Lin's phone hadn't stopped vibrating since morning. Work groups, partners, fans, friends, old classmates—messages piled up, notifications sounding almost continuously. She replied, posed photos, recorded clips, smiling naturally and appropriately, looking like someone completely surrounded by blessings, moving through the day on autopilot.
She knew how to play this part. Yet no matter how full the schedule was, there were always gaps. Between , while others were talking, in those brief seconds when the camera turned away—she would glance down at her phone instinctively. Not to reply, but to scan the notifications.
She was waiting for a name. The feeling was faint at first, but it grew stronger with disappointment.
She couldn't explain it. She and Yeh had known each other such a short time, chatted infrequently, with no defined relationship and no promises made. Logically, this person shouldn't occupy so much of her attention.
Yet every time the screen lit up, she looked. Once, a message from an unknown number popped up, and her heart skipped a beat, illogical and fast.
She opened it. It wasn't her. The letdown was subtle, but it happened repeatedly.
She showed nothing. In front of camera, she was still perfect—laughing when needed, responding when required.
Until the cake-cutting ceremony in the afternoon. Lights flooded down, the crowd closed in, people cheered, hands passed the knife, arms wrapped around her. Shutter sounds filled the air, the room reaching a peak of orchestrated excitement.
Standing in the center, being pushed forward, she suddenly drifted away. It wasn't unhappiness, but a strange, untimely thought: Among all these wishes, the one she truly cared about hadn't come.
It made no sense, she even questioned herself:
Did she even know it was my birthday? Or has she simply forgotten?
She kept smiling, kept posing, but her eyes flickered with a momentary blur.
Someone joked, "Lin, you look like you're daydreaming, aren't you!"
She caught herself immediately, with voice light. "No, just a bit tired."
It was reasonable enough. No one asked further.
That evening, when the events were finally over and she sat in the car, the door closed, shutting out the noise. The interior dimmed, and silence returned.
Leaning back against the seat, she picked up her phone and really looked at it this time.
So many messages, red dots clustered together.
She scrolled down, the name wasn't there.
She paused for a few seconds, then stopped looking.
She let out a soft sigh, as if mentally crossing the matter off her list.
"Never mind."
The tone was light, almost a warning to herself.
"Maybe she just doesn't care that much."