A Shift

Hugo came back to his bedroom.

The door was shut, the lights were off, and he was lying flat on his mattress in his designated isolation zone. To reset his drained social battery, he engaged in mindless data consumption, scrolling through his phone's algorithmic feed. It was mostly just white noise—global news updates, targeted ads, and meaningless trending videos.

Then, his thumb hovered over the screen. He sat up slowly, the mattress springs creaking under his weight.

Before he could stop himself, he opened the search bar. He hadn't intentionally memorized it, but when Shira had slid her phone across the café table, her handle had burned itself into his memory.

His fingers paused over the digital keyboard for a fraction of a second. A strange, quiet thrum started up against his ribs—a slight elevation in his heart rate that he stubbornly chose to ignore. He typed in the letters and hit search.

Her profile loaded instantly.

Sitting right at the top of the grid was a new post, uploaded exactly two hours ago. It already had over four hundred likes. The first image was the fruit crepe, aesthetically framed, that she had been photographing at the café.

Without entirely understanding his own motives, Hugo tapped the little speech bubble icon to open the comment section. It was exactly what he expected: a rapid stream of exclamation points, questions about the café's location, and compliments directed at Shira.

But as he scrolled, a cluster of replies broke the pattern.

‘Wait, who is the boy on the 3rd slide?’

‘Wow, who is he??’

‘Did she post a guy??’

Hugo frowned in the dark. 

Third slide? 

He tapped the screen and swiped left. The second image was a candid shot of Mina and Yuri mid-argument over the menu.

He swiped left one more time.

A sudden, intense rush of heat flooded Hugo’s face, prickling all the way up to the tips of his ears.

It was a picture of him.

He wasn't at the café. The background was the school library. He was sitting at the wooden table, his face illuminated by the harsh glow of his laptop screen, entirely focused on formatting the bibliography. He looked completely unaware of the camera.

Hugo let out a sharp, rigid exhale, trying to push away the sudden tightness in his chest. He instinctively looked up, his eyes darting into the dark corners of his empty bedroom as if someone might be watching him right now.

He was completely alone. But on that screen, he was right there.

He violently tapped the power button, plunging the room into absolute darkness, and dropped the phone face down onto the mattress. He collapsed backward, pulling his arm over his eyes.

A heavy, suffocating restlessness crawled under his skin. It was an unnamed, uncomfortable static that his logical brain couldn't categorize. Why did she take it? Why did she post it? And why was his chest reacting like this?

He rolled onto his left side, staring at the blank wall. Ten seconds later, he rolled onto his right side. He kicked the blanket off his legs. A moment later, he pulled it right back up.

Unable to force his system to shut down and go to sleep, Hugo finally gave up. He threw the covers off, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and stood up. The silence of his room was suddenly entirely too loud. He needed a distraction.

Opening his bedroom door, he stepped out into the quiet hallway and headed downstairs.

The warm light of the kitchen cut sharply through the dark hallway. Hugo stepped inside and quietly pushed the door shut behind him, sealing out the rest of the silent house.

His mother was standing at the counter, methodically washing vegetables in the sink. She glanced over her shoulder at the soft click of the latch.

"Hugo. Good timing," she said, drying her hands on a towel. "Can you help me prep these?"

Hugo didn't answer. He just walked over to the counter, picked up the spare knife from the cutting board, and silently pulled a handful of carrots toward him. The rhythmic, repetitive motion of the blade against the wood was exactly the kind of mindless distraction he needed to drown out the lingering static from upstairs.

They worked in total silence for a minute. Then, the running water next to him stopped.

Hugo felt the sudden shift in the room's atmosphere. He kept his eyes focused entirely on the cutting board.

"What?" Hugo asked defensively.

His mother didn't immediately reply. She was turned slightly, staring intently at the side of his face.

Hugo stopped the knife. He looked up, his shoulders instantly tensing under the prolonged scrutiny. In this house, being closely observed usually meant an interrogation was coming. "Is there something on my face?"

She slowly shook her head. Her brow furrowed in a mix of genuine curiosity and mild disbelief. "Did something good happen today?"

Hugo stared at her. "No. Why."

She gestured vaguely toward his mouth. "You're smiling."

Hugo froze.

Slowly, he lifted his free hand. His fingertips pressed against his own cheek. The muscles there were taut. The corners of his mouth were physically pulled upward. It was a completely foreign arrangement of his own features.

He had walked down the stairs, entered the kitchen, and started cutting vegetables, all with a faint, lingering smile physically painted across his face—and his brain hadn't even registered it.

Hugo dropped his hand from his face, gripping the handle of the knife a little tighter. "Can't I even smile?"

"You may," his mother replied, turning her attention back to the sink. "But smiling without a reason makes people think something is wrong with you."

Hugo offered a single, non-committal shrug. He had zero desire to keep talking about it, especially when he didn't have the answers himself. The rhythmic, heavy thwack of the kitchen knife against the cutting board resumed, safely filling the space between them and shutting down the conversation entirely.

Dinner passed in complete silence. The moment it was acceptable to leave the table, Hugo retreated upstairs, firmly shutting his bedroom door behind him.

He didn't go back to bed. He sat down heavily at his study desk. The room was completely dark, save for the harsh, artificial glare of his phone screen resting flat on the wood.

On the display, a single newly added contact card was open.

Shira Umi.

He couldn't deny that something inside him was changing. The heavy restlessness, the heat in his face upstairs, the unprompted smiling in the kitchen—he knew exactly what the reason was, and she was staring back at him in glowing white text.

His index finger hovered over the screen. He tapped the top corner menu. A small confirmation box popped up on the glass.

Delete Contact? [Yes] / [No]

It was simple logic. The easiest way to resist this weird, uncomfortable change was to just remove the cause entirely. If he deleted her number and went back to ignoring everyone at school, all of these strange reactions would stop. He could go back to being a ghost.

His finger hovered directly over the [Yes] option.

The silence in the room stretched on. He stared at the glowing prompt.

Slowly, his finger drifted a fraction of an inch to the right. He pressed [No].

This will all be over after the presentation anyway, Hugo rationalized to himself, staring at her name as the menu collapsed. Let's just... wait until then. Then things will go back to normal.

It was a perfectly logical excuse. It was also a complete lie, and deep down, he knew it.

He pressed the power button, instantly killing the screen and plunging the room back into darkness. Leaning back in his chair, Hugo tipped his head up and started staring blankly at the ceiling.