Somewhere Else

Chapter 2: Bump in the Road (iii)

Tatiana's visit provides a pleasant break in the monotony that my days have settled into. I am getting more restless as the days pass, even though I try to hide it from Aksel. He's busy with work now and I don't want him to worry needlessly. It's not that I dislike life in Helsinki, but now that the novelty, the sense of adventure, has worn off, I'm starting to feel the strain – the strain of all the little differences that, when separate, don't seem like much. But when they all start to pile up like this...

I feel displaced and restless.

I feel like there is an itch inside of my heart that can never be appeased. And it's making me more uncomfortable by the day.

"How's it going?" Tatiana asks me, taking a sip of her coffee. We're sitting in a café in the city area. It's a café that she likes to come to whenever she's in Helsinki, she says, even though I've never heard of it before this. "How's life going for you over here?"

"I..." I'm not quite sure what to say. How is life going? Probably not that well. But it's her country too; I can't tell her that. I end up shrugging and gesturing vaguely, "It's going fine, I guess."

Tatiana is looking at me with a slight crease in her brow. "Are you sure?" she asks in a soft voice. "You look..."

"What?" I prompt, when she leaves her sentence hanging. "I look bad?" I try to laugh, to turn it into a joke. But Tatiana is looking at me seriously.

"Not bad," she says. "Just a little sad."

Her words send a jolt to my chest. I curve my lips into a smile, waving it off. "Don't be silly. I'm not sad."

"You know you can always come to me if you need someone to talk to," she tells me. "Day or night, it doesn't matter."

I feel tears prick my eyes. I get sentimental over the smallest things lately. But it's been a while since I've felt like I have a friend to go to. I still text my friends from back home, of course, but it's getting increasingly obvious from their messages that I'm outside of the loop now. They talk about events and incidents that I don't know about. It's getting harder and harder to join in the conversation. "Yeah," I murmur, looking down because I don't want her to see my expression. "I know."

She sips her coffee silently for a while, and I follow suit, inwardly crinkling up my nose at the bitterness. The Finns are genuinely crazy about their coffee. Germans drink a lot of coffee, too, but not as much as Finns.

Personally, I've always preferred tea.

"What do you think of Finland?" Tatiana asks then, the one question I've come to expect. That, along with the usual, where are you from, China?

I've worked out a default response to this question. As I rattle off the attractions I've been to, and how beautiful Helsinki is in general, I see Tatiana laugh at me.

"No, really," she says. "Don't worry, I won't hate you if you hate Finland. I mean,we get close to no sun in the winter. And it's damned cold – although Helsinki is so much to the South that it's definitely warmer here. But it must be colder than what you're used to."

I blink at her. Her candidness has shocked me.

She rolls her eyes, "Oh, come on. We've been friends for two years. Do you think I wouldn't be able to see through your rehearsed spiel?"

It takes me a minute for me to remember what the word spiel means in English. All this switching of languages messes me up sometimes.

"I don't hate Finland," I tell her. I don't want her to think that. I really don't. "But... well, things are so much different here. I do like Helsinki, though. It's a nice city."