The smell of sweat hung in the air. Everything was blurry—from the posters to the dusty silhouette of a fan—as if the night had smudged the room’s outline with an indiscreet finger. Apart from a beam of light that cut through the curtains, the bedroom was cloaked in darkness.
The smell of sweat hung in the air. Everything was blurry—from the posters to the dusty silhouette of a fan—as if the night had smudged the room’s outline with an indiscreet finger. Apart from a beam of light that cut through the curtains, the bedroom was cloaked in darkness. Outside, a row of lavender bloomed beneath the windowsill. Its scent streamed through the air like purple ribbons but found no passage past the window, and the aroma slipped off the glass, like silk from a shoulder.
Silence draped the room like a carpet of snow, such that even the smallest of movements were muffled. The world remained frozen for a few more heartbeats until the outline of the bed stirred. A thin arm grasping a phone emerged from beneath the blankets, and the rest of the body, bathed in a fluorescent glow, followed slowly from the depths.
The boy was inconspicuous, with short hair and faint circles under his eyes. He personified the surrounding malaise to such a degree that he seemed indistinguishable from the furniture. Making no attempt to leave, he sat, marooned on his bed, scrolling through his phone with glazed eyes.
He heard the shuffling of slippers down the hallway from beyond his closed door. The sounds were faint and distorted, as if they were filtered into his room through a film of water. Soon there came a rap at his door, and a small, feeble woman trotted in. She had silver hair cropped above her shoulders and hobbled as she moved. She flicked on the lights as her grandson stumbled out of bed.
“You didn’t come out for dinner, and don’t think you can apologise with a hug,” she said in Cantonese as she untangled herself from him. At eighty-two, age had bent Hua Xin Zhou’s back and stiffened her knees, but it had not dashed her smile.
“Sorry, Grandma. I wasn’t hungry today.” Ethan’s Cantonese, in contrast, was littered with pauses, and the sounds seemed to hang at the back of his throat.
While he justified his absence, she studied his lanky body. He had grown—that much was apparent—even for a three-year span; he had changed under the hands of puberty. She turned to his bedroom and winced as her eyes ran over the mess around his bed.
When we were young, we didn’t waste any food—” her lecture was quickly derailed by her grandson, who rushed in for another hug. Hua slapped him on the back in mock fury and then smiled quietly to herself.
She resisted the urge to comment further and instead waddled towards his wastepaper basket to remove the overflowing plastic bag. Ethan flushed with embarrassment as he quickly intervened but was dismissed with a slow shake of her head. She straightened with a grunt, and then retraced her steps through the clutter before exiting the room.
Hua had only taken a few steps into the hallway when she realised that she had forgotten to ask the very question that led her to enter his room in the first place. She stopped and glanced back over her shoulder. Through a crack in the door, she could see him scurrying about, gathering his clothes from the floor and hanging them in his wardrobe. It was a candid moment—a rare glimpse into his mind—uninterrupted by the outside world. She leaned in closer to the door and marvelled at how quickly he transformed the room. The longer she watched, the more her resolve wavered. But her indecision was fleeting, and the significance of the date reimposed itself—to not speak was an act of cowardice, even if the consequences were guaranteed.
“Ethan?” she called, with a quiet knock at the door.
Her grandson turned away from the bookshelf in surprise.
Hua swallowed. “Do you know what day it is tomorrow?”
For a few breathless seconds, it appeared as though he had not understood the question, then a long sigh escaped his lips and his body folded as if the air had been wrung from him.
“Yeah, of course.” He crumbled onto his bed.”
She tiptoed forward.
“Would you like to pay your respects with me?”
Ethan kept his eyes on the ceiling, feeling no inclination to answer. He wished that her question would vanish like the musty scent of a cabin, which with the door being opened, would be swept away by the wind. But realising that she would not leave without an answer, he flashed a flaccid smile and gave a timid “No.”
Hua loitered about as her eyes scoured his body for signs of indecisiveness: a creased brow, perked ears or wet eyes … anything to signal the softening of his heart. However, Ethan neither stirred nor acknowledged her, so she exited with a bowed head.
Trapped between the hazy walls of sleep and consciousness, Ethan rolled around in his bed, wrapped in an opaque haze of memories and muddled dreams until the slowing of his breath lulled him to sleep.
At long last, he was roused from his drowsiness by the muffled vibrations of his phone. Sitting up, he let out a silent yawn, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stared at the illuminated screen trembling beside his pillow. Midnight had just passed, and a new day had dawned. Waking with a soft groan, he sat on the edge of his bed and waited for his senses to return. His bedroom looked identical to when he first drifted off to sleep, as if the slanting beams of moonlight that cut through his curtains embalmed everything in a grey patina. Ethan picked a jacket off the floor, pulled it over his body and left the room.
He paused in the corridor to let his eyes adjust to the darkness and then crept forward, navigating the house’s terrain with his bare feet. Suddenly, Ethan stopped beside a white door, leaned in and held his breath as he placed his ear beside the keyhole. He had always loved the night and the silence that accompanied the shadows. Daytime was a period of obligation and unwavering schedules, but the moon demanded no activity, no motion, no acknowledgement. He inched closer until he could feel the cool kiss of the brass handle against his cheek. Finally, he was rewarded with a loud snore emanating from his grandma’s bed. He continued forward, reassured by the receding murmurs of her heavy breaths.
Soon the scratch of carpet was replaced by the cold tile of the dining room. He paused and inhaled the faint thread of spices rising from the dining table. He could smell the marinated pork, steamed broccoli and diced ginger seeping out from under the plastic-wrapped plates, and a wave of affection uncoiled in his chest. He took one more glance at his grandma’s handiwork and made a mental note to thank her in the morning.
Relying upon his memory to guide him, Ethan felt his way towards a cupboard in the corner of the room. He dropped to his knees to pull open the drawers and winced at the screech that echoed around him. It was completely dark, yet he felt no urge to illuminate the house with artificial light. He felt alive under the shroud of midnight, as if the repression of one sense only heightened the others. Pricking his ears for any disturbances in his dimly lit playground, he crept away with the newly acquired objects in his hands.
Arriving at the threshold between the house and garden, Ethan hesitated in front of the glass doors before disappearing out into the night. The veranda was a mural of different tones, as if nature had distilled the colours of the rainbow and then slathered the flowers with the dye. He shivered as he turned to his right and hurried down a flight of stairs. Midnight had always stirred feelings of melancholy within him. Now, when everyone else had retreated to their dreams, time trickled by like sand from a clenched fist.
As he walked to the middle of the garden, he reached into his pockets and pulled out the sticks of incense he had taken from the cupboard. He whispered a few sentences, and then lit the incense beneath the bone-white glow of the moon.
The smoke roiled gracefully into the air, twisting and coiling like a snake before melting into the purple sky. Captivated by the red ember, he watched as the small flame tunnelled towards the bottom like a drop of red blood down a stalk. Ethan returned to the stairs, sat on the tiles and rummaged through his pockets again. After a few more exasperated pats, he unearthed a crooked cigarette and lit it. He turned his attention back to the moon and felt a sudden connection with the silver orb. High amongst the clouds, she witnessed, with quiet curiosity, every moment of humanity, every tile upon the mosaic of time, every misguided argument, every white lie, every quiet farewell.
He brought the cigarette back to his lips, inhaled, and leaned back.
In the distance, a dog’s howl rang across the sleepy streets, returning Ethan’s attention to the present. Noticing that his cigarette had long since been extinguished, he rose, dusted the ashes from his pyjamas and retraced his steps to the door. He placed his hands on the smooth handle and paused to admire the moonlit garden for a final time before swallowing the knot in his throat.
“Happy birthday, Mum.” He sighed and snuck quietly back into the house.
Positioned on the fringes of the city—as the skyscrapers melted into the suburban sprawl—the office existed between both worlds; neither modern nor dilapidated, disguised by its blandness and tucked away in the quiet corner of a busy street. But its starkness existed beyond the exterior, as if the bored stares and complacent yawns from passersby had penetrated its brick walls and bled into its foundations. Stapled to the ceiling were rows of fluorescent lights that hummed and flickered over the employees.
But beyond the drab furniture or the constant film of perspiration that hung in the air, the most immediate presence was the flurry of activity. The ringing telephones and the accompanying chorus of hellos and goodbyes stirred the office into a frenzy.
It was as if Ethan had sunk to the ocean floor, where he could watch, with growing trepidation, the breaking of waves above him. On his first day, he had sought refuge in the bathroom and was dismayed that the thin plastic walls offered no escape. Four months later, he was still not acclimatised to the cacophony of sound.
He rubbed his eyes then yawned as he glanced at the lowered heads around him. Every day, he was burdened with the task of diverting anonymous voices to their relevant departments at the telecommunications centre. It was a thankless job and painfully dull. Perhaps it was because youth always longed for spontaneity, but Ethan felt despair from the moment he sank into his chair. It was during this relapse into the twisting alleyways of his mind that the sudden trill from his mobile roused him from his daze.
The name of the caller flashed over the screen as his device rattled against his desk.
Feeling a flush of panic, he reached for the phone but quickly withdrew. It just dawned on him that he hated his ringtone; its artificial chime of bells and jarring notes rattled on, indifferent to the occasion. At long last, the phone stopped vibrating, with all evidence of its disturbance sealed behind a dimmed screen. Ethan sighed with relief and leaned back in his chair, readying himself to be consumed by the din again.
Then he turned to his right.
She sat perfectly still, with her head bowed and fingers curled into a ball. Compared to the commotion around her, it was like her figure had congealed into a statue. Nothing about her moved; in fact, nothing about her even trembled. The long black hair thrown over her shoulders hung as if no breath of wind dared to shake its frame. She had joined two weeks ago and had been assigned to Ethan as a mentee due to their similarities in age. Despite this, he had realised, during an early morning train ride, that she had yet to ask him for a single piece of advice.
He looked at her again, tracing the delicate curve in her wrist and the sharp cut of her jawline to eventually rest on her earring. He swallowed with disappointment. She had been, quite frankly, an exceptional employee, and since he was neither charismatic nor courageous, their relationship had stagnated, buried behind complacent nods and obligatory smiles.
Since her novelty had not yet worn off, Ethan was forced to idle as his peers congregated around her during their breaks. However, what struck him the most was not their manufactured expressions of interest but how she maneuvered between them.
She was the perfect guest, emboldening her co-workers with enthusiastic nods and disarming them with laughter.
He could see the delight on their faces as they confessed the content of their hearts and then left with no better assessment of her character.
She was like a ballerina tiptoeing across a wire, her limbs moving under the spell of instinct, oblivious to the dangers of a potential misstep.
Even Alexander, the patronising manager, had dropped his cold exterior to offer her assistance. She declined the invitation, although in an equally gracious manner.
Ethan struggled to hide his annoyance as his co-workers continued to hover beside her cubicle, armed with the same predictable promise that she would “fit right in”. He could not help but feel a sting of animosity as he compared her fanfare against the mute indifference he had received. But even deeper than that, he recoiled at the false words of affirmation they spewed at her; it was all a performance, an act to quench the insecurities buried inside themselves. She was a conduit, a hollow basin which they filled with their own self-doubt.
After all, Mary was blind.
He had heard the whispers that circulated amongst the staff; perhaps she had struck her head in a fall or, maybe, she had been born with a rare degenerative condition. He could not help but grit his teeth every time he heard her name tossed around in casual speculation; she had been regulated to the new toy for the office, a blip of excitement in the otherwise tedious slog of uniformity. Sometimes the ferocity of his feelings startled him; she was, at the end of the day, a stranger. When reflecting, he defended his feelings as necessary or moral, but underneath, he knew these reactions stemmed from a deeper well.
She was beautiful.
Her raven-black hair, delicate face and vulnerability only made her all the more striking and mysterious.
Slouching back into his chair, he sank deeper into his thoughts before his ringing work phone dragged him back to the present.
Ethan placed his handset down on his desk and yawned. He leaned forward, pressed the mute button on his work phone and slumped against the desk. Turning his head to the right again, he watched Mary speak as she twirled a pen between her fingers. His eyes continued up her body, following the contours of her shoulders, charting the ridges of her lips before falling upon her permanently closed eyes. It occurred to him that this was the first time he had been properly confronted with a disability, one that could not be spoken of in euphemism. Although he had witnessed some of his high school classmates return from injury, they wore their cast as a rite of passage, an object of celebration, a prop to be used when recounting the story to the masses. But now, Mary—and by extension, blindness—was seated only a few inches away. Disability had lost its childish bravado, and he could not help but lament how chance had given him sight and cruelly snatched it from her.
Burying his face into the crook of his elbow, Ethan gnashed his teeth as his resentment swelled in his chest. He had also been condemned by the figurative roll of the dice, although it simply manifested differently; yesterday’s midnight stroll was a testament to that. He stared into the darkness around his feet, seeking an answer and demanding empathy, but he received neither, and his rage soon came to pass.
The minutes slowly rolled by as the crackle of static enveloped him. It felt as if he had been submerged in a stream of white noise pouring from his colleagues’ mouths. He lingered in this restless haze, treading the narrow path between sleep and exhaustion until his mobile, inches from his head, rattled again. He lifted his eyes and waited for the blurriness to clear before grimacing.
It was the same caller.
Unable to find an object large enough to cover his still ringing phone, Ethan rummaged through his mind for any distraction, but it proved futile. Instead, he resorted to glaring at the screen until it flickered back into darkness.
“You must really be angry at your girlfriend.”
Ethan’s head snapped to his right.
“At this rate, I’m going to have your ring-tone memorised,” Mary laughed before swivelling her chair towards him.
Ethan was astounded by the consequences. The difference of just a few inches had entirely rewritten the unspoken dynamics between them—he was no longer looking at her side profile, confined to studying her from afar without consent. It was the minutest of movements, but now it felt as if she was within reach, that she had been woven into the same tapestry that he existed in.
“It’s not my girlfriend,” responded Ethan, suddenly aware of his dry throat.
“Well, that’s cause for celebration,” replied Mary with a slight smirk.
He opened his mouth a few times before resigning himself to a nervous chuckle. He glanced around to see if anyone else was eavesdropping. This was not how he had envisioned their first real conversation unfolding.
“Sorry for prying, but four calls in one morning is bordering on obsessive.”
Ethan shook his head to dispel her apology before realising the futility of his action. “It’s fine. It’s about time we had a conversation,” said Ethan.
Nodding in agreement, Mary spun her chair back to its original position and began to twirl her pen again, severing their temporary connection with a cool sweep of her shoulder.
Ethan’s body deflated as the weight of failure fell upon him. He had squandered the opportunity, one that had cost him a fortnight of timid greetings and polite departures. However, when the moment arrived for him to distinguish himself from the sea of sweaty collars and mundane questions—
“It is about time.”
Ethan turned to his right again.
Mary was smiling at him, with the telephone cord twisted around her finger.
She had dimples.
A large shopping centre gleamed as its glass panels collected the afternoon sun. A sea of orange roofs and black sedans sat quietly under the building’s shadow, encircling the metallic husk like an expanding ripple. As Ethan strolled through the opulence, his eyes sifted through the trimmed hedges, polished windows, and brick driveways. While initially alluring, the obligations of his job had stripped the suburb of its charm, and he dismissed the scenery with a tired bat of his eyelids. Heaving as he lugged his battered luggage trolley along, he slipped a bundle of flyers into a row of beige letterboxes before continuing down the street.
The sun, a liquid drop of gold, slipped through the clouds, coating them in a magenta blush. Spring had arrived and the cold had faded. Beneath the soil, the hibernating heartbeat stirred as the wind shook the greening foliage. It just dawned on him that trees did not move in winter; their joints were not yet thawed.
Upon arriving at a large intersection sandwiched between two parks, Ethan took a sip of water and let out a sigh. His luggage trolley had lightened considerably, and its wheels no longer groaned against the gravel. Spotting a familiar sight in his periphery—a crooked signpost overlooking a fork in the road—he approached it to pat its hollow body affectionately before turning left. Although it was a simple deed, one that he had repeated a mindless number of times, this time this single act stopped him in his tracks. Perhaps it was the aroma of budding flowers, or perhaps the repetitiveness of his job had dulled his senses, but Ethan felt the warm breath of déjà vu on his neck as his feet slowed. It was as if he had conjured his surroundings from memory—as if it were he who dotted the flowers with their drops of dew and not the descending night mist. Glancing over his shoulder, the untrodden streets beckoned to him, promising him adventure and, most importantly, the liberty to choose his own path.
Ethan turned around.
Peaking above the trees, Ethan could see the shopping centre’s silhouette in the distance. But the gradual shift in architecture around him already indicated that he was at the fringes of suburbia. The rigid pull of conformity that dominated the previous streets had waned, and now the landscape was infused with a collage of anomalies. He smiled.
As he was relying upon his intuition to guide him back to his grandma’s house, his eyes combed his surroundings for any object that he could anchor his mental compass to. He found nothing, and as the skies darkened, he became increasingly desperate. Slowly, the flame of impulsiveness that had burned so brightly under the auburn skies flickered and expired. But just as his regret was about to assail his mind, the fog dissipated. The cracked bitumen, rotting oak, and overgrown shrubbery materialised like blotches of ink on parchment. Ethan bit his lips as a jolt of adrenaline ran up his spine. He was only a few streets away.
His heart drummed against his ribs as he weaved through a mesh of twisting alleyways. Finally, he arrived at an intersection and, peering around the corner, found it deserted save for the occasional streetlight lining the road.
Ethan broke into a run with his luggage trolley bouncing behind him. A string of details rushed past him, registering as minor blips in his imagination before being subsumed by another blurry image. He ran until his lungs burned, oblivious to the throb in his knees, and at last he slumped against a wooden fence as his ragged breath punctured the air. Steeling himself, he looked across the street.
It looked like any other house—double storey with a red roof. Its only unusual characteristic was the odd brown brick that peppered the otherwise cream exterior. Ethan’s eyes followed the strong pillars, the oak-coloured door and the yellowing shrubs, and he soon sank into a stream of old memories. But his introspection was short-lived, disrupted by a nagging blemish in his periphery. Two bicycles were leaning against a large recycling bin. Ethan leered at the foreign objects, aberrations that tunnelled into his past and shattered the façade. His eyes shifted back to the house but found it impossible to resist the gravity of the bicycles. Fuelled by self-pity, he froze as resentment gnawed at his heart, and he readied himself for the catharsis of detonation. His emotions simmered dangerously until his eyes returned to the bikes, and he spotted a pair of training wheels attached to the back.
His anger immediately dissolved, vanquished by a morsel of empathy. He stood there, empty, robbed of his vindication, denied the pleasure of self-flagellation as his guilt filled the crater in his chest. Slowly, he sank into the grass until he was sitting across from the house of his childhood.
Ethan gave the handle a firm twist but to no avail; the front door’s flexibility had long been sapped by rust, and it took him another few pulls before it swung open. As he stood in the hallway, removing his shoes, he could tell that dusk had descended, for a grey hue had fallen over the house—a dusty grey that hung in the corners and clung to the final breath of the sun. He continued through the hallway to the living room.
The kitchen was empty. Only the ticking of an unseen clock could be heard, and the air did not carry the scent of cooking.
Ethan opened the refrigerator and found it filled with meat and vegetables but bare of anything he could microwave. His stomach growled as he leaned against the counter and accepted his misfortune. But, even as he sifted through the recipes in his mind, his appetite was subsumed by an unshakeable tide of fear welling up from the depths of his subconscious. The ticking of the clock melted away, and only the rise and fall of his chest reverberated between the walls. There was something uncanny about his surroundings, something unnerving that could not be dispelled by apathy. His neck tingled as dread spread through his mind like a drop of ink in a warm solution.
He had never returned home and not been greeted by the energetic presence of his grandma.
He peered into the living room, expecting her figure to be slumped over a sofa. He found nothing but long shadows draped across the furniture.
“Grandma?” whispered Ethan. His voice bounced down the hallway, where it withered beside some potted plants. In this hazy blur of sepia, he dared not move, standing still as if he were at the edge of a cliff and the sudden twist of his limbs would send him and his world tumbling below.
“Grandma?” he cried again, but the house yielded nothing.
Ethan pricked his ears for any scratch of movement as silence enveloped the room. Just as the weight of the stillness seemed unbearable, and the world threatened to fold in on itself, his mobile suddenly rang, and the house exhaled under the spell of activity.
He pulled the phone from his pocket and winced; it was him again, with his weekly call, defiant even in the face of certain rejection. Ethan flipped the screen into his palm, hiding the contact’s name, but the phone was undeterred, and the vibrations continued to shake his hand.
His phone dimmed momentarily before convulsing back to life like clockwork. He could have answered and spewed out his situation, shifting the burden of his grandma onto the caller, saddling him with her fading strength. His fingers hovered above the screen. It would be so easy, just a simple swipe of his finger, and he would not be so alone, but he couldn’t, or rather wouldn’t. His pride, which had slept undisturbed until now, growled menacingly. To accept help would be a betrayal of his grief; no, he did not want, or rather, he did not require help. This would be his burden and his alone. After all, phantoms of the past had no place amidst the living. Swollen with self-righteousness, Ethan returned to his phone, ready to stamp his will upon the caller, but his mobile had already fallen silent.
Returning to the stillness of the house, it was as if sound itself had vanished, retreating to a realm beyond his reach. There was no crevice, no jutting stone, no chasm that he could latch onto, no creaking floorboards, no clanking pen, no scraping chair. The house simply refused to acquiesce.
Gripped by anxiety, he scoured his surroundings.
He sprinted to her bedroom and knocked against the door. After a brief pause, he barged in. It was empty. The bed, neatly folded; the chair, tucked into the vanity. Whatever secrets were etched into the room, he knew that he could not pry them out. As he sprinted back into the hallway, he felt that if he ran hard enough, if the soles of his feet collided against the carpet with enough force, then he would find her in the bathroom, bent over the sink, oblivious to his fright. He stopped outside the bathroom. She was not there.
Ethan darted away and found himself in the kitchen again. He spun around but found no crooked figure to break the silhouette of the room. By now, night—a shroud of black velvet dotted with gold beads—had fallen. His body shook with disbelief as he ran his hands through his hair.
Had she walked out without her keys? Had she left to buy groceries and forgotten her way home? Had she—
Ethan exhaled. The contrast was immediate—as if the searing heat in his chest had been doused by a pail of water. He sighed again and let the stiffness rise from his abdomen, up his sternum and then through his nose where it evaporated with his breath. He had heard it. It had only been a small note, a minute squeak in the otherwise unbroken blanket of silence. But he had heard it, that was for sure. Moving towards the glass doors, he peered into the garden and then crossed the threshold.
From his position atop the veranda, she looked like a spectre hovering above the lawn. A dim glow emanated from her skin as if she had absorbed the pale gleam of the moon, a translucent silhouette, where a touch on her bent shoulder would send ripples down her body, and she would then disappear, swallowed by the night like a lit window flickering from afar.
Ethan started walking down the stairs towards her but hesitated as though stopped by an invisible force. He stayed rooted to the step, unable—no, unwilling to continue.
She was perfect, exactly where she was: a mirage touching both worlds, neither burdened by age nor severed from the earth. It was as if the night captured her essence, condensed it, and moulded it into the image before him. She was perfect, a woman tending to her garden, her fingers pressed into the soil and her frame rising and falling slowly with each breath. She was perfect, and from his elevated position, his eyes sank into the quivering vista.
At last, she placed her hands upon her knees and rose from her flowers. Time, which had stagnated around her folded body, flowed again, uninhibited by the fleeting transience.
Sensing his cue, he ran up and wrapped his arms around her.
“Ethan?” Hua laughed. “What took you so long?”
However, words felt like a poor substitute for what he wanted to say, and his warmth conveyed his feelings more accurately. Perhaps she could feel his heartbeat in the embrace, perhaps she could sense the trepidation in his pulse, perhaps she would no longer be so faint beneath the sky.
"Let’s go in; you’ve forgotten your jacket,” said Ethan as he led her through the grass.
She giggled. “Oh, how silly of me.”
