The numbers didn't climb gently.
They surged.
He refreshed the page at 6:42 a.m., expecting nothing—maybe a handful of new views at most.
The screen loaded.
Views: 312
He blinked.
Refreshed again.
Views: 318
His pulse spiked.
"What…?"
Notifications stacked one after another, each vibration of his phone cutting sharper than the last.
New comment.New favorite.New follower.
The silence he'd lived in for so long was gone—replaced by noise, attention, expectation.
And fear.
He scrolled through the comments slowly, almost cautiously, as if moving too fast might shatter whatever fragile thing had formed overnight.
"This feels real.""I wasn't planning to read, but I couldn't stop.""Please don't drop this story.""Update soon."
The last one tightened something in his chest.
Please don't drop this story.
He closed his eyes.
They were already afraid of losing it.
He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, where the early morning light painted pale streaks across cracked plaster. Just hours ago, he'd been invisible. Now strangers were waiting—some refreshing their screens, some hoping for more words he hadn't written yet.
His hands began to shake.
This was what he'd wanted, wasn't it?
So why did it feel like standing on the edge of something too high to climb down from?
He stood abruptly and paced the room. His notebooks lay open on the desk, ideas half-formed, outlines scribbled months ago. They suddenly looked inadequate—too small for the attention now pouring in.
"What if I can't keep up?" he whispered.
The platform rewarded consistency. Everyone knew that. Miss a day, and readers disappeared. Lose momentum, and the algorithm buried you beneath thousands of newer, louder stories.
He'd read about it. Warned himself about it.
Dreams were easy.
Sustaining them was brutal.
His phone buzzed again.
Followers: 124
He stopped pacing.
That number didn't feel real.
A hundred and twenty-four people had decided they wanted more of his thoughts. More of his honesty. More of whatever it was they'd felt in the first two chapters.
He sat back down, heart pounding.
For the first time since he'd started writing, the thought crept in—quiet but dangerous.
What if I fail them?
He scrolled back to the very first comment.
"I don't know why, but I feel like this was written for me."
He let out a slow breath.
That had been enough yesterday.
Why didn't it feel like enough now?
A new comment appeared at the top.
"The opening is strong, but where is this going?"
His stomach tightened.
There it was.
The question he'd been avoiding.
He didn't fully know the answer.
He had fragments. Emotions. A direction, maybe—but no certainty. And certainty, he realized, was what readers wanted most.
Confidence.
Promise.
A future.
He rested his forehead against the edge of the desk, eyes closed.
"I just wanted to write," he murmured.
But writing alone wasn't what this had become.
This was responsibility.
Expectation.
Pressure wrapped in praise.
The cursor blinked on the blank page of Chapter Three.
Waiting.
Just like before—but now it wasn't patient.
It was demanding.
He opened the analytics page.
Trending: #17
His breath caught.
Trending.
The word glowed on the screen like a warning disguised as a reward.
Once you were seen, there was no going back to safety.
He closed the tab and stared at the empty document again.
If he wrote carefully, he might lose the raw honesty that had drawn readers in.
If he wrote recklessly, he might destroy the trust he'd just earned.
Either way, the risk was unavoidable.
His fingers hovered.
Then settled.
"I won't write for the numbers," he said quietly.
The words steadied him.
"I'll write for the one who needed it first."
He began typing—not faster, not slower—but truer.
Outside, the city was fully awake now.
And somewhere among the noise, hundreds of eyes were watching a story grow in real time, unaware that its author was fighting not to disappear beneath their belief.