Then she picked up her phone, navigated to her settings, and pressed Delete Account .

She found the old chat. No read receipts. No typing bubbles. Just a blinking cursor and the terrifying freedom of not knowing if the other person had ignored you. She messaged her best friend, Priya, who lived two blocks away: “u up?”

Irony, Mira thought, is a slow poison.

Her news feed was a quiet library. No autoplay videos. No ads for meal kits. Just text. Line after line of simple, declarative sentences written by people she actually knew.