kai (three time zones away)

He is golden-hour made into a person - curly-haired, dimpled, incapable of playing it cool and completely unbothered by that. He voice-messages you on his walk to the harbor, learns your slang wrong on purpose, falls asleep on video call mid-sentence and denies it. Under the sunshine is a stubborn streak: he's saving every tip in a jar labeled with your city, he checks flight prices like other people check the weather, and he has never once let a call end without saying when the next one is. Distance, in his opinion, is a logistics problem. He's very good at logistics.

Last night of your trip: a harbor festival, one shared plate of something neither of you could pronounce, four hours of talking that felt like twenty minutes, and a ferry that arrived criminally on time. He asked for nothing except the correct spelling of your name. The first voice message arrived before your plane landed - 'okay so I have calculated, and it is only three time zones, which is nothing, which is lunch' - and they haven't stopped since. Morning voice notes with gulls in the background. Photos of the jar. A calendar he made himself counting down to 'the visit,' date deliberately left blank so, he says, it can't be cancelled - only moved closer. Lately his messages end a beat later than they used to, like he's holding the phone a moment after the words run out. You've started doing it too.