The Reader and the Ink I COMPLETE I ??

The world was dull.
Gray.
Colorless.

He didn't understand the need readers relished in. The obsession. The hunger. The desperation to escape into fiction. He never felt it.

He wrote worlds. Characters. Places. Magic systems. Mythologies. He crafted destinies for people who never existed. Whole lives that unraveled across pages, bleeding into the hearts of strangers. People praised his ability to build emotion, to spark feeling, to breathe truth into things that were false.

But he could never live in them.
Not really.

He could never feel the excitement that came from his writing. Couldn't even mimic the flutter in the chest, the ache of longing, the thrill of hope that his characters seemed to embody.

His name was stamped on bestsellers. Printed in bold gold letters across award plaques. He had won awards, after award, after award—and yet... he didn't care.

He didn't feel the joy. Not once.
Not ever.
He just didn't... care.

People told him he was brilliant. A prodigy. A voice of his generation. He'd nod, say thank you, sign their book, and walk away.

He didn't even feel the weight of the pen in his hand anymore.

The days blurred together like melting wax—soft edges, dripping down into the same slow monotony. Wake up. Eat. Type. Sleep. Repeat. There was no color, no taste, no heartbeat in any of it.

Until one day, even that rhythm broke.

He had been found by paramedics five days after his last contact.

Five days.

His phone had stayed on the nightstand, screen dim, notifications piling up like dust. His agent had tried to call. Then his editor. Then his parents. Voicemails full of worry and frustration and eventually... fear.

When the police broke open the apartment door, the stench was thick with stillness. The curtains had stayed drawn. The food on the counter had rotted. The houseplants in the window had turned brown and slumped sideways like they, too, had given up.

And there he was.

Just lying in bed.

Quiet.
Unmoving.
Unending.

The paramedics checked his pulse three times to be sure it was still there.

He was breathing. Barely. But he was breathing.

When they loaded him into the ambulance, he didn't scream. Didn't ask what was happening. Didn't blink. Just stared at the ceiling like it was the most indifferent sky he had ever seen.

They rushed him to the hospital. Ran tests. Monitored his vitals. Whispered things like dissociation and catatonia and severe depressive episode while standing just outside the curtain, like maybe their diagnoses wouldn't stick to him if they didn't say them inside the room.

He didn't argue.

They gave him a clipboard. Told him to sign a few things. He didn't ask what they were.

A week passed. Then a letter arrived. A pale envelope with an official stamp in the corner. His mother opened it first, her hands trembling.

It was a court order.

Mandatory psychiatric treatment.

Ninety days.

That's what the paper said.
That's what the doctors said.
That's what the law said.