He texted first. She noticed that.
Not in a way she made into a big deal. Just a small observation she filed away without meaning to, the way you notice something and then can't un-notice it. Two days had passed since their last conversation. She hadn't texted first either. She wasn't sure what that said about either of them.
Seth: okay important question
Seth: do you think the reason isekai protagonists are always so mid is intentional. like is the blank slate thing a feature or a bug?
Alya was in the middle of folding laundry, which was the kind of task that made her brain go completely rogue from boredom. She dropped a shirt on the bed and picked up her phone.
Alya: feature. 100%
Alya: if the MC has a strong personality then the reader can't self insert as easily. the whole genre is basically a power fantasy delivery system
Seth: so they're deliberately writing boring protagonists
Alya: deliberately writing empty ones. there's a difference
Seth: okay that's actually a depressing thing to realise about a genre I've spent a lot of time watching
Alya: sorry
Seth: no you're not
Alya: I'm really not 💀
She sat down on the edge of the bed, the laundry completely forgotten.
Seth: okay so what's the view like from where you are right now?
She looked up from the screen at the window. The mountains were doing the thing they did in the late afternoon where the light went gold and heavy and everything looked slightly more dramatic than it actually was.
Alya: mountains. the kind that look like they're showing off
Seth: showing off how?
Alya: like they know they're pretty and they're not going to pretend otherwise. very main character energy for a mountain
Seth: your mountains have ego
Alya: enormous. what's your view?
Seth: a building. and then another building. and then if I lean a very specific way I can see a slice of sky between them
Alya: poetic
Seth: I think so. very gritty. very cinematic. very "young man navigating the city alone"
Alya: do you actually like it though? the city, I mean
A pause.
Seth: yeah I do. it's loud in a way that kind of cancels out the noise in your head you know. like everything is so much that your own stuff gets drowned out for a while
She read that twice, slowly.
Alya: that makes a lot of sense actually
Seth: what about the mountains? Do you actually like them or are they just there?
Alya: both. they're just there but I think I'd miss them if they weren't
Seth: that's how I feel about the city. it stresses me out and I'd hate to leave
Alya: exactly
Alya: though I wouldn't say the mountains stress me out. they're more like... I don't know. they just exist really hard. if that makes sense
Seth: it does actually
Seth: they just exist really hard is going in my notes app
Alya: please don't
Seth: already done. full credit to you don't worry
Alya: I'm so honoured 💀
The afternoon light shifted. Outside, one of the neighbours' dogs started barking at something and then stopped. She could hear her mother moving around in the kitchen, the particular rhythm of someone who was cooking and also thinking about something else.
Seth: okay can I ask you something?
Alya: you've been asking me things for the past twenty minutes
Seth: a different kind of something
She looked at the screen.
Alya: …okay
Seth: what do you look like?
There it was.
She had been expecting it, vaguely, in the way you expect something without letting yourself fully admit that you're expecting it. She looked at the question sitting there on her screen and felt the familiar instinct to sidestep, to make a joke, to turn it into something light and easy and harmless.
She typed:
Alya: describe yourself first and then maybe I'll consider it
Seth: okay that's not a no so I'll take it
Seth: okay. 5'11. which I'm aware sounds like something a 5'9 guy would say but I promise
Alya: sure
Seth: I'm serious. I have receipts
Alya: you have receipts for your height
Seth: I have a photo next to a doorframe with a measurement. it was for an argument. it's not important. anyway. dark skin, locs, been growing them for like two years so they're at a length now that I'm proud of, though I keep them under my durag or skull cap most of the time
Alya: okay that's actually cool
Seth: right? people sleep on locs as a commitment. it's a whole thing. anyway. I've been told I have a resting face that looks like I'm judging everyone in the room
Alya: are you?
Seth: usually yes but that's not the point
Alya: 💀
Seth: your turn
She looked at the ceiling for a second. Then back at the screen.
Alya: 5'4. which is a completely respectable height and I won't be taking questions
Seth: I wasn't going to say anything
Alya: you were thinking it
Seth: I really wasn't. keep going
Alya: brown skin. natural hair that is in a very complicated relationship with humidity. and I've also been told I have a face that's hard to read which I think is a polite way of saying resting unbothered face
Seth: resting unbothered face and resting judging face in the same conversation. we'd be terrifying together in a room
She stopped.
Alya: nobody would approach us
Seth: absolute peace. total social immunity
Alya: the dream honestly
Seth: okay so brown skin natural hair mountains. got it. does the face match the "I will start a riot in a Discord server and feel nothing about it" energy?
Alya: I've been told yes
Seth: nice. I feel like I was picturing something in the right neighbourhood then
Alya: you were picturing me?
She sent it before she thought about it. Too quick. She immediately picked up a pillow and put it over her face for three full seconds.
Seth: I mean. yeah. you kind of picture people when you talk to them. that's just how brains work
Seth: don't make it weird
Alya: I'm not making it weird
Seth: you're a little bit making it weird
Alya: moving on
Seth: 😂 okay okay. moving on
She exhaled, lowering the pillow. Outside the window the mountains had shifted from gold to something cooler and softer. The sun was starting its slow exit, the way it always did out here... gradually, unhurried, like it had nowhere else to be.
They talked for another hour after that. About nothing specific, just the kind of conversation that doesn't have a subject so much as a general direction, the two of them just moving through it and seeing where it went. He told her about his siblings, two younger ones, and the way his voice changed even through text when he mentioned them, getting slightly less dry, slightly more unguarded. She told him about a book she was rereading and he asked enough questions about it that she could tell he was actually interested and not just being polite.
At some point she realised she'd migrated from the edge of the bed to lying fully across it, phone held above her face, and that her mother had called her for dinner and she had said one minute without registering that she'd said it.
Seth: okay I should actually go do something with my evening
Alya: same
Seth: same as in you have plans or same as in you're also just going to lie there for another hour
She looked at the ceiling.
Alya: …same as in I have things to do
Seth: sure you do
Alya: goodnight Seth
Seth: 😂 goodnight
Seth: hey
Alya: what
Seth: the mountains that exist really hard. I keep thinking about that
She didn't respond immediately. She lay there for a second, looking at his message.
Alya: go do something with your evening
Seth: going going
The thread went quiet.
She set her phone down and stared at the ceiling for a moment. The room was dimming around her, the last of the afternoon light pulling back from the walls. Her mother called her name from the kitchen again, more pointedly this time.
She sat up. Smoothed her hair. Picked up the shirt she'd abandoned on the bed forty minutes ago.
The thing was, and she noticed this in the vague, peripheral way she noticed most things she didn't want to look at directly, the room felt slightly different once the conversation ended. Not bad. Not empty exactly.
Just less than it had been a few minutes ago.
She folded the shirt and went for dinner and didn't think about it again until later that night when she was almost asleep and her phone lit up one more time.
Seth: okay I lied I'm not doing anything with my evening
Seth: what's the book?
She smiled into her pillow.
She told him.