" Jieni bao yan wo— " he said, and she imagined him hugging the air of his own lonely apartment, two cities away.

" Kono su… qingrashii shi… " the voice on the other end crackled.

" Wo wu liao shi ting, " he whispered. I'm bored, just listening.

Jenny closed her eyes. She didn't answer. She just listened to him listen to her. Outside, a truck rumbled past. A dog barked twice. Somewhere, an episode of some forgotten anime played its soft ending credits—but neither of them was watching.

He was bored, he said. So bored that listening to her breathe on the line was the only thing keeping the silence from eating the walls.

" Wo shi ting suru, " he continued, his voice half-muffled by the cheap microphone. " Gogo anime de di1hua. " The first episode of the afternoon anime.

It was him again. The boy with the broken Japanese and the Mandarin that slipped through the cracks like water. He called her Jieni —the way her name sounded in his mouth, soft and foreign.

She smiled. Or maybe she didn't.

They were just two people, trapped in the static of a Tuesday afternoon, holding a dead phone line like it was the last warm thing in the world.

The air in Jenny’s tiny rental room tasted of instant coffee and dust motes dancing in the 4 PM light. She lay sprawled across her unmade bed, phone pressed to one ear, earbud dangling from the other.