Characters:
Alina: A quiet, kind girl who always hides her pain behind a smile.
Nida: Her best friend — or so she thought.
Rayyan: A boy Alina secretly loved for years.
The betrayal: Heart-shattering.
The clock hit 3:17 a.m. Alina sat on the cold floor of her room, phone in hand, staring at the last voice note she'd sent to Nida.
“I don’t know what I did wrong... but if being your friend means always losing... then maybe I should stop trying.”
She hadn’t slept in three days. Her eyes were sore, swollen. Every breath she took felt heavier than the last.
Two weeks ago, everything was fine.
Until Nida stopped talking to her.
Until Rayyan stopped smiling at her in class.
Until she heard the whispers behind her back.
“She’s so fake.”
“She flirts with everyone.”
“She tried to break them up.”
Them.
Nida and Rayyan.
Together.
They were the only two people Alina trusted. The only two who knew she cried when no one was watching, who knew she’d skipped meals for days because of stress, who knew she wrote letters to her dead mother every night and hid them under her pillow.
And now they had turned her into a joke.
One day before the betrayal, Nida hugged Alina tightly and said:
“You’re the only one who really knows me.”
And that night, Alina wrote in her journal:
“I don’t think I deserve such a friend. I love her so much it hurts.”
But the next day, the truth hit her like a storm.
Nida had shared all her secrets — every single one — with Rayyan.
About the love she never confessed.
About the scars on her arms.
About how broken she felt inside.
And they laughed.
They. Laughed.
On her birthday, Alina didn’t receive a single message.
No cake.
No call.
No friend.
Not even her father, who worked abroad, remembered.
She lit a candle alone. She whispered a wish:
“I just want one person to stay.”
She recorded a voice note that night. Not for Nida. Not for Rayyan.
For herself.
“Hi... It’s me. Alina.
I know no one will listen to this.
I know I’m the joke everyone laughs at when I leave the room.
But I loved you both. More than I ever loved myself.
And maybe that’s why I was so easy to break.”
“If you ever wonder why I stopped smiling... listen to this again.”
She deleted her social media.
Blocked every number.
She didn’t disappear.
She simply chose silence over screaming for love no one was ever going to return.
A year later, Nida saw her again — standing quietly in a library, hair tied up, eyes emotionless. She opened her mouth to say something.
Alina looked at her.
No anger.
No pain.
Just a soft smile.
“I healed without you.”
And walked away.
Because some friendships don’t end with fights.
They end with silence.
And silence, sometimes, screams the loudest.
