The day Lin left Bangkok, Yeh didn't send anything extra.
No summary. No soft, open-ended goodbye disguised as casual politeness. She finished what needed to be said in the work group, then slipped quietly back into her own rhythm.
After that, contact narrowed almost immediately.
Everything stayed in the group—project updates, timelines, coordination. Nothing more.
For the first couple of days, Lin didn't question it.
She told herself this was how it was supposed to be.
Yeh had never been someone who texted often. What they had was built on work. Those days in Bangkok—whatever closeness had formed—belonged to a specific place, a specific time. Back in their separate lives, things naturally reset.
It made sense.
Lin accepted it.
Until, about a week later, something began to feel off.
It wasn't that Yeh never reached out first—that had never been the pattern.
It was that even when Lin did message her privately, the conversation went nowhere personally.
Yeh still replied promptly. Carefully. If anything, more precise than before.
But the closeness was gone.
Every response landed exactly where it should end. No more, no less. No space left open.
Like the connection had been filed back into place.
From something that once leaned slightly past the line—
to something defined, contained.
Just collaborators.
The shift was quiet.
Impossible to ignore.
That night, past midnight, Lin opened their chat.
The screen glowed. She didn't type.She tried to find a way in. A sentence that wouldn't cross a line, but wouldn't feel unnecessary either.
There wasn't one.
The realization unsettled her.
A thought surfaced, slow and unwelcome—
If she didn't reach out, would this just… stop here?
She paused.
When had she started thinking in terms of ending something that had never even been defined?
She went back through the details.
Yeh's silence at dinner with Eric.
That steady, almost emotionless line—I don't like women in real life.
The way they had understood each other from the very beginning.
The pauses, the hesitation, the way Yeh had said she would never be the one to make the first move.
All the moments she had noticed, accepted, and let pass—
now resurfaced, rearranging themselves into something clearer.
A possibility she hadn't allowed herself to name before.
Maybe it wasn't that Yeh didn't feel anything.
Maybe she just wouldn't allow herself to.
Yeh's logic was always clean—rational, self-contained, guarded by clear boundaries. If a situation held uncertainty, she wouldn't test it.
She would exit.
And maybe, at some point, she had already assumed something—
about Lin and Jing.
Once that thought settled, everything else followed naturally.
This wasn't distance that happened on its own. It's Yeh took initiative to cut it.
Lin leaned back against the headboard, her breathing slowing.
She realized something with unexpected clarity—
she didn't want Yeh disappear from her.
The next day, she sent the message anyway.
How have you been lately?
Simple. Ordinary.
But it crossed a line she had set for herself. It wasn't work. It wasn't necessary communication.It was personal.
After sending it, she didn't check her phone right away.
Not because she didn't care—
but because she suddenly worried.
If there was no reply, or just a polite one—
what would she do with that disappointment?
The uncertainty unsettled her.
Yeh replied soon enough.
When the screen lit up, Lin looked almost instinctively.
Pretty good. Been busy.
That was it.
No question back. No opening. Nothing to continue.
Clean. Complete.
Lin stared at the message for a few seconds.
At first, there was no reaction—just a stillness.
Then, slowly, something settled in.
Not rejection.
Something quieter.
She had been placed—carefully, correctly—back where she belonged.
And in that moment, she didn't need to analyze anything further.
If she didn't care, she wouldn't have hesitated that long.
Wouldn't have rewritten a single sentence in her head, over and over.
Wouldn't feel this tightness now, over something so restrained.
She exhaled, almost soundlessly.
"I don't think I've ever cared this much about losing someone."