It started like a promise: soft light through a cracked blinds, the kind of morning that smells like laundry and possibility. You learned her laugh first—too quick, like someone who’s always a few beats ahead—then the way she left trails of cigarette ash on the balcony tiles, an unspoken map of places she’d been and places she wouldn’t take you.
You learned to reassemble yourself from the shards. Not healed, not whole, but functional. You stopped romanticizing the idea of fixing what was broken and instead catalogued lessons—what to keep, what to burn, what to file away in the memory closet for reference. You started drawing again, tracing the silhouette of a hand that refused to be entirely yours. Corrupted Love -v0.9- By RIC0H
Corruption creeps in subtly. A promise turned into a ledger: favors owed, apologies counted on callused palms. The calls grew fewer; when she spoke, there was the rumble of another voice beneath hers, a static you never cleared. She’d tell you she was fine and the line between truth and performance thinned until the notion of trust was something you could bend and twist into shapes that fit the moment. It started like a promise: soft light through
You were both architects of your downfall. Late nights became negotiation tables. Old photos were edited—faces blurred, edges sharpened—until memory itself felt retouched. You argued about nothing and everything, about the exact shade of a lie, about the ethics of omission. Sometimes you’d make up, clasp hands over steaming coffee, and swear it was different now; the vow tasted like cheap sugar. Not healed, not whole, but functional
Days later, you discovered her sketchbook tucked in the bottom drawer. Inked pages were half-finished portraits—faces blurred in all the places you knew too well—not with anger but with a methodical, almost scientific removal. She had been practicing erasure. It was art and apology at once.
Between the two of you, affection was a series of small betrayals disguised as gifts. A thrifted sweater with a lipstick-colored stain—“I loved it so I stole it”—folded beside receipts for things neither of you could afford. Playlist dedications posted at three a.m., then deleted the next day. She called it honesty; you called it survival. Neither name fit.