Probably Just Friendly

Saiful woke before his alarm.

For a few seconds, he did not know why.

The room was still mostly dark, washed in the faint blue-grey that came just before dawn in his part of the estate. The ceiling fan turned overhead with its usual soft click. Somewhere beyond the window, a mynah called once, sharp and insistent, then fell silent. His phone lay face down on the desk where he had left it the night before, beside a pile of orientation schedules and a pen he had not capped properly.

He lay still, eyes half-open, letting consciousness gather itself properly.

Then he remembered the messages.

Not in any dramatic way. There was no sudden rush of feeling, no embarrassing replay of every line. The memory arrived with the same clean, inconvenient precision with which he remembered lecture timings or document deadlines.

Hi Senior Saiful, this is Xinyue from the administrative crisis this morning.

He shut his eyes again for a brief moment.

It was ridiculous that his mind had kept that exact phrasing.

The alarm rang a minute later. He reached over, silenced it, and got out of bed before he could indulge the thought any further.

By the time he had washed up and stepped into the kitchen, his mother was already there in her house clothes, moving quietly between the stove and the counter. The smell of toasted bread and fried egg settled warmly through the flat. His father had not yet left for work. The morning news played softly from the living room television, the volume kept low enough not to disturb the thin peace of early hours.

“You’re up early,” his mother said without turning.

“Orientation.”

“You came home tired yesterday.”

“It was fine.”

His mother set a plate on the table and looked at him the way mothers looked at sons who claimed to be fine while moving with the stiffness of someone held together by scheduling and caffeine. “Eat properly then.”

Saiful obeyed, because resistance would only produce another egg and a lecture on energy. He sat at the table, still a little sleep-heavy at the edges, and reached for his phone only after taking the first bite.

There was already a message waiting.

From Xinyue.

Sent at 6:31 a.m.

Good morning, Senior. Please tell me orientation starts later today than yesterday or I may perish dramatically.

He stared at the screen.

The message was so entirely in character with the girl he had met yesterday that he could hear the exact tone of it in his head: mock tragedy, one eye half-open, probably sending it while still not fully awake herself.

His father stepped into the kitchen, and Saiful set the phone down automatically.

“Second day?” his father asked, reaching for the kettle.

“Yes.”

“More tiring than the first.”

That was less a prediction than family law. His father had always believed that anything involving groups of people became worse once initial enthusiasm wore off. Saiful had never found evidence against it.

He nodded. “Probably.”

His father poured tea into a mug, then glanced once at the phone on the table. “You’re smiling at something.”

Saiful looked up too quickly. “I’m not.”

His father raised his brows in mild amusement and said nothing else.

Saiful finished breakfast in a composure that felt slightly more deliberate than usual. When he left the flat, the message was still waiting unanswered.

He replied on the lift down.

Reporting time is 8:30 today. You’ll survive.

He had barely stepped out of the block when her reply arrived.

No sympathy at all. Very cruel.

A second line followed almost at once.

But thank you. I knew you would know.

He put the phone away and told himself that this, by itself, meant nothing.

Freshmen often attached themselves to whichever senior seemed competent enough to translate university life into manageable pieces. Orientation created quick, temporary dependencies. People who would not normally text a near-stranger at dawn did so during that week because everybody was tired, oversocialized, and slightly dislodged from their better judgment.

That was all.

By the time Saiful reached campus, the sky had turned bright and merciless again, the aftermath of yesterday’s rain already burned away. The faculty concourse was livelier than it had any right to be at that hour. Seniors were dragging boxes, shifting chairs, herding reluctant microphones toward usefulness. Freshmen drifted in batches toward the assembly point, still wearing orientation lanyards and the expression particular to people who had voluntarily signed up to be tired for social development.

Saiful checked the station brief, the indoor contingency plan, and the attendance sheets for the day’s city challenge segment. He had just finished updating the transport timings when Haziq appeared beside him holding two canned coffees.

“One for the elderly,” Haziq said, handing him one.

Saiful took it. “I’m older than you by four months.”

“That is enough.”

Haziq cracked his own can open and took an appreciative drink. “So.”

Saiful looked at him once. “No.”

“I haven’t even said anything yet.”

“You were going to.”

“That is offensive profiling.” Haziq leaned against the registration table, already enjoying himself. “Did she message you?”

Saiful opened his can. “Why would that matter?”

“It matters because I enjoy being right.”

“She asked about reporting time.”

Haziq made a noise so theatrically triumphant that a nearby facilitator turned to look. “Aha.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“My friend,” Haziq said solemnly, “girls do not wake up and text random senior facilitators at sunrise unless something is already wrong with their decision-making.”

“Orientation starts early.”

“Exactly.”

Saiful drank some of the coffee because it was easier than answering that.

Before Haziq could continue, the emcee called the facilitation team into a briefing huddle. Saiful moved without urgency, grateful for any task that required attention more than conversation.

The freshmen were divided into their orientation groups again, this time for a faculty-wide challenge that would take them around different checkpoints. The atmosphere had changed subtly from the first day. The nerves were still there, but they had loosened. People who had arrived yesterday clutching their water bottles like flotation devices now laughed more easily, sat closer together, borrowed sunscreen from practical strangers, and spoke over one another with the relief of beginning not to be alone.

Saiful noticed Xinyue only when she lifted her hand from Group B and waved at him as if greeting someone she had known for weeks.

He should not have noticed that as quickly as he did.

He acknowledged her with a small nod and immediately regretted it when her grin widened in visible satisfaction.

She was standing with Mei Qi and two other freshmen near the edge of the cluster. Her hair was tied up again, though less neatly than yesterday, and she had somehow managed to wear her orientation shirt in a way that looked less shapeless than it had any right to. She said something to Mei Qi after Saiful nodded, and the other girl followed her gaze toward him with an expression of instant interest.

That, more than the wave itself, made him look away.

The morning briefing passed in a blur of route instructions, safety reminders, and seniors pretending to be more energetic than they felt. Saiful spent the first hour coordinating departures and making sure the transport sequence stayed on schedule. When one of the station leaders reported that Group D had gone the wrong way toward the business school and taken three freshmen with them like confused ducklings, Saiful solved it with two phone calls and a map pin.

When a Year One boy nearly missed his checkpoint because he had gone back to the lecture theatre to look for a portable charger, Saiful found him sitting miserably on the corridor bench and steered him toward the correct bus stop before his group could lose more time.

By eleven, the sun had become unbearable again.

Saiful was halfway through updating a location sheet outside the sheltered walkway when he heard footsteps approaching from behind.

“Senior.”

He turned without surprise this time, which felt like its own problem.

Xinyue stood there holding a half-finished bottle of water and a folded clue sheet. Mei Qi hovered a pace behind her, clearly pretending not to hover. Both girls looked warm and faintly windblown from the outdoor stations.

“I thought your checkpoint was on the other side,” Saiful said.

“It is.”

“Then why are you here?”

She raised the clue sheet. “Officially, to ask for clarification.”

“And unofficially?”

Xinyue’s eyes flickered with amusement. “To verify whether you always look this serious in direct sunlight.”

Mei Qi made a choking noise that sounded very much like a laugh being strangled before release.

Saiful looked at the clue sheet in her hand instead of at her face. “What needs clarification?”

Xinyue stepped closer and held it out. The clue itself was straightforward–deliberately vague, but not difficult if one had paid attention during the route briefing. He could have answered in one sentence.

Instead, because Mei Qi was watching him with the fascinated suspicion of someone witnessing a small campus incident in real time, Saiful took the paper more carefully than necessary and read the line twice.

“You’re meant to identify the landmark from the faculty motto hidden in the wording,” he said.

“We guessed that.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“We wanted to make sure we were correct.”

He glanced between them. “Both of you?”

Mei Qi immediately pointed at Xinyue. “Not me. I’m just collateral damage.”

Xinyue did not even deny it. “Mei Qi lacks team spirit.”

“Mei Qi has pattern recognition,” her friend said.

Saiful, to his own mild alarm, almost laughed.

Xinyue caught the near-smile again with predatory efficiency. “There. Again.”

He handed the clue sheet back. “The landmark is the innovation wall beside the old engineering block.”

“I knew it,” she said, though it was impossible to tell whether she meant the clue or his expression.

Mei Qi watched them both for another second, then said dryly, “Okay. Good. Can we now leave before you embarrass our entire batch?”

Xinyue turned to her in outrage. “You are so unsupportive.”

“I am trying to preserve your future.”

Saiful looked away, because there was no correct place to rest his expression during that exchange.

Xinyue stepped backward, still facing him. “Thanks, Senior.” Then she added, with a brightness so artless it would have sounded rehearsed on anyone else, “You should smile properly one day. I think it might improve campus morale.”

Before he could answer, Mei Qi physically hauled her away by the wrist.

Saiful watched them disappear into the heat-shimmering brightness of the walkway. Only when they were gone did he realize he was still holding the pen he had uncapped before they arrived.

He recapped it.

“You are in trouble,” Haziq said from somewhere to his left.

Saiful did not jump, but only because he was practiced.

Haziq ambled closer, looking infuriatingly pleased. “Her friend is already briefing herself on you. That is stage two.”

“There are stages?”

“Of course. Stage one is eye contact. Stage two is information gathering. Stage three is group-chat analysis.”

Saiful slid the location sheet back into his folder. “You invented this.”

“I refined it through field research.”

“You need better hobbies.”

Haziq shrugged. “Maybe. But I am still right.”

Saiful returned to work and managed, for nearly two hours, not to think about Xinyue at all.

This was mostly because the afternoon segment descended into the sort of logistical absurdity orientation committees privately expected and publicly denied. One group arrived at the wrong checkpoint because a senior facilitator had sent a photo of the wrong staircase. Another station ran out of task forms because nobody had checked whether the printer jam had eaten the final ten copies. A faculty flag went missing and was later discovered under a bench, where someone had placed it carefully enough to suggest either reverence or stupidity.

By the time the groups were sent back toward campus, Saiful’s concentration had narrowed into practical slices of time again. Check the returns. Confirm attendance. Ensure nobody had been left behind at the MRT station or the food court or in the vague geographical area known to freshmen as “that place near the library.”

He had just finished calling one of the station leaders when his phone vibrated.

A message from Xinyue.

Senior, I would like you to know Group B suffered heroically in the heat. If there are no prizes for endurance, the system is unjust.

He looked at it for three seconds before replying.

There are prizes. But not for complaining.

Her answer came almost immediately.

Then I’m finished. My greatest talent has no institutional support.

He stared at the message, thumb hovering above the screen, aware with an irritation bordering on amusement that replying to her had begun feeling too easy.

Before he could decide on a response, another message appeared.

Also Mei Qi says I text you too much. Please tell her she is dramatic.

He did not smile.

He absolutely did not.

He typed:

She may have a point.

The typing indicator returned so quickly it almost seemed offended.

You’re supposed to be on my side.

After a second:

Actually no. Don’t be on my side too obviously. I have a reputation to maintain.

That finally drew a real reaction from him, though only enough to loosen something around his eyes.

Haziq, passing just then with an armful of checkpoint materials, saw it at once.

“Oh, that is bad,” he said.

Saiful locked the phone and slipped it into his pocket. “What?”

“You looked at your phone and made a face that belongs in a romantic subplot.”

“I did not.”

“You did. It was small, but it was there. Very embarrassing.”

Saiful took half the stack from him just to end the conversation.

They spent the next hour resetting the atrium for the closing segment. The freshmen returned in clusters, louder than before, sunburnt at the cheeks, carrying tote bags and too many inside jokes formed under minor suffering. Somebody had bought bubble tea. Someone else had lost a cap and adopted another one from a friend with the confidence of temporary communism.

Xinyue reappeared when the groups were called to settle for the final reflection activity. She dropped into a seat near the front with Mei Qi and another girl, then glanced back over her shoulder as if on instinct.

Her eyes found him immediately.

That was the second time that day he looked away first.

It annoyed him enough that he spent the rest of the reflection segment focused with unreasonable intensity on the attendance tabulation.

The closing activity involved freshmen writing short notes about their first two days–what surprised them, what they were afraid of, what they were looking forward to. The notes would be pinned anonymously to a board and revisited at the end of the semester in a mentorship event the faculty liked to call a circle of growth, which was both sentimental and mildly unbearable.

Saiful moved through the rows collecting cards from those who had finished. Most were predictable.

I’m scared of not making friends.

I hope I can survive the math modules.

Campus is bigger than I thought.

The seniors are nicer than expected.

He had just reached the front row when Xinyue held her card out to him face-down.

“You’re not supposed to read it, right?” she asked.

“They’re anonymous.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Saiful took the card from her. “No.”

She narrowed her eyes slightly, clearly unconvinced. “You look like the type who alphabetizes secrets.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means I don’t trust your administrative morality.”

He slid the card into the stack. “Yesterday you said you were the trustworthy one on administrative matters.”

“Yes,” she said promptly. “Not you.”

Mei Qi covered her face with one hand.

Saiful moved on before the exchange could become even more impossible.

He did not read her card.

What he did do, several minutes later while sorting the stack by group, was notice hers by accident because she had drawn a tiny moon in one corner beside her handwriting. It was not enough to read the content. Only enough to recognize it.

That should not have felt personal.

Yet somehow, standing there under the overbright atrium lights with a stack of anonymous first-year hopes in his hands, it did.

The day ended earlier than the first, though the fatigue seemed to settle deeper. By late afternoon, the freshmen were released with promises about tomorrow’s final segment and several exaggerated warnings not to disappear from group chats now that people had invested emotionally in attendance numbers.

Saiful stayed back with the senior facilitators to clear the leftover materials. The atrium emptied slowly, leaving behind only scraps of paper, chairs shifted out of alignment, and that strange hollow quiet large places developed after too many voices had filled them.

He was carrying a box of marker pens toward the storeroom when he saw someone waiting near the side staircase.

Xinyue.

Not with Mei Qi this time. Alone.

She stepped forward when she saw him, though not in the bright, public way she carried herself around groups. There was something quieter in her posture now, something that belonged more to evening than sunlight.

“Are you done?” she asked.

“Almost.”

She glanced at the box in his hands. “Do you want help?”

“No.”

Her mouth curved. “You answer very kindly.”

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

“I know. I’m rebelling.”

He shifted the box more securely against his hip. “What do you need, Xinyue?”

The use of her name changed her face for half a second.

It was only half a second. But it was there: the flicker of surprise, then satisfaction, then something softer she covered quickly by tucking a loose strand of hair behind one ear.

“Oh,” she said. “So you do know my name.”

“You’ve introduced yourself more than once.”

“Still. Nice to hear it.”

He had no useful reply to that.

She rocked once on her heels, then seemed to make up her mind. “Actually, I wanted to ask whether your group–sorry, the facilitators–are joining the freshmen for dinner tomorrow after the final segment.”

“Some of us.”

“Are you?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“How much work is left.”

“That is a tragic answer.”

“It’s a realistic one.”

She sighed as if realism were a personal betrayal. Then she reached into the tote bag slung over her shoulder and took out a small packet of biscuits, the kind sold in multipacks at campus vending machines.

“I bought too many,” she said. “Before you say anything, I know that sounds fake. But it’s only half fake.”

Saiful looked at the packet, then at her.

“It’s just biscuits,” she added, more lightly than before. “Not a proposal.”

A beat passed.

Then, to his own surprise, Saiful said, “That’s reassuring.”

Her laugh came quick and genuine, the sound bouncing softly off the corridor wall.

He set the box down on the floor so he could take the biscuits properly.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

This time neither of them filled the pause immediately.

The corridor beyond the atrium was quieter now. Somewhere outside, a shuttle engine started and faded. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Through the windows, the late-afternoon sky had begun softening into gold at the edges, campus buildings losing some of their hardness in the gentler light.

Xinyue glanced toward the atrium and then back at him. “Can I ask you something without you giving me one of your suspiciously efficient answers?”

“That depends on the question.”

“Why do you look like you’re always about to leave?”

It caught him off guard badly enough that he did not answer at once.

Her expression changed, just a little. The teasing remained, but not as a shield. More like permission for him not to take offense.

“You don’t have to answer if that’s too personal,” she said. “I just noticed it.”

Saiful looked past her for a second, toward the stairwell landing where afternoon light had spilled in pale and slanted across the concrete.

He could have dismissed it. Said she was imagining things. Said he was tired. Said facilitators were always busy.

Instead, perhaps because it had been a long day, perhaps because her question felt less intrusive than accurate, he said, “I’m usually thinking about the next thing I need to do.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“Not really.”

“Only because you’re used to it.”

He met her eyes then.

It was unnerving, how quickly she sometimes landed on the truth of small things.

She seemed to sense his surprise and smiled, but gently now. “See? Less scary when you’re honest.”

Before he could decide whether that was unfair, voices rose from the atrium entrance–other seniors heading out. The moment thinned at once, becoming ordinary again.

Xinyue took a step back. “Okay. I’ll go before your friend appears and decides there’s a scandal.”

“That seems wise.”

“It was nice talking to you, Senior.”

He should have left it there.

Instead, because something in him had shifted half a degree in a direction he did not like examining, he said, “Get home safely.”

Her smile changed.

Not bigger. Just warmer.

“I will,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”

Then she turned and went down the side staircase, her footsteps quick against the concrete steps, light and receding until the corridor was quiet again.

Saiful stood there for a moment longer than necessary, the packet of biscuits in his hand and the box of markers at his feet.

Haziq appeared not thirty seconds later, which in Saiful’s view supported the theory that his friend was either unnaturally observant or morally unwell.

“Was that her?” Haziq asked.

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

Haziq’s expression became one of terrible joy. “And you’re holding snacks.”

Saiful picked the box back up. “You need better hobbies.”

“I have many hobbies. This is just my favorite today.”

Saiful walked past him toward the storeroom.

Haziq fell into step beside him. “So what did she want?”

“She asked about dinner tomorrow.”

“And?”

“And gave me biscuits.”

Haziq stopped walking entirely. “Biscuits.”

Saiful kept moving.

“My brother,” Haziq called after him, scandalized by delight, “you are in a developing situation.”

Saiful did not dignify that with a response.

But later, much later, on the MRT home with the packet of vending-machine biscuits in his backpack and the day finally sliding loose from his shoulders, he found himself thinking not about the biscuits or the messages or even the way she said Senior as if it belonged to him more than to any other facilitator.

He thought about her question.

Why do you look like you’re always about to leave?

He leaned back against the train seat and watched his reflection tremble in the dark window opposite him. The carriage lights turned everyone a little tired-looking. Students nodded over their phones. A woman in office clothes slept with her head tilted carefully away from the glass. Across from him, two boys in orientation shirts argued softly over whether a professor’s online reviews could be trusted.

Saiful had not thought of himself, exactly, as someone always about to leave.

But maybe he had lived like that for years without naming it. Moving from task to task. Semester to semester. Obligation to obligation. Never unhappy, not really. Just disciplined to the point of emotional economy.

Perhaps that was why Xinyue felt so disruptive.

Not because she was especially loud. She was not.

Not because she flirted. Though she did, with a steadiness that would have unsettled anyone in his position.

But because she brought with her a kind of attention that refused to stay superficial. She noticed things too fast. Asked questions that reached a little past the obvious. Made ordinary exchanges feel faintly overlit, as though there were more happening inside them than he had prepared for.

The train slowed into his station.

By the time he reached home, the sky outside had gone fully dark. The flat was quieter tonight. His father was not back yet. His mother had left food covered on the table. Aisyah was in the living room with her laptop open and one earbud in, doing the sort of multitasking that looked unserious until one noticed she was also somehow topping her classes.

“You’re late,” she said without looking up.

“Orientation.”

“You said that yesterday too. At this rate your faculty camp sounds like military service.”

Saiful took off his watch and set his bag down. “That’s dramatic.”

“It runs in the family.”

He was halfway to his room when she glanced up properly and narrowed her eyes.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“That’s a lie.”

Aisyah leaned back against the sofa and studied him with alarming sisterly focus. “You look weird.”

“I look tired.”

“No. Tired is normal. This is different.”

Saiful did not answer, which only encouraged her.

“Did something happen?” she asked.

“No.”

“Did someone happen?”

He turned his head very slowly.

Aisyah sat up in immediate triumph. “Oh my God.”

“Nothing happened,” he said.

“That is not what your face says.”

“My face doesn’t say anything.”

“It absolutely does. It says somebody spoke to you and now you don’t know how to behave.”

“That’s nonsense.”

Aisyah was grinning now, one hand over her mouth as if to contain the delight. “Abang, this is the most exciting thing that has happened to me all week.”

Saiful went to his room before she could become more unbearable.

He closed the door, changed, and sat at his desk with the intention of sorting tomorrow’s orientation notes. Instead he found himself taking the packet of biscuits out of his bag and setting it beside the orientation file.

He looked at it for a moment, then shook his head once at himself and reached for the schedule.

His phone vibrated.

A message from Xinyue.

I reached home alive. In case your “get home safely” was legally binding.

He stared at it with his hand still resting on the file.

Then another arrived.

Also Mei Qi says if I keep texting you I’ll lose all my dignity. But I think first-year dignity is overrated.

Against his will, his mouth moved.

He typed:

Your friend is trying to help you.

The reply appeared almost instantly.

You sound like you’re on her side again. Very disappointing.

A pause.

Then:

Did you eat the biscuits?

He looked at the unopened packet on his desk.

Not yet.

Her answer came back with irritating speed.

Please do. If you keep forgetting to eat properly, you’ll start looking even more serious, and apparently that’s possible.

He should not have felt that line land.

It was light. Teasing. Entirely within the bounds of harmless conversation.

And yet it carried the same small, disorienting accuracy as the message from the previous night.

You look like the kind who will.

If you keep forgetting to eat properly.

It was one thing to be admired. That, he imagined, was flattering in a general and unserious way.

It was another thing to be noticed.

He leaned back in his chair and looked at the screen.

For a fleeting moment, he considered not replying. Let the conversation rest. Put back some ordinary distance before the shape of this week became stranger than it needed to be.

Instead he wrote:

I’ll eat them. Go sleep. You said you were perishing this morning.

There was a brief pause before the typing indicator returned.

Wah. So caring.

He closed his eyes.

Less Singlish, he thought automatically, and then nearly laughed at himself for having that reaction at all.

Another message arrived.

Okay, okay. Good night, Senior. See you tomorrow.

He read it once.

Then again.

Tomorrow.

The third day of orientation. The final stretch. More noise, more clearing up, more reasons for a freshman to text a senior facilitator under the excuse of shared logistics and group dinner and whatever else the week could plausibly contain.

Probably just friendly, he told himself.

Probably just the strange temporary closeness orientation created.

Probably just a bright first-year girl talking too much because that was the easiest way for her to move through a new world.

And if his attention kept tilting toward her against his better judgment–if he had begun expecting the next message before it came, if he was already noticing her even in crowds–that only meant he was tired enough for ordinary things to feel exaggerated.

Nothing more.

Still, when he finally opened the biscuit packet and ate one while reviewing tomorrow’s schedule, he caught himself reading the lines on his phone once more before locking it.

Good night, Senior.

See you tomorrow.

He placed the packet carefully beside his notes and told himself, with all the confidence of a man already beginning to lose an argument with his own life, that tomorrow would put everything back in proportion.

It did not occur to him yet that proportion was exactly what Xinyue seemed determined to ruin.