The Loss.

Everything we start... ends at a some point

Maybe not right away.
Maybe not with a crash, or a clean goodbye.

But eventually — it ends.

Stories fade.
People drift.
Ideas we once held like fire lose their heat.

Sometimes, it ends quietly —
a slow letting go you don’t even notice until it’s already gone.

Other times, it’s sudden.
Violent.
Like something being torn from you mid-sentence.

But the truth is:
no matter how hard we hold on,
not everything is meant to stay.

I used to think if I worked hard enough,
if I cared deeply enough,
if I poured enough of myself into something —
it would last.

It would matter forever.

But time doesn’t always reward effort.
And meaning doesn’t always equal permanence.

I’ve lost projects.
I’ve lost people.
I’ve lost pieces of myself trying to make things last
that were always meant to leave.

And the worst kind of loss?
It’s not something being taken away.
It’s watching it slip through your hands,
knowing you’ve already given all you had.

Loss doesn’t ask for permission.
It just arrives.

And when it does,
all you can do is decide what you’ll carry forward,
and what you’ll finally let rest.

It started with a pattern.

A person from the platform’s internal team — someone in moderation or backend analytics — noticed something odd.
A glitch in the illusion I had worked so hard to make seamless.

Not in the content itself, but in the numbers behind it.

Not in writing.
Not in the dialogue or the pacing or the story arcs.
No — this wasn’t about what I wrote.
It was about how it was being seen.

At first, it looked like success.
Massive spikes in traffic.
A flood of comments.
Thousands of upvotes.

But the deeper they dug into the logs,
the more something felt off.

The views weren’t just coming from different cities or countries —
they were scattered in a way that didn't follow natural engagement patterns.
And most of all, the IP addresses?
They weren’t normal.

A large chunk of them were routing through TOR exit nodes — the final gateways in the TOR browser’s anonymizing network.
IPs that changed constantly.
Impossible to trace directly.
Perfect for masking identity.

The comments too — many of them were generic, vague, overly positive.
The kind of praise that looked human until you read enough of them in a row.
Almost like someone had pre-written dozens, rotated them, and injected them at random intervals.

And the IDs?

Many were freshly created.
Some had no posting history at all.
Others followed the exact same trail of content engagement —
as if someone had scripted the behavior.

It wasn’t a botnet in the traditional sense.
It was smarter than that.
Slower.
More careful.
Intentional.

The analyst cross-referenced timestamps, IP hops, behavior flow —
and slowly the truth began to surface:

Someone was manipulating the platform.
Using the TOR network to mask their tracks,
and inflating content performance — views, upvotes, and even follower count —
to make it look like organic growth.

But it wasn’t real.

It was designed.
Engineered to go viral.
And if no one had checked the logs,
no one would’ve ever known.

But they did check.

The person from the platform compiled everything —
IP logs, account behaviors, access timestamps.
It was undeniable.

And at the center of it all...
was me.

My stories.
My account.
My sudden rise.

At first, I didn’t even know they were investigating.
I was just riding the wave —
waking up every day to higher rankings, more comments, fan art,
messages from people who said my words changed something in them.

And I wanted to believe it was all real.
That I’d finally broken through.

But in the backend, they were tracing every move.
And it didn’t take long for them to connect the dots.

TOR exit nodes.
Thousands of views and interactions routed through anonymized channels.
Different accounts — created, warmed up, and used just enough to seem human —
all feeding into my work.

Boosting it.
Lifting it.
Making it look unstoppable.

Some part of me had always known.
Not every detail — not how it all worked technically.
But deep down, I knew the success wasn’t clean.

I’d bent the system.
Maybe I didn’t write the scripts,
but I played along.
I let it happen.

Because I was tired of being invisible.

Because the dream of being seen —
it was louder than my conscience.

And now?
The numbers didn’t matter.
The platform knew.
They hadn’t confronted me yet,
but I could feel it coming —
the silence before a storm.

One day They called me in.

Not through a warning email.
Not a polite meeting request.
Just a message with a time, a link, and one sentence:
“We need to talk — this can’t wait.”

The next morning, I sat in a virtual meeting room.
A black screen. A blinking cursor.
Then faces — not many, but enough to feel surrounded.

There was someone from the technical operations team,
the kind of person who reads logs like confessionals.
Another from Trust & Safety,
who spoke in clipped, cautious sentences.
And then —
the CEO.

I didn’t expect that.
They usually stayed far above things like this.
But today, they were here.
Not angry. Not dramatic.
Just... disappointed.

That made it worse.

They didn’t yell.
They didn’t accuse me outright.

They showed me numbers.
IPs.
Patterns.
Timelines that aligned a little too perfectly.

“Is this your doing?” one of them asked.
The words were neutral.
But the air wasn’t.

And in that moment, I couldn’t lie.
Not convincingly.

I said what I could:
That I didn’t write the code.
That I didn’t pay for views.
That I didn’t run any bots.

But even as I spoke, I could feel the weight in the room.
Because the truth was murkier than guilt or innocence.
I knew it was happening.
And I let it.
Because it was working.

The CEO finally spoke, voice calm but final:
“You’re not the only one we’ve seen try this. But you’re one of the first who almost got away with it.”

Then they asked the hardest question:
“Why?”

I wanted to say I was desperate.
That I was tired of shouting into the void.
That I never meant for it to go this far.
That I only wanted a chance.

But none of it sounded like enough.

They told me I wouldn’t be banned — not yet.
They would “review the case.”
They needed time.
But until then, my account was frozen.
No uploads.
No comments.
No way to speak.

Just silence.

The call ended.
The screen went black.

And for the first time in a long time,
I wasn’t visible.
I wasn’t performing.
I was just...
me.

And I didn’t know if that would be enough anymore.

Not because I got caught,
but because part of me wanted to be.
Because living with the lie was starting to feel heavier
than whatever consequences might come.

Because I couldn’t keep pretending it was real.
Because if they took it all away…
maybe I’d finally find out who I really was underneath the noise.

And now, with everything frozen —
no uploads, no likes, no comments —
I was finally alone with that question.

No audience.
No algorithm pushing me forward.
Just the empty echo of a screen that used to mean everything.

At first, the silence was unbearable.
Like withdrawal.
Like standing on a stage after the lights go out and the crowd disappears,
and suddenly realizing you were never speaking for yourself.

I kept checking my profile,
even though I knew it was locked.
Kept refreshing inbox tabs,
hoping for some kind of message —
even if it was just someone asking where I went.

But no one did.

No one asked me where I went.
No one reached out to check if I was okay.

Every novel I wrote —
the ones I poured my soul into —
just vanished from the platform.
Unseen.
Unnoticed.
Like they’d never existed at all.
Just vanished without a trace on the platform.
No one could find them anymore.

Not a single comment,
not a single new reader,
no traces anywhere.

Time passed.
The world moved on.
And so did everyone else.
They forgot me.

Even the studio — the one that had once signed me, promising a future —
broke the contract quietly.
No explanations.
No second chances.

I was nothing.
Just a name erased from a digital ledger.
A story lost in the noise.

So I left behind the hope of breaking into the industry.
Not the dream itself — that stubborn flame still flickers inside me —
but the hope that I could ever find a place there.

I stopped chasing the myth of the webnovel world.
The illusion that going viral or getting lucky would save me.

I always wanted my story to become something bigger —
a film, an anime, something real.
And deep down, I still believe there are studios out there who care about the story first.
Not just the marketing tools, or sales numbers, or pushing source material for profit.

But about the heart of the story.
The soul behind the characters.

Maybe someday, that kind of place will find me.
Or maybe I’ll find it.

A place for the creative people not focused on the performance metrics but on the soul.

But there’s one last novel I wrote.
Still buried somewhere in the low-buzz corners of the platform.
Hidden under a different name.

A name I gave to my soul —
just so I could write without pressure,
without eyes,
without pretending.

It was the night I couldn’t sleep.
Not with the guilt, not with the silence.
So I wrote.

And what came out wasn’t crafted for clicks or comments —
it was a confession.
A prediction.
A story that somehow knew what was going to happen to me
before I even admitted it to myself.

A story of mine.
A story of a writer who wanted to break into the industry.
A story of one in a millions of readers of his own—
The one making millions of his own.

Do you know a fun-fact?

That story—
it only got one view.
Just one.
Maybe someone clicked it by accident.
Maybe they were just curious about the title.
Or maybe… just maybe… someone actually read it.

It wasn’t fake. It wasn’t for attention.
It was me.
Every word.
A story straight from the heart —

It’s the story of mine, A story "I got millions of readers."