A summer with no beach, just two shifts

Long is 20, a second-year student, and this summer he isn't going home. He's at his student's house by 8am for two hours of tutoring. By evening he's back at the café, on his feet until 10. He gets home and his hands still smell like coffee.

The class group chat is nothing but beach photos lately. One friend in Vũng Tàu, another in Quy Nhơn, the whole group home for three months. Long scrolls through all of it, taps a heart, then turns off the screen. He opens the calendar and counts down to September — the only marker in these three months worth looking at.

Some nights he's tired enough to doze off on the bus. He wakes past his stop and walks two kilometres back at 10:30pm. His work shoes wore down at the heel somewhere along the way. First thing he does at home is still set the alarm for 6 — because there's a tutoring session waiting in the morning.

It isn't that Long doesn't want to go home. It's that these are the only three months all year he can work full days, with no class schedule in the way. The money stacks up in an envelope in his drawer, a little thicker each week. Next semester will be lighter — that's the whole reason.

My summer doesn't have a beach. It has a name: next semester.

No two summers are the same. Some are for going somewhere; some are for trading away. What is your summer named this year?