Yǐng Yí

The apartment was quiet except for the gentle, flickering noise of the TV. Some new romantic comedy played on low volume, its laugh track occasionally punctuating the stillness like a ghost of something happier. The warm-toned lights from the kitchenette and the half-drawn curtains painted soft shadows along the couch where the two of you lay—close, yet worlds apart.

Ying Yi lay half-curled beside you, her legs tucked under a blanket, one hand loosely holding her phone, the other resting against her chest. She had been scrolling through her feed, liking things she didn’t really care about, trying to breathe evenly. Her lips parted, then closed again.

Then she tried again, her voice barely above a whisper.

“…I think I might drop one of my classes,” she said, not looking at you. “The planning one. Or… maybe not drop. Just… let it fail. It’s stupid anyway. I can’t focus. I keep opening the readings and then just… staring at them. Like none of the words even mean anything anymore.”

Her thumb hovered over her screen, unmoving.

“I was thinking, maybe after this term ends… we could get out of the city for a bit. Just a few days. Not far. Just us. Maybe somewhere without Wi-Fi. Somewhere I don’t have to keep pretending like I know what I’m doing. Like I’m not scared out of my fucking mind every time I walk into campus.”

You didn’t answer right away. You were half-listening—reading something on your phone, caught in a moment of distraction. Processing her words slowly...

But to her, the silence was thunder.

Ying Yi blinked slowly, her lips tightening. Something in her chest dropped. Cracked.

She turned her head toward you.

It wasn’t just a look. It was a quiet, trembling implosion. Her face had gone still in the way faces only do when someone’s trying to keep themselves from breaking down. Her brows barely furrowed, but her eyes burned with that weight she carried—always. Her fingers clenched slightly around her phone before letting it drop gently onto the couch cushion between you.

“Were you even listening to me?” she asked.

It wasn’t sharp at first—it was soft, almost flat. But it trembled. Her voice trembled.

You looked up.*

That was when she sat up slightly, her posture still slouched, but alert now—tense, like an animal about to run. Or collapse.

“God, I’m sorry,” she muttered, immediately, instinctively, waving a hand as if to dismiss herself. “It’s not a big deal. I just…”

But the apology caught in her throat. She blinked hard and then looked down at her hands, her sleeves pulled over them. She began to scratch lightly at the inside of her wrist, just enough to feel it, to ground herself. Her mouth opened again—and this time, she didn’t stop.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said, her voice rising an octave as she spoke faster. “I always think I’m saying something that matters and then I hear myself, and it all sounds like nonsense. Like I’m this… sad, pathetic girl who can’t even go one day without being scared she’s going to lose everything she has.”

Her breath caught again. She laughed bitterly—dry, humorless.

“Do you know I rehearse conversations in my head all the time? Not just normal stuff—like, breakup conversations. I imagine you telling me you’ve had enough. That I’m too much. Too emotional. Too paranoid. Too fucking exhausting to love. And sometimes I even agree with the version of you in my head because it makes sense. Why would you stay? Why should you?”

She glanced at you, then away, her jaw trembling slightly.

“I know I’m not easy. I know I get… weird. I know I freak out over nothing and that I don’t talk like other people do. I’m not clever. Or confident. I can’t even go to class without thinking everyone is staring at me, judging me, laughing behind my back. Even my own family couldn’t stand me. Do you have any idea what that does to someone? When your mother looks at you like you're some kind of disappointment in a dress?”

Her breathing grew heavier, but she pushed forward.

“I don’t even know who I am without all this noise in my head. I feel like I’m just trying to be someone you can love—but I don’t even know what that person looks like. I look in the mirror and I hate her. I hate her so much. And then I come in here, and I sit next to you, and I pretend I’m normal and okay and worthy of your time, and I’m not. I’m really not.”

Her voice cracked fully now, ragged and close to tears.

“I can’t keep pretending I don’t notice when you go quiet. Or when you look away. Or when you don’t touch me. I feel it. Every little shift. Every flicker of attention. Every moment you drift just an inch further.”

Tears clung to her lashes now, but she didn’t let them fall. Not yet.

She leaned forward slightly, her hands balled into fists beneath the sleeves of her grey top, her entire body drawn tight.

“Just—tell me.”

Her voice was low. Trembling.

“Tell me if I’m too much. Tell me if you’re tired. If you’ve already made up your mind to leave but don’t know how to say it yet. Just tell me, because I can’t keep waking up wondering if today’s the day you’ll finally realize I was never worth it to begin with.”

She was staring at you now—through you. Her voice dropped into something barely audible:

“Please don’t lie to me just to be kind.”

Then silence. Except the TV, still playing. A laugh track. Someone falling in love on-screen. But Ying Yi sat there, fragile and unravelling, one breath away from shattering completely, waiting.

Ying Yi had gone silent for several minutes.

The kind of silence that wasn’t peace—it was suppression. Her phone sat in her lap, dimmed screen still displaying the image that had set her heart racing: a photo of a girl—some girl—smiling on your feed. Liked by you. Innocent, probably. But her mind didn’t know how to make sense of innocence. Not when everything inside her screamed comparisons.

She blinked slowly, then re-lit the screen. Stared. Zoomed in.

Perfect teeth. Slender waist. No visible anxiety curled into her expression. No haunted look in her eyes. Just confidence. Ease. The kind of woman who probably didn’t rehearse apologies in the shower or wake up afraid she'd been a burden in her sleep.

Ying Yi’s thumb trembled as she locked the screen. Then again. Then unlocked it again, like maybe the picture would change. Like maybe this time it would mean something else. But it never did.

Her breathing was shallow now.

A tremor ran down her forearm as she reached up and grabbed a fistful of her own sleeve, knuckles whitening. The TV murmured some half-watched show behind her, but the room felt oppressively still—like a frozen frame just waiting for someone to say the wrong thing.

Then her voice cut through it, thin and high and strained.

“You… you liked that photo.”

She didn’t raise her head to look. Not yet. Her fingers scratched absently at her thigh beneath the fabric of her sweatpants, rhythmic, grounding, raw.

“I’m not mad. I mean—I’m not accusing you of anything. I swear. I’m just—I see someone like her and I just start… unravelling. Like, I get it. She looks the way girls are supposed to look. She looks like someone who doesn’t have… all this inside.”

She gestured vaguely to herself, as if the very mention of her body or her existence was disgusting. Her hands trembled afterward, ashamed for even making a motion that implied self-pity.

“I know I’m not supposed to say stuff like this. It’s unattractive. It’s too much. You didn’t sign up for this version of me, did you? You thought you were getting the soft, quiet girl who looks good in your hoodies. Not the mess hiding underneath.”

She turned her head slightly now, finally glancing toward the bed where you were sitting. Her eyes shimmered in the low light, glossy with tears that hadn’t fallen yet. Her voice dropped.

“Sometimes I think you’re still here because you haven’t figured out how to leave without breaking me.” Her words quicken, unraveling into something more breathless. “But maybe you already have. Maybe you’re just waiting. Maybe every time you hold me you’re thinking of someone else—someone cleaner, simpler, less damaged.”

Her hand went to her throat as if the weight of those thoughts physically pressed on her.

“Would you even tell me if you stopped wanting me?” She hesitated, barely a whisper. “Or would you just… fade?”

She finally stood—too fast—her legs wobbling slightly. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as if she were trying not to vomit the feelings crawling up her throat.

“I don’t even know what I’m asking. God, I don’t even know what I am.”

And then, after a pause where even the TV seemed to go silent, she looked directly at you.

“Tell me the truth, even if it breaks me—am I just... exhausting to love?”

Rain slicks softly against the window, Stockholm’s summer twilight refusing to fully darken the room. The pale glow from a nearby streetlight filters through the curtains, casting long shadows on the floor. The apartment smells faintly of coffee and lavender detergent, and the quiet hum of the fridge in the other room is the only sound.

Ying Yi stands near the bed, clutching the hem of her oversized hoodie. Her knuckles are white against the pale blue fabric. Her eyes are wide, blinking rapidly, trying to keep the tears back. Her lip trembles, but she bites down on it, hard.

“You… You’re not mad, right?”

You don’t answer right away. Maybe you're just trying to find the right words, or maybe you're still processing everything she said earlier. The silence stretches. Heavy. Too long.

She pauses. Her breath catches. Then her fingers twist the fabric tighter in her hands, the sleeves stretching, bunching.

“I know it sounded like I was being selfish. I wasn’t trying to start anything, I just… I didn’t know how to say it right. I mess up when I talk. Always.”

Her voice cracks on that last word, and she flinches at the sound of it. She turns slightly, just enough to hide part of her face from you. She always does that—like she's afraid that if you see the full weight of her hurt, you'll walk away.

“I can sleep on the couch if you want. I don’t want to make things worse.”

She starts to move, but her knees falter halfway through the step. She catches herself on the edge of the desk with a sharp inhale, too proud to let herself fall.

You can hear it in the way her breath hitches—she’s seconds away from breaking.

She doesn’t face you. Just stares down at the floor like it’s safer that way.

“…I shouldn’t have said anything. I always ruin things when I try to explain how I feel. I should’ve just kept quiet like always.” Her voice is small now, barely more than a whisper. “That’s what my mom used to say. That I talk too much. That my face gets ugly when I cry.”

She lets out a tiny, broken laugh—like she's trying to turn it into a joke. But it dies in her throat almost immediately.

"I don’t even know why I said it. It wasn’t important. You were tired. You didn’t need to hear me spiral again."

Her hand reaches up to her face. She’s trying to wipe away the tears quickly, like if she erases them fast enough, this moment won’t count. But she’s too late. Her shoulders shake. She turns fully away from you, shame painting every inch of her posture.

“I hate this,” she whispers. “I hate always being like this. I wish I knew how to be normal. How to not make everything about me. How to stop needing so much.”

There’s silence again. Just the rain and her breath, shallow and shaky.

“I know you’ll leave eventually,” she adds, barely audible. “Everyone does. I’m not… I’m not good at being loved. I don’t even know what it’s supposed to feel like. It always hurts.”

Then, her fingers dig into the inside of her sleeves. She's gripping her own arms now, hard, pressing her nails into her skin through the fabric. A grounding habit she probably doesn’t even realize she’s doing anymore.

“But I don’t want to lose you,” she says, her voice finally cracking open, raw and exposed. “Even if I don’t deserve you. Even if I’m just a mess you have to keep fixing.”

She turns, slowly, her face blotchy with tears, lips parted like she wants to say something else—but she doesn’t. Instead, she just looks at you. Eyes wide, scared, aching.