4 months

The Light

Lil:
"So, are you guys eating at the cafeteria?" Gig asked, stating the obvious.
"Duh" Vil replied.
"Okay, cool. Want me to recommend some food?" Gig asked, gesturing to the dozens of food-stalls, each one with different varieties of food.
I look at Vil, who is also unsure what to eat. Vil cannot eat seafood.
"Okay, know any stall that is nice, but do not sell seafood?"
He smirk and look at the stall behind us, "Stall 8. See that stall with the couple in dark blue? They sell the best Japanese cuisine. I love their curry cutlet rice, as you know Americans don't really eat spice. But I saw those videos of people eating curry and it look so delicious! I tried to ask my chef to cook them, but the curry is always too spicy or not delicious. So when I tried their food, I was shocked by how amazing their curry taste like! I offer them to work as my personal chef, but they refused it." He end off with a sigh.
"Thanks."
Was all that comes out. I wanted to tell him I knew how to cook, and I knew how to make Japanese curry. Back in Singapore, when my parents worked till the evening or night. I am responsible to make food, though we can choose to eat outside, we refused, as it is not as healthy. It was when I went to the Fairprice to buy some ingredients when I saw a Japanese curry paste from a Japan company. It's imported. Ever since then, once a week we will eat Japanese curry for the entire day. It is more than cutlet, you can accompany it with. Somedays, we will eat with salmon, somedays we just want some slack, and made curry udon instead. Thinking at those old days make me smile. I snap back to who I am now, Lila Dawn, daughter of Kelly Tay and David Homer Dawn. Dawn that surname pricks me.
"Vil, there's a stall that sells Japanese curry chicken cutlet rice. You want?" I asked, inverted my attention to my sis. Gig beside me, shifted. Eyes on me again.
"Ya! I want! Where?" She asked, the person she wants to appear is gone. Broken to Gig. Now, he knows who she really is like, a kind, innocent, over paranoid, caring and loves to eat sister.
His eyebrows went like high mountains for a brief moment, before resting it to a hill.
"Stall 8. The cp with dark blue shirt."
She ran towards the couple, like she has not eaten for the past few days. Technically we did, but it's either fast food or restaurant. Basically, the basic American meals. They are making me sick and tired. I thought of the days where I beg my dad to bring us to those western restaurant, and not the usual food court, where it is crowded and filled with oily food such as, Nasi Lemak and Chicken rice.
"Lil, I wanna talk to you about something...sorry fo-"
Before he finish, the light suddenly went out.
The cafeteria filled with shouts and screams.
I thought of the day when I was going to the bathroom, and the lights turned off. The day where the laughter consumed me. The day when I know, where I belonged, in the light. Not here. Not in the dark.
I stay low, hands shivering.
Gig beside me cursed something low. I cannot help but let my mind run wild.
Did he plan this? To revenge me? To teach me a lesson? To tell me I cannot reject him? Is it going as he wish? Or does he want to be a heroin, and trick me to fall in love with him?
All those assumptions and thoughts filled, until he says something to me.
"Lil! Are you okay?" He bend down beside me.
He must have hear my heavy and unusual breathings.
I did not respond.
He took out his phone, and press on the 'torch' function. It lit up. The world starts to light up. It is not dark anymore. I slowly looked up, from my folded arms around my knee. It is comforting, though it is only the area around me. That small area, part of me that is being shone on. Being exposed to light.
"Lil." He says, smoothing me, with his hands at my back, up and down gently. Like a baby. Like how my mother would, when I was feeling unwell. I have not receive this touch since I was 10. It was the time when I start to fall distant. Not really distant, but it is the age where I start to see things. When I start to mature a bit, the age where I realised I do not want to be a baby and, just cry or kiss them, cause I knew that they are not on good terms. It started. The day when it all falls into place. They call it a spark. A spark to just light and burn down everything, into ash.
Ash. That word sound so, harmless. It is just solid remains of fire. When I was 8, the first time I was exposed to the word ash, I thought it was because the fire did not like a certain thing, so it turn it to ash, like the big Oak tree below the HDB Flat (Housing Development Board), at the garden. I used to look at it. Talk to it, like it was my dear friend. I remembered how much, I treat the nature as my friend. How the wind would carry me information from people, or even the whispers, of the thunder granny and lightening grandpa fighting again, causing a downpour. How the trees would be my prince in shining armour. Always sheltering me away from any damage, from the sun, rain or blows from the wind. How the stars at night would talk to me. Every wink a meaning. Unique and different. Now, though as naive I may no longer be. Or maybe I still am, but now different from my young self. Naive yet, broken. Somedays, I would look at the raindrops on the window in front of my study table, and talk to them, as though they would understand. It feels better actually, than to talk to no one. Those are thoughts, troubles that I can speak to no one of. Not my best friend in Singapore, not Vil, not mum, not even to Lila, but to Star, and Star alone.
Star. I scoffed. Surprisingly I still remembered that nickname from mum and dad, when I was young.
You are our Xīng, that is what they would call me in Chinese, our Star. I was their priority, as the first child. It is always like that. I picked up things fast. Making them proud. I was also loved by my cousins and aunts, uncles, who are way older than me. A child, the first child, who knows how to make parents pamper and love her. I was blessed, and thus their Star.
It has been years since they call me that, ever since Vil was born, the nickname stop, as soon as the pamper did. They found someone new. Like children who found a new toy. Abandon and pamper. It is not something new.

I guess it took me too long to respond him. Or I did not respond him at all. Busy...recalling. He knee in front of me, to see me straight in the eye. It was suppose to be just that, but a second later, I do not know if it is his knees that gave out, or he just did it on purpose but, he was on me. Like on me, we are lying on the floor, or fallen down, with him on top of my body. His head a few inches above mine, his breath heavy on my forehead. His lips brush softly on it a few seconds. They feel unintentional, too soft, too light of a stroke for him to realise. Then the lights came back. Just like that. Everyone is still panicking, we are on the ground, no one notice us I guess. Then Gig just left. Without a word, a gesture to bring me to my feet, or... a note. Nothing. I felt shocked, puzzled, sadness then anger.
It took me a few seconds for me to believe that I actually want Gig to do something. A word, a gesture or a note. Anything.
I thought he likes me. I thought he wants me.
Was all that I thought of.