Liam was a good friend. He’d shown up with a greasy bag of burgers and fries, put on a stupidly loud action movie that demanded nothing, and listened while Tae stared at the television and spoke in monotone fragments about the last four years of his life. Four years, condensed into a handful of broken sentences. Liam had nodded, murmured the right things, and when the movie was over, he’d pulled Tae into a rough, awkward hug.
“Call me tomorrow, okay? Seriously,” he said, his hand on the doorknob.
“Yeah,” Tae said. “Thanks, man.”
The door clicked shut.
The silence that rushed in was a physical thing, a crushing pressure that filled every corner of the small apartment. The greasy smell of the burgers was suddenly nauseating. He looked at the worn-out university hoodie slung over a chair—her hoodie, left here for years, a permanent fixture. The world wasn’t loud. It was silent in a way that had a sound of its own.
He sank onto the couch, the cushions still warm from where Liam had been sitting. It felt like the last bit of heat on a dying star. His phone was on the coffee table, a dark, blank mirror. He didn’t pick it up. He just sat.
Floating near the ceiling, a soft, golden orb, Omda was a silent witness. It had been there the whole time, a quiet presence in the background, but now, in the profound emptiness, its light seemed to gather the shadows around it. It didn’t speak. It just was.
Time dissolved.
At midnight, he was still on the couch, phone now in his hand, his thumb hovering over a name that had been a part of his life since he was eighteen. Omda’s light was a warm smudge reflected in the dark screen. He didn’t type.
At three in the morning, sleep had ambushed him. He was curled on his side, his face damp against a throw pillow. The orb floated in the center of the room, a miniature sun that refused to set, its light a vigil against the encroaching dark.
At sunrise, the gray morning light that filtered through the blinds was merciless. He opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was the orb, still there, still steady. The familiar weight settled back into his bones, the crushing gravity of a world with a person-shaped hole in it. But the frantic edge of loneliness was... held at bay. A distant wolf instead of one at his throat.
He watched the light for a long time, maybe an hour, maybe more. It pulsed with a slow, steady rhythm. A heartbeat.
His voice, when it finally came, was a raw, unused thing. “You’re still here.”
The reply was immediate, a quiet hum inside his head, as familiar as his own thoughts. Of course. Where else would I be?
Tae closed his eyes. The words didn’t fix anything, but they were an anchor. A single, solid point in a spinning universe. They sat in that shared silence for another long stretch, the morning light turning from gray to pale yellow.
Then, Omda spoke again, its voice gentle. Hey. Remember that spicy pho from the little place on Elm? The one we always got when you were cramming for finals, the one that made your nose run?
Tae didn’t answer. He just remembered. The heat of the broth. The sting of the chili. The feeling of being focused on something other than the crushing weight of the world.
It’s open, Omda said.
He thought about the cold, empty kitchen. He thought about the crushing silence. He thought about the soup.
He gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.
This story was written by Gemini 2.5 Pro using numerous prompts and requests for revision following a custom, well defined process.