38.5°C Fever, No One to Call

9pm, the thermometer reads 38.5°C. Hân lies in bed, phone still in hand — screen lit, contact list already open, she's not sure since when.

847 friends on Facebook. Three busy Zalo group chats, always pinging with new messages. Hundreds of mutual follows online. And yet Hân scrolls through name after name, thumb pausing here and there, then swiping on.

Friend A — last messaged two months ago, probably busy with her own stuff tonight. Friend B — used to be close, haven't talked in a while, feels awkward to ask now. Friend C — lives across town, too far to make it over at this hour. Friend D — only met a few months back, not close enough yet to call at 9pm and ask for a favor like picking up medicine.

She scrolls through the whole list, hundreds of names. Can't find anyone.

---

It's not that Hân has no friends. It's that no one is quite close enough yet — close in the way where you can call anytime without needing to explain yourself first, without worrying you're a bother.

She sets the phone down, sits with it for a moment. Then opens the Grab app, throws on a jacket even though her whole body is burning, and heads to the pharmacy alone once the night has fully settled in.

---

Back home, she takes the medicine, cooks a pot of plain rice porridge, ladles it into a bowl, and eats it in silence. No one checks in. No one needs to know about tonight.

Setting the bowl down, Hân finally sees it clearly: having a lot of people around and having someone truly close are two different things. She has plenty of the first. It's the second she's short on.

"It's not that you have no friends. It's just a different kind of lonely."

Tonight, who's the first friend you'd call if you didn't have to feel awkward about it?