It's not what she expected 7!

Time accelerated after that. In a breath, everything shifted. The camaraderie of that laughter-filled night became the first fissure in what would crumble into a chasm between Sebastian and Dewi—a slow, relentless erosion that left them strangers passing in hallways, their eyes skimming past each other like ghosts.

Their bond frayed, thread by thread, until the distance between them yawned wide enough to drown in. Sebastian stopped fighting it. He let Dewi drift into Emeka's orbit, his once-fierce protectiveness dissolving into resigned silence. Classes resumed—majors reclaimed, routines rebuilt, but the scholarships and late-night study sessions felt hollow now, papering over cracks no one dared name.

Two months in, even Ajeng's relentless scheming couldn't stitch the rift.

"They used to be besties," she muttered, watching Sebastian exit a room the moment Dewi entered. Rafa shrugged, pragmatic as ever, "People change."

Only Rian & Ajeng clung to hope, though their efforts dissolved like sugar in rain.

Dewi and Fitri had vanished into Emeka's world—a whirl of parties and inside jokes, where the past stayed buried. Sebastian buried himself deeper in textbooks, his laughter now a relic.

Some fractures, it seemed, refused to heal.

In those two months, the silence between them grew teeth.

Sebastian and Dewi moved through the corridors like parallel stars—close enough to burn, too distant to touch. Words, once effortless, now lodged in their throats, eye contact fractured into shards of avoidance.

Since that night, Dewi had folded herself into Emeka's orbit, her laughter syncing with Emeka, her hours dissolving into marathon gossip sessions and binge-watched dramas. Fitri, ever the shadow, lingered at her shoulder, a silent sentinel to their unraveling.

Sebastian tried. God, he tried. He'd linger outside her classroom with her favorite food, Bakso, that really hot in the bowl with Mie in it. He'd text—*Remember that we eating together in under a large tree in the field?*—only to watch the bubbles die unanswered. Each rejection was a slow puncture to his pride.

But the Dewi who'd once defended him from danger, who'd stayed up sketching blueprints for his startup idea, was gone. In her place: a stranger who chose Emeka's lazy smirk over their inside jokes, who traded their midnight study marathons for rooftop karaoke with his crew.

Some nights, Sebastian would replay their last memories together—

"You're choosing them over me?"

The truth hung like a blade. He'd become a footnote in her story, while she—she was everywhere, glowing in the light of a new constellation.

Sebastian fought like a man possessed. He clawed at self-improvement with a desperation that bordered on mania—enrolling in Taekwondo and Silat until his knuckles split, convinced brute strength could resurrect the protector Dewi once needed. He joined the humor club, rehearsing punchlines in mirrors until his laughter turned hollow, a pantomime of the wit she'd once adored. Nights bled into dawns at the cooking club, where he perfected bakso broth, the aroma of star anise and grief clinging to his clothes.

But Dewi's eyes slid past him, cold as river stones. She laughed louder at Emeka's lazy jokes, leaned into his effortless charm, her loyalty now a leash around his wrist. Sebastian's offerings—steaming bowls of broth, rehearsed jokes, calloused hands—piled up like debris at her feet, unnoticed.

At night, he unraveled. Rian held him as he crumpled, Sebastian's raw sobs muffled against his chest.

"Why am I never enough?" he'd rasp, the question etching itself into the walls. Ajeng and Rafa watched from doorways, their helplessness a gnawing guilt. They'd catch fragments—bakso left uneaten in the fridge, joke notebooks abandoned in trash bins and ache for the boy who'd turned himself inside out, only to find emptiness staring back.

Dewi, meanwhile, drifted further—a ghost in Emeka's glow, her laughter sharp as broken glass.

Moreover, Dewi became a fixture in the cafeteria, seated across, sometimes with Farhan, sometimes with Emeka and Austina, their heads bent in conversation. Sebastian watched from afar, the hollow clatter of trays echoing his simmering envy.

'What could they possibly talk about?' He wondered, bitterness rising like bile. Their's laughter—effortless, disarming—cut deeper than any blade.

The breaking point came in the ICU.Two days strapped to whirring machines, his lungs raw with every breath, Sebastian clung to delusion,

' She'll come. She has to'

. But the door stayed shut, the silence louder than the monitors.

After discharge, he refused meals, surviving on crackers and water—fuel forced into him by Rian's trembling hands. "Eat," Rian would plead, voice cracking, but Sebastian's gaze stayed fixed on the wall, his heart a fist-sized bruise.

Two months eroded him.He ghosted through lectures, replies pared to grunts, his once-bright humor smothered. Ajeng and Rafa traded glances in his wake, their pity a language without words.

Dewi, meanwhile, thrived. Her laughter rang louder in Emeka's orbit, her absence a verdict: You are nothing.