He avoided mirrors and the news. The internet was a place for ghosts, and he’d already met his own. Every day felt like a penance measured in silence. For a man who once loved jokes, he found it hard to laugh. It seemed he had exhausted all his mirth. He had no one left to disappoint but himself.
Months passed, and anonymity began to feel like oxygen. The whispers were gone. The judgments, too. Yet beneath the stillness, something restless lingered—a sense of borrowed rather than earned peace. He wondered what would become of him.