Prose by Brandon Lo

Edited by Manelle Aruta

I.

She watched out the window as her plane dipped beneath the clouds, the empty blue expanse stretching starward replaced by hazy pyrite skies, and far below, the peninsula city with twin bridges and the monolithic white fireman’s nozzle on a wooded hill. Waves of fog rolled in from the coastline, blanketing tiny houses and apartments in shapelessness. In one corner of the city, angular skyscrapers towered and flickered with shiny logos, their omnidirectional electronic billboards an ever-present reminder of encroaching capitalism. 

It was strange, to say the least. Six years and this was the first summer she had returned from the East Coast, the first summer where she was too burnt out to snag a local part-time job or commute for a metropolis internship. From up high, she tried to pick out individual houses, using her favorite parks and the high school campuses she could recognize as landmarks to approximate where her friends all used to live. If she focused enough, she might find one.

A hand landed on her shoulder and the woman froze up, the blood receding from her fingertips into icy numbness. She was well aware she was gripping the armrest with bone-white knuckles, but her hands refused her commands. Her chest seemed to constrict on itself as her fight or flight instinct surged, burning brilliant like Helios in the sunspots across her vision, wanting nothing more in the world than to get away from the vice grip enclosing around her—

“Ma’am.” A burst of clarity—and then, channeling Herculean will, she forced herself to face the voice slowly. It was the flight attendant. “We’ll be landing shortly so for your own safety, please fasten your seatbelt and stow away any loose items you have in your bag.” 

Her face flushed with heat and she was glad to be wearing a mask, to avoid staining her identity in front of someone she might never meet again. Embarrassed, she shoved her paperback and notepad into her purse, too flustered to worry about the corners, and dramatically pushed it under the forward seat, as though she had intended to all along. The attendant, now satisfied, headed down the cabin into first class to deliver the same script for the other passengers. 

The woman’s head hung low in shame and she softly pounded the padded armrest with a curled fist, hoping that once she got home, she could put this whole hated ordeal behind her. Perhaps hate was too strong a word, but she had no other way to express what he had done.

II.

“That’s just how it is,” chided her mother as she cleaved down with machine-gun fury on a pile of carrots, her knife reducing them to tiny cubes. “Friends come and go. Sometimes you’re only a means to an end. Sometimes they stop caring. Xiaoli, you must be careful with that.”

“I know,” she responded half-heartedly, knowing her mother would’ve swung the conversation into a soapbox stand sooner or later. Between the whacks of the blade against the wooden cutting board, Xiaoli had told an altered story, only commenting in passing that she and one of her old high school classmates on the East Coast no longer saw eye to eye. There was no mention of the one bedroom loft, the hazy summers of melted ice cream and chastity, or the shadow that replaced her shadow; in six years of sparse WeChat correspondence, it may as well have never existed. She saw now there was no point in telling the truth anyways. 

“Are you still meeting up with that other one?” her mother asked, her tone intrusive.

“Which other one?” 

“You know who I mean, don’t get smart with me! That one you used to rattle on about in high school. What is he doing now?”

“Engineering. Down south,” Xiaoli said, not missing a beat. 

Her mother clicked her tongue. “Better than nothing. Shame he didn’t go into medicine with you.”

“He wouldn’t have survived,” she mumbled back under her breath. Then, with more conviction and volume, she leapt to his defense. “He’s already working at a company, though. They pay him close to six figures. And he gets a lot of benefits.”

“Aiya, six figures means nothing in this city,” her mother grumbled, and crossed to the stove to remove the lid over a big boiling pot of soup. The aroma of chicken and cabbage spilled into the kitchen, and Xiaoli’s mouth watered at the prospect of a home-cooked meal after failing to live up to her mother’s recipes since she left for college. “Either way, you bring him home so me and your aunties can meet him, okay la?” she said, sliding the diced carrots into the soup.

“Ma, can we not be evaluating every person I interact with?” 

“Well, I won’t have my daughter marrying a man I’ve never met.”

“How about we not talk about marriage? I’m not going to marry any man just because you like him,” Xiaoli retorted. She recalled a conversation much like this one before she went east, and how ironic her words were now, having come so foolishly close to trapping herself in a fermenting relationship. In fact, her mother had approved of her ex-boyfriend because he was raised traditionally, but neither she nor Xiaoli saw the warning signs of possessiveness when things were still as friends—and to her mother, that was all they ever were. Friends.

Amber sunlight peeked in through the window above the sink, painting the walls orange. The soup pot began to simmer and a new flame came alive under the wok. Her mother squinted at the clock timer on the stove and frowned. “Aren’t you leaving soon?”

Xiaoli could not help but think that she had just gotten home. Why was she leaving already? She watched silently as the shadows crept over the counter.

III.

Half an hour before sundown and another two before twilight, after the sun had skirted below the I-80 overpass and no longer blinded the homebound drivers packed in traffic like rows of sardines, Xiaoli stepped out the door into the approaching eventide with her jacket and purse. 

“Do you have everything?” shouted her mother over the whir of the kitchen vent. 

“Of course I do,” she snapped, adjusting her heels over her feet. “I’m not a child, Ma.”

“Just be careful!” Oil crackled like fireworks in the wok, and her mother lost interest for a moment. “Okay, see you soon. If you still need dinner, I’ll wrap it in the fridge.” A pause. “You should go or you’ll miss the bus! No man is going to want to marry you if you’re always late.”

Xiaoli scoffed to herself, electing not to respond. Instead, she rummaged for the second, unused pair of keys at the bottom of her bag, and fished out a keychain with a worn-down teddy bear charm. Metal jingled against metal as the iciness burned her fingertips, and while muscle memory used to handle locking up the house, she had to actively search for the correct keys. As she inserted each one, the teddy bear bobbed against her palm. Its matted fur briefly echoed a memory of a lifetime long past, when her after-school study group had gone shopping together at the mall, and on a whim, she had bought the charm. 

She wondered if they too still thought about shopping dates and now struggled with keys that had once been second nature. 

Then Xiaoli thought about the guy she was going to meet, and how he wasn’t a ‘guy’ anymore, but a man. She remembered him in AP Physics, fiddling with scraps of copper wire, and this one time he repeatedly shocked himself with the Van de Graaf generator, all the while wearing a half-quizzical, half-flamboyant eyebrow tilt over his puzzled features. Imagining him stuffed in a suit and tie at a studious, high-end engineering firm gave her second-hand embarrassment. But then again, she had no idea what he looked like now; over text, he was reduced to a thousand pixel profile icon over three emboldened letters: KEN.

A hollow laugh slipped through her pursed lips. Focusing on the road helped stave it off.

Thankfully, six years of driving in an East Coast suburb hadn’t eroded the memory in her legs, and she found herself retreading the same unevenly paved sidewalk to the bus stop. Nostalgic sounds rang in her ears: an ambulance screeched around the corner, banking a left turn so hard its tires burned the road; and pigeons cooed on power lines as they occasionally dropped biohazard warheads of white excrement onto any unlucky loiterers. Xiaoli inhaled through her mask, tasting the tinge of exhaust fumes, and smiled in secret. She remembered the city through innocent eyes, but even with the innocence pulled away, nothing had changed. The bustle, the pollution, the scent of sauces and vegetables tossed in her mother’s all-purpose universal wok—everything that made home home. 

Xiaoli arrived at the bus stop she waited at a thousand times in high school just as the bus crossed the intersection towards her. It pulled to a halt, purring with its electric engine; she remembered the old diesel ones and the horrible smog they left in their wake. 

“38–Geary–now servicing–Downtown–to–Land’s End,” blared the robotic announcer, pausing as each phrase was procedurally strung together with no regard to rhythm, like a novice speaking a new language. She hopped aboard the bus and paid the fare, locating a window seat in the middle. The 38 was uncharacteristically empty, for a main line.

In the front, an elderly couple dozed on each other with their grocery bags nestled on their laps; by the rear door, another person slept with a black jacket draped over their head; and at the far back were three girls shoulder to shoulder. This trio of girls talked fast, their hands and feet shuffling every so often, and they kept their words brief, so Xiaoli couldn’t hear much of what they were saying. One of them, she noticed, wore familiar red-grey colors plastered over a standard-issue thirty dollar hoodie. Washington High, the dusty glass-paned fortress that surveyed a quarter of the city, brought back warm memories. It was ironic that most of her warm memories starred Ken, who she fought alongside through AP classes and college applications, and not the man she ended up loving, who she only met in her second year of university. 

Before she realized it, the 38 had idled at the next stop. The old lady with her groceries at the front nudged her sleepy husband, and together the two hobbled off. Xiaoli watched them leave with a strange awe, glimpsing for a second an alternate future in which her relationship hadn’t soured, and then, a timeline where she had the strength to leave sooner. 

She continued on the bus route, resisting the urge to peer over her shoulder at every stop with measured breath and tensed muscles, as she had adapted to ever since she escaped. It was safe here, she thought. But in any case, by self-doubt or sheer habit, she pressed herself into the corner of the seat, as if the glossy plastic walls could protect her forever. 

IV.

Xiaoli disembarked at the Mediterranean cafe she and Ken had decided on with renewed excitement. Although she had anticipated this moment ever since Ken suggested they meet up for dinner at their old spot, it didn’t feel real. She stood statuelike in front of the cafe, still gathering her thoughts, when a man’s voice called out from behind. 

“Funny meeting you out here.”

She spun around on instinct, her purse whipping in an arc as it connected with the person behind her, doubling him over in pain. At first, she didn’t recognize him. He wore a charcoal topcoat with a dark cherry scarf, both of which drowned a white dress shirt underneath. However, past the powder-blue facemask, she saw the signature furrow in his eyebrow as he rose to his feet. 

“Ken,” she said, half asking, and her blood pounding like kerosene.

“Owww,” he groaned back. 

“Ugh! You idiot! Don’t scare me like that!”  

Ken wobbled a little as he stood there. “I’m alright…thanks for asking. Didn’t expect you to be out here waiting. Thought you would’ve…you know, gone inside? It’s cold out here.”

“I–sorry. Sorry about that,” Xiaoli corrected herself. “Are you okay? I didn’t recognize you at first, it’s just that you got tall, and your hair is different, and you look, uh, overdressed.” The words tumbled out at lightspeed.

“Hey, I didn’t recognize you either. Not until you said something, at least. Wouldn’t have killed you to ease up on that swing though.”

“Sorry, I don’t know why I swung so hard,” she lied quickly. “You just startled me is all. I mean, you barely look like how I remember you. When I asked you to dress nicely, I thought you’d do slacks and a tie. I honestly didn’t even know you owned a scarf.”

He looked down at his outfit. “Well, I dressed for the weather. You look really nice too. And–don’t take this the wrong way, but why’re you wearing a skirt?”

“Sixty-four degrees is kinda warm for a coat, don’t ya think?” She couldn’t help but grin beneath her mask. “You look like you’re gonna go skating at Rockefeller Center.”

“Well, where I live now, that’s chilly. And just so you know, there’s no colder winter than a summer in San Francisco,” Ken declared, his brow twitching with that same old habit. Xiaoli liked that. “Should we go in now? We look like two idiots out here. And I’m kind of hungry.”

“I’ll say you’re the only idiot out here.”

He held the door open—as he always had—and the pair crossed into the cozy ambiance. But without a moment’s hesitation, he took the lead from behind her, blitzing to the counter like lightning. The line was empty. Xiaoli blinked, slowing down. 

“I’ll get the beef skewers and a salad,” Ken was saying to the cashier. “And one chicken rice bowl with extra tzatziki.” He winked back. “That’s your order, right?”

Xiaoli laughed, and her heart rejoiced. For the first time since she had been back in San Francisco, she was laughing—for real. She sucked in her breath as she tried fruitlessly to contain herself. “Yes…yes that is..!”

“Right! Then that’ll be all for us,” Ken told the cashier. As the two of them stepped to the waiting line, he crossed his arms. “So! You still keeping up with Arondight of the Stars?”

Now that baffled her. The niche manga series hadn’t had an update in five years. She barely remembered it existed, although the memories quickly tumbled back: the tears she shed over beloved fictional characters in her room at night, the tucked-away convention booths, the rarity of the merchandise, the signed volumes—and the time she dragged Ken into a Barnes and Noble to read with her. She didn’t know if he committed to reading the series or what ‘up to date’ even meant for a five-year hiatus, but it didn’t matter so much. 

“I can’t believe you remember.” Xiaoli let it slip out as a whisper, as if the thought were too private for the world to know. I can’t believe you still care, she left unsaid. 

“Well, I remember your mom threw out your first-edition volume. Pretty upsetting, if you ask me,” Ken said, crossing his arms. The memory stung Xiaoli as she recalled it. Her thoughts grew retaliatory, snowballing through forgotten moments: first her mother, scoffing at her daughter’s tears over people that never existed, though they spoke to Xiaoli’s heart better than any person and maybe that was what her mother resented—then her ex, insulting the series for pandering demographics and convoluted writing, a combination of product and consumer he labeled disgustingly as ‘made for each other.’ He had laid his hand on her shoulder as he said this, as if to reassure his own rightness, and in the moment, she found herself agreeing with him. 

How had she allowed them to make her feel ashamed of herself? She knew why she couldn’t defy her mother, in the same fundamental way she wouldn’t have dared to defy her ex for years. Day after day, they suffocated her a little heavier, and incrementally she normalized the squeeze. She probably normalized the helplessness too. But Ken rejected their scorn veiled with love. He celebrated her for her. Maybe that would be enough. 

“Um, I know this is weird to ask suddenly, but do you mind if we eat elsewhere?” There was no turning back—not on a gamble of trust. “I want to go somewhere private. And talk.”

“Should we go back to your house?”

“Oh, God no,” Xiaoli said immediately. “Privacy doesn’t exist in my mother’s house, boy or no boy. Maybe…I want to go to the park.” The cafe’s atmosphere seemed to pulse around her.

Ken contemplated it for a few seconds—an eternity’s worth. “Alright, sure. Let’s do it. If you feel that way, who am I to stop you?”

“I–I didn’t expect you to say yes. But thank you. I’m sorry if it’s sudden—”

“Don’t worry about it. Honest. Let’s get our food and get going.”

So he accepted without question. She had no idea what that meant, but she didn’t want to kill whatever momentum had arisen inside of her, even as her senses blasted on overdrive. Even through the mask, she clung to the swirling aromas of smoky barbecue and rich soup broth, undercut by the occasional whiff of propane or booze. Whenever Ken’s hand or arm brushed hers, she would inhale sharply, in the same innocent way she did years ago. They eked out small talk over her final years of medical school and his future prospects at the startup, but for the most part, walked in silence. All said, Xiaoli didn’t need the moment to be ruined by words.

It wasn’t until they reached the foliage, glowing maple-gold from the sun dying over the horizon, that Ken finally spoke. “So, what’s the problem?” He said this with a hint of exhaustion, in the way a parent might hold a disapproving tone.

“I’ve not been entirely honest with you.”

“Does this have to do with your relationship?”

“I–how did you know?”

Ken’s eyebrows were knotted together. “You know, I’m not an idiot. It doesn’t take a lot of guesswork or observation to figure out something was going on, even if we don’t talk often. I’ve had my suspicions for a while now. And besides, I know you.”

The words wouldn’t come out. If he knew all along, why didn’t he say something? Or do something? But then, Xiaoli thought, he only sees one side of the story—as an outside observer. 

“If you don’t mind my rudeness,” Ken continued, “were you unhappy?”

The question had a simple answer and she knew it with all her heart. But like clockwork, the grip around her shoulder tightened, and now she remembered his invasiveness with ugly clarity—how could she forget?—the smug grin and the nauseating leather jacket and the way he pressed his thumb against her collarbone when his arm was around her, a gesture she always thought was to remind her that he was the one in control, that he could break her if he wanted to. Xiaoli felt sick and even though she had physically escaped, she still couldn’t defeat the chokehold he held over her. How long would she go in circles?

“This was a mistake,” she muttered, her knees wobbling. Her mind was raw with frustration. Rage was easy, and self-destruction was even easier. Her hate had direction, but her healing did not. She wanted to function normally again, to wipe the slate clean, and she wanted to be free of this stupid, stupid problem that he ingrained in her, that she just couldn’t get over for some goddamn reason. If she was going to be weak now, then what was the fucking point? 

“Xiaoli! Are you okay?”

She hadn’t realized it, but she was hunched over on the ground now. Her bare knees burned angrily against the gravel path, and her hands twisted in pain at the slightest movement. The front of the nice skirt she picked out earlier was caked in dirt. Ken’s hand supported her by the sides, and his face was inches away from hers. “That was a pretty nasty fall,” he said.

Xiaoli felt the urge to cry, but held the tears in. She didn’t want to be seen like this, for him or anyone else to know about the weakness she was carrying. 

“You probably don’t want to talk right now, but I think we should make an executive decision and do it anyway,” he insisted. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice sooner. I see now there’s still…scars.” Ken helped guide her to a nearby bench, enclosed from the street view. Xiaoli fumbled a mini first-aid kit from her purse, which he used to bandage her hands and knees. 

“Please don’t look at me right now,” she asked, and Ken complied. They sat away from each other, facing opposite directions as they talked. 

“I’ll start by saying I appreciate you agreeing to meet with me. That you still talk to me after all these years,” he announced into the open air. “I thought I’d never see you again once we got our acceptance letters, that our lives would be too far off course. I’m glad I was wrong.”

“I am too,” Xiaoli said. 

“I never figured out how to say these things. But I want the best for you, for the person who stuck with me through high school and kept hope alive in a hopeless idiot. And I’m guessing you didn’t stay on the East Coast this summer because things were starting to kill you.”

“I…I finally got away.”

“That too.”

“I should be free,” she said to convince herself. “I am free.”

Ken sighed. “I’m gonna be brutally honest. You don’t seem free. And the longer you hold it in, the worse it’ll get. It doesn’t have to be me, but tell someone. The pain isn’t worth it.”

Xiaoli’s threshold for trust inched out hesitantly. Over the last years she had hidden within herself to survive, to assuage the pain of being cursed by her old lover into something equally as ugly as him, but Ken drew her to the surface. She suspected her feelings the moment she felt them, that nostalgic warmth, but denied them on the grounds that she couldn’t forgive herself if she gave in so easily. She didn’t want to be betrayed by love, in any form, again. 

Still, she had to be sure. “Ken…” she murmured, “do you think about the future? Like if you made one different choice, how your life would have changed?”

“All the time. But what’s the point? We can only choose once, so better make it count.” Xiaoli turned around to see he was staring at the sky. “You gotta be brave. And move forward.”

“But how?” she asked. “It’s not as simple as just saying it. It feels impossible.”

Ken’s shadow on the pavement seemed to stretch into infinity. “I don’t know. I’m a hypocrite who’s stuck in the past. I never figured out the courage part. But I’m sure the first step is to forgive yourself,” he said. The twilight bands of the sky faded from crimson to pinkish purple, soon to be swallowed by a vast navy-blue sea sparsely dotted with star glitter. 

They ate in silence, still at the same distance, and every now and then, Xiaoli would glance over her shoulder at Ken. Without the mask, she could see how the last six years had etched themselves into his cheeks and jawline, and she thought some terrible hardship must have drained the vitality from him. Had the same change been visible on her own face? Was she wearing her scars on display and unaware of it?

“If you feel down,” Ken blurted out, “then we can go somewhere. Like we used to.”

Xiaoli knew what he meant. She remembered those bygone days of racing through downtown together, awash in the neon of the night. They would wander the labyrinthine mall on Market Street or hop the fence over Yerba Buena at midnight—and in each dreamlike moment, she had harbored a tide of unspoken emotions for Ken. He must’ve been dreaming with her, too.

“I really miss those days,” she admitted. “I miss being innocent. I thought coming back would help, but even if nothing else has changed, I have. And it won’t ever be the same, and I hate it.” She paused and fidgeted with her hands, drawing a deep breath. “This is really sudden, and you don’t have to answer. But back then, when we did all of those things, did you—”

“Yes, I did.”

“I didn’t even finish my question.”

“No, but I know you, remember?” His eyes darted away. “I kept my feelings to myself for a long time and let them die. I figured it was a natural part of life. But now, I feel the regret slipping back into me. And I wonder, if six years ago I had the courage to say the words, ‘I love you,’ or ‘Go out with me,’ or ‘Don’t leave me behind,’ would it have made a difference? Would it have spared you the suffering?”

After an eternity had passed, Xiaoli finally responded. “Yes, it would have.”

“I see. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize for a decision I made.”

“But I’m a hypocrite, you see?” Ken smiled painfully at her. “I can’t help but think of what I could have done.” 

“You aren’t wrong though. Forgiveness is the first step. Forgiving yourself,” Xiaoli said. Without thinking, she reached across the gap to hug him from behind. He let out a little gasp, and she felt his shoulders relax into her. But even though he didn’t resist, she sensed his hesitation.

“Why are we so broken?” Ken asked nobody in particular. 

“Everybody breaks, I think. Fear and guilt. Would it be easier if we both got a happy ending?” Xiaoli found herself flooded by an immense strength, like her heart was beating with molten metal. “Yes, but we were dealt bad hands. Our only hand, right? Still, we can make it count…day by day, move forward. Forgive an enemy one day and yourself the next. It doesn’t need to be all at once.” She didn’t know if she believed what she was saying, but she wanted to.

“I have to know.” His voice softened. “I want to know if you would have said yes to me.”

Once upon time, perhaps. She knew she would have accepted him. But hearing that now might only worsen things, so she said all she could in the moment. “I don’t think I was ready. And I’m still not. We’re at different points in our life. I wouldn’t want to repeat a tragedy.”

“If nothing else, I’d be willing to wait for when we catch up with each other.”

“That might be nice,” she said, her eyes glued to Orion in the far sky, shining stellar through the clouds. “Maybe give it another summer. And I’ll have an answer for you then.”

“I can’t argue with that.” Ken pulled away from the hug, but his demeanor seemed more at ease. “Are you ready to head home?”

“I think I am. Thank you for dinner.”

“Thank you for the talk. Tell your mother I said hello.”

“You know that would never be enough for her.”

“Then maybe I’ll have to visit next time,” Ken said, looking like he had just seen the first victory in a long line of defeats.

V. 

Xiaoli pondered what the ‘next time’ might look like, as the earthy August breeze caressed her cheeks. From the tranquility of her room, she watched out the open window as a plane punctured through a cluster of nimbus clouds, her thoughts wistful and nostalgic for that brief flicker of invincibility she felt in the park. Ken had burned through his vacation week quickly—at least Xiaoli got to see him off at the terminal, armored for corporate hell in a tailored suit and loafers—and as his outbound airliner faded into pale blue, she began to dread returning to the loneliness of her own apartment. 

Xiaoli knew that once she was on that flight, leaving the pyrite summer sky of San Francisco behind, she’d have to face the counseling sessions she had been denying. Home couldn’t fill her void, even with its lack of change in six years. She had to take responsibility.

The future and its uncertainty gnawed at her. There was always the risk that her ex would find her again, without the geographical barrier to hide behind. But she elected to take her own makeshift advice to heart: day by day, to keep fighting, to keep winning. Forgiving herself was the hardest part. Could she learn to love herself the way she was now? She knew she wouldn’t be able to produce her own strength without that crucial step. 

The August wind seemed to glow as the sun yawned wide across the cloudy horizon, and Xiaoli felt her eyelids drooping in the warm shadows. Although she still pressed herself to a corner, like an animal at war with the world, this time she felt justified. And as if laying claim to freedom for the first time, she closed her eyes, permitting herself to slip into a bittersweet summer daydream, even if only for a moment.