A harsh sound churned out from my speaker, it sounded like wind, if the wind was a pounding hammer and her phone’s microphone was a bent nail. It was all a blur too, a hazy blocky, stuttery white of poor reception.

Of course, the call starts dying now. Crystal-clear and somewhat pristine before, but the second something somewhat important needed to be seen – it starts acting up. 

Almost as if the divine internet gods deemed me unworthy, that I didn’t deserve to see it… to see her again, and was deliberately weakening the signal where I’m at more than it already was.

Even Irene’s voice sounded like a robot malfunctioning.

“So..rry… phone… ell…” was the best I could decipher as she spoke up. “Anyw… Dy- Ee her?”

Ee her… if she meant see her, then I couldn’t one bit. Aside from our poor connection, the smoke only exacerbated matters, I could only barely make out what was up and down, everything else was either a pixel or had melded into something else beside it. 

Even when the camera was unmoving, even when nothing obscured the view, what she was trying to show, what I asked her to show… I couldn’t even see it all. 

“Ee… her…?” Irene spoke, leaning the camera in a little further. “R…ia.”

Ria… 

The last I saw of her, I hardly even wanted to look at her. In the backseat of Irene’s car, feeling her faint smoldering locks draping over my shoulder so lukewarm, almost cold, forced my eyes to stare out the window. 

In spite of it, I’ve already spent so long staring at her sleeping face that regardless if I didn’t want to, her every minute detail was imprinted in my mind – I blinked, expressed a single thought regarding her – her face was there almost crystal-clear.

An ageless beauty in her complexion, possessing long thin lips that could stretch so far on either side when she smiled, the faint dimples that formed on her cheek when she did… she also had a nose shape perfect for twirling up in the air, just smug looking enough to exude that better-than-thou vibe to which she already constantly permeated. 

Sometimes I’d even hear her lightly breathe, her voice faintly slithering through her closed lips. Hearing her so quiet, and anything less than boisterous was something I never got used to and probably never will. 

There was so much more too, an almost countless amount of trivial details I knew about her, and yet this image, this imprint I had of her was reduced to nothing but a faint red-orange blocky glow in front of my eyes.

No sign of her long lips, the curve of her nose, or anything else that vaguely resembled her. I was as close as I could ever be to her now, and yet nothing could be seen. 

Almost as if, for my failure, I didn’t deserve the right. For choosing as I did, for leaving her as I had, this new, stunted view I had of her was all that I was left with. 

Of course, that obviously wasn’t the case. I could Ria anytime I wanted, have Irene snap a photo if I requested. I’m just here giving a little too much meaning and depth into my own shitty fucking internet.

But I can’t help it, guilt like this… it’s fickle, it’s petty, and though I knew definitively that it wasn’t my fault… that petty, fickle prick pointed the finger of blame squarely at me all the same. Whispering what-ifs and could-haves into my ears constantly… always there to mock me of how things might have been different if I had just done something different, something right.

I guess this was what Irene was worried about. This torturous feeling of guilt, if it was this bad now, just how worse could it get if I failed again later?  I have every intention of saving Harry, the same way I had every intention of waking Ria, and failure wasn’t even an option in my mind, just like it wasn’t an option back with Ria. 

It wasn’t an option… until it was, and once it was… if, for Harry, it came down to failure again… oh man, no wonder Irene was drilling on me so much about this. 

Sometimes, it’s as if she knows me better than I know myself. 

“…ello… hear me? Yo… see… er…?” Irene asked again. “Want… -et… closer…?” 

Red and orange dimming and glowing in a swirl of white smoke. Again, that’s all that I could see no matter how long I waited for the image to stabilize… and maybe that was enough. 

“Yeah, Irene,” I replied, watching as the glow gradually faded away into the white. “I see her…” 

Though I don’t think she managed to hear me respond because, just shortly after, the video froze, blaring out only a few seconds of white noise, before the call was abruptly cut and our conversation came to an end – the last image, faintly, through the smog, through the pixels, somehow showed her face. 

Still asleep, still dreaming, and my hope, pacing about somewhere in there just waiting for me to show myself in her mind again. Maybe someday I will, maybe one day I’ll have to, but for now, you just keep dreaming, Ria…

I’ll see you around.

I let my phone fall limp against my chest, drifting my eyes to the clear skies, and felt something pressing down on me that clearly wasn’t my phone, a pressure, a burden, the worry of failure.

Today. By tonight. It all comes down to this. I have to get it by then. This barrier has to fall, and it will… and then I’d finally win, I’d finally succeed. I could save someone after all. 

As I was thinking this, my chest vibrated hard and my phone promptly fell off to the side. It was Irene again, settling for her usual short brief messages like she always had before.

<<Terrible connection>> She wrote. <<Anyway, in case you couldn’t see, Ria is just fine here. The smoke’s already cleared too. I have to get ready to work now, but it was really nice to see you again, and hear you again… next time, I hope I won’t have to wait for this long.>>

I replied back, even shorter. <<You won’t.>>

A few seconds later, she shot back. <<That’s a promise.>> and just when I thought that was it, another message chimed in just as my thumb leaned against the power button.

<<Don’t use Ria as an excuse not to fail, I know you are. You won’t fail, because you refuse to fail, that’s it. Don’t let your guilt coerce you into succeeding. You’ll succeed, because you want to, that’s it. Alright? Bye.>> 

Like I said… sometimes she just knows me better than I know myself.

It’s almost frightening, honestly.