The room did not feel different after the message.
That unsettled him more than anything else.
The ceiling fan had stopped, yet the air remained still, heavy in a way he could not explain. His phone screen stayed dark after the last line appeared, as if whatever had spoken had already lost interest. He sat up slowly, listening for something that never came.
No alarms. No voices. No footsteps outside his door.
He pressed the power button on his phone. Nothing happened.
"Great," he muttered, more tired than afraid.
He set the phone aside and stood. The floor felt solid beneath his feet, familiar in its unevenness. He took a step, then another, testing himself, half expecting the world to glitch or dissolve. It did not. The room remained painfully ordinary.
That was when the tightness began.
It started in his chest, subtle at first, like a breath that did not quite finish. He paused, hand resting on the back of the chair. He inhaled again, slower this time.
The air felt thinner.
He frowned and rolled his shoulders, trying to shake it off. Stress, he told himself. Lack of sleep. Too much caffeine, not enough food. He had ignored worse sensations before.
The pressure grew.
It was not sharp. Not dramatic. Just an increasing weight, as if something unseen had decided to sit inside him and refuse to move. His heartbeat picked up, uneven, each pulse slightly off from the last.
He reached for his phone again.
Still dead.
A flicker of unease crept in, but it did not bloom into panic. Panic required energy. He felt strangely hollow, as if fear could not find a place to stand.
He walked toward the door, intending to step into the hallway, maybe knock on a neighbor's door. Halfway there, his legs weakened.
The world tilted.
He caught himself against the wall, breath shallow now, chest burning in a dull, spreading way. Sweat gathered at his temples. His vision narrowed at the edges, the room losing detail, colors flattening.
This was not how death was supposed to feel.
There were no flashing memories. No sudden clarity. No voice narrating meaning into the moment. Just discomfort, confusion, and the creeping understanding that something was going wrong inside his body and he had no control over it.
He slid down the wall and sat on the floor.
The hallway light flickered once overhead, then steadied. He wondered if anyone else had noticed. He doubted it. The building was old. Lights flickered all the time.
His breaths came short now. Each one felt borrowed.
He thought about calling for help. The idea surfaced, then drifted away. Who would he call out to. His neighbors barely knew his name. The people from his internship would not answer. Friends existed in theory, not practice.
His throat tightened, but not from emotion.
It was not fear filling his chest.
It was regret.
The realization settled quietly, almost gently.
This was it.
Not a dramatic accident. Not a heroic sacrifice. Just a body failing in a rented hallway, unnoticed, unimportant.
He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the erratic thud beneath his palm. His fingers trembled. He focused on the sensation, grounding himself in it, the way people advised during anxiety attacks.
It did not help.
His thoughts slowed, each one heavier than the last.
He thought of all the moments he had waited.
Waited to be chosen. Waited to be invited. Waited for someone to look at him and decide he was enough.
He remembered standing at the edge of groups, hoping someone would turn and wave him over. Remembered sending messages that were answered hours later, if at all. Remembered smiling through conversations that never deepened.
He had always told himself it was fine.
That being unnoticed was safer than being rejected.
Now, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, he understood the lie.
Being invisible did not protect him from pain.
It only delayed it.
His breathing grew ragged. Each inhale scraped, shallow and unsatisfying. His vision dimmed further, the hallway stretching, then contracting, as if distance itself had lost meaning.
He wondered, briefly, if someone would find him before it was over.
The answer arrived before the hope could form.
No.
There was no reason for anyone to come looking.
The thought did not hurt. It simply existed.
He closed his eyes, then opened them again, unsure why he bothered. The hallway looked the same. Beige walls. Scuffed floor. A door across from him with a peeling number.
He had passed that door a hundred times without knowing who lived behind it.
They did not know him either.
His heartbeat stumbled. The pressure in his chest intensified, then dulled, spreading outward like numbness. His hands felt distant, as if they belonged to someone else.
He tried to remember something good.
Something warm.
His mind offered fragments. A rare compliment from a professor. A classmate once laughing at his joke. A girl who had thanked him for listening, then drifted away weeks later.
None of it stayed.
The dominant feeling was not sadness.
It was the weight of an unlived life.
Not in the grand sense. He did not dream of fame or greatness. He had wanted small things. To be wanted. To be chosen without hesitation. To be someone's priority, even once.
His lips parted as if to speak, but no words came out. There was no one to hear them anyway.
His final coherent thought arrived without drama.
I was never wanted.
Not as a burden, not as a mistake. Just as an absence. A space people did not notice was empty.
The pressure in his chest peaked, then released.
His heartbeat slowed.
The hallway light flickered again.
Somewhere far away, a door opened and closed. Footsteps passed, distant and unconcerned. Life continuing along its quiet path.
His vision collapsed inward, the edges swallowing the center. Sound faded next, the hum of electricity thinning until it was nothing more than an idea.
He did not feel fear.
He felt tired.
The floor was cool against his side as his body slumped fully, muscles giving up the effort to hold him upright. His hand slipped from his chest and rested limply on the floor.
There were no last words.
No witnesses.
No meaning assigned.
The darkness arrived without ceremony.
And it stayed.