The phone said it plainly and without mercy: "You can't send messages to this chat anymore."
No waving hands, no goodbye, just that grey strip where a conversation used to be. I stared at it until the light of the screen blurred and the fan above me sounded like someone clearing their throat.
It should have felt dramatic, I guess... a scene with thunder and an umbrella. Instead, it felt like the most ordinary thing in the world had been quietly moved. Somewhere outside my window, students biked past, a pair laughing about a seminar; the campus kept being a campus. Only the shape of my days had changed.
Saki used to fill those days. She had that way of arriving at the opposite side of the library steps and making the whole bench seem lit. She was always on the move... club meetings, last-minute photo shoots with friends, laughing too loud at a joke someone else made. Her friends, and mine, called her the sun because she left small warm smudges everywhere she went.
We'd started the same year, she and I. We were both Computer Science undergraduates at Seishin. Her course ran four years. In my third year, I chose to continue into the integrated bachelor's-and-master's program, which meant I'd stay for a fifth. For the first three years, that difference had meant nothing at all—the same campus, the same winters, the same friends. Now it meant she was finishing and I wasn't.
She'd slide into our group at the café across campus, tuck her head into a hoodie when it rained, steal fries without asking. Little permissions grew into a private catalogue of moments that I kept in my head like photographs.
A week before my birthday, I sent her a screenshot. It was a silly thing, a page from a light novel where the lead confesses at the end of the semester, the heroine blushes, and everything gets fixed by earnest timing. I thought she'd see the joke. I pressed send because I wanted to make her smile, maybe to nudge the air between us toward something less murky.
Her reply was a paragraph of coldness I didn't recognize. No laughter, no heart emoji, just a clipped sentence about how she was busy and she didn't like people using other people's stories to push feelings onto them. I read it twice, then three times, trying to find the softer version of what I'd misread. Maybe she'd guessed. Maybe she'd been irritated. Either way, the lightness was gone.
On the morning of my birthday—which, cruelly, was also an exam day—I waited the way you wait for a train that might not come. I opened the chat every ten minutes with ridiculous hope. At noon, she sent a message.
Saki
sorry, i'm sick today. hope your exam goes well
Short, considerate. Enough.
I sent a reply.
Itsuki
oh, take care
hope you feel better soon
There was no reply.
I closed my notes and tried to study, but every sentence turned into a question. Why didn't she wish me like she always did? Was she really unwell or just busy? The exam felt papery easy and emotionally impossible.
The next day, there was a collage of pictures on the group feed: Saki in a flowery dress, laughing with someone else, hair in a wind-smudged halo. The photos were the kind of thing that made you smile and then feel something sharp in the chest because the world had kept moving without asking. She looked vibrant, alive.
I texted her.
Itsuki
you okay? you said you were sick...
Her read receipt turned blue and then... nothing.
That "nothing" filled days. Messages that had been a stream became a trickle. I told myself she had exams, she had club responsibilities, that there were sensible, unromantic reasons for silence. But there's a difference between being reasonable and being honest with yourself.
She had interviews lined up too—actual invitations, dates, a future she could almost map out. With every company email that pinged on her side of the conversation, the thought flared:
She'll be gone in a few months. I'll still be here.
If I didn't tell her now, I might never get to say it at all.
So the night I told her, I tried to be small and careful at first. It started like any other message: about a silly class presentation, about the rain, about how I couldn't focus on study notes. But the sentences shortened like someone running out of breath.
Itsuki
i like you, saki
i just needed to say it once
Saki
...i never saw you that way
Itsuki
can we talk normally like before?
Saki
no way i can talk to you like before
Itsuki
why does it have to change?
i'm not asking for anything
Saki
because pretending nothing happened would hurt more
Itsuki
i just don't want things to end like this
Saki
itsuki, please
let's stop here
Itsuki
if you don't feel the same, then don't talk to me again
The typing bubble flickered once, then disappeared.
I waited, refreshing, hoping for lag, for mercy, for anything. The chat stayed still.
The next morning, the screen simply said it:
"You can't send messages to this chat anymore."
I stared until the light blurred, until the fan sounded like someone clearing their throat. Outside, a couple biked past, laughing about a seminar; the campus kept being a campus. Only the shape of my days had changed.
Maybe she was never warmth. Maybe she was phosphor... beautiful because she was burning out.
The night folded in on itself. I kept staring at the screen until the words blurred into light. Then the blur deepened, a soft distortion that I didn't recognize at first.
Ah, I realised after a second, because of the tears.
They came all at once, without warning... hot, stubborn, refusing to stop. Every blink spilled another memory: her laughter across the library steps, the rain under the café awning, the way she said my name when she was amused. The moments rushed past like film frames I couldn't pause.
I pressed the heel of my hand against my eyes, but the warmth kept coming. The phone screen dimmed and brightened again, as if even it didn't know what to do with me.
Outside, someone shouted good-night to a friend. Inside, I sat there, eyes stinging, tasting salt, watching a conversation fade into grey.