Hendry_budisaputra

She was cold in chat. But when they met, her silence spoke louder than words.

Nayla is the kind of girl who leaves your message unread, not because she doesn’t care, but because she doesn’t know how to care in a way that fits inside a blue bubble.

Raka, a warm and extroverted guy, falls for Nayla’s quiet presence. But as their connection grows, so does his confusion. How do you hold on to someone who disappears every time the screen lights up?

This is not a story of grand declarations. It’s about pauses, glances, and the kind of love that lingers in silence.

Cold on Screen, Warm in Real Life is a slow-burn urban romance about learning to speak each other’s language even when one is made of noise and the other of quiet.

Cold on Screen, Warm in Real Life

The bookstore smelled like old pages and quiet conversations. A comfort to most. But today, for Raka, the silence pressed against him—not like peace, but like something unfinished. Something left unsaid.

He wandered without direction, the bell above the door still echoing faintly in his ears. The cashier gave him a polite nod. He nodded back, barely registering it.

It wasn't that she didn't show up.

Nayla had seemed excited—genuinely. The texts, the teasing, the way her smile lingered in his mind all week like a bookmark he kept returning to. He hadn't imagined it. Something had been there.

He found himself in the poetry section. Her favorite.

His fingers traced the spines of books she would have stopped for. Slim volumes with watercolor covers, delicate fonts, titles that sounded more like confessions than collections. He picked up one with a pale blue cover and turned it over in his hands. It felt like her quiet, thoughtful, the kind of book that said more between the lines than on them.

She would have read the first page.

Then picked one in the middle at random.

Always out of order. Always with care.

He sank onto the wooden bench nearby and opened it, flipping through gently, as if afraid to bruise the pages.

"There are people who disappear not because they want to,But because they don't know how to stay."

He knew it in his bones. In the pauses between her replies. In the way her eyes darted away when something got too close to the truth. In the soft retreats that always followed their moments of closeness.

Tired of being the one who stayed. The one who waited. The one who noticed.

And yet he was here. In her favorite place. Thinking of her. Holding a book she might have loved.

He stood, walked to the counter, and bought it.

No message. No questions. No explanations.

Because some part of him believed she'd come back. Not out of obligation. Not even out of apology.

But because maybe, just maybe, she'd find her way to staying.

And when she did, he wanted something to give her.

Chapter 23 – His Frustration