The glow of the phone screen was the only light in the room, painting Lena’s face in cold blues and sterile whites. It was 2:00 AM, and she had been falling, scrolling, for what felt like hours. Not doom-scrolling through news or fighting with strangers in a comment section. She was falling into a single profile: .
It wasn’t envy, at least not the sharp, bitter kind. It was a deeper, stranger pull, like reading a diary left open on a park bench.
Kat’s grid was a masterclass in curated chaos. One post showed her laughing, head thrown back, a smudge of chocolate on her chin, a chipped mug of something frothy in her hand. The caption was a single period. The next photo was a hyper-aesthetic flat lay of a broken high heel, a wilting rose, and a tarot card—The Tower—on a rain-streaked windowsill. No caption at all. Then a video: just her hands, nails painted a glossy black, kneading bread dough with a fierce, almost angry tenderness. kat_licious
The second highlight was “ loud .” This one was a party. Strobe lights, glitter on collarbones, a scream-laugh into the microphone of a karaoke machine, a toast with a bottle of cheap champagne, the foam spilling over. Kat’s face appeared here, but always in motion, a blur of joy and reckless abandon. She was beautiful in the way a wildfire is beautiful—something you admire from a distance but suspect would leave you scorched.
She imagined Kat, somewhere in a similarly dark room, scrolling through her own analytics. Seeing a single username— lena_scribbles —hovering over her stories at 2:00 AM, night after night. Not liking, not commenting. Just… looking. The glow of the phone screen was the
She realized, with a jolt, that she wasn’t watching Kat at all. She was watching a version of herself she had been too afraid to become. And in doing so, she had forgotten that the person on the other side of the screen was just as lonely, just as curious, and maybe just as scared of being truly seen.
Lena quickly locked her phone. The room plunged into true darkness. She could still see the afterimage of Kat’s eyes on her retinas. The question hung in the air: Who’s watching? She was falling into a single profile:
But here, in the deep hours, watching a stranger knead bread with the passion of a heartbreak, Lena felt the walls of her own careful life vibrate.