The Space Between Replies

Harith had never thought of silence as something with weight.

Before Aleesya, silence was useful. It was the room he entered when other people became too loud. It was the pause he took before answering difficult questions, the space he placed between anger and reaction, the quiet discipline his father had praised when he was young. Harith knew how to wait. He knew how to hold his tongue. He knew how to let a moment pass without needing to own it.

But Aleesya’s silence was different.

It did not sit empty.

It gathered.

It occupied the places she used to fill so naturally that he had forgotten they could become vacant. It sat beside him on the train when his thumb opened their chat before he realized what he was doing. It hovered over his lunch when he bought coffee and remembered too late that she would have told him not to replace meals with caffeine. It waited at the end of workdays, where her messages used to appear without occasion, small and unimportant and somehow necessary.

By the second week, Harith began to understand that absence had a sound.

It sounded like his phone not buzzing at 10:47 p.m.

It sounded like typing bubbles that did not appear.

It sounded like him sending a message and receiving, hours later, a reply so polite it could have bowed before leaving the room.

On Tuesday, he sent her a photo of the sky after Maghrib. The clouds over the office towers had split open into a bruised purple, with one thin strip of orange burning low between buildings. It was the kind of sky Aleesya would have noticed first. In the past, she would have replied with something dramatic, probably about the sky looking like it had unresolved trauma.

He stood near the window of his office pantry, holding his phone, watching the image load.

Harith Sky looks like your kind of sad.

He read it back and nearly smiled.

It sounded like them.

For a moment, sending it felt like opening a door he still had the right to open.

Aleesya replied forty-three minutes later.

Aleesya Pretty.

That was all.

Pretty.

No joke. No complaint. No “why are you still at work?” No accusation that he was bad at taking photos. No little piece of herself attached to the message.

Harith stared at the word until the office lights reflected over his screen and turned it ghostly.

A colleague walked into the pantry behind him, humming under his breath. The coffee machine hissed. Someone laughed from the open workspace. Life continued around Harith with insulting ease.

He typed, deleted, typed again.

Harith You okay?

He did not send it.

It was becoming embarrassing, how many unsent questions lived in his phone now.

He locked the screen and placed it face down on the counter as if the device itself had betrayed him.

“Bro, you look like your phone rejected you,” his colleague Hafiz said, reaching past him for a paper cup.

Harith straightened. “Just tired.”

“You always say tired. That’s not a personality.”

“It’s a condition.”

Hafiz snorted. “You coming down for dinner?”

“No.”

“You meeting someone?”

Harith looked at his phone despite himself.

Hafiz noticed. Of course he noticed. People were far more observant when Harith least wanted to be seen.

“Ah,” Hafiz said. “Someone.”

“There’s no someone.”

“That’s exactly what someone with someone would say.”

Harith took his phone and slipped it into his pocket. “I have work.”

“You have emotional damage.”

Harith gave him a flat look.

Hafiz lifted both hands in surrender, but his grin softened. “Okay, okay. Don’t glare. But if you keep staring at your phone like that, at least make sure the person knows you’re staring for a useful reason.”

Harith said nothing.

Because he did not know what a useful reason looked like.

He only knew Aleesya’s one-word reply had left him standing in the pantry like a man listening for footsteps outside a locked door.

---

On Wednesday evening, Harith found himself at the prata shop under Block 418.

He told himself it was convenient.

It was on the way home if he took a slightly inconvenient route. The food was decent. The teh tarik was better than the one near his office. He had been eating there long before Aleesya became part of the table near the back.

That last part was technically true.

But when he entered and saw their usual table empty, the lie collapsed so quickly he almost turned around.

The shop looked the same. Fluorescent lights. Plastic chairs. Metal trays clattering near the counter. The television in the corner playing a game show with too much canned applause. A fan turned overhead, pushing the smell of curry, fried onions, and rain-damp concrete through the open space.

It had rained earlier. Not heavily, but enough to leave the pavement dark and slick. Water still dripped from the awning outside in slow, patient intervals.

Harith ordered prata kosong and teh o peng, then sat at the table he should have avoided.

Across from him, Aleesya’s chair remained empty.

He had not realized a chair could accuse a person.

When the food arrived, he tore the prata into pieces without appetite. He looked at the tissue packet on the table and remembered placing one on Aleesya’s side before she arrived, the night after her bad meeting. He remembered her walking in from the rain, dusty work blouse damp at the sleeves, eyes tired but brightening when she saw the drink waiting.

Had he known then?

The answer rose before he could bury it.

Yes.

Maybe not in a way he had been willing to say. Maybe not in a way he had allowed to become a plan. But some part of him had known. A man did not cross rain at midnight because a friend had skipped dinner and remain ignorant of his own heart.

He had called it care because care was safer.

He had called it friendship because friendship did not ask him what he would sacrifice.

His phone lit up beside the plate.

For a split second, his pulse betrayed him.

It was his mother again.

Ibu Besok malam free? Your auntie coming. Dinner at home.

He replied with one hand.

Harith Okay. What time?

Then, because habit moved faster than thought, he opened Aleesya’s chat.

There was no new message.

The last exchange remained from the previous night.

Harith Sky looks like your kind of sad.

Aleesya Pretty.

Harith sat back.

The prata cooled.

He thought of sending another message. Something casual. Something normal enough not to scare her further away. He could ask about work. He could mention the prata shop. He could say the curry was too salty today and she would probably agree.

But the old rules did not apply anymore.

Every message felt like reaching for a handle that might no longer turn.

He set the phone down.

Outside, rain began again, light and silver, barely visible except where it crossed the streetlamp. A young couple ran under the shelter laughing, the man holding a backpack over both their heads. The woman pushed him away and pulled him closer in the same motion.

Harith looked down at his plate.

It took him an embarrassingly long time to finish half the prata.

Before leaving, he ordered one teh o peng to take away.

Then he stood there with the plastic cup sweating in his hand, realizing he had bought Aleesya’s drink.

The cashier looked at him. “Anything else?”

Harith shook his head.

“No.”

He carried the drink all the way to the nearest bin before throwing it away.

It landed with a soft, wet sound that felt more dramatic than it deserved.

---

Aleesya saw him before he saw her on Friday.

That, too, seemed unfair.

She had spent the whole week convincing herself that distance would become easier if she kept choosing it in small, consistent ways. Reply later. Say less. Do not volunteer details. Do not soften every silence. Do not make his confusion comfortable. These were not grand acts of rebellion. They were tiny disciplines, almost boring in their repetition.

But healing, she was discovering, was often boring.

It was eating dinner before anyone asked. It was going home without waiting. It was telling Mei Lin about her day instead of saving the best parts for Harith. It was noticing a funny signboard and allowing it to remain unshared. It was carrying her own umbrella.

On Friday evening, she attended a community planning session at the Tampines volunteer centre, the same place where she and Harith had first met three years ago. She almost cancelled when she saw his name in the group chat list of attendees, but pride pushed her out of the house in a navy blouse and a neatly pinned grey tudung.

The volunteer centre occupied the second floor of an old community building, with narrow corridors, notice boards full of faded posters, and classrooms that smelled faintly of whiteboard markers and floor cleaner. Rainwater tracked in from shoes left dark marks along the tiles. Through open windows, Aleesya could hear badminton players shouting in the hall below, their voices rising and falling with the hollow knock of shuttlecocks.

She arrived ten minutes early.

Harith was already there.

Of course he was.

He stood near the front of the room helping stack cartons of bottled water, sleeves rolled up, name tag clipped crookedly to his shirt. He looked tired. Not dramatically, not enough for anyone else to comment, but Aleesya saw it because her body still knew the old language. The faint shadow under his eyes. The slight roughness at his jaw from shaving too quickly. The way he paused with one hand on the carton before lifting it, as if his mind had briefly gone elsewhere.

Her first instinct was concern.

Her second was anger at the first.

She walked in anyway.

Harith looked up.

The room did something terrible around them. It continued to exist. Volunteers chatted. Plastic chairs scraped. Someone opened a packet of markers. The ceiling fan made a soft clicking sound each time it turned. Nothing in the world paused to honor the fact that Aleesya’s heartbeat had become suddenly inconvenient.

“Hi,” Harith said.

His voice was careful.

Aleesya smiled. “Hi.”

A friend’s greeting.

His face shifted almost imperceptibly, as though the word had touched a bruise.

“Need help?” she asked, nodding at the cartons.

He seemed surprised. “It’s okay. I got it.”

“Okay.”

She turned away before either of them could turn politeness into conversation.

At the registration table, she found the attendance sheet and began arranging name tags alphabetically. There was comfort in small tasks. Names had order. Sticker backs peeled cleanly if you knew the angle. Pens belonged in cups. Forms belonged in stacks. Life, at least in administrative fragments, could still be managed.

“Eh, Aleesya!”

She looked up.

Danish Rahman entered with an umbrella in one hand and two paper bags in the other, rain clinging to the shoulders of his light brown shirt. He was one of the newer volunteers, though not new enough to be unfamiliar. Early thirties, perhaps. Calm-faced, with kind eyes and the easy steadiness of someone who listened properly before speaking. He worked in social services, if she remembered correctly, and had once spent an entire event coaxing a shy primary school boy into joining a group activity without making the child feel observed.

He lifted the bags. “I brought curry puffs. I overestimated the number of people in my house again.”

Aleesya laughed, genuinely caught off guard. “How does one overestimate that?”

“My mother cooks like guests are hiding in the walls.”

“That sounds like a blessing.”

“It is, until you’re assigned as delivery service.”

He placed the bags on the registration table and shook water from his umbrella outside the doorway. “You want one before the meeting starts? Still warm.”

Aleesya glanced at the bag, then at him. “You’re bribing volunteers.”

“I prefer the term morale management.”

She smiled. It came easily enough to surprise her.

Danish took out a curry puff with a napkin and handed it to her, careful not to touch her fingers. The pastry was warm through the thin paper, fragrant with potato and spice. Aleesya had not realized she was hungry until the smell reached her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“No problem.” He leaned lightly against the edge of the table, looking at the attendance sheet. “You’re always doing registration, ah?”

“Apparently my face says admin.”

“I think your face says trustworthy.”

It was said simply. Without flirtation sharp enough to demand a response. Compliment or observation, she could not tell.

Aleesya looked down at the curry puff because warmth had risen unexpectedly in her cheeks. “That’s a dangerous thing to say to someone holding the attendance list. I can mark you absent.”

Danish laughed, a low and pleasant sound. “Fair. I take it back. Your face says terrifying authority.”

“Better.”

Across the room, a carton landed on the floor harder than necessary.

Aleesya did not look.

She did not need to.

---

Harith did not mean to stare.

That was what he told himself while pretending to rearrange bottled water.

Aleesya was allowed to speak to people. Obviously. She was allowed to laugh. She was allowed to accept curry puffs from men with steady voices and annoying restraint. None of this had anything to do with him.

They were friends.

The sentence returned like punishment.

Bukan kita kawan je?

He hated the sound of his own voice in memory. Hated how soft he had been when saying it, as if softness could make cowardice less damaging. Hated that Aleesya had not shouted, because if she had shouted, maybe he would have known how to respond. If she had accused him, he could have apologized. If she had cried, he could have been useful.

Instead, she had agreed.

Kawan je.

And now she was behaving exactly as promised.

At the registration table, Danish said something that made her smile again. Not the polite smile she had been giving Harith all week. This one reached her eyes, surprised and unwilling. Her shoulders loosened. She broke off the edge of the curry puff and ate it while Danish looked away, giving her privacy in a way Harith found irritatingly respectful.

A familiar heat moved through Harith’s chest.

Jealousy arrived ugly.

It did not ask whether it had rights. It did not care that Harith had built the fence himself. It simply stood there, unreasonable and alive, watching another man receive a version of Aleesya that Harith missed so badly his hands tightened around the plastic bottle he was holding.

The bottle crackled.

Hafiz, who had volunteered because Harith had foolishly invited him months ago, looked over from the next stack of chairs. “Careful. The water didn’t reject you.”

Harith released his grip.

Hafiz followed his gaze.

“Ah,” he said softly.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re about to.”

“I was only going to say your face is very loud for a quiet person.”

Harith picked up another carton. “Help me with this.”

Hafiz obliged, but his mouth did not know how to remain closed. “That’s Aleesya, right?”

Harith said nothing.

“Pretty.”

Harith shot him a look.

Hafiz lifted his brows. “I’m engaged, relax. I’m making an objective statement.”

“Then keep it objective somewhere else.”

“Wah. Territorial.”

“I’m not.”

“No? Then what is this face?”

Harith stacked the carton near the wall with more force than necessary. “There’s no face.”

“There is a whole documentary on your face.”

Harith turned away, jaw tight.

Hafiz’s amusement softened into something more careful. He lowered his voice. “You two not okay?”

Harith looked at Aleesya again before he could stop himself.

Danish had moved slightly away now, speaking to another volunteer, but Aleesya still held the curry puff in one hand as she checked names off the list. A strand of fabric near her shoulder had slipped out of place. In the past, Harith would have told her. Quietly. Casually. She would have rolled her eyes and fixed it. He would have pretended not to notice the faint scent of her perfume when she turned.

Now he stayed where he was.

“No,” he said.

The honesty surprised both of them.

Hafiz did not make a joke. “What happened?”

Harith swallowed.

How did he explain it without sounding like the villain of a story he had not meant to write? I cared for her badly. I let her believe in something I was too afraid to name. I called her a friend because the room was watching and because my fear speaks faster than my heart.

He said, “I hurt her.”

Hafiz nodded slowly. “On purpose?”

“No.”

“Does she know that matters?”

Harith looked at him.

Hafiz shrugged. “Sometimes it doesn’t.”

The words landed with uncomfortable accuracy.

Before Harith could answer, the coordinator called everyone to gather. Chairs were arranged in a loose circle. The planning session began.

Aleesya sat across the room.

Danish sat beside her because that was where the empty chair was.

A practical reason.

Harith almost laughed at the cruelty of it.

---

The meeting lasted an hour and a half, though it felt longer because Aleesya was aware of Harith the whole time.

She hated that awareness. It was a habit carved into the body. Even when she did not look at him, some part of her tracked where he sat, when he leaned forward, when his pen stopped moving, when he shifted in his chair after Danish made a suggestion and she nodded.

The discussion was about a weekend food distribution drive for low-income families in the area. There were routes to plan, dietary restrictions to note, volunteers to assign, logistics to confirm. Aleesya took notes because no one else did it properly. Danish contributed quietly but usefully, asking whether elderly residents living alone might need smaller packages they could carry. Harith handled transport details with his usual competence, mapping out collection points and timing.

They worked well in the same room.

That hurt in a different way.

Their old rhythm still existed in fragments. When the coordinator forgot to account for lift access in one block, Harith mentioned it just as Aleesya wrote it down. When someone suggested calling residents late at night to confirm delivery, Aleesya and Harith both said “No” at the same time, then stopped.

Several people laughed.

Aleesya smiled politely.

Harith looked down at his paper.

The space between them became visible.

After the meeting, volunteers stood around in loose clusters, packing markers, folding chairs, claiming leftover curry puffs. Rain had stopped outside, but the windows remained fogged at the edges. The badminton hall below had gone quiet. The building seemed to exhale.

Aleesya was stacking attendance sheets when Harith approached.

She knew his footsteps.

That, too, irritated her.

“Need help?” he asked.

She kept her hands busy aligning papers. “It’s okay. Almost done.”

“You’re taking minutes again?”

“Someone has to.”

“I can type them out if you send me photos.”

The offer was familiar. Too familiar. He had done it before after long sessions, turning her messy handwritten notes into clean documents while she sent voice messages explaining what she meant by arrows and underlined question marks.

Aleesya placed the papers into a folder. “No need. I can manage.”

His silence was brief but heavy.

“Okay,” he said.

She softened before she could stop herself. “Thanks though.”

His eyes lifted to hers.

There it was again—that bruised relief, as if even her smallest kindness had become something he needed to ration.

Aleesya looked away first.

Danish came over with the empty paper bag folded neatly in his hand. “Aleesya, I’m heading toward the MRT. You going that way?”

She hesitated.

Harith stood beside her, so still she could feel him listening.

The old Aleesya would have glanced at Harith automatically, checking whether he was leaving too, whether they would walk together, whether the night would fold them back into habit. The old Aleesya would have let the answer depend on him without saying so.

The new Aleesya picked up her handbag.

“Yes,” she said to Danish. “I’m going MRT.”

Danish smiled. “Okay. I’ll wait outside. No rush.”

“No, I’m done.” She turned to Harith with a small smile. “See you, Harith.”

See you.

Not “you going off too?” Not “text me later.” Not “don’t stay too late.”

Just see you.

Harith’s face changed in a way she wished she had not seen.

“Yeah,” he said. “See you.”

She walked out with Danish.

The corridor smelled of rain and old paint. Their footsteps echoed lightly down the stairs. Danish held the door open at the ground floor without making a performance of it, then stepped aside so she could pass first. Outside, the pavement was damp but the air had cooled. A few puddles reflected the orange lamps along the walkway.

“You okay?” Danish asked after a few moments.

Aleesya looked at him, surprised.

He kept his gaze ahead. “You looked a bit tired during the meeting. I wasn’t sure whether to ask.”

She almost laughed. “Is that your way of asking while pretending not to?”

“Yes,” he said, completely unashamed. “I’m trying to be respectful and nosy at the same time.”

The honesty caught her off guard.

“I’m okay,” she said.

Then, because the answer felt too automatic, she added, “Just a long week.”

Danish nodded. “Those are dangerous.”

“Long weeks?”

“The ones where nothing dramatic happens, but somehow you reach Friday feeling like you survived a small war.”

Aleesya looked at him.

He smiled slightly, not pressing.

For the first time that evening, the silence beside her did not demand anything.

They walked toward the MRT under the shelter. Rain dripped from leaves along the walkway. Somewhere nearby, a mynah hopped across a railing, shaking water from its feathers. The world smelled washed and tired.

Behind them, at the entrance of the volunteer centre, Harith stood under the light and watched them leave.

Aleesya knew without turning around.

She kept walking.

---

Harith should have gone home.

Instead, he remained at the volunteer centre until everyone else had left, carrying chairs that did not need carrying, checking locks that had already been checked, wiping a table that was not dirty. Hafiz waited by the doorway with the patience of a man watching his friend make poor emotional decisions in real time.

When the coordinator finally thanked them and shut off the lights, Harith stepped outside into the damp night.

The walkway Aleesya had taken with Danish was empty now.

Of course it was empty.

People did not remain in places simply because Harith was late to understanding them.

Hafiz opened his umbrella, then glanced at the clear sky and closed it again. “Want prata?”

Harith shook his head.

“Want to pretend you don’t want prata but end up there anyway?”

“No.”

“Want advice?”

“No.”

Hafiz nodded. “Great. I’ll give it.”

Harith sighed.

They began walking toward the carpark. The night air carried the smell of wet grass and distant traffic. Somewhere in the dark, water dripped from a roof edge. The volunteer centre lights switched off behind them one by one.

Hafiz walked with his hands in his pockets. “You know what my fiancée told me before we got engaged?”

Harith said nothing, which Hafiz accepted as permission.

“She said, ‘I don’t need you to be fearless. I need you to be clear.’ At first I thought, wah, very dramatic. But actually, she was right. Clarity is kindness.”

Harith looked ahead.

Clarity is kindness.

He thought of Aleesya beneath the wedding shelter, asking where to put her heart. He thought of his own answer. Not clear enough to free her gently. Not brave enough to hold her properly. A sentence that had tried to protect him and cut her instead.

Hafiz continued, quieter now. “If you don’t want her, let her go properly. If you want her, don’t make her guess.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It never is. Still must choose.”

Harith stopped walking.

Across the carpark, the ground shone under streetlights. A motorcycle passed on the road beyond, its sound fading quickly into the night.

“I don’t know how,” Harith said.

It was the most honest thing he had said all week.

Hafiz stopped too. For once, he did not make the moment easier with a joke.

“Then learn fast,” he said. “Because she looks like someone who already started learning how to live without waiting for you.”

Harith felt the words in his chest.

He took out his phone after Hafiz left.

Their chat opened to his last message from the night before.

He typed:

Harith Can we meet? I need to talk to you properly.

He looked at it.

The words seemed both too much and not enough.

He thought of Danish walking beside her. Of Aleesya smiling at curry puffs. Of the way she said, “See you, Harith,” as if putting him gently back where he had asked to belong.

He deleted the message.

Typed again.

Harith Did you reach home?

He stared at that too.

Safe. Familiar. Cowardly.

Deleted.

Finally, he sent nothing.

Because every sentence he could manage still asked Aleesya to make space for him before he knew what he would do with it.

Harith stood alone in the carpark, phone in hand, while water dripped steadily from the trees.

---

Aleesya reached home just after ten.

Danish had walked with her only until the MRT entrance, then wished her a safe journey and left without asking for her number, without stretching the conversation beyond its natural end. The restraint had been strangely comforting. Not cold. Not uninterested. Simply respectful of the fact that one pleasant walk did not entitle him to more.

On the train, Aleesya had found herself thinking about that.

How peaceful it felt when kindness did not come with a hook.

At home, she showered, prayed, and changed into soft cotton pajamas. Her mother was in the living room watching a drama, volume low, a bowl of cut mango on the coffee table. Aleesya sat beside her and accepted a piece without being asked.

Her mother looked at her sideways. “Meeting okay?”

“Okay.”

“Harith was there?”

Aleesya chewed slowly.

Her mother did not look at the television anymore.

“Yes,” Aleesya said.

“Hmm.”

This time, Aleesya almost smiled. “Mama.”

“I only said hmm.”

“Your hmm has subtitles.”

Her mother’s mouth curved, but her eyes remained gentle. “And?”

“And nothing. We’re friends.”

The word no longer broke when she said it.

That frightened her a little.

Her mother picked up another piece of mango and placed it on Aleesya’s palm. “Are you saying that because it is true, or because he said it first?”

Aleesya looked at the fruit in her hand. It was bright yellow, slippery with juice, sweet enough to sting at the edges.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

Her mother nodded as if she had expected no other answer. They sat together without speaking for a while, the drama murmuring on screen, rain beginning again outside in a soft rush against the windows.

Later, in her room, Aleesya checked her phone.

No message from Harith.

She should have felt relieved.

Instead, she felt the old ache stretch inside her, instinctively searching for the familiar shape of his concern. Did you reach home? Have you eaten? Text me later. Small hooks disguised as care. Or care tangled with hooks. She no longer knew.

She placed the phone on her desk and began removing the pins from her tudung.

Halfway through, the screen lit up.

Her heart lurched before she could stop it.

Harith.

She stood still, one pin between her fingers.

But it was not a message.

It was a photo in the volunteer group chat, sent by the coordinator. A group picture from the meeting. Everyone seated in a loose circle, some mid-laugh, some looking tired. Aleesya sat near the center, holding a pen. Danish was beside her, leaning slightly forward as if listening to someone outside the frame. Harith sat across from them.

Aleesya zoomed in before she knew why.

Harith was not looking at the camera.

He was looking at her.

Not obviously. Not dramatically. But enough.

Enough that anyone who knew how to read quiet things would see it.

Aleesya locked the phone quickly.

Her room felt too small.

She sat on the edge of her bed, pin still in hand, and pressed her lips together until the old longing passed through her without becoming action.

It would be so easy to fall back.

That was the cruelest part.

One honest message from him, one clear sentence, one “I was scared but I know now,” and she did not know whether she would have the strength to remain untouched by it. She had not stopped loving him. Love did not obey pride so neatly. It remained, wounded and watchful, like something that had crawled beneath the bed during a storm.

But loving him did not mean she had to wait at the door.

Her phone buzzed again.

This time it was a private message.

Harith.

For several seconds, Aleesya did not move.

Then she picked it up.

Harith You reached home?

The message was so familiar it almost hurt more than silence.

Aleesya looked at the words until they blurred.

Then she typed.

Aleesya Yes, reached. Thanks.

She nearly sent it.

Her thumb hovered over the arrow.

Something in her chest tightened, not with anger but exhaustion. That reply would be polite. Fine. Exactly as distant as she had been all week.

But it would also keep the same game alive.

Harith asking just enough to feel close. Aleesya answering just enough to seem okay. Both of them orbiting the wound, careful not to name it.

She deleted the message.

For the first time since the wedding, Aleesya chose something that was not only polite.

She typed again.

Aleesya Yes, reached. Harith, you don’t have to check on me like this anymore.

She stared at the sentence, pulse loud in her ears.

Then she sent it before fear could make her kinder than she could afford.

The typing bubble appeared immediately.

Stopped.

Appeared again.

Stopped.

Aleesya placed the phone on the bed and looked away.

A full minute passed.

Then his reply came.

Harith I know.

Another pause.

Harith I just don’t know how not to.

Aleesya closed her eyes.

There it was: the pain, the honesty, the almost-confession that still did not become a choice.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she picked up the phone.

She wanted to comfort him. The instinct rose fast, familiar, devastating. She wanted to say it was okay. That he could still check. That she understood. That neither of them knew how to become strangers after being something softer than friends and less certain than lovers.

Instead, she remembered the wedding shelter.

She remembered the word just.

She typed slowly, each word costing more than the last.

Aleesya Then maybe we both need to learn.

She sent it.

This time, when the typing bubble appeared, Aleesya did not wait to see what would follow.

She placed the phone face down on the table, removed the last pin from her tudung, and let the fabric fall loose in her lap.

Outside, rain blurred the windows again.

For once, she did not wonder whether Harith could hear it too.