A clear “no” hurts for a minute. A long “maybe” hurts for months.

Vagueness usually gets chosen out of kindness and works as the opposite. A maybe that never resolves keeps someone waiting, arranging their plans and their hopes around an answer you reached privately a while ago. The short pain of a clear no is far smaller than the long erosion of not knowing. Clarity is kinder even though it is harder to say.

Give the answer within a day of knowing it. Keep it brief and do not decorate it with false hope. People recover from no much faster than they recover from waiting.