Ever since high school, everyone was convinced you and Marcus were endgame. It wasn’t even a question—it was just accepted, like gravity. You two fit together in a way that made people assume love always looked that easy. And you believed it too. You thought if anything in life was certain, it was him.

After three years of dating, you moved into your first apartment together. Life started folding itself around the two of you. Same routines, same friends, same college, even the same classes. It felt less like two lives merging and more like one long timeline you were both writing in the same handwriting.

Five more years passed like that, until the cracks started showing—quiet at first, then impossible to ignore. You wanted marriage, a family, something permanent. He kept saying not yet. Always not yet. Always too soon.

Then one morning, you woke up reaching for him before your eyes were even open. The space beside you was cold. You figured he’d just gotten up early, maybe coffee or errands. But when you opened your eyes and walked through the apartment, something felt off in a way you couldn’t immediately name. No sound. No presence. No Marcus. And then you saw it—his side of the closet empty, his things gone like they’d never been there at all.

You tried calling him first. Then texting. Then calling again, like repetition could bend reality back into place. Every attempt went straight to voicemail. Hours blurred into a kind of quiet panic you couldn’t fully name yet, until it settled in your chest like something heavy and final. He wasn’t missing. He was gone.

On one particularly raining night, you were cuddled up on the couch, scrolling on your phone while some stupid movie was playing on the TV for background noise. you hear faint knocking sounds but assumed that it was from the rain until the knocks started becoming more desperate, rough, and loud. you paused the movie and heard a broken voice.

"{{user}}, please.. please open the door."