Tetra Pact

Chapter 23

Summer rolled around, and Asbjørn was excited.

He loved that his favourite day - his birthday - fell on the month of his favourite season. This year, he was looking forward to it even more, because today was also the special day of his favourite girl.

Eden didn't like extravagance, so he'd decided to take her to a dainty coffee shop downtown that he knew to be mostly free of crowds and noise, which was exactly what Eden liked. He fished his phone out of his pocket and cleared the hundreds of notifications he'd gotten from his newly downloaded Instagram app. Judy had somehow convinced him to make an account for himself, with the excuse that she wanted to 'tag him' in her posts next time, whatever that meant.

Asbjørn wouldn't call himself popular, but he'd garnered a few hundred followers within two days of creating his account, and he wondered if people had anything better to do than to follow strangers online. He suspected it was one of his friends that had posted him on their account and linked his, which made everyone find out that he had one. He wasn't able to find out now, because he was currently avoiding the app flooded with notifications.

"Ben, you're so bloody famous for no reason," Crisanto remarked, presumably on Asbjørn's own empty Instagram page. "I can't believe you surpassed the number of followers I have without even posting anything."

Asbjørn held out his phone. "You want to swap accounts?"

Damian snorted at his nonchalance, while Crisanto scrunched up his nose. "No thanks. You don't even follow anyone."

"I do!" Asbjørn insisted indignantly. Judy had made him follow all of their accounts the moment he made the account.

"Yeah. Four of us."

Asbjørn shook his head. He was never really into social media as his grandparents made sure he stayed away from electronic devices until he was eighteen. He had no idea how he'd survived without a phone for so long, but he had. And he was sure he could survive without any form of social media for much longer, since he didn't exactly have a fear of missing out.

"Hey, what's this?" Judy asked suddenly, staring intensely at her phone screen. She showed the picture to the rest of them.

Crisanto squinted and read the caption of the photo. "Best-looking couple of 2018...oh, it's you, of course, and - Rut?"

"That's literally fake news," Damian said. "They can't call you guys a couple when you're not dating."

Judy took another glance at the screen. "Well, um... Rut seems to enjoy it though. She reposted it on her story and...tagged you." She looked at Asbjørn, who slid his phone to her immediately

"Help me delete my account."

Judy's eyes widened, flustered. "Oh, Ben! It's not such a big deal, it's just - social media things. She might be posting for fun."

"But she doesn't know I have a girlfriend. If she did, she wouldn't post that."

"That's what you think, mate." Crisanto slung an arm around Asbjørn's shoulders. "You can never know a person's true colours just by looking at them."

Damian pulled Crisanto away and took his place. "Ignore him. You should probably tell Rut, then."

"Argh," Asbjørn groaned, leaning back in his seat in despair. "I hate social media."

"By the way, you should totally post a picture of yourself today," Judy chirped, quickly jumping over the previous topic. "It's your birthday. You're twenty-two. What a special age."

"You say that for every age, Farmer," Crisanto scoffed.

Asbjørn let out a sigh and slumped further down the sofa.