The blanket was doing absolutely nothing useful.
Angelina Wang had rolled herself into it approximately four times over the past hour — tucked in so tight that only the top of her red hair and the very tip of her nose peeked out into the world — and still, the bed felt too big. The apartment felt too quiet. Luna City hummed outside her window the way it always did at this hour, all neon and distant hover-traffic and the occasional burst of rain against glass, and none of it filled the particular kind of silence that lived inside these walls since three years ago.
She rolled again.
Left. Then right. Then left once more, just for the principle of it.
The blanket burrito situation was getting critical.
Her phone screen lit up the ceiling — 22:14 — and Nana stared at it from her cocoon with the focused intensity of someone conducting a very important staring contest. She had checked it fourteen times in the last thirty minutes. Not that she was counting. She was absolutely counting.
*He said after the mission.*
*The mission should be done by now.*
*It's fine. He's fine. Stop rolling, Nana.*
She rolled again.
The ringtone shattered the quiet like a small, joyful explosion.
Nana was upright before the second note, blanket pooling around her waist, phone already in both hands. The contact name glowed on the screen —
Caleb Gege 🪖🍎
She made herself wait exactly one second before answering. Dignity. She had some.
"Hello?" Her voice came out perfectly casual. Completely unbothered. Totally fine.
"Still awake." It wasn't a question. Caleb's voice was low and unhurried, carrying that particular texture it always had after a long mission — not tired exactly, more like the careful quiet of someone who had been alert for many hours and was only now allowing themselves to settle. She could hear the distant background noise of SKYHAVEN dissolving as he stepped somewhere more private. "How's the apartment?"
"Normal," Nana said. "Good. Big."
A beat.
"Big," he repeated.
"Spacious. I said spacious."
She heard the exhale that meant he was almost smiling. Caleb had never been someone who laughed easily or loudly — his smiles lived mostly in the corners of his mouth and the brief softening around his eyes, and she had spent enough of her life studying his face to know every variation. Over the phone she had learned to read him in breath and pause instead.
"Mission's done," he said. "No casualties. Standard extraction."
"I know," Nana said, then immediately: "I mean — good. That's good. Not that I was waiting."
"Mm."
"I wasn't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You said mm."
"That's not saying anything."
"Caleb Gege, *mm* is absolutely saying something, it's just saying it in a way you can technically deny later and you've been doing it my entire life —"
The exhale again, warmer this time, and Nana pulled her knees up to her chest and pressed her cheek against them and allowed herself to just — be in it. The sound of him. The particular ease that lived only in this, in his voice in her ear while the city hummed outside her window and everything was exactly the same as it always was.
"I'm heading back in two weeks," he said. "Pending reassignment."
Nana's heart did something embarrassing. "Oh."
"I thought I'd bring something. New comics — the third volume came out, the one you bent the spine on and pretended you didn't." A pause. "Or that strawberry bread from the market near the east dock. They still make it."
She made a sound that was not a squeal. It was simply a noise of moderate enthusiasm. "The one with the cream inside?"
"That's the one."
"I don't — I mean, you don't have to —"
"Nana."
"I'm just saying you don't have to bring me things every time you —"
"Do you want the bread or not."
She bit the inside of her cheek. "...yes."
"Good."
The silence that followed was the comfortable kind, the kind that didn't need filling. Nana had spent her whole childhood learning the difference — Caleb was not someone who talked for the sake of talking, and early on she had mistaken his quiet for distance. It had taken time and approximately one thousand small moments to understand that this was simply how he was present. Fully and without performance.
She picked at a loose thread on the blanket.
"Hey, Gege."
"Mm."
"Have you seen the new amusement park? The one on the east side of the upper district — they posted the opening reel last month and there's a freefall ride that goes over the edge of the platform and you can see all of Luna City from the top and I know you're going to say it sounds dangerous but —"
"It sounds dangerous."
"*Gege.*"
"You just described a freefall ride that goes over the edge of a platform."
"The harness system is rated for —"
"Nana."
"There are reviews, Caleb Gege, there are very positive reviews written by people who did not fall —"
"We can go." His voice was level, with that very specific note underneath it that she had learned meant *I have already decided to take you, I simply need to finish pretending otherwise.* "When I'm back. If you stop describing the fall distance."
Nana beamed at her own knees. "Deal."
Another comfortable silence. Outside, a rain shower tapped briefly against the window and passed. She twisted the bracelet on her wrist — a simple silver one, nothing special, except that she'd had it so long she couldn't remember a time before it.
"Oh," she said suddenly. "Speaking of — have you seen my blue hair tie? The thick one with the little knot? I've looked everywhere and I can't —"
"No."
Too fast.
Nana narrowed her eyes. "Caleb Gege."
"I haven't seen it."
"You answered very quickly."
"I answer quickly. That's a normal thing people do."
"You also took my yellow scrunchie in March and my green bracelet in the summer and I found the bracelet in your jacket pocket when I was doing laundry before you left —"
"That was an accident."
"An accident," she repeated, with great feeling.
She could hear something in his breathing that was not quite a laugh and not quite a sigh but lived somewhere in between, and it was one of her favorite sounds in the world. She tucked it away in the place she kept all of them — the quiet collection of Caleb-sounds that she could pull out on the nights when the apartment felt particularly big.
"Give it back when you visit," she said.
"I'll consider it."
"Caleb Gege —"
"Nana." His voice shifted — just slightly, just enough. The warmth stayed but something more careful moved underneath it. "Tell me about tomorrow."
She straightened a little without meaning to. "Oh. You heard about —"
"First day at the Association. Class A certification, active duty roster." A beat. "You sent me the confirmation email three weeks ago."
She had absolutely done that. She had also sent a follow-up with the uniform fitting photo and one further update about the equipment assignment. "I was excited."
"I know."
"Are you worried?"
He was quiet for one second. Two. In Caleb-language, this was the equivalent of pacing.
"Wanderers don't care about enthusiasm," he said finally. "They don't care about certification rank or how fast you moved through the program. You're small, you're reckless, and you have a documented history of running toward things you should be running away from." Another breath. "So yes. I'm worried."
Nana opened her mouth.
"Don't say you'll be careful."
She closed it.
"Tell me you'll call me," he said. "After every mission. Not the day after. Not when you remember. After."
The firmness in it was so familiar it ached — the same voice that had stood at the door of every dangerous thing she'd ever tried to do and said *I'm not going to stop you, I'm just going to need proof you survived it.* She had grown up inside that particular kind of love, the kind that didn't grip so much as it steadied, and she had taken it completely for granted until the day she drove him to the transport dock and watched SKYHAVEN's carrier disappear into the clouds.
Three years.
The apartment was so quiet without him.
"I'll call," she said. Not lightly. Like she meant it.
"Good."
She stretched out slowly across the bed, phone resting against her ear, staring up at the ceiling where a small crack had appeared sometime last winter that she kept meaning to report to the building. The rain had started again. Softer this time.
"Gege."
"Mm."
"I don't miss you," she said. "Just so you know. I'm very independent. I'm thriving. This apartment is the perfect size and I haven't once looked at your old bedroom and —"
"Nana."
She stopped.
"I know," he said.
She pulled the blanket up to her chin. "...Come visit soon," she said quietly. "Please."
The pause before he answered was just a breath too long. She didn't notice. She had already closed her eyes, already letting the familiar weight of his voice settle over the night like something warm and certain and permanent.
"I'll bring the bread," he said.
Nana smiled into the dark.
Outside, Luna City hummed on, neon-lit and endless, completely unaware of what was coming.
Tomorrow, she would walk through the doors of the Hunter Association for the first time as an active Class A.
Tomorrow, she would meet the person who would become her mission partner.
Tonight, she fell asleep still holding her phone, with the city outside her window and three years of missing someone tucked quietly against her ribs.
She didn't know it would be one of the last ordinary nights.
None of them did.
.
.
.
.
.
To be continued.