4344.35 · February 4, 2024 AD
Four Missed Calls
Four missed calls. Three unanswered texts. One voicemail containing what Aylin insists was her best material. When Mira finally agrees to coffee in Beyoğlu, she knows what's coming—the questions she can't answer, the concern she doesn't deserve, the particular pain of smiling at someone you love whilst knowing the smile is a wall. Aylin has always seen too much. Ten years of friendship have taught her exactly where Mira hides. And today she's not pretending she doesn't notice.
Aylin chose Kronotrop on Serdar-ı Ekrem Caddesi. Bright, airy, the kind of place where baristas know the altitude at which your beans were grown. Mira would have preferred a traditional çay house where nobody asked questions. But Aylin chose because Aylin insisted, and Mira owes her at least three returned phone calls and a month of normal human behaviour she hasn't delivered.
They've been friends since orientation week at Boğaziçi. Ten years of shared meals, honest arguments, the particular intimacy that comes from watching someone become who they're going to be. Aylin pivoted from archaeology to journalism. Mira descended into archives and silence and a life she can't explain.
Now Aylin sits across from her in winter light, reading the exhaustion, the evasion, the grief Mira won't name. She asks the question directly: are you okay, or is "I found a document" code for "I'm not coping and I don't know how to say it"?
Some secrets protect the people who keep them. Others just hollow out everything around them.
