Two Years of Silence Over a Few Hundred

The phone brought it up on its own — he wasn't looking for it. A photo from five years ago, the two of them standing shoulder to shoulder, both laughing. He looked at it longer than he needed to, turned the screen off, then turned it back on.

It started over a few hundred thousand đồng. Funny when you say it out loud now; it wasn't funny then. Two years on, the slip of paper with the number is still in the drawer, along with the old notes nobody bothered to count again. The anger wore off ages ago — he can't even remember when. What stayed wasn't anger. It was awkwardness. Enough of it to keep an empty chat window closed for two years.

His friend's number is still pinned at the top of his contacts. Never unpinned, never tapped. On his friend's birthday he opened the calendar, looked at the faint pencil circle he'd drawn who knows when, and closed it again. The funny part: every time he posts something, his friend watches all of it. That name is still the first one on the viewer list. Neither of them went anywhere in those two years — neither of them stepped forward either.

He finally typed it out. Typed and deleted, typed and deleted, a dozen times over. The thing he feared wasn't being cursed out — it was the silence. Then he actually hit send. A minute later the reply came, fast enough that he understood immediately: his friend had been sitting somewhere too, holding the same message, waiting.

The first message costs nothing. Two years of silence is what's expensive.

Coffee tomorrow afternoon. Two cups, neither one turned upside down. And whoever's still got a name pinned at the top of their contacts without tapping it — what exactly are they waiting for?