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I’m home alone today and the “alone” part is really starting to hit me. Usually I enjoy the solitude, but I’ve been pacing the floor caught in a whirlwind of thought for hours. It wasn’t until I flipped over my phone, the screen lighting up with a subtle vibration, that I realized it was nearly a quarter til 5pm. Where the hell had the day gone? I squinted at the screen, pushing up my glasses.
12 missed messages.
What the hell, I must’ve set the phone to vibrate . . . or maybe I heard them but didn’t compute. Typical. Usually I did just let the new messages fade into the background while I wrote or watched youtube or paced the floor apparently. Even now I felt as though I had to muster all the energy in my body to unlock my screen and face the torrent of what I expected to be reminders from mom about upcoming appointments and my sibling’s usual quirky niche-reference memes. But it wasn’t . When I opened up my messaging app, all 12 were attributed to one name: Aulik *sword emoji*.
I’d met him back in sophomore year as an undergrad and we hit it off immediately. But he’d dropped out of college later that year to work full time as a sword master at the martial arts studio about two towns away from my home. The two of us remained friends, but I was well into the Master’s of Linguistics program by now. Whenever we called each other, the conversations were always pleasant, involving updates on work, friendships, his romantic flings or my lack thereof. They always ended in philosophical conversations about our favorite films or lyrics shared from our most treasured playlists. I frequently wondered why we didn’t do it more often.
As much as I enjoyed Aulik’s company, we rarely saw each other other than the rare occasion that I popped into his studio after picking up very specific ingredients from the asian food market next door. He was always so busy, a bit of a celebrity if you will. Even back in college, he was beloved by many students and staff alike despite the academic warnings and skipped classes. It was sad to see him go, but he worked hard at the studio, and I was happy for him. These days, I was very tentative to initiate our messages myself. He always seemed so busy. So needed. It had been a couple of months since we last spoke, so to see 12 messages surprised me honestly. But then again, he was rather sporadic with his communication in general. Curious, I immediately tapped into our conversation thread.
4:30: Hey, how’s life? Sorry, I know it’s been a while. Things have been cray here at the studio. You know how it is.
4:31: Btw did you ever get that first pull up? Hope the tips helped.
4:31: How’s college life treating you?
4:34: Been meaning to tell you Central Cee dropped a new singallllll.
4:35: I won’t lie I’m losing my mind over here. Imma crashout if I don’t get a break.
4:40: *A pic of ramen*
The man was so random.
The messages went on in this way ending in:
4:33: Can we hang today? Pretty please baee.
I laughed. The “Baee” would have caught me off guard if it weren’t for the running joke about the term being overused by his desperate exes. I felt a semblance of energy course through my veins upon the realisation that I had something to look forward to today. Something that involved a real human being. I took my time responding to each message, frivolous as they were. Within a few moments the blue dots hopped into life a the bottom corner of the screen followed by:
5:01: Damn, I didn’t expect you to respond to all that but thank you*heart emoji*. Meet at my place? Here’s the address.