Cycle I: Coming on Strong
The Hidden Voice
The Hidden Girl · 13 (v2.00)
THE HOUSE OF ZAN — Zan
Playlist Track: FKA twigs — “Perfect Stranger”
She changes the search filter again.
Relationship brings up people who talk about the future before she knows whether she likes the way they talk. Casual brings back profiles she has already passed. Still figuring it out feels closest to the truth. She is less sure she wants someone who feels the same.
She clears the filter and scrolls without one.
A new reply moves a stranger to the top of her matches. She opens the conversation, then checks their profile to remember which person they are.
They ask what she wants.
She starts writing, “something that doesn’t feel like it could be with anybody.”
The answer looks too specific for someone whose name she had to check.
She deletes it.
When she begins typing another answer, the phone suggests just seeing what happens. She has used the sentence often enough that it arrives ready for her.
She sends it.
Their answer says they feel exactly the same. Then they ask what she is doing.
She looks farther up the conversation as if something more interesting might have appeared while she was typing. It has not.
Nobody has said anything wrong. That makes losing interest feel like something she is doing to them, so she leaves them in her matches and returns to the profiles.
The same claims pass beneath her thumb. Looking for something real. No games. Open to anything.
She has written versions of all of them herself. They looked more honest from her side of the screen.
A profile she almost likes disappears when the app loads more suggestions. She finds it again in her history and notices a sentence that annoys her.
She closes it.
There are still people farther down who have not had a chance to become disappointing.
She opens a private browser and types, Why does attention stop feeling exciting once I get it?
Before she searches, a message from the conversation she pinned covers the top of the screen.
“Can I be honest?”
She opens that instead.
The question about attention remains in the private tab.
She can look it up after she answers them.