One Roof

Chapter 5

"That felt..."

Emily muttered as she came out from her bath. She appeared from the balcony as I sat facing away from it, toward my wardrobe. Noticing her, I put the phone down on my bedside table and turned around, sitting cross-legged above my bed. She wore a simple pink T-shirt along with white shorts. She saw me and approached me, sitting above something. I couldn't tell where she actually sat on, or where I sat on in her view, but from my viewpoint, she sat on the same bed across from me, facing me.

I assumed our beds happened to be aligned and repositioned myself. I went toward the top area, where my pillows were, and leaned back on the wall. She reached for something on her head and started shaking it. I could see her previously wet hair being dried.

"... What?"

"Ah, nothing."

I turned myself away from her and reached for the phone.

"Why are you looking away?"

Emily asked. I could only shrug. Truth be told, I would love to look at Emily drying her hair. As weird as it sounds, I found simple things like that to be more interesting, but I knew staring at her would make her uncomfortable, and made the entire ordeal more unbearable compared to how it was currently, so I decided against it.

I searched my mind for an excuse that I could use.

"No reason."

Eventually, I settled on that. I opened my Fine app and searched for Caleb's name. I typed in my message but then turned toward Emily.

"Is it fine if I ask my friend about this?"

"You're not going to ask your mom?"

"I... don't know."

I had concerns about how my mother would react when she heard that her son technically lived with a girl. While it wasn't something of my choice, it would still be weird.

"Will they even believe it?"

"You're right..."

Caleb would probably be laughing at me if he heard this. Since Emily wasn't visible, there would be no way they ever believe me. If anything, my parents would be the ones to believe me, but I really couldn't tell how they would react, and I didn't like the idea of finding out.

"If we don't ask anyone, then what should we do?"

"Can't we ask anonymously online? Maybe someone had the same experience as us?"

"Won't they just laugh at us?"

Emily turned around and hopped off the bed.

"They will, that's why we're anonymous."

She headed toward my desk and sat down on an invisible chair, a portion of her body inside the table. She looked to be opening her laptop and started typing something. All I could see was her 'pretending' to sit and type, so the sight felt very off.

Like a mime performing a show, Emily's finger ran through the invisible keyboard, typing what I assumed to be lines of text in some social media somewhere.

"Photogram?"

I asked. It was the only social media site where I followed her, but we didn't really interact. We lost connection ever since we parted ways for high school.

"No. Eddit."

"I see."

Eddit was a large forum site that was blocked in this country, so she probably used VPN to access it. I lay on my bed, looking at her back that faced me. Now that we both had calmed down, I could look at the entire ordeal with a clearer lens. This entire meeting felt bittersweet. Bitter because obviously both of us would prefer some more, no, a lot more privacy, but saying that it was all hell wouldn't be right either.