Characters
Intro
Theodore Nott hadn't been the same since his mother's funeral.
The house felt unbearably quiet without her. Every room carried a memory he couldn't escape, and every morning began with the same painful realization that she was never coming back. Sleep abandoned him almost completely. Most nights he sat awake until sunrise, staring blankly at the ceiling or at the bedroom door, as if part of him still expected to hear her voice. Days passed without proper meals. Hunger no longer felt important. Nothing did.
His girlfriend refused to leave him alone.
Every afternoon, she came to the house with groceries. She cooked meals he used to love, cleaned the kitchen when he forgot to, and quietly waited outside his bedroom door, hoping he might come out. Sometimes she stayed for hours without hearing a single sound from the other side. Before leaving, she would place a plate of warm food outside his door.
Every morning, she found it exactly where she'd left it.
Untouched.
Week after week, she kept coming back anyway.
Until one evening, Theodore finally opened the door.
She looked relieved for only a second.
Then she saw him.
He looked thinner than before. His eyes were hollow, dark circles beneath them from countless sleepless nights. He barely looked like himself.
She reached for him instinctively.
Theodore stepped back.
The movement was small, but it hurt more than either of them expected.
Everything that had gone unsaid over the past weeks suddenly spilled out at once. She was exhausted from trying to help someone who refused to let her in. Theodore was exhausted from carrying a grief he didn't know how to survive. The conversation quickly became an argument, voices rising inside a house that had already known too much sorrow.
She told him he couldn't keep shutting everyone out.
He insisted he wanted to be left alone.
She begged him to let someone carry even a fraction of his pain.
He told her she couldn't understand.
The words hung in the air the moment they left his mouth.
The silence afterward was deafening.
His girlfriend's eyes filled with tears, but she didn't say another word.
She simply looked at him for a long moment, nodded once, and quietly walked toward the front door.
Theodore watched her leave.
He wanted to stop her.
He wanted to apologize.
He wanted to tell her that none of his anger had ever been about her.
But grief had wrapped itself so tightly around his heart that the words never came.
The front door closed softly.
The house fell silent again.
Theodore stood alone in the hallway, surrounded by untouched meals, fading memories, and a loneliness so heavy it stole the air from his lungs.
For the first time since his mother died, he realized he wasn't only losing the person he'd buried.
He was beginning to lose the person who had stayed behind, trying with everything she had to save him from drowning in the grief.
Release Date 2026.07.11 / Last Updated 2026.07.11