Chapter 4: Casual Cruelty
The final break came in the most unexpected way. It wasn’t a big confrontation or a dramatic argument. It wasn’t something you could trace back to one single mistake or misstep. Instead, it was a slow unraveling, something that had been coming for months, maybe even years.
And yet, when he called me up that night, I still wasn’t prepared for it. His voice was cold, distant, like he had already made up his mind, like he had already moved on. He told me things that cut deeper than I expected, and in the way he said them—so casually, so calmly—it felt like he had never really cared at all.
“Sorry, but it’s over,” he said, as if it were nothing. As if it were just another casual conversation.
It wasn’t the words themselves that hurt so much, but the way they were delivered. He wasn’t even angry. He wasn’t shouting or crying. He was simply stating facts, as though we were nothing more than two strangers who had once crossed paths.
And in that moment, I felt small, crumpled, and broken. The person I had once known so well seemed like a stranger, and I was left with nothing but memories of what we had shared.
