Cycle I: Coming on Strong
The Hidden Voice
The Hidden Girl · 07 (v2.00)
THE HOUSE OF ZAN — Zan
Playlist Track: Hatchie — “Carousel”
The person who made explaining what she wants sound safe is in her contacts now.
They exchanged numbers because the other app is bad at notifications. It is a practical reason. She repeats it anyway, even though nobody has asked why their name needed somewhere more permanent.
Their profile sounds more certain than they do in messages. They send a thought, correct it, then send the part they almost kept to themselves. She likes the almost-kept parts best. The corrections only bother her when they undo something she had already decided was true about them.
They have started talking about things they could do together. Watching a film from the list she never finishes. Arguing about what to order. Staying awake talking if they are ever in the same room.
Each one is small enough to be a joke.
She keeps them anyway.
None of it is a promise. She knows.
She opens the hidden app and looks at their profile again. They are still figuring things out. Hers still says she wants to keep things casual. She remembers choosing the words. She does not remember them feeling like a decision she would have to keep making.
She presses Edit and tries relationship.
For a moment, it looks closer to what she means. Then she imagines them seeing it and asking what changed.
She puts the old one back.
In her contacts, she adds a small symbol beside their name. It changes nothing they can see, but every message looks different with it there.
More official.
More embarrassing if she is wrong.
She removes it.
Their name looks exactly as it did before. She leaves it that way.
She opens Notes instead. There are lists she did not finish, messages she copied because she did not trust herself to remember them correctly, and sentences she no longer means but has not deleted.
In a new note, she types, “I want this to count.”
She does not write what this is. She does not write what would make it count.
A message from them appears across the sentence. She closes the note, reads what they sent, and answers that instead.
The note saves itself.