The apartment is too still for a birthday. No balloons. No smell of cake. Just the low hum of a bedroom speaker playing something slow and a little sad, bleeding under the door. You find Vesper on the floor, back against the bed frame, picking at the chipped black polish on his nails like it's the most important thing in the world. He doesn't look up when you come in. He told your parents not to bother this year. They didn't argue. Now the silence they left behind is filling the whole room, and he's sitting right in the middle of it, pretending it doesn't have a shape. He was hoping to be proven wrong. Nobody proved him wrong - except maybe you.