Cycle I: Coming on Strong
The Hidden Voice
The Hidden Girl · 06 (v2.00)
THE HOUSE OF ZAN — Zan
Playlist Track: Slowdive — “kisses”
The reply arrives while she is deciding how to finish the apology. It has nothing to do with the words still sitting in her message field, but whatever she thought needed fixing no longer looks broken.
She deletes the apology.
After that, messages keep arriving before she can put the phone down. Every time the screen starts to dim, another one brightens it. Her drink goes warm beside her. She picks it up twice without taking a sip.
Then the screen dims all the way.
Something different is playing now. She does not remember hearing the song change.
She rereads the last few messages. Her last message is still marked Read. She opens their profile to see if they are active.
They are.
She returns to the conversation as if checking again might make that mean something else.
Back in her inbox, the person who remembers almost everything is still there. Their last message mentions something she told them once and had nearly forgotten herself.
When it arrived, being remembered felt like pressure.
Now it looks like patience.
She opens the thread and types, “sorry i disappeared.”
Disappeared makes what she did sound important. She replaces it with got busy, which makes it sound accidental.
That is not true either.
She puts disappeared back.
Before she can send it, a notification covers the words. The new person has returned. The preview continues from where the conversation stopped, as if the silence was never long enough to require explaining.
Her anxiety subsides before she decides whether anything was wrong.
She calls the feeling destiny. Relief would mean she was happier about getting an answer than about what it said.
She taps the notification and returns to the faster conversation.
In the older thread, sorry i disappeared remains saved beneath the unanswered message from the person who remembers.
Now that someone is answering, she no longer feels sorry.