The pandemic reduced everyone to rectangles.
Mr. Kim became a forehead beneath a weak dormitory light. JP became a voice shouting from a frozen mouth. TZ became the ceiling fan he accidentally showed whenever he dropped his phone. Bunny became a bright virtual background that erased half her hair.
June became a face I could watch without knowing what happened beyond the edges of her screen.
Three days after our first hotline shift, heavy rain forced the university to suspend supply deliveries. The students assigned to field support returned to their dormitories, and the entire class attended the evening debrief online.
Anna's square remained black.
Her father's condition had not improved. He had been transferred to a higher-dependency unit and needed more oxygen, but the hospital had finally promised her a short video call.
Nobody complained when Mr. Kim delayed the debrief for her.
HS displayed the day's report.
"One hundred and forty-three calls completed. Twenty-six telemedicine appointments scheduled. Nine urgent escalations. Two abusive calls."
JP unmuted himself.
"Only two? XH received both of them. That is discrimination."
"I am happy to transfer the next one to you."
"No, no. You have a special gift."
"People hate him efficiently," Cherry said. "Do not take away his only marketable skill."
I laughed with them.
The sound still surprised me when it came out naturally.
Fourteen sober mornings did not make me healed. The counselor had warned me against turning days into a purity score that one mistake could destroy. We counted actions instead. I answered appointments. I ate. I told someone when the craving became loud. Residence staff no longer checked twice each night, but HS still demanded the breakfast photograph.
That morning, I had sent him a picture of an empty bowl.
He replied that an empty bowl proved nothing.
I hated him enough to make oatmeal again and photograph myself eating it.
On the screen, June smiled at our argument.
Then her phone lit beside her keyboard.
The smile disappeared.
She read the message, turned the phone facedown, and looked at the camera as if she had never looked away.
NS looked away first.
June missed her hotline shift the following morning.
That had never happened before.
At eight fifteen, Daw Mya reassigned her calls. At eight twenty, Mr. Kim tried her phone. At eight twenty-six, NS closed the supply inventory on his screen and called her privately.
"Why you?" I asked.
"Because she will answer me."
He said it without pride.
That made it worse.
June joined the class call four minutes later. Her hair was uncombed, and the sleep marks on her cheek had not faded.
"My alarm didn't ring."
NS opened a shared calendar.
"You set it for tomorrow."
June checked her phone.
"No, I didn't."
"Look at the date."
She stared at the screen for a little too long.
"I must have changed it accidentally."
Mr. Kim told her to skip the morning shift and rest. June argued until Daw Mya reminded her that exhausted volunteers created inaccurate records.
"One missed shift is not a moral failure," the nurse said. "Go back to sleep."
June left the call.
NS remained inside her calendar.
I could see appointment blocks arranged in different colors. Hotline shift. Lecture. Meal. Call mother. Medication. Specialist.
Before I could read the last one clearly, NS stopped sharing his screen.
"Since when do you manage her appointments?" I asked.
"Since she asked me to help with reminders."
"Why didn't she ask me?"
"Maybe because you are learning to manage your own."
The answer was gentle.
I still received it as an insult.
"So you have been waiting for me to become useless?"
Kitty appeared in the doorway behind NS's camera. She had come to collect supply labels from the shared workroom and heard enough.
"Do not punish him for answering a question June has not answered," she said.
"Everybody knows something except me."
NS's face changed.
Only slightly.
"Everybody knows different pieces," he said. "That is not the same thing."
"What piece do you know?"
"Ask June when she is ready."
He ended the call.
I wanted to search his room, his messages, and every year of friendship that suddenly seemed to contain locked doors.
Instead, I wrote one sentence for the counselor.
I want to know whether my fear is evidence.
She replied later.
Usually it is evidence that you are afraid. Begin there.
The specialist appointment happened at noon.
I did not know that was what it was.
June told the class she had a family call and switched off her camera. For the next hour, she answered questions from a physician overseas while her mother sat inside another rectangle and corrected details June forgot.
When did the headaches begin?
How often did she lose track of dates?
Had she noticed difficulty finding familiar words?
June minimized the answers. Her mother enlarged them. NS remained connected only long enough to confirm the medication list and appointment history, then left before the private assessment began.
To the rest of us, he simply disappeared with her.
Kitty noticed my eyes moving between their empty squares.
"You could trust them," she said through a private message.
Do you? I typed.
She waited.
More than I did before The Walls. Less than they probably want.
It was the most Kitty answer possible.
That is not helpful.
It is honest. Try it sometime.
The message irritated me enough to stop imagining June and NS together for almost five minutes.
When June returned, she wore makeup.
Not much. A little color on her lips. Her hair had been brushed and pinned behind one ear. She looked prepared for a dinner nobody was allowed to attend in person.
Her phone lit again.
This time, the preview appeared before she covered it.
A.V.: You look beautiful. I hope that smile is for me tonight.
June saw me read it.
Neither of us spoke.
She turned the phone over.
The movement had become more familiar than her smile.
A.V. called at seven.
June's mother had arranged a virtual dinner because restaurants were closed and travel between townships required permission. A meal from one of A.V.'s hotels arrived at June's residence gate in sealed containers. The delivery included white flowers and a handwritten card.
June placed the flowers behind her laptop where the camera would see them.
She changed her shirt.
She checked the names written inside her notebook.
Then she entered the call smiling.
A.V. asked about Malaysia, the airport, and whether she had recovered from the attention surrounding the passports. June laughed at jokes that were not funny. She told him his car had rescued half the exchange program. She praised his connections, asked about his overseas work, and listened while he explained how quickly countries would need men capable of moving money and medicine across closed borders.
"Your mother says you still refuse help," he said.
"I accepted dinner."
"That is not the kind of help I mean."
June lifted her glass of water.
"Then you will have to keep offering until I understand."
He smiled.
It was the kind of sentence that allowed a man to believe patience would eventually become possession.
Her mother smiled too.
June kept smiling until the call ended.
Then she closed the laptop and pressed both hands over her mouth.
NS called before she could cry.
"Did he agree?" he asked.
"His office will keep the overseas appointments. He said the borders won't matter."
"And the price?"
"He didn't name it."
"He doesn't have to."
June wiped beneath her eyes before the tears could damage the makeup.
"My mother thinks I should keep him interested."
"Your mother thinks security excuses everything."
"Security is not imaginary."
"Neither is what this is costing you."
June looked toward the closed door.
"XH cannot know."
"He already knows you are hiding something."
"Let him think it is another man."
NS went silent.
"That will hurt him."
"The truth will hurt him longer."
"You do not get to design his grief for him."
"Then help me protect the part of his life that can survive me."
NS closed his eyes.
He had loved June once. Perhaps part of him always would. That was why she could ask something cruel and trust him not to mistake it for romance.
"I will help with the appointments," he said. "I will not help you erase yourself."
June nodded.
Five minutes later, she joined our class call and flirted with him in front of everyone.
It began with Bunny asking whether NS had eaten.
"Not yet," he said.
June rested her chin on one hand.
"You need somebody to take care of you."
"Are you volunteering?"
"Maybe. You did remember my schedule better than I did."
JP made a noise of exaggerated disgust. Cherry told them to create a private room. TZ asked whether billionaire courtship included free delivery.
Everyone treated it as a joke.
I watched June's eyes.
She was performing.
I knew her well enough to see that.
I did not know whom the performance was meant to fool.
Her phone vibrated. A.V.'s name appeared again. She dismissed the notification and continued smiling at NS.
Kitty left the call.
NS stopped smiling immediately.
"I need to check the supply manifest," he said.
He followed her into another little box.
Kitty answered only after his third call.
"You don't have to explain June to me," she said.
"I wasn't calling about June."
"Then why are you calling?"
"Because you left."
Rain whispered through Kitty's open window.
"I am allowed to leave."
"Yes. You are also allowed to be followed by someone who wants to make sure you didn't leave alone."
Kitty studied him through the screen.
"Do you love her?"
NS did not ask which woman she meant.
"Not in the way you are afraid I do."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the only one I can give without betraying something she trusted me with."
Kitty looked down.
"More secrets."
"Yes."
"You know I hate that."
"Yes."
"And you still called."
"I have loved you since Foundation Year. I am tired of pretending that makes me less afraid of losing your trust."
Kitty's face softened, but she did not rescue him from the silence.
"Stay on the call," she said at last. "Do not talk."
NS stayed.
For forty minutes, they studied in separate rooms while rain crossed both windows.
It was not a confession accepted.
It was not a rejection either.
During lockdown, sometimes love advanced by remaining inside the little box after the other person had stopped speaking.
Anna's call came shortly before midnight.
The hospital nurse had found three minutes.
Her father's face appeared behind an oxygen mask, pale beneath the blue light of the ward. Machines sounded beyond the phone. A curtain separated his bed from somebody coughing on the other side.
Anna tried to smile.
"Papa, can you hear me?"
He opened his eyes.
His answer disappeared beneath the mask, but he lifted two fingers toward the camera.
Anna pressed her own fingers against the screen.
They could not touch.
The nurse said his oxygen level had stabilized for the moment. She did not call it improvement. She did not promise tomorrow.
When the three minutes ended, Anna remained in front of the black screen.
Kitty called her first.
NS joined next. Then June, Bunny, Cherry, HS, JP, TZ, Jihye, NC, Mr. Kim, and me.
No one knew what to say.
Our faces filled the screen around Anna's empty center square.
June reached toward her camera as if trying to touch somebody through it. For one second, confusion crossed her face. She looked at the names along the edge of the call, found Anna's, and whispered it to herself.
"Anna."
Then she said it again.
"We're here, Anna."
Outside my window, thunder rolled over the city. The reactor warning app remained green. The hospital dashboard remained red. A.V.'s flowers stood behind June, bright and patient, while her notebook lay open beyond the camera's view.
I looked at NS beside her name.
I looked at the messages she kept hiding.
I looked at the makeup she had not removed.
The old certainty returned quietly.
June had a future waiting beyond me.
This time, instead of drinking, I switched off my camera and let myself believe it.