“Oh no…” Arkay muttered under his breath. “This is… not good.”
Arkay’s day had been pretty busy, and his evening was busy too. But the biggest problem was that Arkay had forgotten to message Velas back, several hours ago.
“I am quite upset…” was the second message Velas had sent. Before it, there was a general “hey how are you?” message that Arkay had seen but not responded to. A message sent nearly ten hours ago.
“I’m sorry, Velas, I had a really bad day and I was busy and I just got caught up with things and kinda forgot to re-open our chat and… I’m sorry.”
“I will be blunt with you, Arkay, your apology means very little to me. You’ve done this before.”
Arkay let out a shallow breath. “I didn’t mean to…”
“Mean to what? Ignore me? Leave me hanging? Forget that I had messaged you?”
“I didn’t mean to not answer.”
“You didn’t have time to answer me when I sent my first message? Because that is what I feel like you did. After all, I have had a very busy day myself. Very, very busy. But because you were unhappy and in a bad way yesterday, I thought I could take a moment to message you. You saw it, then ignored it.”
“I’m-”
“Say sorry again and I’ll get more upset.”
Arkay paused. “O… kay… But I genuinely didn’t mean to ignore it! I just… I just forgot…”
“You forgot to send a message to the guy you love, and did so for ten whole hours?”
“Uh… yeah… I admit I… I am wrong.”
“You very much are, Arkay. And you’ve done this shit before. We’ve talked about you doing the same thing in the past, and I’m certain you have done it, intentionally or otherwise, to other friends of yours. This is a bad habit you must get rid of. It makes us, me, the sender of the message, feel unwanted and bad. As if you have no time for us.”
“I… I…” Arkay took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. He felt incredibly guilty for not answering Velas’s message. But worse, Velas was also correct in saying that Arkay had done this stuff before, to other people.
“You wouldn’t like it if I did the same thing to you.”
“Yeah… I know… I.. I apologize. It’s all I can do.”
“No, that is not true at all. Your apology means nothing if you are going to repeat your actions. And you repeated your past actions today.”
“What do you want me to do?” Arkay exclaimed. “I don’t… I mean I can promise not to do it again and stuff and I can apologize some more and…”
“I just want you to be better.”
“I… don’t get it.”
“You know what you did. Be better than that. Don’t do it again.”
“Okay…” Arkay sighed, still feeling shitty. “I’ll be better.”
“Good. However, I do think you’ll need a little punishment. Something to help you remember.”
Arkay blinked. “What?”
A long message appeared. Arkay scanned the message, then typed a response.
“So… four?”
“Five. Bonus point if you mix it up a little.”
“I guess I can do that.”
“Good. I am off to get some rest. See you soon.”
Velas’s icon switched to offline, leaving Arkay alone with his thoughts.
“I’d… better go to the shops then…” Arkay muttered as he got up from his chair. “Going to need a few bits and pieces…”