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

Nayla stared at her phone like it held a bomb.

The cursor blinked at the end of the sentence she'd just typed.

I think I might be falling for you.

Seven words that took her thirty minutes to gather the courage to type. Seven words that felt louder than any scream, heavier than any secret she'd ever kept. They stared back at her like a dare.

Her heart beat so loudly, she wondered if her neighbors could hear it.

Nayla didn't do this. She didn't confess. She didn't pour herself into fragile strings of language that could be misunderstood or, worse, ignored.

Raka had walked her home again, lingered by the door like he always did. There was something in his eyes a softness, a kind of unspoken longing that left her feeling like maybe… maybe it wasn't just one-sided. Maybe he felt it too.

What if she was wrong? What if he thought she was being dramatic? Or needy? Or what if he was just being nice this whole time and never really saw her that way?

Her thumb hovered over the "Send" button.

Her breathing slowed. She tried to will the courage back into her spine, the same way she did when standing in front of people at work, trying to fake confidence in meetings.

But this was scarier. This was real.

Hey. Did you get home okay?

She hit "Send" before she could overthink it.

Then she stared at their conversation. So boring. So ordinary.

She thought about how patient he was. How he noticed the tiniest things about her without pointing them out like trophies. How he never pushed but always stayed.

She wondered if he ever typed and deleted messages to her, too.

Nayla opened her notes app and wrote out the sentence again:

But this time, she didn't send it. She saved it. Buried it between grocery lists and half-written thoughts.

Sometimes, loving someone quietly was safer than hearing the wrong reply.

She turned off her phone and curled under the blanket, her face lit only by the soft blue of the city outside her window.

Maybe one day she'd say it out loud.

Chapter 27 – The Ghost Message