WRONG NUMBER | NIKI

6 - Fault Lines

HANA'S POV

The walk home passes in a blur. It's not because anything particularly interesting happens on the way, but it's because my brain has collectively decided that replaying every humiliating second of the afternoon on an endless loop is a significantly better use of its time than paying attention to traffic. 

By the time I unlock the front gate, I've already relived the conversation fourteen separate times, and in every single version I somehow manage to embarrass myself even more than I did in reality. Sometimes I answer his questions with confidence. Sometimes I don't drop my phone. Sometimes I don't accidentally end up on top of him in front of half the volunteer committee. None of those versions actually happened. Unfortunately, reality remains stubbornly committed to the worst possible timeline.

The house is unusually quiet when I step inside. Mother is still at work. Father won't be home until dinner. The silence settles comfortably around me, interrupted only by the soft ticking of the clock hanging above the living room bookshelf and the distant hum of the air conditioner drifting through the hallway. 

Normally, I appreciate how peaceful the house feels during the afternoon. Today, however, the quiet simply gives my thoughts more room to become unbearable. I drop my school bag onto my bedroom floor with a sigh heavy enough to qualify as emotional exhaustion before collapsing backward across my bed, one arm thrown dramatically over my eyes.

"I hate him," I announce to the empty room. Silence. "...I don't hate him." More silence. "I hate that I don't hate him."

I groan into my pillow before rolling onto my side, reaching beneath my bed for a storage box I'd shoved there months ago while reorganizing my room. It contains old notebooks, worn-out headphones that only worked if the cable was bent at exactly thirty-two degrees, birthday cards I'd never had the heart to throw away, and somewhere beneath all of that... my old phone.

I haven't touched it in almost a year. The screen is covered in a fine layer of dust, and the transparent case has yellowed with age, but after plugging it into the charger beside my desk, the display flickers to life with surprising obedience. Notifications from months ago appear one after another before finally disappearing, leaving behind the familiar home screen I'd forgotten I used to have. More importantly, the SIM card inside still works. Different number. Different account. No embarrassing anonymous conversations attached to it. No accidental photos. No catastrophic history waiting to ruin my life.

I stare at it for nearly five full minutes. This is ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. But technically... technically, I did promise I'd give him another number.

"...This counts," I tell myself, as though saying it out loud somehow transforms questionable logic into perfectly reasonable decision-making. "He wanted a way to contact me for the festival. This is a way to contact me for the festival. Nobody specified which phone had to receive the messages."

My conscience looks unconvinced. I choose not to make eye contact with it. And with all the confidence of someone submitting evidence in her own criminal trial, I open the messaging app and type.

Hey. It's Hana. This is my number for the festival. I stare at the message. Delete it. Rewrite it. Delete it again. Eventually, I settle on: Hi. It's Hana. This is the number I mentioned earlier. Simple. Professional. Entirely free of emotional instability.

I hit send and watch the message disappear into the conversation before lowering the phone onto my desk with the kind of careful restraint usually reserved for unexploded bombs. The tiny text bubble vanishes, leaving behind nothing but a blank stretch of chat and the certainty that there is now absolutely nothing left for me to do except wait. Waiting, unfortunately, has never been a skill I've possessed.