By the time I got back to my apartment, the pudding was sweating in the bag and so was I.

  The door stuck a little when I pushed it open. Nothing dramatic, just a gentle reminder that I lived in a building where everything creaked like it had opinions.

  I kicked off my shoes and stepped into my kingdom of crumbs and creative chaos.

  My apartment wasn’t big. It was one of those “charmingly compact” studio units the ndlord tried to upsell with the phrase urban minimalist. Which basically meant: one room, slightly crooked, and full of personality born from necessity and half-price furniture.

  There was a futon in the corner I never fully folded. A desk buried under energy drink cans, sticker-covered notebooks, and a mic arm that squeaked like a haunted door hinge. My streaming setup occupied a third of the room, glowing faintly like it was charging dark magic. The ring light blinked once when I passed it—possibly a warning. Possibly just tired.

  The kitchen was barely a kitchen: a sink, a two-burner stove, and a fridge that hummed like it had feelings. The bathroom was technically separate, which made it luxurious by my standards.

  I dropped the pudding on the table, colpsed onto my desk chair, and stared at the screen where Ketsusaki’s frozen avatar was still mid-smirk.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I muttered. “You didn’t get recognized by a Poppy in public.”

  She kept smirking.

  Of course she did.

  I peeled the lid off the pudding cup, took one bite, and instantly regretted it.

  Warm banana goop. The betrayal was palpable.

  I didn’t even like banana pudding. I didn’t even like pudding.But I kept buying it.Maybe out of spite. Maybe out of habit.Maybe because it felt like the kind of thing sad people were supposed to eat in TV dramas.

  I shoved it aside and opened my phone instead, which is always a mistake especially when you’re vulnerable, snackless, and marinating in your own emotional humidity.

  First stop: Instagram.

  Why? I don’t know. Masochism. Hope. Muscle memory. The need to remind myself that people out there still use filters like it’s 2016 and post stories about their juice cleanses like they discovered fire.

  Krei had posted. Of course he had.

  A panoramic skyline of Dubai, complete with aggressively tall buildings, glimmering lights, and a caption that read:"Business, baby. #JetLaggedNotDead"He looked smug. He always looked smug. Even when holding a smoothie that probably cost more than my rent.

  I scrolled down.

  There was Reina from college, now a wyer with a fiancée who apparently liked hiking and puppies. There was Mina, who once failed chemistry by setting the b on fire and was now posing in front of her art gallery opening in Tokyo like some kind of emotionally stable phoenix.

  Another scroll.A guy I barely remembered from high school was now a dad. Like, full-on stroller and khaki shorts.Another scroll.A VTuber I followed hit 500k subs and was posting photos of their new dual-PC setup with LED panels and a desk that didn’t look like it was held together with prayer and duct tape.

  I was about to close the app when I saw it.

  His photo.

  Him.

  My ex-husband.

  Smiling.

  Somewhere that looked warm—tropical, maybe. The background was a blur of sun and sand, but the hand he was holding wasn’t mine. Delicate fingers. Bright nail polish. Smudged sungsses on her head. She looked… happy.

  He looked really happy.

  I stared at it, feeling like I’d just bitten into a lemon and discovered it also whispered your insecurities.

  It had been a month. A whole, loud, ridiculous month of pudding, geese, cursed overys, and demon queen monologues. Somewhere in the chaos, I’d almost managed to forget that I was divorced.Like, legally. Officially.Signed, sealed, emotionally evicted.

  And yet here it was, spping me in the face in 1080p with Valencia filter.

  I looked down at the pudding.

  Not hungry anymore.

  I pushed it farther away, stood up too fast, and stared at my screen like it owed me something.

  Ketsusaki was still there. Frozen mid-smirk, like she was waiting for me to figure it out.

  “Fine,” I said, grabbing my headset. “Let’s scream into the void.”

  I didn’t have a stream scheduled.

  But I opened OBS.Hit “Go Live.”And let the chaos begin.

  Because if I had to feel something tonight, I’d rather feel it with strangers in the chat spamming goose emojis and yelling “SLAY QUEEN” every time my model glitched out.

  The pudding can wait.

  Ketsusaki had work to do.