"Rhaen? You're mad at me, aren't you? Rhaen?" "I'm...not." "I'm really really sorry. I...I don't know what to say." "It doesn't matter." "But." "Drop it." "O...okay." "Say something." "Like what?" "Anything!" "O...okay. Urm. How's life?" "Not too good right now." "Oh..." "So?" "So what?" "Do you have anything else to say?" "Urm. I don't think so..." "Do you or do you not have anything else to say?" "... No." "Okay then. I gotta go." "Okay, bye." "Bye." "I lov-" She looked at the receiver. He'd put down the phone before she could finish her sentence. Sadly, with tears in her eyes, she put down the receiver. This was the second night in a row that their phone conversation ended badly. He had been mad at something, and she was scared to anger him even more. So she became silent and hesitant. Which just made him even madder, this time at her. Which in turn made her even more scared. "Wha...what happened to us?" she muttered softly to her god. Then she prayed and cried herself to sleep again.
"Hey, I'm going to the toilet, okay?" "Okay. What do you want to eat?" "Oh, just the McChicken meal. Upsize. And get me some mayonnaise." " 'Kay." The girls separated, and she walked out of McDonalds. This was one of the only McDonalds in the country without a toilet of it's own. But it did share the floor of the complex with five other fast food restaurants, which made it very special. Even though there was a nearer toilet, she insisted on walking further to the bigger and cleaner toilet. She liked it better, and a little walk didn't hurt. She was still troubled by last night's conversation. There must be some way to avoid that kind of conversations again, but she didn't dare to do anything. It always seemed too out of her place to do anything. She felt so helpless. Do I really love him? Yes, I think I do. Even though I'm very young, I know how I feel. That is why I don't want what happened last night to repeat itself. But how? I have to tell him how I feel about it...but can I?
Inside the toilet cubicle, she sat down, engrossed in her thoughts, totally forgetting her purpose in there. It was a small cubicle, with a tiled wall on one side, and a plastic divider on the other. How? How can I tell him? Suddenly something caught her eye. It was some kind of graffiti on the tiled wall. Something scribbled with a ball pen in the space between tiles. She went closer and squinted, trying hard to read the words. They were in Chinese characters. "ai yi ge ren hao nan." It's so hard to love a person. It seemed like a desperate call from someone driven to despair.
"Rhaen? Please, are you angry with me?" "No." "But you sound mad." "I said it, I'm not angry with you." "But." "Can we just get off this subject?" "But, how can we?" "Just talk about something else. Please." "If we don't talk about it now, how can we ever be the same again?" "...Look, I gotta go now. We'll talk about it some time later, alright?" "Oh...okay then." "Bye." "Bye. I love you?" There was only silence on the other side, followed by a click and the ring tone. She bit her lip. Had he heard her words at all? Maybe he was already putting down the phone and didn't hear it. Otherwise he would have responded to it, right? But what if, what if he heard it, and purposely ignored it? Her mind was in a turmoil, and as usual, tears came quickly for her. "Please God. Please don't take this love away from me now. You know, better than anyone else, how his love kept me strong, and kept me alive, every time I became suicidal again. You know that I live for him, that my life rotates around him. Please don't take him away from me. Please... I love him. I don't want him to go. Not now. Not when life...when life is starting to have some meaning. When it is finally having some meaning after sixteen years of searching. Please...don't..." She tried crying herself to sleep again. The tears came, but the comfort of slumber evaded her. So she sat up and switched on her computer. And did what she used to do a lot, when she used to be depressed, when she was suicidal. She wrote. Poetry. Poetry came easily to her when she was full of sad emotions. Like now. Then she printed it out. And wondered what to do with it. Finally she folded it up and put it in an envelope. And wrote "Rhaen" on top of it. She thought the crying when she wrote would sap her of emotions and leave her tired. It left her tired alright, and as she fell asleep to a dreamless slumber she remembered that she hasn't written poetry ever since she met him. And then she cried again.
"Rhaen?" "Hmm?" He was in a good mood. He was always in a good mood whenever they're together. It's only in their nightly phone conversations that things turn sour. "I...I've got something to show you." It was now or never. If she didn't give it to him, she would never have the guts to give it to him. "What is it?" He smiled. She smiled too, thinking that she wanted him to smile like that forever. And that the poem would depress him. And suddenly all her guts evaporated. "Not...nothing." "Nah, I know its something. What is it?" "Nothing! Really!" She threw the letter into the bin unobtrusively. "I know it's something. Out with it!" His playful look said that he was going to tickle her into submission again, but the worried look on her face stopped him. "What is it? It's something really important isn't it? What's making you so sad?" His concerned voice was the last straw. Breaking into tears, she kept shaking her head. He panicked. "What? Why are you crying? Oh no! What happened?" He pulled her into his arms, and she started crying even harder, feeling how warm and welcoming his arms were. She didn't want to lose him. He was all she lived for now. "Shh...don't cry...tell me what happened." "I...I don't want to lose you." "You won't lose me! Silly girl, what are you talking about?" "You won't say I love you to me on the phone anymore. And...and we've been getting into those silent moments so much. I...I was so afraid that...that maybe you don't love me anymore." She dried her eyes, but more tears kept coming. She tried to speak more, but she was too caught up by tears and sobs. "Bliss." She lifted her head at his voice. His face was full of remorse, and she immediately blamed herself. How could I have ever thought he didn't love me anymore? He...he still loves me. "Bliss, I still love you. I will always love you. I'm so sorry that all this has to happen, but I'm glad this happened. I...I've been very stressed and irritated this whole week, but I should never have involved you." "I..." "Bliss, I'm sorry." She could tell that he was going to cry soon. Smiling, having finally solved her troubles, she leaned forward. And gave him a salty kiss on the cheek. "It's okay. So long as you still love me, nothing else matters." "But I..." "Shh...it's okay. Don't cry." "I...I won't. And I will always love you!" He smiled shyly at her. She smiled back at him. "Me too!"
"Hey, I'm going to the toilet, okay?" "Okay. What do you want to eat?" "Oh, just the McChicken meal. Upsize. And get me some mayonnaise." "Again?" "Yup." The girls separated, and she walked out of McDonalds. Even though there was a nearer toilet, she insisted on walking further to the bigger and cleaner toilet. She liked it better, and a little walk didn't hurt. And this time she had a mission. She went back into the same cubicle, and scanned the wall for the message. There it was. "ai yi ge ren hao nan." It's so hard to love a person. It no longer seemed like a desperate call from someone driven to despair. This time, it seemed like a message written by a hopeful person. Someone who wanted someone else to contradict him or her.
She smiled, and took the mechanical pencil out of her pocket. Looking around to check for security cameras, she stooped down and scribbled a reply next to the original message. Her reply was in Chinese characters too. "dan zai nan ye zhi de." But no matter how hard, it's still worth it.
chiiyo's comments :
*sigh* This story used to be a favourite of mine, but now when I read it, I just feel sad. This was based loosely on two separate events in my life, my discovery of the graffiti in the toilet, and incidents that happened between me and my ex-boyfriend. Both are true events, but both are past events. The toilet with the graffiti on it has been renovated, and obviously will no longer have the graffiti. And I have broken up with my boyfriend, 3 years after I wrote this piece. There is a kind of bittersweet nostalgia surrounding this piece, but the subject matter still holds. Kept In The Box was an old project of mine, I had wanted to write stories about hope, and bundle them up under the title "Kept In The Box" (Pandora, anyone?). In the end, this piece was the only one I was satisfied with.