There was something sacred about the hours between midnight and dawn, a quietness that made confessions feel safer, a space where emotions could breathe freely without judgment. It was in these hours that Cean and Yuan stitched the fragile beginnings of what might have been love.
Their chats started innocently enough—recaps of immersion tasks, jokes about their friends, or teasing about how Cean kept forgetting her ID or how Yuan had once spilled water all over the attendance sheet. But slowly, the messages turned personal. Deeper.
"Do you think people can really move on from their first love?"
Cean had asked this at 1:43 a.m., staring at the blue light of her phone in the dark.
"Yes. But it doesn't happen the same way for everyone," Yuan replied. "Why?"
"Because I don't know if I have," she typed, then deleted.
Instead, she sent: "Just wondering."
She always downplayed her feelings, but Yuan could read between the lines. And even if he didn't always answer directly, his presence, consistent and steady, was something Cean hadn't experienced before. Not even with Saylor.
Yuan didn't talk much about Diane. But when he did, his words were sharp with clarity.
"I loved her," he said once, after Cean dared to ask what happened.
"But she didn't love me the way I needed to be loved."
Cean understood that more than she could admit.
They were opposites in many ways. Cean's mind was a storm of contradictions—sometimes loud, sometimes withdrawn, always reaching for meaning in things others might ignore. A personality through and through, her emotions came in waves, unpredictable and raw. She feared abandonment but kept people at arm's length. She needed love, but didn't always trust it.
Yuan, on the other hand, was controlled. Logical. He navigated the world with sharp focus. He spoke with purpose, acted with intent, but when it came to vulnerability—he held back. His avoidant nature clashed with Cean's craving for intimacy, but perhaps that was what made their bond so fragile, and so real.
The ring she gave him, a simple band with the moon engraved on it, wasn't just a gift. It was a symbol. A quiet declaration. She didn't say "I love you," but Yuan knew.
"You really like blue and black, huh?" Yuan teased one morning after she sent him a mirror selfie in her usual hoodie.
"It matches my soul."
"I thought your soul had more color."
Cean paused. "Only when I'm with the right people."
And Yuan smiled. She couldn't see it, but he did. He always did when she said things like that.
They had their own world. One built from sarcasm and vulnerability, from Cean's love for gift-giving and Yuan's ability to make her feel heard. Sometimes he surprised her with small gestures—asking how her debate practice went, sending motivational quotes laced with humor. He didn't say much, but when he did, it mattered.
But they were still just friends. Kind of. Almost.
Their friends noticed the shift long before they admitted it to themselves.
"I swear, if one more of your 'good mornings' is from Yuan, I'm calling it," Mia grinned one lunch break.
"He's just nice," Cean said, cheeks warm.
"No, girl. Jer is 'just nice.' Yuan is invested. That boy looks at you like you're the final answer to a math problem he's been trying to solve for years."
Sky, overhearing from the other side of the table, smirked. "He talks about you, you know. But in his own weird way. He overanalyzes everything. That means you're under his skin."
Cean didn't respond. Because deep down, she knew.
And Yuan? Yuan was confused. He thought he had fallen for her during their immersion. But as he stared at the late-night messages, at the screenshots of her Spotify playlists, at the candid photo he took while Cean was sleeping—he realized something terrifying:
He had fallen long before that.
But college loomed like a stormcloud.
They both got into different schools—Cean at USM for Political Science, and Yuan at USM too at first, for Psychology but he didn't enroll, instead enroll at UM for Accountancy, but he shifted to Engineering after a semester. The distance between them was no longer metaphorical. And like most things that change slowly, they didn't notice when the daily messages became weekly, then rare.
No fight. No goodbye. Just silence.
Cean cried the first night she realized he hadn't replied in a day or two. She kept opening their chat, rereading old conversations, tracing every sentence for signs that he had already started letting go. She didn't tell anyone, not even Yesha. Because how do you explain a heartbreak that hasn't even been named?
Yuan, meanwhile, drowned himself in coursework, projects, friends—Neo, Raphael, Prudence. But Cean lingered. In his notifications. In the ring he still wore on a chain under his shirt. In every blue-black outfit he saw that reminded him of her.
Sometimes, he almost messaged. But he didn't know what to say. He was afraid—of giving her hope, of making promises he couldn't keep, of disappointing her.
And so, the silence stretched between them like a thread too thin to pull, yet too strong to break.
Somewhere between "good morning" and "talk soon," their world began to blur.
And yet, even in the quiet, they still wondered:
Did it mean something? Did it still?
'_'