Last Night

At 7:30 PM, the only light in Hugo’s bedroom was the harsh glare of his phone screen.

He lay flat on his bed, rubbing his stinging eyes. He hadn't typed a single word in the group chat for twenty minutes. He was just watching the text bubbles fly upward, completely unable to keep up.

Buzz.

Mina: Wait, is the title supposed to be bold AND underlined??

Buzz.
Yuri: Just bold. Look at the template.

Buzz-buzz.

Mina: But underlined looks so much more professional!
Yuri: Mina, I swear to god.

Hugo let out a heavy sigh. Every time he tried to read a message about the transit data, three new arguments about font sizes pushed it off the screen.

Suddenly, the rapid scrolling vanished. The bright white screen flipped to black.

The phone vibrated violently in his hand, the sudden noise loud in the quiet room.

Incoming Call: Shira Umi

Hugo’s stomach completely dropped.

He stared at the glowing letters, a sudden, very human spike of panic hitting his chest. Why was she calling him? Did she notice he was ignoring the chat? Did he mess up the data sorting? He frantically racked his brain, trying to remember if he had missed a direct question in the flood of texts.

The phone kept ringing. He hesitated for another three seconds, bracing himself for a scolding, before swiping the green icon and slowly bringing the phone to his ear.

"Finally."

Hugo blinked. He pulled the phone away from his ear and frowned. That wasn't Shira. That was Yuri’s voice, and she sounded deeply exhausted.

He squinted at the screen. Right under Shira’s name, in tiny text, it read: & 2 others.

He pressed the speaker back to his ear.

"If I have to type 'Arial size 12' one more time, I am going to snap my keyboard in half," Yuri was saying, the sound of aggressive keyboard tapping echoing through her microphone.

"You guys were sending fifty texts a minute," Shira chimed in. Her voice was perfectly calm, with a faint trace of amusement. "A call is just faster."

"Yeah, my thumbs were literally cramping!" Mina complained loudly. There was a muffled thud in the background, like she had just flopped onto a bed. "But honestly, why couldn't we just meet at the café again? It's so much more fun than sitting in my room."

"Because," Yuri snapped, "if we go to a café, you are going to spend three hours taking pictures of the napkins. And Hugo is going to end up in the wrong postal code again."

Hugo stayed completely silent, staring up at his ceiling.

"We are finishing this project tonight," Yuri continued, her tone leaving zero room for argument. "In our own houses. Where nobody can get distracted, and nobody can get lost."

"So mean..." Mina muttered.

Hugo let out a slow, quiet breath, feeling his shoulders finally drop against the mattress. He wasn't the target of an intervention. He was just another casualty of the group chat.

"Okay, let's just focus," Shira’s calm voice cut through the lingering complaints over the speaker. "Let's finish the project fast, and we can have fun later."

Yuri let out a sharp, tired exhale. "Fine. Mina, you are on the presentation. Twenty-five slides maximum. The rest of us are compiling the written report."

"Why am I doing the slides alone?" Mina groaned, the sound of her rustling blankets echoing through the microphone.

"Because a single person can handle a slideshow," Yuri fired back, the rapid, aggressive clacking of her keyboard already starting. "The report is over a hundred pages. It requires actual formatting. Open the shared drive."

Mina mumbled something incoherent, but a heavy mouse click followed.

For the next three hours, the call descended into complete, productive silence. Hugo kept his phone resting on his bedsheets, his eyes locked on his laptop screen. It was entirely mechanical work. On his monitor, three different-colored cursors danced down the pages of the shared document, highlighting text, shifting margins, and dropping data tables in real time.

Nobody spoke. The only sound in Hugo's dark bedroom was the low, rhythmic tapping of three different keyboards filtering through the phone's speaker.

It was surprisingly efficient. Because no one dropped their connection and no one messed with another person's assigned section, the massive wall of data slowly morphed into a clean, finished document.

At 10:45 PM, Yuri’s cursor finally stopped moving.

"Alright. That's it," Yuri’s voice suddenly broke the three-hour silence, startling Hugo. "Tomorrow is the day. I will print and bind the report in the morning."

Hugo rubbed his burning eyes, letting his head fall back against the wall.

"Mina," Yuri continued, her voice all business. "Make sure the presentation is saved to a flash drive and bring it to first period."

No response.

"Mina?"

Hugo leaned closer to his phone. Through the speaker, beneath the faint static of the connection, he could hear the slow, deep, perfectly even sound of breathing.

Yuri let out a long-suffering sigh that practically rattled the microphone. "She fell asleep. Unbelievable. I'll text her so she sees it when she wakes up."

A brief pause followed.

"Okay. See you all tomorrow. Read over your own sections before class," Yuri ordered.

Beep. Yuri disconnected.

Hugo blinked at his phone screen. The call timer was still ticking upward. 03:12:45. Beneath the timer, the text had updated.

Shira Umi & 1 other. Mina was dead to the world, but Shira was still there. She hadn't hung up.

Hugo stared at the glowing screen. His eyelids felt incredibly heavy. The adrenaline of the deadline was crashing hard, leaving behind a dull, heavy exhaustion. He wondered if Shira had fallen asleep at her desk, too.

Ten seconds passed. The silence on the line was absolute, save for Mina's distant breathing.

Hugo kept watching the timer. 03:12:55. Twenty seconds.

He slowly reached out, his thumb hovering directly over the glowing red End Call button. The logical move was to say a quick "goodnight" to the empty air and disconnect.

Hugo’s thumb hovered a millimeter above the glowing red End Call button. The digital timer ticked forward. 03:13:02. "Are you still there?"

Shira’s voice drifted through the phone speaker, breaking the heavy silence. It sounded softer now, lacking the bright, polite energy she carried in the school hallways.

Hugo pulled his thumb back. "...Yeah."

"It's finally over," she murmured. He could hear the faint rustle of fabric, like she was leaning back against her pillows.

"Yeah. It is."

The line went quiet again. The ambient hum of Hugo's empty house pressed in around him. He watched the call timer tick. 03:13:15. He knew he should say goodnight. It was the easiest exit.

"Are you always like that?" Shira asked suddenly.

Hugo blinked. "Like what?"

"So focused that the building could burn down and you wouldn't even notice."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

A soft, tired laugh came through the speaker. "The other day in the library. I took a picture of you sitting right across the table, and you didn't even blink."

"I saw it."

The line went dead silent for two full seconds.

"You saw it?" Shira’s sleepy drawl vanished entirely.

"Yeah. It popped up on my feed."

"Wait. You have an account?"

Hugo frowned slightly in the dark. "You say that like I just confessed to a crime."

"Because it feels illegal!" He could hear the genuine smile in her voice now. "You and social media. It doesn't make sense. It’s like seeing a teacher at the grocery store. What do you even do on there?"

"I read the news," Hugo said defensively. "And I look at tech updates."

"Of course you do," Shira sighed, clearly amused. "Give me your username. Let's follow each other."

Hugo stared up at the dark ceiling. He didn't say anything. The ambient hum of his empty room suddenly seemed a little louder as the silence stretched over the line.

After a few seconds, the teasing edge dropped from Shira's voice. "What's wrong? You don't want to?"

"No," Hugo answered immediately. He paused, rubbing the back of his neck against the mattress. "It's not that."

He let out a long, reluctant exhale, quietly rattling off his handle before he could overthink it.

A few seconds of silence followed, accompanied by the faint, rapid tapping of her screen.

"Oh, my god," Shira mumbled. "You weren't kidding. You follow a hundred and fifty news pages, and you have exactly ten followers. And I'm pretty sure half of them are spam bots."

"They are very supportive bots."

"I just followed you."

A small banner dropped down from the top of Hugo's screen. Shira_Umi started following you. He stared at the totally mundane string of text for a second, feeling a strange, sudden warmth hit his chest. He tapped the notification, pulling up her page, and pressed the Follow Back button.

"You haven't posted a single thing," Shira noted.

"And you post everything," Hugo countered.

The silence returned, but the heavy, awkward weight of it was gone. They talked about the project, the absurd amount of pink ribbons in Mina’s café, and Yuri’s terrifying work ethic. Whenever the conversation naturally faded, one of them would quickly pull a new, random topic out of the air.

Hugo knew exactly what was happening. Tomorrow, the presentation will end. The only excuse keeping them in the same orbit was going to disappear. Staying on this call made absolutely no sense. He was exhausted.

He still didn't hit the red button.

"Yeah, when Yuri scolded her for the font sizes, I thought she was actually going to cry," Shira was saying, her voice dropping to a whisper.

"That's just Mina," Hugo muttered, a small, involuntary smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

"Wait, you guys are still here?"

The sudden, groggy voice blasted through the speaker, making Hugo physically flinch.

"Oh," Shira said. "You woke up."

"Did I fall asleep on the call?" Mina mumbled, her words slurring together around a massive yawn.

"Looks like it."

"Ugh... okay. Goodnight then. I'm literally dying."

"Goodnight, Mina. Don't forget the flash d—"

Beep.

Mina disconnected, cutting Shira off completely.

The screen updated. Shira Umi. Just the two of them again.

Hugo glanced up at the digital clock on his laptop. The harsh white numbers read 01:14 AM.

"I think..." Hugo started, his voice suddenly feeling a little rough in his throat. "I think I should go to sleep."

"Yeah," Shira said quietly. The playful energy from earlier had completely evaporated, replaced by a soft, heavy finality. "Goodnight, Hugo."

"Goodnight."

He finally pressed the red button.

The screen went black. The room was plunged into total, absolute silence. Hugo lay completely still in the dark, his phone resting on his chest.

Usually, the quiet of his room was his sanctuary. It was the only place he felt safe. But tonight, the silence just felt incredibly heavy. He stared up at the ceiling, trying to ignore the strange, tight warmth lingering in his chest, and the uncomfortable realization that he hadn't actually wanted her to hang up.