Ten minutes later, they exited the tea shop with cups in hand. Deil ordered green tea with lime, and Sae stuck to his milk tea. Sae noticed that Deil never drank milk tea. One time Sae tried to talk the owner into adding a scoop of ice cream to his order. As he glanced to the side, he caught Deil looking at him with an expression that could only be described as horror.
“Did you give Emi the tickets yet?” Deil asked.
Sae shook his head while taking a sip. “Not yet. I don’t want to, at least not until the midterms. It’s useless to get her excited before exams.”
“That’s a good idea.” Deil agreed. “She tends to slip up more when her mood fluctuates.”
They were back at the topic of exams, a dangerous place to linger. Fortunately, Potato came trotting from the narrow path that led to the back garden. The dog stopped to sit down partly on Sae’s foot, his pink tongue wagging over his lower canine teeth.
“Doggo, why do you keep doing this? Distancing yourself from me?!” Deil squatted down to pet Potato’s head. “Hey, we were friends first!”
Sae wanted to say the same thing. How come this dog only stuck to him all the time?
“Did you roll around in a pool of sausages?” Deil asked while scratching the pup’s head.
Sae pulled the corner of his mouth to the side. “How is that possible?”
As if on cue, Potato started sniffing his pant leg.
“It is possible. When I was a kid, I fell into a field of catmint at my grandparents’ farm,” Deil said, “I was rather small and couldn’t get up, crawling around while crying. After my Grandpa pulled me out, the neighbourhood cats followed me all the way back to the house.”
Sae imagined that scene and found it rather humorous. “Potato is a dog, though,” he argued.
“Duh, that’s why I said sausages.” Deil straightened up and pulled out his phone, tapping and scrolling on its screen.
“What are you doing?” Sae asked with a sideways glance. He had qualms about Deil with his phone out ever since the day he got his picture taken with Potato sleeping on him.
“I’m looking up what scents dogs especially like.” Deil didn’t look up from the screen, so he couldn’t see Sae furrow his brows. “An article says the top scents liked by dogs are the following; vanilla, coconut, lavender… there’s the smell of each other too.” Deil squatted once again, leaning closer to Sae’s track pants.
“...” Sae became speechless. “Did you just sniff me?”
“You don’t smell like rabbits or ginger,” Deil said and looked up, “Since you aren’t Potato’s father, it can’t be the scent of a familiar human. I mean, you are familiar, but not to that extent.”
Sae stood there and thought, Why do I have to listen to this?
“Don’t look so done. I’m not the one who started it.” Deil pointed at Potato still sniffling at Sae.
Sae tucked his arm close to his chest before he let it drop beside him. He took a breath and shuffled back. “Potato, I have to go now. Please let me go...”
Deil watched this exchange unfold with amusement written all over his face. He pocketed his phone and spoke up, “Maybe that’s why he likes you. You’re so courteous and proper with him. Never heard anyone speak to a dog in this manner.”
“He is a prideful one!” The tea store owner followed them out of the shop. He looked down at his dog and whistled. “Baby, c’mere. Let the boys go.”
Potato ran to his dad and passed through the door held open for him. The owner turned to them. “Stinky kids, don’t loiter and try to ensnare my dog! If you’re not buying anything else, scram.”
“That’s an extremely particular ideology of commerce,” Sae muttered as they turned to leave.
Deil grinned at the shop owner who was looking at them with a fake suspicious expression. The man’s eyes narrowed, but it seemed nothing but an act.
“It’s a kind of hospitality. Anyway, simply doing my job is now considered slacking off as I’m required to babysit my juniors,” Sae’s mum grumbled into the phone squeezed between her shoulder and ear.
In the past weeks, Sae’s mother became wearier and wearier, stress and fatigue evident in the lines around her eyes. The restaurant wasn’t doing so well. A lot of the staff resigned, and fresh recruits weren’t apt at doing their job, giving headache after headache to Sae’s mum. Even the other manager had taken off. They all left the sinking ship before things got worse.
“No, I don’t think that’s necessary yet.” Sae’s mum noticed that Sae was back. She smiled at him and waved with a hand. “Sis, Sae’s home. We’ll talk later?”
Sae passed his mum sitting at the kitchen table and went to get a drink from the refrigerator. The milk tea had been a little too sweet, leaving him to feel more parched than anything. He had gulped down half a bottle of water by the time the phone call finished.
“Your aunt sends her greetings,” his mum told him, “She said your cousins want to see you.”
Sae sighed. “Mum, we’ve already talked about this. I won’t help them prepare for exams. We’re not even in the same year. Can’t she hire a tutor or something?”
I could recommend one, he thought.
His mum looked at him for a few minutes without saying anything. She pursed her lips, her silent gaze saying, You’re clearly capable, though.
“Tell her I’m busy. Game Day’s coming after the midterms. As you can see, I’m not even helping Emi nowadays. Don’t...” Sae put the bottle down before softening his tone. “Don’t let her order you around so much.”
Sae’s mum rested her forehead in her palm and let out a whoosh of air. “You’re right, you’re right. We’ve talked about it. I’ll think about what to tell my sister.”
“Tell her your son has enough on his plate. Tell her I said no. She can call me if she wants. I’ll repeat the same thing to her.”
“Okay.” His mum nodded. “Have you eaten?”
“Not yet.” Sae checked the time. “Do you want to go out?”
His mum shook her head. “I’m too tired.”
“Let’s order something!” Sae pulled his phone from his pocket and went to search for a place close by. “Take a nap. I’ll call you when it’s here.”
“No, no,” his mum objected. “I barely see you as it is.”
“You don’t have to go back tonight?” Sae asked. “Come on. I’ll sit with you.”
They moved to the sofa in the living room. The glowing sun of dusk came through the glass doors and cast the walls in different shades of yellow. Sae’s mum ran her fingers through his fringe, asking, “Sweetheart, why are you so sweaty? Weren’t you in the library?”
“I went for a run. It’s so hot outside.” Sae concentrated on his phone. He showed his mum a store on his phone, scrolling through its menu. “Here. Will this be good?”
His mum took over the phone and looked at the screen without blinking. A few strands of hair fell over her forehead and brows. After a minute, she nodded. “Good. But next time, don’t run around all sweaty, or you’ll catch a cold. It may be warm during the day, but in the evening it gets cold in a matter of minutes.”
Sae obediently agreed, “Yes, yes. Mum…” He cleared his throat, looking into his mother’s eyes. “I’m not sure if I can ask.”
His mum took a pillow into her lap and hugged it. “Ask.”
“About your job… Is it too––”
His mum didn’t let him finish. “Things are just a little inconvenient at the moment. You don’t have to mind that.” She smiled at him.
Sae liked her smile the best, but this time it seemed off. He glanced away before his mum saw him notice the difference.
“At least I don’t have to worry about you,” his mum said and leaned back. “How is your revision going? You’re particularly thorough with studying this time. Don’t think I didn’t notice.” She poked Sae’s arm. “Do you have difficulty with a subject?”
Finishing their dinner order, Sae put his phone down and shrugged. “It’s manageable. Am I that particular?”
His mum thought about it. “Compared to before? Yes. Compared to others? I don’t think so. Maybe I’m too used to your way of studying, but if you say there’s no problem...”
Sae shook his head with a smile. They chatted until the food arrived, then ate dinner together. His mum told him she had to work a few night shifts the following week. She wasn’t sure exactly when she would make it back home.
Sae’s mum always minded exam weeks with a special nerve, trying to accommodate it the best she could. She wanted to take care of Sae, taking off time from work if needed, staying home and sending him off in the mornings. In her opinion, it was a time inadmissible of unnecessary confusion.
Now she warned Sae not to let this unfortunate hindrance affect him. She tried to reassure him that he could call her anytime. She would try to make this conversion the smoothest and not disturb him further.
At night, Sae lay in his bed, checking his phone before he slept. He had been revising not long ago, so his brain was still awake. He could never sleep with a mind so alert – formulas and dates whizzing in it left and right. The best choice was to divert his attention with something easy and boring.
His mum went to sleep right after dinner. Since then, there wasn’t the slightest noise coming from her room. Moon and lamplight shone in from the balcony, and the house became tranquil.
Sae read a few messages and thumbed through his gallery folder. His finger stopped at a picture, tapping on it. It filled the screen, its colours reflected in his glasses. In it, he was sitting in that awfully short folding chair with Potato sleeping on his leg.
Sae looked at his expression in the photo for a while. He never realised but… Was that what he usually looked like? He adjusted his glasses, pondering.
Thinking back on that afternoon, his mind involuntarily wandered to Shum Deil.
Maybe if Sae were half as confident in himself as Deil was, he’d laugh at what he had been doing for the past weeks. Studying and revising so hard, even his mum noticed something was different.
That feeling of teetering at the edge of a slippery slope came from the uncertainty he felt around a certain someone.
Hold it.
That wasn’t necessarily true.
After all, simply encountering a more unorthodox, lax type of studying – coming from someone who practically lived his days bragging – should not motivate him to this extent, right?
Was it Deil’s capability in the face of his laziness that infuriated him, or was that envy? A hidden kind of rivalry or…worry.
Was he overcompensating?
But that didn’t make any sense. Even if Sae reassured himself with more work put into studying, that was solely on him. It couldn’t affect anybody besides him, so what difference did it make?
At the end of the day, who knew about it?
His mum had noticed, but she was the closest to him. She cared the most about him. But other than her, no one else did.
So silently and covertly, Sae decided he could only be doing it for himself.
On the last day before exams, Sae was held back from going home. Teo, Kaikai, and a few other classmates invited him to join their gathering at the last desk closest to the windows.
The humanities classroom was located next to a flat-roofed annexe with a ledge connecting the two buildings. The room’s windows faced that roof, and warm sunshine cascaded over the wide windowsills. After the start of the semester, students started to store different things outside according to the seasons.
Currently, the boys crowded around a tray they had pulled in from the heated ledge.
“Finally, it has ripened,” Teo said, pinching a small ball between two of his fingers. He signalled to the others to pick from the tray.
“A toast,” one of the boys drawled, “To revere this ceremonial!”
A few of the classmates snickered.
They all looked at each other. Teo had the biggest mouth; Kaikai was the most adept in socialising, while Yidan was the class president. And yet, after a few moments, several pairs of eyes turned to Sae.
“Huh? Why me?” Sae mumbled under his breath. He glanced at Teo, “Isn’t it enough that I’m here?”
Teo’s mouth barely moved as he whispered back, “You are the god of studies here, don’t look at me.”
“...”
Kaikai tapped him with an elbow. “Just say something simple.”
Sae thought, Can I say that this is bullshit?
“Okay...” He cleared his throat. “Let’s eat this and go home.”
“Eyy, that’s no fun. Let me try.” Teo took over. “Let these gooseberries bring us good fortune! To a harvest of grades as spectacular as these berries!”
“Dude, when we harvested, these were still inedible,” a classmate interjected.
Teo gave that boy a look. “You just had to say that, right? Screw off if you can’t appreciate this moment. Don’t think I won’t push every berry down your throat to make you shut up.”
Light laughter followed, their rowdiness barely veiled.
On a serious note, could anyone really appreciate something like this? These berries were looted from the school’s greenhouse between classes – too sour and hard at the time – then left out on the rooftop for two weeks to ripen.
Sae couldn’t understand their mindset. Why jinx themselves by connecting this kind of goods with their potential grades?
“It’s not so bad, though,” Kaikai spoke up. “When we sneaked out to pick these berries, they were still unripe. Like leaving them out to bask in the sun, we can cultivate knowledge and collect good results after the tests.” He touched his berry with Sae’s like they were clinking glasses. “Let us encounter a sweet taste!”
“Let us encounter a sweet taste!” the boys echoed before popping the berries into their mouths.
“Fuck, it’s still sour!” Yidan yelled.
Everyone burst into howling laughter. Sae chuckled while washing his gooseberry with a splash of water from his bottle, then cautiously bit into the fruit. It was somewhat sour, somewhat sweet.
All the while Kaikai had said his piece, Sae wanted to inform him that judging by their colour alone, these gooseberries were probably still sour, thus unsuitable for that particular figure of speech. Now he admitted, “You still haven’t lost your touch with bullshitting.”
Kaikai smiled with a little shake of his head. “Let them think they’re blessed by something.”
“If they all studied, they wouldn’t need luck,” Sae mumbled. “Do they know they are only fooling themselves?”
“Hey!” Kaikai objected. “I studied, but I need luck, too. Okay? It’s only the midterms, so let them have fun with their luck.”
“But to think even the class president is in it...”
“Why?” Kaikai glanced sideways at Sae. “Do you want to take his place?”
“Jesus, no.” Goosebumps ran through Sae at the mere thought of it. “Don’t even joke with something like that.”
The classmates were still jumping around like dazed monkeys, stuffing sour berries into each other’s faces.
“Eat one more. You need all the luck!” Teo told one of their classmates.
Sae crossed his arms, leaning back as he chatted with Kaikai while waiting for the intoxicated dumbasses to finish. “Your Mum and Dad... Are they still on your heels?”
The smile on Kaikai’s face didn’t lessen, but his eyes became a bit dull at the mention of his parents. “They’re perfecting their over-managing skills and call it parenting. No one asks for my input.”
“Oh.” Sae hesitated. “…I thought the English competition helped.”
Kaikai let out a harsh note of ha. “It did until it lasted. Now it’s the midterms. Next, it’ll be the regionals for the essay writing competition. If that goes well, nationals will follow. After that, it’s the finals of the first year. There’s always a next step.”
Sae wanted to kick himself for asking. He patted Kaikai’s arm. “Try not to mind it too much. You’ve been hearing this for years; you’ve become a pro at tuning it out if needed.”
“Mnm,” the boy agreed.
“But if you want to…” Sae looked out the window. “We could chat some more.”
Kaikai turned to Sae with a smile. He didn’t say anything for a while, just stared at him. Sae felt Kai’s gaze but was too embarrassed to meet his eyes.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Kaikai said at last. “Just bear with me if I suddenly rant about stupid shit without warning.”
“Okay,” the corners of Sae’s mouth lifted as well. “When you go crazy, check with Teo first, so you two can match. I’ll pretend not to know you from some faraway corner while secretly cheering you on.”
“Oh, shut up.” Kaikai shoved him away. “Do you still plan to cram this weekend?”
“No.” Sae’s reply was decisive. “I’ll only do reading or solve some test papers. I’m done with last-minute cramming.”
“Good for you. I still have lessons throughout the two days.”
“Can I do something?”
Kaikai laughed, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Abduct me until it’s time for the exams.”
April 18, the first day of the midterms.
The temperature didn’t drop over the weekend but the humidity in the air had doubled, pressing down and making it seem more unbearable than it actually was. The difference between the temperature during the day and night kept on growing.
Today, Deil completed three of his exams. For him, exams weren’t any different from doing practice papers. They were uninteresting as long as they didn’t bring the slightest challenge. With a mind like that, Deil could’ve easily skipped grades and gone to a university affiliated or advanced high school. The problem was that he didn’t have a speck of ambition.
Deil didn’t work hard; he didn’t strain himself in any sense of the word. All was fine as long as it was comfortable. He didn’t care, so school never got bothersome.
Others compared and checked answers together to know where they stood on the scale of safe to absolutely-screwed. As soon as school let out they hurried back home to revise for the next day. Meanwhile, Deil’s biggest problem was to decide where and what he wanted to eat, truly an aim worthy of a student unbound by life’s sour constraints.
But being untouched by the problems his classmates faced didn’t mean he could completely ignore them. While Deil contemplated, he got a phone call from Little Mo.
He answered the call, “Mn, what is it?”
The line wasn’t the best, but Little Mo’s voice came out excited. “Where are you?”
“Still in school,” Deil said, “Why?”
“Your day’s over, right? I tried to call at a good time.”
Deil was humoured. “Since when did you care about calling at a good time? Who woke me in the middle of the night saying you need help defeating a BOSS, so I should log on and help provide you with essential stones.”
“That was a one-time thing...”
“You crashed my moped while I was in school. I almost ran out of the principal’s office to get to you.”
“That wasn’t my fault, though...” Little Mo turned timid. “Have you eaten? If not, my granny will make dinner. Like, a lot. She told me to invite a friend.”
“So? Invite one,” Deil replied, unconcerned. He wasn’t in the mood to play into Little Mo’s hand.
There was a short break of absolute silence, then Little Mo said, “...I’m currently doing that. Can you come?”
“To eat dinner with you and your granny?” Deil asked as he left his classroom. “Then head home?”
“If… If you have some time, could you show me how to solve these practice papers?” Little Mo hastily added, “We’re having exams later this week.”
“No shit, I’m having exams right now,” Deil said.
“What?!” Perhaps Little Mo knocked himself dumb from the shock. The line cracked before he came back. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Are you my parent? Why would I tell you anything about my tests?” Deil tsk’d. “I hope your granny really did tell you to invite someone over because I’m famished.” Unlike his unassuming words, he had already turned in the direction of Little Mo’s house. More parents came to claim their kids during exam week, so fewer students waited at the bus stop. Deil arrived just in time to board the oncoming bus.
Little Mo’s tone brightened. “You’re really coming? Don’t you have to study?”
“…”
“My bad, forget I said anything.” Little Mo let out a sigh. “My brother threatened me, saying he won’t bring me along on the trip if I flunk the exams.”
The bus heading to the neighbourhood departed with Deil on it. He chose a seat next to the windows and asked, “The one out of the country?”
Little Mo hummed in agreement. He had been chit-chatting about that trip for weeks now. “Okay. So when will you be here? I’ll go down to the bus stop and wait for you. Can you stay a bit after dinner as well?”
“I can. I’m already on the bus. It won’t take long. I’m hanging up now to message my dad.” Deil opened the window beside him. “Buy me a drink if you’re dead set on waiting for me. It’s too hot outside.”
“Ok, ok. See you in a bit then,” Little Mo said. There was the sound of his slippers slapping on the stairs as he left the house.
“Mnm,” Deil answered with a chuckle.
