Friend Mode

Aleesya did not cry when she reached home.

That surprised her.

She had expected tears the way one expected rain after a sky had spent hours turning grey. She expected to close her bedroom door, remove her pins with shaking fingers, sit at the edge of her bed still dressed in dusty rose, and finally let herself become as pathetic as she felt. She expected the kind of crying that left the face hot and swollen, the throat scraped raw, the pillow damp in a shape no one else would see.

Instead, she came home quietly.

She greeted her parents, answered her mother’s gentle “Dah balik?” with a nod and a soft “Dah, Ma,” then went to her room. She removed her earrings and placed them in the little ceramic dish beside her mirror. She unpinned her tudung carefully, smoothing the fabric before folding it. She changed out of her baju kurung. She washed her face twice because the first time did not feel like enough.

The girl in the mirror looked the same after.

That seemed unfair.

There should have been some visible damage. Some small sign that a sentence had gone through her and rearranged something important. A bruise blooming beneath the collarbone, perhaps. A crack at the mouth. A dullness in the eyes that announced to the world: here stands a woman who mistook nearness for choosing.

But her reflection only looked tired.

Pretty, even, in the softened aftermath of wedding makeup. Her eyeliner had smudged slightly at the corners, giving her eyes a gentleness she did not feel. Her lips still held faint colour. Her hair, freed from its pins beneath the inner cap, lay flat and warm around her face.

Aleesya stared at herself and waited for collapse.

Nothing came.

Only Harith’s voice, returning with cruel softness.

Bukan kita kawan je?

The words did not echo loudly. That would have been easier. Instead, they settled into the small places of her life, as if they had always belonged there. They folded themselves into the memory of late-night prata. Into the lift lobby. Into the umbrella tilted over her shoulder. Into every “text me when you reach home,” every “dah makan,” every patient silence he had allowed her to fill.

Just friends.

Fine.

Then she would be his friend.

Properly.

Aleesya picked up her phone.

There were no new messages from Harith.

Only the old one, still sitting there like an apology that had lost its way.

Harith I’m sorry if that was awkward.

Awkward.

The word had followed her home.

She opened the chat. Her thumb hovered over the keyboard for a long time.

There were so many things she could say. She could ask him if awkward was really the word he wanted to use. She could tell him that friends did not look at friends the way he looked at her beneath rain shelters. She could tell him that if they were “kawan je,” then he had been careless with her heart in ways no good friend should be.

She could send him the truth and watch both of them bleed.

Instead, she typed something simple.

Aleesya It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.

She stared at the message after sending it.

It looked mature. Kind. Horrifyingly composed.

The typing bubble appeared almost instantly.

Her stomach tightened.

She locked the phone before his reply came through.

Then she placed it face down on the bedside table, switched off the light, and lay in the dark with her eyes open.

Outside, the estate had grown quiet. Somewhere below, a motorcycle passed with a low hum. Pipes clicked faintly in the wall. From her parents’ room came the muffled sound of her father coughing once, then silence.

Her phone buzzed.

Once.

Twice.

Aleesya did not move.

A friend could wait until morning.

---

Morning arrived with too much sunlight.

It spilled through the gap in her curtains and landed across her face with no regard for emotional injury. Aleesya woke before her alarm, heavy-eyed and strangely calm, as if some part of her had stayed awake all night doing the grieving without permission.

For a moment, she did not remember.

Then she reached for her phone and saw Harith’s messages.

Harith Can we talk properly?

Harith I don’t like how we left things.

There was a third message, sent almost twenty minutes later.

Harith Text me when you can.

Aleesya read them once.

Then again.

Her heart, disobedient and stupid, reacted to the care in them before her pride could stand up. It softened at the word properly. It heard worry in the spacing between his messages. It remembered him outside the hall, rainwater shining behind him, looking frightened after she said, “Kawan je.”

But softness was how she had ended up here.

Aleesya sat up slowly.

Her room looked ordinary in daylight. Laundry basket near the wardrobe. Work bag by the door. Lipstick uncapped on the desk. A receipt from the prata shop still folded in her handbag because Harith had paid and she had taken the receipt without thinking, as if evidence of his care belonged to her.

She got out of bed and made it immediately.

It was a small act of control, but she took what she could.

In the kitchen, her mother was already preparing breakfast. The smell of toasted bread and kaya drifted through the flat, mixing with the sharp comfort of kopi. Her father sat at the dining table reading something on his phone, glasses low on his nose.

Her mother looked up the moment Aleesya entered.

Mothers, Aleesya thought, should be less observant. It was inconvenient.

“You slept okay?” her mother asked.

“Okay.”

Her mother placed two slices of toast on a plate. “Harith sent you back?”

“No. I took Grab.”

Her mother’s hand paused for half a second above the butter knife.

Her father lowered his phone just enough to become part of the conversation without admitting it.

Aleesya took the plate before her mother could ask the next question. “He had something else.”

It was not exactly a lie. Harith had something else: fear, perhaps. Or confusion. Or a talent for keeping her close enough to feel responsible for him but not close enough to be chosen.

Her mother watched her spread kaya too carefully across the toast. “Did you two argue?”

“No.”

It came out too fast.

Her mother’s eyes softened, which somehow made it worse.

Aleesya set the knife down with a faint click. “Ma, please don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re about to say something.”

Her father, wisely, lifted his phone again.

Her mother sighed and leaned against the counter. She did not look disappointed, only careful. “I was only going to say, sometimes men are blur.”

Aleesya gave a small laugh that had no warmth. “Blur is when you forget where you parked.”

Her mother absorbed that quietly.

The kitchen fan turned above them, moving warm air around the room. Outside the window, the opposite block was alive with Sunday morning: laundry hung from poles, a child dragged a scooter along the corridor, someone watered plants in old biscuit tins.

Her mother came closer and lowered her voice. “Then don’t explain his heart to him until he wants to understand it himself.”

Aleesya looked down at her toast.

Her mother’s hand touched her shoulder briefly, warm and familiar, before withdrawing. “Eat.”

The instruction was gentle, but it sounded like survival.

So Aleesya ate.

After breakfast, she returned to her room and unlocked her phone.

Harith’s chat waited.

She thought of her mother’s words. Don’t explain his heart to him.

Then she replied.

Aleesya Nothing much to talk about, Harith. We’re okay.

He responded within a minute.

Harith Are we?

Aleesya looked at the question until the screen dimmed in her hand.

No, she thought.

No, they were not okay.

But he had asked for friendship, and friendship had rules. Friendship did not demand emotional post-mortems after every wound. Friendship allowed discomfort to pass politely. Friendship did not stand beneath a shelter after a wedding and ask a man where to put her heart.

She typed slowly.

Aleesya Yeah. We’re friends. Of course we’re okay.

This time, there was no typing bubble.

Aleesya placed the phone down, picked it up again, and turned off notifications for his chat.

Not forever.

Just for now.

Just until her body learned not to answer him before she had even read the message.

---

Monday morning came with office air-conditioning, printer jams, and the artificial cheerfulness of people pretending weekends had restored them.

Aleesya arrived early because she had not slept properly and because work, despite its many cruelties, gave pain somewhere to sit. She bought kopi from the downstairs café, took the lift up with three strangers and one man who spoke too loudly into his Bluetooth earpiece, then reached her desk before most of her team had arrived.

Her office was all glass partitions, muted carpet, adjustable chairs, and motivational posters that seemed designed by people who had never worked under deadlines. A potted plant near the pantry had been dying slowly for months despite everyone claiming to water it. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead. The air smelled faintly of coffee, paper, and cold metal.

Aleesya opened her laptop and began editing the report her manager had criticized.

At 9:17 a.m., her phone lit up beside her keyboard.

She had not turned off all notifications. Only Harith’s chat.

But his name still appeared on her lock screen because he had called.

For a second, her fingers froze above the keyboard.

The call rang silently, vibrating against the desk with tiny, insistent movements.

She watched his name until it disappeared.

Then she turned the phone face down and continued working.

Her colleague Mei Lin arrived ten minutes later, dropping into the chair beside her with the dramatic collapse of someone who considered Monday a personal attack.

“You’re early,” Mei Lin said, peeling the plastic from a takeaway sandwich. “Suspicious.”

“I have edits.”

“You always have edits. Today you have dark aura.”

Aleesya did not look up. “Good morning to you too.”

Mei Lin rolled her chair closer. “Wedding how? Got drama? Malay weddings always got auntie drama, right?”

“Mostly biryani drama.”

“Nice. Productive.”

Aleesya tried to smile.

Mei Lin studied her for a beat, sharp eyes narrowing. “Okay, who died?”

“No one.”

“Who emotionally died?”

Aleesya stopped typing.

Mei Lin softened immediately. She was blunt, not unkind. The kind of friend who would insult your choices while bringing you bubble tea. “Oh. Is this about that guy?”

“What guy?”

“The ‘not my boyfriend but somehow knows my medical appointments’ guy.”

Aleesya closed her eyes briefly. “Please don’t call him that.”

“So it is about him.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Women only say ‘it’s nothing’ when it is either nothing or the worst thing that has ever happened. There is no middle.”

Aleesya leaned back in her chair and looked at the report on her screen. The words blurred. Assertive enough. Defensive. Confident. Too soft. Too much. Not enough.

She suddenly felt exhausted by every version of herself she was expected to calibrate for other people.

“He said we’re friends,” she said.

Mei Lin’s expression changed.

Not with surprise, which told Aleesya enough.

“He said it like that?”

“Someone asked if we were dating. He said we’re friends. Later I asked him what we were, and he said…” Aleesya stopped.

The Malay phrase lodged in her throat.

Mei Lin waited, sandwich forgotten in her hand.

Aleesya exhaled. “He said, ‘Bukan kita kawan je?’”

Mei Lin’s eyes widened slightly. “Oh.”

That single syllable held more sympathy than any speech could have.

Aleesya laughed quietly. “Yeah. Oh.”

For a while, both of them sat with the office noise around them: keyboards tapping, someone greeting someone else near the pantry, the distant beep of the printer trying and failing to be useful.

Mei Lin set her sandwich down. “Do you want me to say something comforting or something violent?”

“Comforting.”

“His loss.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“It is to me.”

Aleesya smiled despite herself, then looked down at her hands. “The stupid thing is, he didn’t even say he didn’t care. He said he cares. He looked hurt. Like I was being unfair by asking.”

Mei Lin’s face hardened. “Ah. Men who want emotional benefits without emotional invoice.”

“That sounds like something from your finance department.”

“It is. I’m invoicing him in my heart.”

Aleesya shook her head, but the smile faded quickly.

Mei Lin lowered her voice. “What are you going to do?”

“Be his friend.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“No,” Aleesya said, surprising herself with the steadiness of her voice. “What was dangerous was pretending I didn’t want more.”

Mei Lin looked at her for a long moment, then nodded once.

Aleesya turned back to her screen.

At 10:03 a.m., her phone lit up again.

Not a call this time. A message.

She did not open it until lunchtime.

That was the first rule she made for herself.

Friends could wait.

---

At 12:41 p.m., Aleesya sat alone in the pantry with a container of rice, sambal goreng, and fried egg her mother had packed. Outside the glass wall, people moved in clusters toward the lifts, laughing, deciding where to eat, belonging easily to their own routines. The pantry was quiet except for the low hum of the refrigerator and the occasional hiss of the water dispenser.

She unlocked her phone.

Harith had sent two messages.

Harith You busy?

A second one, fifteen minutes later.

Harith I called earlier. You didn’t pick up.

Aleesya ate one bite of rice before replying, because hunger made her weak and she did not trust herself weak.

Aleesya Yeah, busy morning. Sorry.

His reply came as she was closing the lid on her container.

Harith Can we have lunch later this week?

She stared at the message.

Lunch was safe. Lunch was public. Lunch was something friends did.

But with Harith, meals were never only meals. They were check-ins disguised as food. They were “tell me what happened” over soup. They were him pushing the chilli closer without thinking. They were the way he noticed when she ate less and quietly ordered something she might manage.

Aleesya’s thumb hovered.

Then she typed:

Aleesya This week quite packed. Maybe another time.

The lie tasted worse than reheated sambal.

His typing bubble appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

Harith Okay.

One word.

She could hear everything inside it.

Aleesya placed the phone down and took another bite of rice. It had gone cold.

For the rest of the day, she worked with an efficiency that impressed even herself. She rewrote the report, sent it to her manager, prepared slides for Thursday, answered emails, and scheduled two meetings she did not want to attend. She became so professionally competent that by 5:30 p.m., Mei Lin leaned over the partition and said, “Your heartbreak is very KPI-driven.”

Aleesya gave her a look. “Don’t make me laugh. I’m trying to be tragic.”

“You’re failing. You look productive.”

“That’s my coping mechanism.”

“Could be worse. Mine is online shopping.”

At 6:15 p.m., Aleesya packed her bag.

Normally, on Mondays, she would message Harith before leaving. Not always deliberately. Sometimes she sent him a photo of the sky if sunset looked dramatic between the buildings. Sometimes he sent her a complaint about his own office pantry coffee. Sometimes they met at the MRT if their schedules aligned badly enough to become convenient.

Today, she walked to the lift without checking whether he had left work.

The city evening was warm and crowded. At Raffles Place MRT, bodies moved in practiced streams: office workers with tired faces, students laughing too loudly, a man balancing flowers wrapped in brown paper, an elderly couple walking slowly through the rush with linked arms. The train arrived full, and Aleesya squeezed in near the doors, one hand gripping the pole.

Her phone buzzed inside her bag.

She did not reach for it.

Instead, she watched her reflection in the dark train window. Her face appeared and disappeared between tunnel lights, layered over strangers’ shoulders and advertisements for insurance, language classes, skincare. The woman reflected back at her looked composed again.

She wondered how many women in the train had taught themselves to look fine between stops.

At Bugis, a seat opened. She let an older woman take it.

At Paya Lebar, her phone buzzed again.

At Eunos, she finally looked.

Harith You left already?

Then:

Harith I thought we usually go back around the same time on Mondays.

Usually.

Such a cruel word.

Usually was the country they had lived in without passports. Usually was prata after bad days, shared umbrellas, messages before sleep. Usually was not love, apparently, but it had dressed itself convincingly enough.

Aleesya rested her thumb on the screen.

She could say, Sorry, forgot.

She could say, Didn’t know you were waiting.

She could say, I cannot keep doing usual with you when usual made me hope.

Instead, she typed:

Aleesya Yeah, left already. Had to head back first.

Then, after a pause, because politeness was the new wall she was building brick by brick:

Aleesya You have a safe trip home.

She watched the message send.

The train doors opened at Bedok.

She stepped out before his reply came.

---

Harith read the message while standing at the entrance of his office building, one hand still holding the strap of his laptop bag.

You have a safe trip home.

He stared at the sentence until the letters lost shape.

There was nothing wrong with it.

That was the problem.

It was kind. Normal. Civil. The sort of thing one colleague might say to another after a project meeting. The sort of thing a distant cousin might text after Hari Raya visiting. It had manners. It had warmth, technically.

It had no Aleesya in it.

No teasing. No “don’t fall asleep in the train.” No reminder to buy dinner because he would forget. No little complaint about Monday crowds. No photo of the sunset. No unnecessary detail that proved she expected him to care.

Just: You have a safe trip home.

Harith locked his phone, then unlocked it again.

He had spent the whole day telling himself to give her space.

It sounded mature in his head. Respectful. He had hurt her, somehow deeper than he had intended, and crowding her would only make things worse. That was what he told himself after she did not pick up his call. That was what he told himself when she replied to lunch like a calendar declining an invitation. That was what he told himself when he looked at their chat and realized the rhythm had changed.

He had spent years knowing her silences.

This one had a locked door behind it.

The lobby doors slid open and closed as colleagues left in groups. Someone called his name, asking if he was coming for dinner. Harith shook his head automatically.

“You sure?” his colleague asked. “We’re going Amoy.”

“Not today.”

The colleague shrugged and left.

Harith remained where he was.

Outside, the evening had turned the office district gold. The glass towers reflected clouds in long, distorted streaks. People moved around him with purpose, office shoes clicking against polished floor, umbrellas tucked under arms though the sky was clear.

His phone buzzed.

For one ridiculous second, hope moved through him.

It was not Aleesya.

It was his mother asking if he was coming home for dinner.

Harith exhaled and rubbed a hand over his face.

He had known Aleesya was hurt. He had seen it beneath the shelter, in the way she smiled after saying, “Kawan je.” He had heard the finality of it and feared it without understanding what exactly had ended.

Now he was beginning to understand.

Aleesya was not angry in a way he could apologize his way through. She was not punishing him. Punishment wanted a reaction. Punishment looked back to see whether it had landed.

This was worse.

She was adjusting.

Harith looked down at their chat again, scrolling without meaning to.

Old messages rose beneath his thumb.

A photo she had sent of a cat sleeping on a motorcycle seat.

Aleesya You after one meeting.

His reply:

Harith I’m more dignified.

Another night:

Harith Dah sampai rumah?

Aleesya Yes, sir. Reporting live from bedroom floor because tired.

Harith Why floor?

Aleesya Floor understands me.

Another:

Aleesya Presentation tomorrow. If I disappear, assume I ran away to become a florist.

Harith You can’t keep plants alive.

Aleesya Emotional attack.

He stopped scrolling.

There were so many versions of her in this chat. Sleepy Aleesya. Dramatic Aleesya. Quiet Aleesya at 2 a.m. when she admitted she was scared she would never become the person everyone expected. Angry Aleesya after work. Soft Aleesya sending him pictures of moonlight between blocks because she said it looked lonely.

Had he really thought friendship was enough to contain all this?

Or had he used the word because it was safer than admitting that what he felt for her had become too large for the life he knew how to manage?

His phone screen dimmed.

Harith typed before he could think better of it.

Harith Did I do something you can’t forgive?

He looked at the message for a long time.

Then deleted it.

He typed again.

Harith I miss you.

Deleted.

His chest tightened.

That was not fair. He had no right to say that now. Missing her was not the same as choosing her. Missing her did not repair the way her face had changed when he retreated into the word friend.

He finally typed:

Harith Thanks. You too.

It was pathetic.

It was also all he could send without asking her to carry his confusion again.

Harith pressed send and stood there in the lobby until the automatic lights above him brightened against the coming night.

---

By Wednesday, Aleesya had become very good at friendship.

She did not ignore Harith. That would have been too obvious, too dramatic, too close to admitting there was something to ignore.

She replied.

Just not immediately.

She was pleasant.

Just not intimate.

She answered questions.

Just not the ones he did not ask directly.

When he sent her a photo of bad cafeteria noodles with the caption, “This should be illegal,” she reacted with a laughing emoji instead of telling him where to buy better food nearby. When he asked whether her report had gone through, she said, “Yes, thanks,” instead of sending a three-paragraph rant about her manager’s comments. When he told her he had a headache, she replied, “Take care, drink water,” instead of asking if he had eaten, whether he had medicine, whether he wanted her to order porridge.

She did not do it cruelly.

That was important to her.

Every message she sent was kind enough to pass inspection. If anyone read their chat, they would see nothing wrong. Two friends checking in. Two adults with busy lives. No drama. No accusation. No visible wound.

Only absence, shaped like self-respect.

On Wednesday night, she stayed late at the office to finish slides. Mei Lin left at seven after making Aleesya promise not to become office furniture. The office gradually emptied around her. Lights in meeting rooms switched off one by one. The city beyond the windows became a dark mirror full of scattered lights.

At 8:12 p.m., Harith messaged.

Harith Still at work?

Aleesya looked at the message.

He knew.

Of course he knew. She had probably been online on Teams. Or maybe he had guessed because Wednesdays were often brutal. In the old version of their lives, she would have sent him a photo of her desk with the caption: pray for me or send snacks.

She turned back to her slides.

At 8:47 p.m., she replied:

Aleesya Yeah. Finishing something.

His reply came fast.

Harith Have you eaten?

There it was.

Dah makan, translated into office-hour English. The old doorway.

Aleesya leaned back in her chair.

The office air-conditioning had turned too cold. Her fingers were stiff. The vending machine dinner she had bought earlier—some sad packet of biscuits and a canned coffee—sat untouched beside her laptop. She was hungry. Tired. Vulnerable in all the boring ways that made a person easy to love badly.

Her thumb hovered.

She imagined telling him no.

She imagined him appearing below her office building twenty minutes later with food he pretended he had bought for himself too. She imagined him saying, “Eat first,” in that calm voice. She imagined hating him for caring and loving him for the same reason.

Then she opened a food delivery app and ordered soup for herself.

Only after the order was confirmed did she reply.

Aleesya Ordered food already. Thanks.

A minute passed.

Two.

Then:

Harith Okay good.

Aleesya set the phone down.

The ache came then, not sharp but deep. She placed both hands over her face, elbows on the desk, and let herself breathe through it.

This, she realized, was the grief no one taught you about.

Not losing someone entirely.

Losing the version of yourself that waited for them.

---

On Friday evening, Aleesya went to dinner with Mei Lin and two other colleagues at a small Japanese place near the office. The restaurant was narrow and warm, with wooden tables placed too close together and soft yellow lights hanging above the counter. Steam rose from bowls of ramen. Someone at the next table laughed too loudly into a glass of iced tea. The air smelled of soy sauce, grilled fish, and rain beginning again outside.

Aleesya ordered teriyaki chicken don and ate properly for the first time all week.

“You look better,” Mei Lin said.

“I look like carbohydrates.”

“Exactly. Healthier.”

Across the table, their colleague Priya was telling a story about a disastrous client call, complete with impressions so accurate that Aleesya laughed until her eyes watered. For a while, she forgot to check her phone. Forgot the shape of waiting. Forgot that somewhere in Singapore, Harith might be looking at their chat and noticing all the spaces she had placed between them.

When she finally glanced down, there were two notifications.

One from her mother asking whether she wanted mangoes.

One from Harith.

Harith You free tonight?

Aleesya stared at it while laughter continued around her.

Mei Lin noticed. “Him?”

Aleesya locked the phone. “Yeah.”

“You going to reply?”

“Later.”

Mei Lin nodded, approving but gentle.

Priya leaned over. “Reply to who?”

“No one,” Aleesya said.

Mei Lin, loyal in the most inconvenient way, added, “Her emotional tax auditor.”

Aleesya kicked her lightly under the table.

Outside, rain thickened, turning the restaurant window into a sheet of moving glass. People hurried past with umbrellas, shoulders hunched. A couple stood beneath the opposite shelter, sharing one umbrella badly, laughing as water dripped onto their shoes.

Aleesya looked away.

At 9:36 p.m., on the train home, she finally replied.

Aleesya Sorry, was having dinner with colleagues. What’s up?

Harith did not answer immediately.

That, too, was new.

At 10:11 p.m., while Aleesya was walking from the MRT station to her block, her phone buzzed.

Harith Nothing. Just wanted to check in.

She stopped beneath a sheltered walkway.

Rain fell beyond the edge of the roof, silver and steady. The path ahead shone with reflected light. Somewhere nearby, a bicycle bell rang. A boy in school uniform ran past, holding his bag above his head, laughing into the rain.

Aleesya read the message again.

Just wanted to check in.

There was a time when those words would have warmed her. She would have replied with a voice note, maybe, telling him about dinner, complaining about Priya’s impressions, asking about his day, letting the conversation stretch until midnight found them both still awake.

Tonight, she felt only the careful weight of the boundary she had chosen.

She typed:

Aleesya All good. Hope your week was okay.

A friend’s reply.

Clean. Polite. Distant enough to survive.

Harith answered after a minute.

Harith It was okay.

Then:

Harith Yours?

Aleesya looked out at the rain.

Her week had been terrible and necessary. She had missed him in stupid places: while buying coffee, while passing the prata shop, while seeing a cat under a van that looked like the one from their old joke. She had missed telling him small things. She had missed being known by someone who noticed what she did not say.

But she had also eaten without being reminded. Ordered food for herself. Sent work rants to Mei Lin. Let her mother sit beside her after Isyak without pretending she was only tired. She had survived several evenings without making Harith the first person she turned toward.

It was not freedom yet.

But it was a beginning.

She replied:

Aleesya Busy, but okay.

The typing bubble appeared.

Aleesya watched it, rain ticking at the edge of the shelter.

It disappeared.

Appeared again.

Disappeared.

Finally, Harith sent:

Harith I’m glad.

She could feel the restraint in those two words. The things he did not ask. The apology he had already given but not understood. The confession he could not make because perhaps he still did not know what shape it should take.

Aleesya slipped the phone into her bag and continued walking.

At the lift lobby, she paused.

This was where he had once pressed the button from outside because the doors were closing on her. The memory rose with such clarity that she could almost smell the rain on his shirt.

She stepped into the lift alone.

When the doors began to close, no hand reached in to stop them.

Upstairs, she entered her room, washed up, prayed, and sat on the edge of her bed with her phone in her lap. The chat remained quiet.

For the first time in years, Aleesya did not wait for “goodnight.”

She placed her phone on the bedside table, screen facing down.

Then, in the darkness, just as sleep began to soften the edges of the day, it buzzed once.

She should have ignored it.

She did not.

The screen lit her face blue.

Harith Dah makan?

Aleesya stared at the words.

They were the same three words that had once felt like shelter.

Now they felt like a test.

Her throat tightened. The room was quiet around her, curtains still, fan turning slowly overhead. Somewhere in the flat, her mother was washing a cup. Water ran, stopped. A cabinet closed.

Aleesya thought of the prata shop. The rain. The tissue packet placed on her side. The way Harith’s knee had brushed hers under the table and pulled away. The way he had looked at her beneath the wedding shelter and chosen the safest word.

Friend.

Her fingers moved before nostalgia could win.

Aleesya Dah. Thanks for asking.

She watched the message send.

A few seconds later, the typing bubble appeared.

Then stopped.

Then appeared again.

Aleesya waited for a reply that did not come.

In his own room, somewhere under the same rain-wet sky, perhaps Harith was staring at the sentence the way she had once stared at his.

Dah.

Thanks for asking.

Nothing wrong.

Everything changed.

Aleesya turned her phone face down again and lay back in the dark. Her chest hurt, but the hurt no longer told her to reach for him. It told her she had reached too many times already.

Outside, rain began again, soft against the window.

This time, she let it fall without opening the door.