It was late in the afternoon when Aiah's phone buzzed on the coffee table. She was half-asleep on the couch, her body stretched out under a thin blanket, trying to fight off the restlessness that had settled in her chest for weeks.
The screen lit up, vibrating insistently against the wood. Aiah lazily reached for it, expecting a call from work or maybe Sheena nagging her to come out for drinks. But when she glanced at the screen, her heart stopped.
Colet.
Mikha's best friend.
Aiah hadn't spoken to Colet in what felt like forever—not since the breakup. Colet had always been the buffer in their relationship, the neutral party who somehow stayed close to both of them without taking sides. But after everything had fallen apart, they'd naturally drifted.
Seeing her name now sent a jolt of anxiety racing through Aiah's veins. Her first instinct was to ignore it, to let the call go to voicemail, to pretend she hadn't seen it.
But the more she stared at the screen, the more her chest tightened. Why was Colet calling? It wasn't casual. It couldn't be.
Her thumb hovered over the green button, her pulse pounding in her ears.
What if something's happened to Mikha?
The thought made her stomach churn. She almost didn't want to know. But before she could stop herself, she swiped to answer, pressing the phone to her ear with trembling fingers.
"Hello?" Her voice cracked, her throat suddenly dry.
"Aiah," Colet said, her voice calm but laced with something heavy. "Hey, uh... I hope this isn't a bad time."
Aiah sat up, her heart thudding painfully in her chest. "It's fine," she said quickly, even though her entire body felt tense. "What's... what's going on? Why are you calling?"
There was a brief pause on the other end, and Aiah could hear Colet exhaling softly, as if trying to find the right words.
"It's about Mikha," Colet said finally, her voice quieter now.
Aiah's stomach dropped. "What about Mikha?" she asked, her voice sharper than she intended.
"She..." Colet hesitated again, and Aiah's fingers tightened around the phone. "She got into a car accident. A few weeks ago."
The words hit Aiah like a punch to the gut, knocking the air out of her lungs. She blinked, trying to process them, but her mind couldn't catch up.
"A car accident?" she repeated, her voice hollow.
"Yeah," Colet said. "It was bad, Aiah. Really bad. She was... she's been in an induced coma for a couple of weeks now. But she's stable. The doctors say she's out of immediate danger."
Aiah's free hand gripped the blanket tightly, her knuckles turning white. "Oh my God," she whispered. "I—how—"
"She's in the hospital," Colet continued gently. "She's been there since the accident. That's why you haven't... I mean, why she hasn't been around."
The words made Aiah's chest twist painfully. For weeks, she had thought Mikha had simply given up on her, that she had finally decided to stop trying. She'd convinced herself that Mikha had moved on or, worse, had just stopped caring. But now...
"She didn't mean to disappear," Colet said softly, as if reading Aiah's thoughts. "I thought you should know that. She didn't mean for it to seem like she'd... given up or anything."
Aiah pressed a hand to her forehead, her mind spinning. She tried to picture Mikha—bright, stubborn, full of life—and the thought of her lying in a hospital bed, unconscious and vulnerable, made her chest ache in a way she couldn't explain.
