hongdoumeng

Red Bean Dreams

Part One

IT HAD BEEN SEVERAL WEEKS since I’ve begun doing absolutely nothing.

Well, not absolutely nothing. Just absolutely nothing productive, nothing of importance or significance. It had been several weeks since I decided to cease to exist as a concept.

On this particular day my phone went off annoyingly to tell me that somebody messaged me on Facebook. A pop, and then a ding. It was an irritating sound, piercing and sudden. A rude noise that often punches in from nowhere, a chibi thunderclap of anxiety and intrusion. I’ve usually kept my phone on silent but somehow it’s always news I hate receiving that seems to ring during those rare times I forget to silence notifications. Who could it be now?

For the past month I’ve received numerous requests from old classmates asking me to work on their startups. I’ve always been terrible at turning people down or saying no, and as a result end up overbooked for work. Being unemployed at the moment, my free time was consistently assumed by my colleagues to be freely available. Even paid projects I’ve been avoiding, as I have been feeling exhausted and burned out. Azuki would’ved called me an idiot for refusing money.

“Why would you say no? This is why you aren’t rich — you have to hustle to be successful! The world is yours if you just work hard enough!”

Azuki sounded like a lame LinkedIn influencer sometimes.

Rolling over, I tried to return to sleep. My head still throbbed from the night before, temples feeling as if squeezed violently from both sides. A thin painful ringing remained in my ears, feeling like needles in my brain, and my lips were chapped and cracked as I opened my mouth gasping for air, gagging and resisting the urge to vomit. A sour burn in my esophagus told me that it was a task at which I failed and I swallowed to push it back down, ignoring the hint of the previous night’s partially digested supper. The taste of throwup jolted me awake.

I turned to lay on my back and opened my eyes. The ceiling performed backflips and I tried to focus on the cobweb in the corner for stability. I held my watery eyes open, willing the room to stop spinning, gradually. Bloodshot and gawking, I must have looked like I was locked in a staring contest with a ghost.

Turning to my side, I struggled to begin the day as if I were Gregor Samsa who awoke one morning from uneasy dreams to find himself as a giant cockroach. And my teeth chattered like a cockroach as I pulled myself up and staggered to the bathroom to turn on the faucet, running my hands under the tap hoping the coolness would bring me back. I pressed my head against the inside of the sink, feeling the water run through my hair. I could feel and hear my retching breath reverberate off the walls.

The phone dinged a second time.

I made my way back to my bed, lunging and holding the wall for support. I unlocked my phone. <Hey, I opened the package. Thank you for the books and especially the mango flavored nougat, it was really good. If I’m not

wrong, I know you still really care about me. I know you don’t want us to be in a relationship anymore, I said I’ll respect that decision.

I don’t understand why you are not willing to respond to my messages when you obviously still care about me. And I still care about you too. Many people have broken up and still remained friends.

You talk about healing yourself and being healthy. I think this silence is really unhealthy to be honest.> <Hey, I know you obviously ain’t gonna reply to me yet. I really don’t get what’s the meaning of this silence if you made your decision to not be lovers anymore and I’m respecting that decision. If there’s anything I can help you with, feel free to ask me. I know you are probably going through a hard time looking for jobs now with companies shutting down etc. etc. I do worry about you, so open up and talk to me ok?> I read the messages a few times. The ringing in my ears became an angry buzzing and my chest began to collapse in on itself and my world convulsed and I was drowning in my own spit as my room shrank. <Active Now> read her status in green. I closed the app.

I grabbed a hoodie. I pulled on a pair of jeans. Almost falling down the stairs, I headed to the garage and started the car.

“Fuck you.”, I said.

I floored the gas and sped off toward the nearest mountain road.

IT WAS APRIL 2020 (or was it still March?) and I was 27 years old. During those times I couldn’t remember which day of the week it was anymore — by this long into the pandemic, everyday had become exactly the same, the repeating events of one day blending into the other, a mixture of calendar Kool-aid that gutted my con-

cept of time. Outside the world stood completely still, gone were the sounds of busy traffic on the nearby street, only the whisper of wind and cacophony of birds.

I would wake up around 11 am, probably hungover, saunter downstairs to the kitchen and reheat leftovers. And then I would watch TV. Sometimes it was Rick and Morty. Sometimes it was old episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I would sit in front of my computer and eat, drinking possibly day-old instant coffee that I mixed with Jameson. (In the beginning I used Jameson but after a few weeks I switched to cheaper, bottom shelf Canadian whisky.)

Before the third or fourth episode I would have passed out asleep in my chair. When I woke up, Netflix would ask me if I wanted to continue playing, which I did. Sometimes I would sketch as I watched, drawing side views of vehicles or architecture in my notebook with sharpies and Copic markers. Other times I would read sitting in a lawn chair out in the backyard when I got tired of staring at lit rectangles. Occasionally I would play the piano, stumbling through Bach’s Keyboard Partitas in a hazy stupor.

My parents’ lives were roughly the same during this time. Mama’s school was closed and Baba couldn’t see any real estate clients; all three of us were stuck at home for the time being. Whenever I went downstairs, I found Baba already laying on the couch, reading WeChat articles on his phone, snacking on roasted sunflower seeds.

Sometimes he would fall asleep to news podcasts speculating the length of the lockdown and rumors of a vaccine, his loud snores filling the otherwise quiet house. I could always tell that Baba was about to fall asleep, even from upstairs, from the sound of his phone falling out of his hands onto the floor. Mama would often be in the kitchen making more pork bao or dumplings to freeze just in case the grocery stores run out of fresh food. I would sometimes see her hunched over the kitchen counter nursing a pen staring at

her notebook, planning meals for the next week or so, eyes glazing over, losing all expressions, gazing at nothing, really.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into a month and the three of us spoke less and less, retreating to our respective zones of the house. Baba’s turf was the family room, where he laid on the couch and watched movies with his computer hooked up to the TV. Mama spent her time in the living room making almost constant WeChat calls, checking up on our relatives in China to see if their time in lockdown was any different. I stayed mostly in my bedroom, watching TV and reading books, disappearing into the stories of others, half-living a half-existence in a fog of intoxication, a Mannerist portrait of post-bacchanalian listlessness. In the evenings, I would sit cross-legged on my bed, snacking on chips and wine resting on the piano bench that I had moved to the side of my bed as a makeshift table, watching Netflix on my 27-inch iMac four feet away. As I did so, I could hear the blaring of the TV in my parents bedroom playing Chinese variety shows at a high volume, interrupted occasionally by videos Baba would watch from his mobile device. The three of us were united in our silent, but ravenous consumption of media.

Baba and Mama would watch their television until the late hours, turning in sometime close to midnight, though it would usually be 1 am that I heard Baba’s snores through the thin walls.

As for me, sleep would not come easy. Most nights I laid in an uncomfortable wakefulness, ruminating, having conversations with Azuki, dwelling on what could have been, contemplating pitfalls easily avoided. Some nights she would be apologetic, and we would cry together expressing our regret over wrongs committed by both sides, making new promises to do better. Other nights she would simply laugh and ridicule, chiding me for having ever even believed that someone like her could ever have been with someone like me,

for not understanding the way the real world works and being as she had always suspected: a small town boy who hasn’t seen the world, from a humble family with no future of high earnings and status. It was those nights I would indulge most heavily, pouring myself glass after glass of Jameson, medicating away her voice in my mind, still beautiful, still sweet as poisoned honey.

THE FA20 BOXER ENGINE of my Toyota 86 screamed as I downshifted, approaching the bend. Halfway through, I flicked the wheel in the opposite direction, tugging the handbrake as I felt the familiar feeling of weight shifting behind me. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach and my rear wheels began to glide, the squeals drowning out my music. “...all the way north I drive, leaving behind a season of you…”, crooned Jay Chou morosely in his trademark mumble as I pressed my foot harder on the gas, accelerating out of the slide and climbing further up Highway 39 toward Crystal Lake.

I was wide awake.

This winding route has always been my comfort spot, a place I visited for the first time when Nainai was in the hospital. I found myself speeding up this road in tears that day after visiting her and the nurses informing me of her condition. My grandmother was dying and I couldn’t think about it. I needed to get away, anywhere, everywhere. During that time, I would visit her three to four times a week, to talk to her and sit by. Some days Nainai would be lucid, her eyes full of gusto as she would pester me to tell her more about the girl with the funny smile I had just met named Azuki. Other times she barely knew where she was as I pleaded with her to eat.

Nainai would tell me about her wishes for me to return to school and get a Master’s degree. After all, most of our family had been educators and university professors.

“But why?” I asked.

There was no need for a Master’s degree as a graphic designer, I said. It would only be a waste of money and effort. Shaking her head, she only said it was her wish, and nothing more.

“Who are you?”, asked Nainai. Azuki stroked Nainai’s forehead, moving a few stray hairs out of the way. Gently, she moved closer.

“I am your grandson’s girlfriend!” she replied cheerfully.

It was the last time I would ever speak to my Nainai. My parents, Azuki, and I crowded around Nainai’s bed in that small hospital room. She was in a dreamlike trance, heavily sedated. However, her eyes still retained their warmth and kindness more than ever, as she surveyed this new person sitting by her.

“You’re so beautiful”, said Nainai to Azuki. “You’re so beautiful.”

This exchange of words repeated several times. Nainai was beginning to fade, unable to remember their conversation. Never faltering, Azuki quietly stroked her hair each time she reintroduced herself. And it was at that moment that I had fallen deeply, madly, passionately in love.

Nainai looked at me with that twinkle in her eye that I had known so well, and looked back at that funny smile and beamed.

“Why are you two still here?”, she asked. “Don’t worry about little old me, I’m just going to rest. Just for a little while”.

I STOPPED AT THE LOOKOUT near the top of the mountain, walking to my usual sunset viewing perch, a large boulder at the edge of the cliff. The silent air wrapped around me as I gazed over the valley. The peaks of the opposite mountain faded into tints of light cerulean and I shivered as the wind swept upwards and around me. I sat down, listening to the light rustling of far away trees singing as their trunks danced in the gale. The ringing in

my ears began to subside and my stomach began to feel better as I drank from the water bottle from the car. It was a maroon thermos with a small Hello Kitty graphic that Azuki gave me to use my first week of grad school. I had taken her up here once before to enjoy the snow, during the time period that I was still preparing my portfolio for admissions. It was a terrifying two years beginning with my resignation from my production design role at a small startup.

It was now or never, I had thought, back in 2016, remembering the promise nearly one year ago I had made to Nainai. At least, that’s what I had told myself in the times to come. My recollection of that fateful week was still spotty, unable to remember if it was for that reason or had I caved from Azuki’s constant belittlement of my career choice.

“How can this be a sustainable field to work in?”, she would say, “creative roles are not stable industries. You should study something real, like engineering or medicine. Every man in my family has been a doctor, and my parents have always told me I am supposed to marry one. It’s not too late for you to attend community college for the credits you need, and go to med school. Please, you’re smart and hardworking, I know you can do this” “I thought you loved me for me”, I would reply. Azuki’s words cut me deeply every time this topic came up, a reminder that no matter how happy we were together, I was not good enough for her and that one day I would lose her too.

“I do! I love you because you are kind. I love you because you value your family. I just don’t love what you do” “Then how could that be love?”

“Because doctors are all over the place especially with my family background it’s easy to marry one but I can’t find a doctor that’s you” Our discussions on the matter never went anywhere. Some-

times we wouldn’t speak to one another for hours after. Sometimes one of us or the other would cleverly change the subject. Either way for whatever reason, I quit my job, unable to offer any real concrete explanation as I gave my two weeks notice. I simply said that I would like to go back to school.

For the two years afterward, my life was a chaotic mess of shame and confusion. As I took classes across subjects, my family and friends would demand if I had a backup plan in place. “How long do you plan on dipping into your savings like this?”, they would ask. In the mornings I would wake and feel a low wave of fear, still in shock that I had given up a stable life for uncertainty. In two years, I transitioned from shopping at Whole Foods to shopping at Wal-mart. I wore the same Converse high tops until the bottom padding began to fall off, buying a replacement pair of shoes from a bargain bin afterward. I began to gain weight from eating frozen dinners and instant ramen. It was the beginning of my struggle years. In retrospect, I really wasn’t as broke as I thought — my savings never dropped below fifteen grand. On my own, I have never been a high spender, having very simple tastes and hobbies.

One joy that I sacrificed were cello lessons. I didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye to my teacher; Azuki, in a misunderstanding, accused me of lying about canceling my lessons as I was about to drive to my last one, not knowing that they were prepaid at the beginning of each month. Trying to quell her temper, I ended up staying home, texting my teacher that I couldn’t make it, unable to offer any real concrete explanation, as before.

Despite the almost perpetual bickering, Azuki still remained the stable constant in my life. With Azuki’s badgering, I volunteered at the hospital, unsure of what my next steps were, or if design remained my true calling. I audited science classes and attended math classes in addition to the various design courses I was taking.

Eventually I was set on creating designs for products that I believed in, and Azuki relented her med school requirements, after many fights and false breakups.

“You better make a lot of money’’, she said.

IT TOOK ME TWO TRIES to get accepted to grad school.

The second time, I was accepted to four programs, but eventually I chose Carnegie Mellon, a name-brand school to impress Azuki.

Constant arguments and bickering peppered my time in academia.

Azuki’s eyes lit up with dollar signs whenever I looked at companies I wanted to intern for that summer. (Well, at the beginning of my search for internships, anyway.) Her cupidity soon turned to dissatisfaction after I received numerous rejections throughout the beginning of 2019. The more rejections I received, the more disappointed Azuki became in me. I became nothing more than a loser with a pipedream, a deadbeat boyfriend who made false promises of success and a better life one day. Anything to keep her from leaving me. Even if it meant numerous side hustles, shameless ass-kissing at networking events, idea pitch competitions on top of my grueling class schedule. The stench of desperation seeped off of my person in waves, a reverse-halo of shit. Potential clients and recruiters at job fairs and interviews could taste the wretchedness that I oozed, and ended up either trying to exploit me or avoiding me altogether. My original desire to work for medical device manufacturers also soured as I discovered the amount of greed that permeated the field. I wasn’t about to go work for the next Elizabeth Holmes, much to Azuki’s chagrin.

Instead, I interned at Honda Research and Development, rediscovering my passion for cars, even writing my graduate thesis on transportation design for the elderly. Recruiters from car com-

panies were welcoming to me and it was the path of least resistance, as my undergrad school, ArtCenter College of Design, was wellknown for its car design program. Choosing the automotive industry felt like returning to a familiar place. Months after graduating, as Covid hit, I interviewed with Ericsson and received a job offer to design 5G interfaces, from none other than Virgil, my old manager at the start-up I used to work for. Not exactly my dream or lifelong calling. But I was tired of hustling, with not only school but so many failed start-up business ideas and ceaseless freelance gigs the past years. The OEMs will still be there in a few years. Plus, Virgil had always been good to me as a boss, a mentor in my early career who consistantly went out of his way to look out for me.

He called me, two days before the job offer, to tell me to negotiate for enough money.

“Hey, make sure you ask for at least 105”, said Virgil.

“Are you sure? I’ve never negotiated before, so do I just say… that’s what I want?”, I replied. “What if HR says no, or takes the offer off the table? I don’t want them to think I’m greedy or a shark.”

Virgil had been the one to ask the bean counters to give me my first salary raise at my first job.

“Yeah. Just ask. They’re not going to take your offer away. The worst that can happen is they say no. But you have to highball them first. Look, us designers, we aren’t sharks. We usually tend to be the nice people in the industry, and that’s why we often aren’t paid what we deserve. There are some things you can learn from the sharks sometimes. It’s a dog eat dog world out there.”

“Dog eat dog, huh?”

“Dog eat dog, young one.”

HR didn’t give me 105. They offered me 95, take it or leave it. I wondered what Azuki would have said if we had still been together.

“If you don’t make six figures after graduation, then that’s just sad.

It means you failed.”, she had told me a year before. The words still burned fresh in the back of my mind, but my shame was eclipsed by a breath of relief. My nightmare was finally over. I was glad Virgil had called me. After coming home, I had found it hard to care about anything, really. For two months I half-heartedly applied to perhaps six or seven job postings about three or four times a week, ignoring Azuki’s disapproving voice that still haunted me twenty-four hours a day. Nothing was good enough for her, and nothing felt right for me.

And no one was good enough for recruiters these days, it also seemed. Design job postings would also require a slew of skills irrelevant to the actual roles, most asking for several coding languages that were not necessary at all. I already knew a few kinds of code, and could probably learn a new one in a few months. But where would that end? If I spent all my time learning every new front-end language in vogue every year, would I be a designer or a programmer? Reading through these descriptions instilled me with deep feelings of hopelessness, injecting me with the same affliction of desperation once more. Those six or seven weekly job applications would drain me of all energy, and after sending them I would collapse in my chair, heart thrashing arrhythmically. I found that I often would forget to blink as I applied for work, and accumulated various bottles of drops during this period to ease my bleary red eyes.

What mattered most now, was that my life could finally restart.

I would disappear into oblivion, a waking coma, abandoning all expectations that weighed me down. And when I begin my new job, I could also begin my new life, at long last, free. An hour after receiving the job offer, I called my cello teacher. It had been four years since I let him down. Each year afterward, he texted me to wish me a happy birthday. “Wish you come back”, he would add.

After a warm conversation, we scheduled our lessons to restart in May, through Facetime. Next, I signed up for more car design classes at ArtCenter, emailing the department to skip prerequisites and asking for an alumni discount. There would still be time for my dreams, after I’ve recovered everything I’ve lost.

MY PHONE BEEPED reeling me back to reality, back to the present world. I had been sitting on the boulder, daydreaming for an hour. The sun sat high in the cobalt sky, and the air warmed in the afternoon hour. A sour note pinched my throat once more and I bent over, puking onto the slope. A bush squirrel resting nearby ran off, clearly agitated. I wiped the vomit with the back of my hand, leaning against the rock for support. A dripping slather of graffiti on the corner of the boulder caught my eye. ABANDON ALL HOPE, it said, in a filthy shade of red. Sitting back in my car, I checked my phone. <Can we jump on a call?>, texted Virgil. <Sure, I’ll let you know when I get home.> I started the 86 and made my way back down the mountain.

BABA AMBUSHED ME in the living room as soon as I returned.

“We need to look at these tonight”, he said, gesturing to the house listings he had opened on his computer. The papers on the coffee table were neatly organized and he had no other tabs open in his browser. Baba has obviously been waiting for me. The past few weeks he had been trying to convince me to buy a home. It was a stressful decision I had been avoiding and putting off as long as I could.

“I don’t have money to buy a home.”, I said.

“You don’t get it. You can take a bit of money out of the inheritance Nainai left you for the down payment. You’ve put your life on hold for too long. This will help you build credit, and you can afford to pay a monthly mortgage, you’re going to be making close to six figures. Do this while the market is good” “I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Didn’t you say you wanted to restart your life again? This is the next step, you’re not a twenty-four year old anymore!”

“I said I don’t want to think about it!”

Annoyed, I headed upstairs.

THE SUN BEGAN TO SET when I remembered Virgil’s text. I had been sitting alone for one or two hours. On afternoons like this my mind often wandered, dissociating for hours at a time. Sometimes I would remember thoughts and listen to them as a bystander would, seeing from afar my own self as someone else sitting in the chair, a figure lost in an infinity mirror. Other times I would black out, lost in the space-time continuum, blinking once and losing an hour, left wondering where my time went and feeling relieved that I skipped ahead further in the day. Picking up my phone, I took a deep breath before I dialed. What could it be now?

“Hey, thanks for getting back to me. Are you more available to talk now?” Virgil’s normally confident voice sounded shaky, filled with foreboding.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry…”

“Wait, what? Virgil, what are you saying —?”

“I tried to ask them to reconsider, I did everything I could. It’s not your fault, I feel like they just didn’t have their act together on

this one. They don’t have the role for you anymore” “What?! But it’s been over a month already! I signed papers, I took a drug test and everything…”

“I know! But with Covid we’re not doing so good in terms of our profits and they hadn’t even created the role in the system before hiring you. And the role did not get approved by the higher ups…it’s not your fault..”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to answer. I could hear Virgil taking a breath to recompose himself on the other end.

“You’ll get an email from HR tomorrow about this. Again, I’m so sorry. If there is anything I can do to help you, let me know. I’ll ask around and see if there are any other roles open for you.”

“Thanks Virgil. I’ll be fine” I hung up.

LATER THAT NIGHT, as I chugged my whisky out of the bottle and the world spun around me, I softly sang in the dark to the only person who knew how to provide me comfort, the only one who has ever loved me.

“Now there is no more dog eat dog, now there is only dog eat shit.”, I mumbled.

Azuki shook her head and said nothing. ...

SHE BREATHED SOFTLY in my ear and I held her desperately, feeling her translucent velvet skin under my hands and she kissed me and she kissed me, the second time sloppily on the cheek and I touched the birthmark on her left breast and her head pressed against my neck as a spasm ran through her body and she gasped

and squirmed and let out a cry and went limp over me as we hugged each other close and laughed, an entire universe in a warm embrace. Her forehead felt sticky against mine and she smiled that mischievous smile, my adorable cheshire cat, and I touched my lips to it and she smiled again as I felt her teeth and her tongue tasted slightly sweet and she laughed gently and cradled me, hand against the back of my head as if I were someone truly precious. “I’m a koala hugging a tree..” she sang and I — The silence woke me.

Ears ringing, I took another sip from the unfinished glass of Jameson on the table and sat up. 2:11 am, stated the time in the upper right corner of the screen. The air outside was still and I felt a chill from the open window. The only sound I could hear was the ticking of my watch on the bookshelf. I had fallen asleep again watching Netflix. In the two weeks since my job offer was rescinded, I have persisted with doing nothing, with reckless inertia, an indolent object at rest to forever remain at rest, a torpid figurehead of shit. Perhaps when a vaccine becomes available, perhaps when I become wanted again. Perhaps when the sun rises from the West, and the sweet taste of red bean becomes bitter.

I thought of sweet Azuki, wondering if she sang her koala song to someone new now, kissing them softly in the same way as she has done for me, and if they felt as adored as I had, clinging to her slender, delicate frame, caressing her soft neck. I wondered if she would still laugh the same way if her new lover decided to kiss her ear and I shook my head, as if I could actually fling loose the intrusive thoughts. I began to shiver, a tremor radiating from my shoulders into my hands. Even after I closed the window, the shudder remained, spreading through my chest into a chatter in my teeth, producing a chilling melody of uneasiness as I opened my mouth to breathe. I drank more of the whisky, feeling its warmth unfurl

around my chest as a warm blanket. The shaking stopped.

[Continue playing], read the button I clicked blindly in the dark, forcing my attention elsewhere.

“When people finish their day and hurry home, my day starts.

My diner is open from midnight to seven in the morning. They call it ‘Midnight Diner.’ Do I even have customers? More than you would expect”, narrated Kaoru Kobayashi as another episode of Midnight Diner began.

His crusty but warm, fatherly voice has been bringing me comfort the past few nights. Sometimes lulling me to sleep, sometimes listening as I conferred to the nothingness, for want of someone other than Azuki, a fictional confidant in the nocturnal ether. “The Master”, played by Kobayashi, would each episode deal with a slew of customers living lives as fucked up as my own, invariably listening patiently, occasionally giving advice, acting as both bartender and a stoic surrogate therapist in a lonely city that ate and spat out its inhabitants, helping them find beauty in themselves.

“Life…don’t underestimate life”, he said.

With his kind eyes, lopsided smile, perpetual chin stubble and gruff exterior, The Master was the spitting, beaming image of my late Yeye. On nights like this I would often sit downstairs and talk with my grandfather over tea as he attended with a similar smile. Yeye would tell me stories from his past lives, as a professor at Nanjing University, and as a younger man staying out of trouble during the Cultural Revolution. I never actually listened, of course, being too rebellious, too stubborn. But unchanging in my memory would always be Yeye’s sideways smirk, lined with his wrinkles of experience, rough but distinguished as an old redwood. Behind his dark eyes I would see the reflections of my childhood, the echoes of bicycle rides, walks to school, and occasional lectures on integrity as I asked him to hide terrible test scores from my parents.

I wondered if Yeye still had memories left of our conversations in his final days, stricken with Alzheimer’s, in almost a vegetative state, kept alive by machines, lying in a hospital bed downstairs at home in what used to be Baba’s work room, a space filled with childhood recollections of computer games and violin lessons. In his twilight years, I would listen to his breathing as I laid in my bed upstairs, a sharp stab in my heart each time he choked, gasping against his own breath, drowning in air.

Yeye left me too, a year after I lost my Nainai.

I was on a late shift, volunteering at the hospital the night it happened. At the end of the night (like all Fridays 10pms for the past six months) I signed out and walked to my car, turning my phone back on. Without reading, I knew, the moment I saw pictures of Yeye in Baba’s Wechat post. And just like that, I was abandoned once again. I stopped volunteering at the hospital, resentful that I had been helping them when I should’ve been by my Yeye’s side. It came at no surprise to us; he had been excruciatingly clinging to life by a hair for an entire year. Mama, Baba, and I were relieved by his passing, understanding that Yeye was finally alleviated of pain. Yet, I never forgave my father for keeping me out of the loop and I abandoned my own parents too, in a way, retreating into my life with Azuki over the next year. Azuki became my family instead, our own clan of two. I hugged her close that night, after a week of sulking. “I’m right here,” she had told me, as I cried. “You’ll always have me. We’re in this together now, you don’t need to do this alone.”

“How long was ‘always’?”, I asked in the dark, emptying the bottle of Jameson. I placed it ungracefully next to other empty bottles on the bookshelf. It dropped as I clumsily stumbled forward.

“Fuck!” I said loudly. Mama knocked on the wall from my parents’ bedroom next door.

“Video chat your friends in the morning!”, she yelled. I ignored her, carrying on with Midnight Diner.

“And if you tear your hair out and still don’t have an answer, then it’s out of your hands”, said the Master.

I wept.

WHERE DO MEMORIES GO AFTER THEIR EXPIRATION DATE? After they die. I don’t mean death, of course, not in the traditional sense. What happens to memories after the death of relationships? After friendships end, breakups, divorces. If we forget, do they become meaningless? If we remember, is it a crime? Our recollections remain, all of the stories, all of the comfort. But they would now exist as an abandoned place you once called home, and you’ve become a lost hermit crab having outgrown its shell, forced to find a new refuge. You can play the memories back, like a favorite show on Netflix you’ve watched over and over again, but each time it plays, it degrades like an old vinyl record. Do we still go back to them perhaps because it is in these memories that we’ve left a piece of ourselves? Haruki Murakami was right. “Memories warm you up from the inside”, he said. “But they also tear you apart.”

This I thought, as I laid in bed tearing myself apart, drunk as sin, hugging a pillow tight. I wondered if my Yeye in his final years felt any kind of relief from the weight of his own memories. I wondered what it would be like to forget. In the months past, I had still been unable to sleep on the left side of the bed: that space belonged to Azuki. In the months past, I would often wake and look for her, forgetting that there was no one there. Her ghost remained and haunted me always, and I lied to myself that I drank for numbness and escape from these thoughts. Part of me still enjoyed her presence, even if she wasn’t real. Try I did, however, to avoid her still. In

the daytime, I pursued my hobbies, and in the waking night time I left the TV on. But in dreams, I felt her comfort, both loving and deeply disturbing. I dreamt of Azuki every night, my sweet vicodin-spiked red bean. At least in the nightmares, I was not alone.

Sometimes I dreamt of living entire lifetimes with Azuki, together in a Pasadena apartment, growing old and dying by each other’s side. Sometimes I dreamt of our worst fights, reliving them like a movie in 4D, watching myself from outside my own body and wishing I had used different words and wishing I had done better by her. Sometimes I dreamt that she buried me alive, laughing as her new partner watched. She would throw the earrings I gave her into my grave before piling on the last shovelful of dirt. And some nights I dreamt of dying from Covid, suffocating and breathing through mud, lungs filling with wasp stings and spiderbites, delirious with fear. I would use my last breath to call Azuki to my side, voice raspy as sandpaper, and watch as she sobbed wretchedly on the other side of the glass, unable to say goodbye as I faded away.

I FINALLY DRIFTED OFF TO SLEEP, finding solace in replaying our early memories.

I met Azuki on OKCupid six years ago. She was the first person I messaged and, having very little experience, I totally struck out with her. A week went by, but I still thought of the girl with a slightly lopsided smile and an interestingly written profile. In her picture, she wore a plaid, purple dress and held a massive, precariously balanced yellow ice cream cone. Tucked underneath her arm, she carried a large box of Taiwanese fruitcake. There was a sly, almost mischievous quality to her expression. She looked at the camera as if to say, I am happy, and I don’t care what you think. A week later, I tried again. This time, she answered. After a round of back and

forth, as I jokingly picked a fight with her, she agreed to meet me for dinner the following day.

On our first date, Azuki arrived an hour late. The smiling, breezy girl in lavender was nowhere in sight. Instead, toward me awkwardly walked, with her hands behind her back, a short tomboy. She wore a dusty gray hoodie and dirty sneakers. Her hair was tied back in a knot so tight that she looked masculine. Bits of dust speckled her head and glasses. Azuki’s forehead looked slightly greasy as she put a hand on her stomach and asked if we could eat something soupy. It was her time of month and not only was she cold and tired, but she was beginning to develop a tummy ache. As we slurped our noodles loudly together, I was surprised how carefree I felt in her presence. It was as if we had already known each other before. There was something uncannily familiar in Azuki’s company. In the weeks that followed, there were no games, no strategy needed. When I wanted to text her, I never waited. If I felt eager to see her, I told her I wanted to see her.

Many weeks later, after seeing one another every single night, Azuki became my first girlfriend. She was the first girl whose hand I ever held. That night, as we walked around a college campus in Pasadena, I nervously grabbed her hand. Trying to act natural, I swung my arms as I walked, immediately making a fool of myself.

She laughed and grinned at me as I awkwardly told her I’ve never done this before.

“Good job!”, yelled out a student from across the street as Azuki giggled comically in her almost cartoonishly adorable high pitched voice.

Our first kiss was no less cumbersome. As we returned to her apartment after my drunken birthday party where I introduced her to my friends for the first time, we sat on the couch and talked until Azuki interrupted, “When are you going to kiss me?”

Funnily enough, neither of us had ever kissed anyone at that point.

“Should we look at tutorial videos online?”, she said.

“What’s that?” Giggling, she opened up Youtube, and proceeded to search for videos of people kissing. They all involved too much tongue. Intimidated, both of us closed the laptop.

“Okay, let’s try this…”, she said. “One…” “…two…”, I answered. I opened my mouth, only for my lips to collide uncomfortably with hers. Our teeth made a clattering sound as they met.

“Ow…”, she said. Blushing, her face turning the color of pink lemonade, twinkling from ear to ear. “Maybe we need more practice…”

Initially, I refrained from professing my feelings. Why should I? There is no reason to. I’m happy the way I was with whatever this is. What if this was just another game? I held my tongue. Even when she told me she was falling in love with me.

“I care about you too”, I said. Taciturn on the matter I would remain. Right up until Azuki crashed her car.

Sprinting through the dingy West Hollywood body shop that the twisted husk of her Mini Cooper was towed to, having blown off the rest of my workday and spent an hour driving like a madman through LA traffic to find her, I was in cold sweat as I spotted Azuki sitting alone in the waiting room.

“Everything is going to be ok”, I said, as she stared blankly later that night. “I love you. Everything is going to be alright. You’re safe now.”

THE GRAY LINE BEGAN TO STREAK as the felt tip squeaked across the marker paper, ruining the side view of the

SUV I worked on. My Copic marker had run out of ink. I had been working on my homework assignment for four hours now, during the first week of the car design course I signed up for from ArtCenter. My instructor had assigned 200 side views of various vehicles, to be scanned and uploaded in a couple of days. Classes at ArtCenter had always been grueling in terms of workload, a pedagogy designed to give us the mileage of ten thousand hours. It was, after all, one of the most prestigious design schools in the country.

Our teachers would often curse or yell during critiques, demanding nothing less than perfection. It was an environment called disciplined by some and toxic by others. To me, ArtCenter was home.

Our campus was a mysterious building, secluded in the mountains above Pasadena, a steel structure that rested like a bridge atop two hills, a third of the school suspended over a ravine. This hanging castle was my habitat and refuge, a place where I had spent most of my adult life, not only undergrad but also in the strange years between quitting my job and beginning grad school. The hillside campus was a sanctuary I would retreat to often after fights with Azuki, driving up to the scenic corner of the school at night to watch the city lights below.

Zoom was a strange place to return to ArtCenter. Gone were the walks through the long stark-white hallways I knew so well. Gone were trips to the coffee cart, the humming of the CNC machines, the smell of dust coming from the model shops, as forgotten as the cold, hard stools sat upon for five-hour long classes.

Instead, all of the essence and spirit of the ArtCenter I knew and loved came through my computer screen now, a reunion digitized, a virtual homecoming.

As I began to resume activities, albeit in lockdown, my parents began to rouse as well. These weeks, Mama continued to teach her students, through Zoom, anxiously asking me or Baba for help

with creating meetings almost everyday. These meetings would more often than not, be plagued with constant technical glitches exacerbated by the student yelling that he can’t hear, even calling his parents into the room to complain “teacher is not teaching me” as we frantically tried to figure out what was wrong. Baba immersed himself in projects with old colleagues, organizing virtual gatherings one week and composing music another, playing his score over and over again through a MIDI program that sometimes irritated Mama and me.

Months had passed since I needed to refill my Copics and I couldn’t remember where I had stored my ink bottles. The markers were expensive, at 8 dollars each; I used a set of 22. However, each marker was only a one-time purchase. I had numerous bottles of refill ink that I have not used for awhile. I went upstairs to my bedroom, rummaging through my bookshelf and cabinets, finally finding them behind the record player in a Blick’s Art Supply paper bag with writing on it.

“Sorry today seems to be a crappy day for you. I hope everything will be better from this moment on. I love you. Btw didn’t scratch a hair on your baby car so no worries. Sorry forgot to buy a card, I wrote it on this crappy paper bag.”

It had been just one of those days, during my first semester back at ArtCenter during those struggle years. A hectic day of classes and errands had made me scatterbrained. It was a day of bad critiques, missed appointments, on top of helping with Azuki’s car troubles. What made things more difficult was the number of belongings I needed to carry at school including a large portfolio bag, a laptop bag, and an art supply box. In my haste I absentmindedly lost my supply box. Most of the items in it could be cheaply replaced, but the markers were pricey. Needless to say, by bedtime I was in a pretty bad mood. The next morning, as I trudged down to

the garage and sat in my car, ready to start another day, pondering how I could find the most economical way of replacing my supplies, I noticed the bag on the dashboard. In it I found a full replacement set of 12 cool grays. Azuki had borrowed the 86 and driven out to buy them as I made dinner.

I removed the inks from the bag and carefully folded it, slipping the bag into the shoebox I kept Azuki’s keepsakes in, and headed back downstairs. This past week I had been working on my sketches on the first floor, as the weather had begun to warm, preferring to keep my hands steady and sweat-free. I uncapped my C5 marker and removed the felt tip. I uncapped the ink bottle, holding the marker in my left hand. Slowly, I dripped the ink into the marker. Then it happened again. My hand twitched, spilling ink onto the table. I set the bottle down, cleaning with a paper towel.

This entire page of sketches was now ruined and needed redoing.

I closed my eyes, willing myself to calm to no avail. The tremors grew more violent, my right hand shaking as if I were playing my guitar. I hugged myself, doubling over, hoping that my body weight would bring me home. The tightening in my chest grew stiff and the buzzing in my ears returned. I could suddenly hear Mama’s laptop in the living room as if it were a loudspeaker pressed against the side of my head, and feel Baba’s thudding footsteps and raucous throat-clearing from the upstairs bathroom. I became acutely aware of our neighbor’s dog barking and the cars speeding down the main street a block away. I wished Azuki were here to hold me and relieve me from the sensory overload. I wished Azuki were here.

I left the sketches where they were and sat in the kitchen, pouring myself a glass of white wine from the fridge. My senses began to dial down and my vision unblurred as I drank, returning to reality.

I looked outside at the ultramarine sky, watching the birds drink from the small fountain in our backyard. Planet Earth is blue and there was nothing I could do.

THURSDAY WAS MY CELLO LESSON. Initially I was afraid of facing my cello teacher again. After all, because of Azuki, I had missed our last session four years ago and almost completely ghosted him. It came as a surprise to me that we were able to resume our lessons so soon, as we were quarantined at home in the middle of a pandemic. However, he gave me instructions on how to attend our lessons through Facetime. My cello teacher had always been warm to me chuckling whenever he saw me in the past. He was a heavyset man with a deep voice and a thick Russian accent. Yet when he laughed his voice would range from a baritone belly laugh to a high pitched giggle. I loved my lessons with him and missed him dearly the past few years, especially his laughter. In the beginning he was skeptical that I could learn at all, being an adult; all his other students were children. When he had asked me why I wanted to play, I could not think of any other reason except to answer “...because it’s beautiful.”

He immediately stood up, held his arms wide and exclaimed “Very good! Very good, my friend!”

Our lessons over the course of those 16 months were the highlight of my week, and I was able to surprise him with my progress, cello being my fourth instrument. Impressed, he convinced me to purchase a better cello, one that he chose for me. It was a beautiful replica of a 16th century instrument, thin varnish over a heavenly dark reddish brown wood. This will be an instrument that grows with you for the rest of your life, he had told me. The bow he gave me as a gift had become one of my most prized possessions. “Talented students deserve good instruments”, he said.

I was not talented anymore, unfortunately.

This week we continued work on Bach’s G major Cello Suite, picking up where we left off four years ago. The slow movement

was the very heart of the piece and my favorite. Playing it used to feel as though I exhaled a deep, warm breath that vibrated the walls of the room and immersed the world in calm, a poem of grace and affection. It was a thing of beauty that I butchered today.

“Metronome!”, he yelled. “Intonation! Do not rush! My friend, why you rushing?”

I stopped playing, turning off the metronome.

“Sorry, nervous, I guess” The suffocating feeling had returned to my chest, along with the ringing in my ears. I began to sweat, and the lawnmower three houses down felt loud. I took a deep breath and started again from the beginning of the Sarabande. The prized bow scratched against the bridge and my teacher gave me a concerned look.

“No no no — my talented friend, what has happened to you? Look your wrists look your shoulders, they tight. Your muscles, all wrong.”

“I’m sorry. I might need a minute”, I said. The bow quivered in my trembling hand. I hugged my instrument closer against my chest and the feeling subsided.

“This piece, it not etude. You must relax, you must feel. It is a sarabande — elegant, stately dance. Bach gave his love here, his sarabandes are all special. Relax my friend, you tight. Pay attention on your touch, loosen your arms. FEEL your instrument!”

We put Bach on hold and played slow, long bowing patterns for the rest of our lesson. I would have to start over and relearn the cello.

I LAID NAKED ON THE TABLE as we ate together, among this decadent feast for two. Beside me sat bamboo steamers of xiaolongbao, shumai, rice noodles, plates of Taiwanese dough sticks.

A bucket of ice with a bottle of champagne stood next to the platter of oysters, its cold touch poking the side of my belly. The dishes clinked together as I rested on my back, moving my leg slightly. She put her hand on my thigh and smiled her mischievous smile, caressing gently and I shuddered and hardened immediately. I smiled back and she lightly rubbed her graceful fingers up and down my body. She stroked it slowly before putting me in her mouth as I looked deep into her unblinking eyes.

“It’s going to be alright”, she said. “I will always be here to take care of you.”

She wiped her mouth and licked her red lips and grinned at me.

“I love you”, I said. “I am yours.”

Her nails dug into my skin as she grabbed my legs and began to bite off chunks, and I gasped in pleasure while she worked her way up to my chest, tearing me open. I could see my own heart still beating as she licked it.

“Don’t leave me”, I said, and she kissed me with her stained lips, continuing to eat, and I disappeared into her bit by bit, never to be alone again.

I WOKE TO MY DAMP PILLOW, wet with a mixture of drool and tears. The walls glowed blue in the early morning light and my phone read 5:44 am. I sat up, feeling the cold floor against my feet. I opened my laptop and continued playing Midnight Diner.

“Life is like the Modori River”, said my grandfather on the computer screen. “You wander, lose your way, and come back.”

I poured more whisky into yesterday’s coffee. ...

THE MIDDAY LULL WAS SPLINTERED by another agitated sigh from Mama.

Obviously she was reading the news through WeChat again.

Another day, another misinformation campaign, infecting our household in a manner more virulent than any pandemic. First it was the quack Covid cures — gargling salt water in March, antimalarial drugs in April, eating garlic in May — Mama was slow to understand my sarcastic explanations on vampires and Chinese jiangshi, then it was a deep phobia of hobos, worries over imaginary convoys here to invite themselves to our homes. Gone were the innocent days of Chinese humor of river crabs and grass mud horses, here to stay were the weekly episodes of terrors and anxiety brought on by our favorite little lime green ten-cent chat bubble. Every week Mama would react the same way, like a running gag straight out of a classic Hanna-Barbera animation. First it would be a sigh, and then a sudden sharp inhale. She would open her mouth a few times noisily, a gesture to speak, and stop, as if attempting to interrupt an unseen plaintiff. These occurrences would raise my blood pressure immediately, unnerving me and giving me winded breath, forcing me to play the role of her asthmatic sparring partner for the hour.

“What now?”, I asked, preemptively irritated. I was sitting in the kitchen, eating reheated potstickers and nursing my daily hangover.

The glaring sunlight shone through the window, reflection glaring off the marble countertop against a noirish backdrop of an inkwell sink and droning appliances.

“We need to lock the doors and turn off the lights tonight.

What is this world coming to! Riots and looting in the streets! My god. The entire country is a mess now, people just taking out their anger on others. Where are the police?” Mama began to look unsettled as her left eye twitched and her brows furrowed toward a scowl.

“It was the police that started this in the first place.”

“That is why I tell you to be careful when you go out! Always obey the law and be a good citizen. That man, he should not have tried to pass off that counterfeit bill! It was just asking for trouble!”

“That wasn’t even proven! All George Floyd wanted was a pack of cigarettes, and it wouldn’t have made any difference if the bills were real or not. They murdered him!”

“That doesn’t mean people should act this way!”

“Maybe the government will finally pay attention then!”

Mama sighed once more and rubbed her head. It was Wednesday and we were both feeling the midweek exhaustion, a toll brought on by stay-at-home life.

“The government not paying attention?”, she said. “Look at what’s happening, people are already kneeling for our African neighbors, there is no honor in this —” “You know what, why don’t you go wear a white sheet and get a tiki torch if you feel so strongly against this!”

My hands began to shake again. I closed my eyes, hoping our conversation would stop, thinking of the turmoil. I thought of the smug, privileged scumbags who, no matter how they looked or behaved, had always earned Azuki’s respect and trust by default.

There was no justice in the world, no karma. The rich are innocent and the poor are guilty. The rich are loved and the poor are hated.

“So unfair”, Azuki fumed, years ago as she watched me toil alone on a group research project at ArtCenter. My partner had been a millionaire brat who spent our work sessions monitoring his stocks and checking home listings for more real estate to invest in, leaving me to pull all the weight.

“He’s making himself richer and taking credit while you’re working hard! This is complete bullshit, it’s everything that’s wrong with the world!” Incensed and red in the face, Azuki had even threatened to take my phone and call him herself. “I want to give

this asshole a piece of my mind! This is totally unfair to you!”

And like the lazy susan at an awkward family dimsum did the table slowly turn over the years as my Azuki turned her fury on me everytime she encountered the wealthy. Why can’t you be like them? Where did you go wrong in life? Am I just stupid for staying with you? There was no justice for me, no karma. I was guilty, and I was hated.

I helped myself to more white wine from the fridge.

“How much are you drinking these days?”, asked Mama.

“The bottles from the wine cabinet are almost gone! Two glasses a day is too many!”

“Not much at all, just to steady my nerves, bad dreams again.”

“I don’t believe you!” Mama gave me a concerned look.

“What kind of bad dreams?”

“Fifty-two giant red beans fell from the sky and crushed my car”, I lied.

THE MID-ENGINED SIDE VIEWS TOOK SHAPE, slowly at first, beginning as quick strokes of cool gray marker followed by light gestures by a Prismacolor black. Our class moved on in the past few weeks from technical sketching drills to a concept project.

I was relieved, taking more pleasure in drawing ten detailed iterations a week instead of two hundred loose ones. The project was becoming a fun one; we were to design a mid-engined supercar in six weeks, for a brand of our own choosing. One classmate chose Polestar. Another chose Aston Martin.

“Pop quiz — can anyone in the class tell me what the letters DB stands for?” asked my instructor as the student presented pictures of the DB9 in his inspiration board.

“Douchebag?”, I grumbled under my breath, forgetting that I

was not on mute.

“Who the fuck said that!? Slap yourself!”, yelled the instructor.

I picked Toyota, wanting to create a champion to the GT86 so often belittled by Azuki. It doesn’t matter how much you modify or dress it up, at the end of the day a cheap Toyota is still a cheap Toyota, she would say. If my car could feel, we would have hurt together, two kindred unworthy spirits, companions in our shared humiliation.

The tremors in my hands had been a problem until I found my old french curves, circle guides, and flexible rulers. Azuki had purchased these drawing aids for me in Taiwan, to save me money, she said, as these tools were quite expensive in the US. Using these was a blow to my pride, at first. Back at ArtCenter, semesters of typography and lettering classes have taught me to draw curves freehand, without help. The stencils and guides to me felt like a crutch, an ableist thought I harbored with a bit of shame. The rough scratch of the sharpened Prismacolor against marker paper felt satisfying, though, as I let it glide over the edge of the clear acrylic curve. It was a good feeling. This friction quivered up the pencil into my hand, steadying and grounding me while I sketched and made a sound not unlike the white noise I listened to through headphones to calm myself back in grad school whenever I studied for exams. Before long, I had five sleek, silver race cars that I photographed and posted to my Instagram story.

The air in my room became hot and I turned on a fan and took off the plastic gloves I wore to protect my work. My hands were sweaty like my forehead, with small beads forming and trickling down my skin, an annoying, harassing feeling like little ants. I leaned back in my chair and drank from the still cold glass of wine that also perspired with icy condensation. Summer came early this year, as small cracks of sunshine at first and becoming an irritating

swelter by now, the light shrieking through my window blinds like the loud static of a broken TV from the 90s. The warmth cast a general drowsiness through the house, a languid months-long Sunday afternoon of the lockdown. I opened Instagram again, looking for a way to distract myself.

Who was I before Azuki? For hours I had dug back out my posts from years ago, looking at a grid of photographs of solo adventures in the mountains, Kodak moments of a downtown LA skyline, videos from Saturday morning cello lessons, and Sunday night dates with Nainai. That person was a stranger to me, a fictional character I played in a forgotten film role. Cars? Piano? Cooking? I played the caricature with all of the finesse of Nicolas Cage in a B-list movie, with the hope that a sequel will come everyday through my Instagram stories, with my friends as a bored audience.

My friends. And Azuki.

There she appeared, on the top of my story viewers again.

Curious, I opened my portfolio website backend on the computer.

Another visit from the same old IP address. “Chicago, Illinois, United States”, it said, under location. This happened every few days for the past five months. Chicago. Chicago. Chicago, the analytics data would say. Sometimes at 9 in the morning. Other times near midnight. An iPhone X, on mobile Safari. I imagined that she would check up some days when she woke up, or at nights during bouts of insomnia, before or after her checkups on the stock market. Every time like clockwork she would visit my website, presumably after another comb through my social media. First she would spend a few seconds on the main page, then she would open my bio and click through my blog. Every time. Azuki had always been a creature of routine.

I FINISHED ALL OF THE EPISODES OF MIDNIGHT DINER in the coming weeks. There was still a Midnight Diner feature film left unwatched. I uncapped a fresh bottle of Jameson as it began (I had stockpiled quite a supply at the beginning of lockdown, foraging at the local liquor shop as others hoarded their toilet paper) and poured two fingers into a tumblr as that familiar opening played once more, soft guitar and an old man singing sadly in Japanese as scenes of the lonely crowded streets of Shinjuku panned across the screen. I began to relax when my grandfather soon appeared again, a little worse for wear, an injury causing his left hand to tremble, debilitating his ability to cook for his customers. I thought of my Yeye, watching Master take in a homeless girl and she became his sous chef, cutting vegetables for him as he poured the drinks for his nocturnal regulars. “Life… don’t underestimate life”, said the disheveled man sitting in the corner arranging his peanut shells artfully at the bar.

At 3 am my phone dinged. It was Azuki. <You can’t sleep either?> I ignored her and continued playing my movie.

In the second act, a pretty woman sat at the bar, down in the dumps and ordering Japanese ketchup spaghetti as she told the Master about the inheritance from her dead lover still not received.

She bonded over a kind hearted young man, a relationship playing out on screen, before leaving him after her money came in. She poured champagne, smiled, and made a toast as she did the dumping.

“Money means more than me? I was just a stopgap?”, he cried.

“Can a heart just go away like that?”

“You would do the same in my position”, she said.

I turned it off.

Given the chance, would I have also done the same? Either

way, maybe it would have given me a seat at the table, I said to myself, just like Azuki’s older cousin, once labeled as a deadbeat dropout by Azuki’s mother. Everything changed for him that summer when her parents came to visit. A ride in his new BMW and an expensive dinner at Fogo de Chao, and he became “worthy” in their eyes. One problem child redeemed while the other one waited at home demoted in status and respect from graphic designer to lost starving student.

“Worthy”. I sneered at the word sitting in the dark, growling through my own blind inebriation like an angry dog. “Worthy”. The word slurred through my lips as I brokenly staggered toward my bed. Even now, six months after the end, I still longed to deserve her love like a disgraced general ruminating decades after a lost war. Had I ever been worthy in Azuki’s eyes? Or had I simply been a vessel to be groomed into someone else, receiving borrowed love on borrowed time, waiting to obtain conditional approval? I looked again at the stranger in my old Instagram pictures. That person was someone else, and the body that sat here in the gloom was Azuki’s creation. I was made to love and worship her, a figure of wood and clay yearning to be a real boy, waiting for my blue fairy. Nights like this, ears buzzing, drunk as shit, I felt a clarity as I revisited the past timeline over and over again. I sat up, swaying to and fro making defiant gestures at the Azuki who wasn’t here, shaking my head and torso manically, pulling at my hair. What if Pinocchio drowned his maker in the ocean, stepped on that stupid cricket, and choked the blue fairy to death?

I leapt out of bed, frenzied in my anger and opened a new notes document on my iMac. Bucket List, it said. I wrote down the spots Azuki bragged about other men taking her to. I wrote down the fancy places Azuki’s cousin took her parents to. I wrote down the name of the luxury michelin star restaurant her family

visited that I was not allowed to join, being told later that I would only “embarrass” them. As soon as I am back on my feet once more, these will be the places I take my own parents to. Then, I can be “worthy” too. When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

“There are no more strings on me”, I said.

“You watch too many immature movies”, laughed Azuki in the corner.

I AWOKE FROM A FITFUL SLUMBER, ready to begin another new day. Yellow sunlight streamed in through the window blinds of my downtown loft, warming me up as I slowly got out of bed and made my way to the kitchen and began to make coffee. It has been years since the Covid pandemic, an interesting time period.

Job searching had been an excruciating process but I was able to find my footing, eventually moving out. One change, however, from the new normal that was here to stay was a welcomed one; working from home. Days like this were quite comfortable, waking up fifteen minutes before the start of the workday and sitting in front of the computer with a steaming mug of coffee. There were no more daily stuck-in-traffic hour-and-a-half commutes, just the short one from the bed to the chair. Today however, I woke early to make breakfast for Azuki; it had been awhile since I’ve done something romantic.

Azuki moved back from Chicago soon after a vaccine was developed, around the same time she finished her MFA program. The bizarre time period that was 2020 changed her for the better. Gone was her fiery temper and controlling tendencies, making way for the truly compassionate soul she had always been, the kindness that I had fallen in love with years ago. The old wounds were difficult to heal and took time and patience from both of us. I had not been the best boyfriend, and sometimes not even a good one at times in

the past either. Yet such is life, we learn, heal, and move on as better people. It had been easier finding work with this new Azuki by my side, quelling much of the old anxieties from the words she used to inflict.

“I had just wanted you to succeed. I didn’t say it in the best way, but I really wanted good things to happen to you”, she told me. After our reconciliation I would sometimes still feel resentful of past hurts. Simply her smile was enough to make me whole again.

It was a sheepish, bashful grin reminiscent of the way a child would simper at a parent at the end of a stern punishment. Against my will, I would accidentally smile too, but quickly force it back into a frown, not wanting to give in so easily.

“I see you smiling there! Don’t try and hide it!”, Azuki would laugh and say. “I love you, okay? And I will always be proud of you.”

The Los Angeles morning was peaceful when viewed from high above. Cars moved slowly down Broadway; I could hear their distant honking noises in the early rush hour. Construction workers below near Third Street walked carrying their equipment, passing by the shops just beginning to open in Grand Central Market.

From my living room window I saw a cyclist zipping down Grand Avenue past the Museum of Contemporary Art, in front of which a food truck was beginning to set up shop. My breath and the steam from my coffee fogged the glass as I stepped closer to look at the crowd of people gathering by the Broad. The early light bathed my city in a warm amber glow, thawing its sleepy commuters as a new workday began. Flecks of gold and saffron twinkled as the dawn bounced from the stirring skyscrapers and automobiles, blinding me. I, too, was beginning to wake as I finished my coffee.

I had purchased the loft after more badgering from both Baba and Azuki. Baba’s real estate connections made it easier to find the apartment and get a good price. My salary was able to cover the

mortgage if I was careful not to live too extravagantly. Occasionally I lent money to Azuki that she would invest. Her portfolio always made her a steady stream of dividends and she would sell shares at the right time to turn a profit; Azuki had always had a keen eye for the stock market, a skill learned from her mother. We converted the second bedroom of the loft into a small studio space for her, filling the home with the old familiar smells of linseed oil and plywood, where she made paintings that displayed at a small gallery on Main Street in Alhambra, close to our old apartment. Occasionally she made some extra money from freelance gigs illustrating covers for children’s books.

Today, Azuki must have gone out to take a walk. Texting her to tell her I would be making breakfast, I started to get dressed. We were out of eggs and I would have to buy them at the grocery store nearby. I put on my jacket and grabbed my keys from the top of the Yamaha baby grand near the entrance. On the wall behind it hung several of Azuki’s paintings next to a few favorite sketches of mine in smaller photo frames. My A90 Supra roared to life as I headed out toward Whole Foods. It was hard letting go of my beloved GT86 but I had also felt it was time for a change. A more “grown up” car, Azuki had said.

“Didn’t you say a Toyota will always be just a Toyota?”, I had said, making fun of Azuki when she whooped excitedly on our first joyride in the Supra.

“Well, the engine is a BMW. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing!”

At the store I grabbed berries, whipped cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract after getting the eggs, ingredients for the french toast I planned to make. Ingredients that I didn’t use the first time I had made breakfast for Azuki, the morning after the first time we had slept together, long ago. She giggled months later when I asked her if she liked my cooking, telling me that I had made

french toast the wrong way. I did not plan on disappointing, this time around. “...dans un sommeil que charmait ton image… je rêvais le bonheur, ardent mirage…” sang a soft voice on the PA. It was a piece I recognized. My cello teacher had taught me to play Après un Rêve in 2021, but until now I had never heard the words. It was a haunting melody, lingering in the air with a shroud of humid, mournful heaviness. There was still no reply from Azuki. She was probably distracted by our neighbor’s French bulldog, I thought to myself as I paid for the groceries and walked back to the car.

It was quiet and empty when I returned home. Azuki should have been back from her stroll by now. Worried, I put the groceries down on the counter and called her. No answer.

“Azuki? Honey?” I walked from room to room looking for her, hoping that she might have maybe woken early to paint and fallen asleep. The studio was empty. Only a half-finished painting of a starry night of red beans still sitting on the easel watching over a floor littered with various tubes of paint. There was still no one home.

I sat down on the couch. Was she angry with me? I thought we were past acting like this, past the furious walkouts and silent treatments. I called again. Still no answer. Did something on my phone make her mad? I looked through my recent messages with friends, recent emails. Nothing out of the ordinary. Azuki knew my passcode and used my phone often to play games or look at Yelp anyway. This was strange. I began to feel cold and slightly sick. How long should I wait before filing a missing persons report?

I went back to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of cold water. I was beginning to panic. What should I do, I thought. Azuki was my life. I took out my phone again. Still no word.

I needed to compose myself before figuring out next steps.

Now wasn’t the time to freak out. I went to the bathroom to wash my face. I felt the cold water from the faucet running down my hands, grounding me once again. I looked down at my fingers.

My slender, beautiful fingers, slightly calloused from years of pottery classes, last week’s nail polish almost flaking off. No. This wasn’t right. I looked up at my reflection, at the face that was not my own.

“Did you miss me?”, said Azuki in the mirror.

I AWOKE, CONFUSED. 11:34 am, said my phone. My head thudded mercilessly and I groaned against the headache. I pressed the side of my forehead against the wooden headboard, feeling the coolness. The surface pounded on my skin with the rhythm of the throbs. The tinnitus in my ears shrieked today, sounding like a million clashes of cymbals drawn out into one continuous note. In other words, nothing new. The dreams were becoming more and more frequent, but it was the waking up that I hated. I plopped down on the chair. I checked my messages. I checked my social media channels. I looked at my Instagram story viewers. There she was again. Nothing new. Why not, I thought, as I opened Google Analytics once again. Chicago, Chicago, Chicago. Oak Park. Oak Park. This was new.

Google Maps told me that Oak Park was a suburb thirty minutes outside of Chicago. The user flow followed the same pattern.

A few seconds on the main page, then bio, then blog clickthrough.

I created a graph of all page visits the past six months from the two locations. Oak Park appeared in March and spiked higher in frequency over the following months. Azuki has moved in with someone else. <Hey> said my phone, cutting through the awful silence. It was Virgil.

<Would you be interested in some freelance work this weekend? We have a deadline and there’s nobody around who can pull together the animations needed.> <Sure>, I wrote. <What’s the budget and scope of work?> <Can I give you a call this afternoon and you can give me a rough quote after i walk you through the work?> <Ok.> I turned off the computer and went outside.