Why does he give me dead replies

Start by looking at what he actually received. If your last message ended on a statement, like a complaint about your week or a story that wraps itself up, there is no thread for him to pull. People who text in short bursts often answer whatever is in front of them and stop there. A short reply is not always a judgment. Sometimes it is an accurate description of how much room he had in that moment.

Look for patterns across several exchanges, not one. If he goes quiet after you share something personal and comes back warm when you ask about his day, that tells you where his attention goes. If he is flat across every topic and never starts a conversation himself, that is more information. Both readings are worth noticing, but neither confirms what he feels. You can only learn that from how he behaves when you give him an easy opening.

A useful message does three jobs. It refers to something he said, it adds one small new detail about your life, and it ends with something he can answer without effort. The point is not to be clever. It is to make the next reply take him ten seconds. Pick one thing from his last message and say something about it, then tie it to something specific from your day.

Avoid questions that invite a one-word answer, like "do you like it?" or "are you free Thursday?" Those get yes or no. Ask about a choice, a preference, or a story he has to tell. The shape to aim for is a question that has a few good answers, because then he has a reason to pick one and write a little more than nothing.

Timing decides whether a dead reply is a blip or a pattern. If he replies within a day but briefly, the thread is alive and you can keep it moving with a fresh message that gives him something new. If the gaps grow to several days, stop judging the individual texts and look at whether he is initiating anything at all. A person who likes you tends to start conversations sometimes, even briefly.

Decide ahead of time how long you will wait and how many messages you will send without a real reply. Two or three attempts with no real engagement is a reasonable limit. After that, stop making the texts bigger or more pointed. The honest move is to let the thread rest, and if he comes back with something more substantial, respond to that and not to the earlier silence.