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Lesley’s tiny hands — smaller even than the warm brown rotary dial with the golden handle that stood atop the wooden table by the front door — reached towards the ceiling, creamy stars and delicate crescents painted with a featherlight hand.
The spiraling patterns turned into a gentle, swirling flame as they danced around the beige sky and she could almost feel herself floating, feet slowly lifting off the ground as the wind wrapped its wispy hands round her elfin arms and pulled her against gravity. Lips stretched into a smile, revealing her chipped front tooth. She was certain that if it had gone on for a bit longer, she would’ve floated off to dreamland and never came back.
“Ley… Ley.”
That small, fragile voice snapped her back. Suddenly, her feet were back on the ground and her big, brown eyes were reflecting the small boy sitting on the couch with curly brown hair and round specs that were far too large for his eyes.
“You were drifting off again,” Minghao said, reaching out for the glass of milk on the silver tray beside him. Lesley giggled and skipped over to him, grabbing one sourdough chocolate chip cookie and taking a bite. There were crumbs on the corners of her lips and Minghao laughed as he wiped them away with his sleeve. She reached for the milk, but he swatted her hand away.
“Get your own.”
“There’s only one glass of milk, doofus,” she said, sticking her tongue out at him. If you’ve got a problem, then go and tell Tris. Not my fault she forgot about you again.”
In the end, Minghao simply chuckled as she downed the whole glass. Her mind’s adventures always left her tired though her physical body never actually went through them. After she finished her milk, Minghao asked, “What were you daydreaming about?”
“Flying.”
“I wish we could really fly,” he sighed, leaning back on the couch. He stared up at the ceiling and Lesley wondered if he was imagining himself swimming in the cosmos.
“Sure, you can fly,” Lesley nudged him, “if you believe enough.”
There was a gloomy defeat in Minghao’s voice that was unusual for a young boy his age. “It’s still not the same as really flying,” he said, staying incredibly still and only his lips moving. He didn’t even blink. “Someday, we’ll have to accept that we can’t really fly and the ground is where we’re meant to be, not up in the air.”
“You sound like Grandma,” Lesley laughed. “She’s always saying really deep stuff, but I don’t really get it. She says someday I will, but right now, I’m still too young.”
Strangely enough, talking about Grandma Rosie always made Lesley feel relaxed. When she was still alive, her grandma was a warm and kind person. She had a raspy but gentle voice, and she always smelled like home-cooked meals and cinnamon rolls. Evenings at Grandma’s house were always warm, wrapped in a knitted blanket and listening to stories about flying ships and dragon-infested lands. She wasn’t so sad when Grandma died because she came to her in dreams and daydreams both, and she didn’t feel alone or afraid even in her cold, too-big-for-her bed.
The sound of the heavy oak doors opening barely reached her ears. Her head whipped to Minghao and she could see the same deer-in-the-headlights look mirrored on his face. She jumped up to her feet, saying, “Oh, no, they’re home.”
But Minghao just smiled, his features slowly relaxing. He always balanced her nervousness with calmness, her tension with tranquility. She heard her parents whispering angrily, and she drowned out the noise to focus on him. With a sweep of his hand, he brought his finger up to his lips and pointed to a window cracked ever so slightly open.
He looked frail, but he was quick on his feet. Soon, he was climbing out of the window and hopping down to the grass, briefly stopping to wave before running into the forest.
When her parents appeared in the living room doorway, she was standing with her back to the window, looking as innocent as an angel. Her hands were hidden behind her back, pinky still touching the edge of the window she had just closed. Behind her, a little boy disappears beyond the tree line and into the foliage.
Dinner was, as always, unnecessarily lavish for a family of three.
The long maple table held dishes of every kind. There was always excess food — after all, they all ate sparsely. Her mother was trying to keep her svelte figure while her father didn’t always eat dinner at home. On nights that he did, he was always quite full from eating with his colleagues. And famously, the dinner table was the sacred space for family quarrels and heated arguments, barely leaving Lesley with any appetite.
And Lesley thought, as she stuck her fork in flower-shaped carrots and bushy broccolis, as her mother angrily bellowed at her father about not having time for them, Tonight, again, I wish I was at Grandma’s instead.
Her mother’s sigh had a finality to it — one that Lesley had learned to pick from countless fights at the dinner table — as she plastered a smile on her face and turned to Lesley.
She never turned to Lesley, never really saw her unless she was far too tired to continue an argument and wanted to steer the conversation away to somewhere unrelated, somewhere that didn’t matter usually other than an afterthought.
“So, tell me, Lesley, what have you been up to today?” her mother asked, resting her chin on one hand while she tapped her perfectly polished nails on the table. Lesley glanced at her father, who rolled his eyes but simply looked down and sliced his steak.
“I drew some pictures,” she answered, back straightening in excitement. “I drew a meadow and a tower. In the tower, there’s a really beautiful princess with gold hair and she’s wearing a pink gown. Do you know the story of the princess with the long hair who was trapped in a tower and couldn’t get out and…”
Something squeezed at her heart. Her mother might be looking right at her, but her mind was far away. Her father wasn’t even listening to them, busily devouring his steak. Suddenly, she had the desire to annoy them, to make them angry. Because maybe then, maybe then , they would finally see her, look at her, remember that they actually had a daughter. Maybe then, she would finally feel real to them. Gritting her teeth, she took a deep breath and said something she knew would annoy them.
“I played with Hao today.”
Lesley watched her mother’s smile drop and her father finally register her in his vision, and she felt weirdly triumphant. Her mother breathed in deeply, then smiled again, another one of her forced smiles, and said, “Well, that’s nice, sweetie.”
No sooner than the words were out of her mouth, her mother had gone back to eating her plate of greens. Lesley didn’t like that, wanted her attention only on her. So she went on.
“We made paper airplanes, and we played around in the yard, then we went back inside and Tris made us milk and cookies,” she said, becoming more animated without even noticing. Her anger dissipating, replaced instead by the happiness she always felt when Minghao was around, the sparkle returned to her eyes. She wondered if she felt so at ease with him since he gave the same cozy vibe as Grandma Rosie, and her chest started to feel fuzzy.
Lesley thought she saw her mother subtly shake her head at her father when he seemed to want to say something. Instead, he gruffed and pushed away his empty plate, rubbing his temples as she continued with her lively storytelling about how she and Minghao fought a dragon and flew to the sky castle with the moon and stars.
She could almost hear her father’s unspoken disapproval, brushing away her fantasies with a snide remark. But she didn’t care about that at all.
Her imagination was untethered, and their distaste couldn’t stop her from flying.
“Alright, places, everybody!”
Her ballet teacher clapped urgently, but Lesley didn’t move from her spot. She was too busy peeking from behind the curtains. Her eyes strained to find her parents, scanning row after row after row. But then, her eyes landed on two empty seats in the fourth row with a paper attached to both. Written in bold, black letters: “Mr. & Mrs. Rogers” .
Nobody was there. Lesley did not even feel tears prickling her eyes, not even the slightest urge to cry. She worried that there might be something wrong with her because what child feels so empty upon their parents’ absence that they don’t even feel a thing?
“Places!” her teacher’s crisp voice cut through her thoughts.
She rushed to the other side of the stage, standing third from the last ballerina in a line. As the lights began to dim and a sonorous male voice started to announce their performance, she shook her head to rid herself of the dark thoughts. They would come to her sometimes, especially when she felt particularly empty or sad. Often, it came to her in the darkness of her room on nights where she couldn’t sleep, her mind in turmoil — or sometimes, because of the warring voices piercing through thin walls, unaware that a little girl’s ears were privy to every sharp word being said, every hateful phrase that was uttered.
But today, she had to shake away the dark thoughts that plagued her. She had to. This was a special performance and for the first time, she was one of the prima ballerinas. She had no time to dwell on such silly thoughts.
The red curtains pulled open and hot lights opened above the pretty little figures, spilling a flash of white light onto her. And then, she saw them.
Sitting in the seats that were reserved for her mother and father was Tris, her nanny. She smiled proudly and applauded, and Lesley found herself thinking that she was clapping too hard. Tris always bruised easily and even the slightest flick on her forearm could cause her skin to turn a slightly blue-purplish color. Stop clapping, you’ll hurt yourself.
And beside Tris, Lesley’s eyes fell on a figure that brought tears to her eyes.
Minghao was there, curly brown hair and round specs too big for his eyes, smiling. He was not clapping, she observed, but that didn’t matter. Sometimes, he couldn’t even get himself out of bed, much less clap. He was homeschooled because he was sickly, and Lesley wasn’t sure if it was the lights or if he looked especially pale today. I hope he’s not unwell.
“Good for you,” the ballerina beside her whispered. “Your mother came.”
She didn’t even feel the urge to correct her.
The sweet sounds of the violin began to come in, and Lesley blinked away her tears and put on her best smile. She had a show to put on for the only people who ever really saw her.
“You sure you’ll be fine? Be careful not to twist your ankle,” Minghao said as they waited by the bleachers. Lesley was in high school now, and she didn’t know what bedeviled her to join the cheerleading team but here she was anyway.
She thought she looked silly in her red, black and white cheerleading uniform. After all, she felt much more comfortable in a tutu. But it had already been long ago when she had given up on ballet for reasons she had never yet spoken to anyone, not even Minghao. When she told her parents a few years ago that she wanted to quit ballet, they didn’t bat an eye. It was Minghao who seemed the most upset, even when Tris was only slightly saddened by it.
“Stop doing that,” she heard him say firmly.
Her eyes turned to him. Frowning, she asked, “Stop doing what ?”
“ That ,” he said, pointing at her feet. Upon looking down, Lesley realized that she had been shifting from foot to foot. Giving one final stomp, she huffed and stretched her neck out to glance at the bleachers, slightly tiptoeing so she could see a bit more.
“What are you doing?”
She hesitated for a moment. Finally, she sighed and admitted, “Well… I told Mom and Dad about the cheerleading competition. They said they would be here.”
“When have they ever meant anything they said?” Minghao asked harshly.
Lesley smacked his arm, eliciting a very offended Ow! from him. “Don’t be mean,” she said, though a nagging voice in the back of her head told her he was right anyway. Lesley could not remember a single promise that they had kept. Going on a family trip? Cancelled due to emergencies at work. Friday movie nights? Didn’t last long because it was unproductive and they preferred to spend their time doing paperwork. Watching her ballet recital, her school play, any performance she was in? Sorry, Lesley, something came up at work.
But she was hoping, perhaps foolishly, that today would be different. And she would always hope with every major school event that her parents would finally make time for her.
Time dragged on. Her cheerleading captain angrily told her to rejoin the group, that they were coming on soon, berating her for going off alone. Until the last minute, her parents never showed up. As the team before theirs started to perform, she turned to Minghao and spoke in a monotonous voice, “I need to go. You’ll be out there, right?”
Gazing at her softly, he nodded. “When was I never?”
That made her smile. Taking in a deep breath, Lesley jogged over to her team, joining their huddle. She felt sad that her parents weren’t there, even sadder at Tris’ absence. She was used to both her parents not being there for her. But it had only been a year since Tris had decided to resign and return home to take care of her dying mother. The day Tris left, she felt a piece of her heart shatter, and she was sure Tris had taken a shard with her.
“Next up, the Rolling Thunders!”
Lesley came out running, whooping as loud as she could. She spotted Minghao among the crowded bleachers and pointed to him. He chuckled, shaking his head and looking down in stifled embarrassment. As she got into position, her eyes widened when she spotted two familiar figures in the crowd.
Her parents were there, sitting side by side, clapping reservedly but clapping nonetheless. And most importantly, they were there . They were actually there .
She almost laughed in glee. But the crowd fell silent and she had to remember that this was a competition. No, more than that — this was her first performance that her parents would ever see. She had to give it her all.
She had never felt more alive. If she was going to be honest, she never really felt a spark in cheerleading. It didn’t give her as much joy as being with Minghao or remembering her Grandma, and it didn’t excite her as much as a ballet recital. But right now, she felt the life pulsating in her veins, the breath filling her lungs, the wind singing in her ear.
Somewhere in the middle of their five-minute routine, her parents got up and left.
They did it so nonchalantly, and maybe that’s what broke her heart. She saw how her father received a call, whispered something briefly to her mother’s ear, and they packed up and left. Just like that. They didn’t even glance at her, attempt to meet her eye and signal to her that they needed to leave. They just up and left, like they did so many times before. Because she, their own daughter, Lesley — she was dispensable.
The Rolling Thunders lost that day after Lesley took a fall and broke her shoulder.
The impatient taps on her window were getting too loud, too persistent to ignore. Pushing herself up off the bed, Lesley reached out to unlatch it, allowing her nimble-footed friend, who was showing an incredibly alarming potential for thievery and breaking into houses, inside her unlit room.
She recoils back into her fetal position on top of her blanket, unmindful of the cold breeze that had started to flow in. Minghao stood a few feet away, watching.
“Your shoulder’s healed, right?”
She didn’t answer.
“You stopped going to school. They’re probably waiting for you.”
No, they’re not. I made the team lose.
“Have you eaten lately? You look really thin.”
Nothing tastes good.
“Did you talk to your parents?”
Silence.
Finally, she heard soft footsteps approaching her bed. Then, the bed shook slightly as he sat on the floor, leaning his back against it. She thought she might be imagining it, but it felt a bit warmer after he came nearer. She wondered if there were just some people who carried the sun inside them, and they spread light and warmth wherever they were needed. If that was the case, then Minghao was definitely a sun-person.
“Take your time. I’ll be here when you want to talk about it.”
That was the first time she slept peacefully after so many sleepless nights.
“You’re still being homeschooled for college?” Lesley asked, stepping on a thick root that was sticking out of the ground. Minghao was walking a little behind her, laissez-faire with his hands buried in his pockets.
“Yeah,” he said, sighing. “They’re still worried that I might be too weak.”
“Come on, how weak can you be?” she asked, frowning. She was moving away for college soon. The thought of being apart from Minghao for too long didn’t sit right with her. To tell the truth, she wasn’t sure if she could survive the outside world without him. Sure, she was going back home during the holidays. But that was too short a time with him and too long a time without. “I mean, you’re traipsing through the forest with me now without trouble.”
“We’re walking really slowly.”
“And your point?” she asked. “Then walk slowly in the outside world, too.”
“I can’t,” he said, sitting on a tree stump. “The world… is always in a rush. If you can’t keep up, you’re dead meat. If you go against the currents, you’re dead meat. If you can’t meet the expectations, you’re dead meat.”
“Fuck that.”
“Hey,” Minghao frowned at her. He was never one to tolerate foul language.
“I just…” She sighed. “I’ll miss you.”
There was a pause as Minghao fixed her with a soft gaze. Lesley found her cheeks heating up at his intense gaze, so she looked away. She had been doing that a lot recently — feeling self-conscious around Minghao, unable to get her bearings together when he fixed her hair, getting tongue-tied when he rested his head against her shoulder. He always did all those things, so she wondered what was so different now.
“We met here, remember?” his soft voice snapped her out of her reverie.
She blinked once, twice. Then looked around at the trees, the plants, the soil. The forest looked the same to her, but she figured Minghao must know it by heart. She’d never been to his house, but he told her it was somewhere past the forest. It was in here that they met, at some vague point in her foggy memories.
She had caught him sneaking around the forest behind their house, so she chased him into it. The only reason she caught up to him was because he tired easily, and she found him slumped against a tree stump very much like the one he was sitting on now.
Huh. Maybe this is where we met.
They had both grown up a lot since then. She was no longer the frail little girl she used to be, and his round specs were no longer far too large for his eyes. It was rare to find someone so special to you entirely by chance and still keep them in your life, in your heart after so many years. Part of her was afraid that if she left for college, if she left for too long, she would outgrow him. Or worse, he would outgrow her.
“Let’s meet up every time you come back, okay? Promise I’ll wait for you.” Those promising words, his soft voice, his kind eyes… Yeah, Lesley was pretty sure she would never outgrow him. And if he promised her he would always wait for her, then she believed him.
“Sure. And I promise I’ll bring you back fun stories from college, too.”
After all, Minghao never broke a promise to her.
Clothes, books, wrappers, and torn papers strewn about. A filthy rug covered the center of the room, dirt clinging to every hair. On top of the desk, there was a toppled pencil case, spilling its contents onto papers stamped with red marks. Beside those crumpled test papers, and on the bedside table, and on some parts of the floor, half-eaten food were slowly rotting, its sickeningly sweet smell wafting in the closed, musty space.
In the middle of the filth, among heaps of unwashed clothes on her bed, in the darkness of the room, lost in the darkness in her head, lay Lesley.
Lying so still that she didn’t even look like she was breathing. Eyes fixed on the metallic object within arm’s reach. Dark thoughts swirling in her head, telling her that there was just one thing left to do.
A knock on the door brings her away from the cutter sitting a few inches away from her.
It’s her parents, and they’re here to take her home.
“You didn’t tell me you were back.”
She didn’t even know how he got in. Maybe he had mastered the art of thievery, after all. Her window was now open even though she remembered locking it. Minghao stood a few feet away from her bed. She was hugging her knees to her chest, hiding her face. She didn’t have the strength to look up.
“Have you eaten?” he asked, shuffling closer to her. Lesley felt the bed dip as Minghao sat beside her, and she heard plastic rustling before smelling bread, lettuce, and meat.
She turned her head away. The smell was revolting, and it made her want to vomit.
“What happened, Ley?”
Life happened, Hao, she wanted to say. But her throat felt raspy, and she was afraid that she would come undone. When it got late, Minghao left the burger on her bedside table and left through the window. But every day, he came back and spent the entire day with her, sitting in silence, bringing fresh food and throwing out the rotten food that she didn’t eat from the day before. He was there so often, unlike her parents who still refused to acknowledge her presence, her existence.
Finally, one night, she whispered into the dark, and her words fell on Minghao’s ears, always ready to listen to even the darkest of thoughts.
“I wanted it to end, Hao.”
So soft was her whisper that even Lesley thought she imagined it.
She remembered how she tried to show them the things she drew or painted when she was a kid. “That’s pretty, honey,” they would say, but they wouldn’t look at her drawings at all.
She remembered when she had decided to quit ballet when she realized her parents would never watch any of her recitals after her mother had told her that “going to a ballet recital is a waste of time” .
She remembered breaking her shoulder at the cheerleading competition and the only thing her parents had to say was that she “should have been more careful” .
She remembered calling her parents from the dorm phone in the dead of night, desperately trying to hold back tears as she recounted how hard her classes were, how terrorizing her professors were, how she missed being home. And all her father said was, “Is that all? I have a report to finish, dear, call your mother in the morning.”
That night, Minghao laid beside her on the bed, his chest pressed to her back as he held her tight against him, stilling her body that was wracked with sobs.
And when her tears had finally ceased, he whispered something.
“Maybe… maybe you should get help, Ley.”
She was smiling more often lately, Lesley observed as she looked at herself in the mirror, twirling around to admire her powder blue summer dress. She felt silly for checking herself out after her big date — after all, don’t you usually fret about whether you look good or not before actually going out?
But her worries came more like an afterthought, and she found herself thinking about how Minghao saw her. Did she look cute to him? Did the blue match her eyes? Her skin? Did she look like she was trying too hard?
She told Dr. Ligaya about Minghao. Though not wont to giving love advice, she agreed that Lesley did seem to have a bit of a crush on him and urged her to tell her about any feelings or developments that could arise out of it in their sessions. It had already been quite a few months since she had started going to a therapist, but she was already getting better with handling her emotions. She found that journaling kept the dark thoughts at bay, so she has been doing that a lot often recently.
Lesley couldn’t help noticing, however, how rarely she saw Minghao ever since she started talking to her therapist. At first, she thought he was giving her space to heal. But then, even when she started reaching out to him herself, he was rarely there.
One time, she ventured inside the forest, trying to get to the other side, hoping to find her way to his house. But to no such luck.
That’s why when he finally paid her a visit, she thought to invite him on a picnic date. They spent the day in a clearing in the forest, talking and reminiscing about the good old days. It made her feel so old, but really, they were just on the brink of the rest of their lives. At least, that’s what Dr. Ligaya always told her.
She glanced at her clock. 6:52 PM.
Jumping out of bed, she started getting changed into more comfortable clothes. Minghao had invited her to go stargazing on her roof — something they always did when they were little. In her excitement, Lesley agreed without noticing the solemn look in his eyes.
He looked pretty sad , she thought as she changed into a loose sweater and pajama pants. Come to think of it, he looked so pale today, too. I wonder if he’s okay.
She resolved to ask him about his sickness tonight. Guilt gnawed at her chest. Perhaps she had been too focused on her own problems that she failed to realize how troubled Minghao was. It made her feel like a bad friend and unworthy to love him. She knew she loved him, but she wanted to take as much time as they both needed. And she wanted to support him in fighting off his sickness just as he supported her in shooing away the dark thoughts.
Her steps were quick and light as she made her way down the stairs. Passing by the dining room, she heard her mother call to her, “Lesley, won’t you join us for dinner?”
“No, Mom, I’m meeting up with Hao tonight.”
A loud bang made her stop in her tracks. Frowning in both confusion and fear, she stared at her father’s stern face, his fists clenched and resting on the table. Her mother began to say, “Robert, I don’t think you should—”
“Isn’t it about time you stop this?” her father asked, anger emanating from every word.
“Stop… what ?” Lesley asked.
“ That boy ,” her father clarified, making Lesley even more confused. “You can’t keep talking about him. I merely tolerated it when you were little because your mother told me not to say anything, to let children be children. But look where that got you now!”
“I don’t understand, what are you—”
“Robert, stop this!”
“Look what you’ve done to our daughter! I told you to quit your job and just stay at home to take care of her, but what did you do? Now she’s seeing some therapist and—”
“Robert! Dr. Ligaya is doing a good thing for Lesley.”
“Will you tell me what’s going on? Why are yo—”
“It’s all because you —” her father touched his finger to her mother’s forehead “—let your mother tell her all those fantasies . It’s what made your daughter a nutjob!”
“I’m not a nutjob!”
“You’re going too far, Robert.”
“All this talk about Hao this , Hao that …”
“I know you never liked him and I never questioned that even if you didn’t have any reason to be so against him.” Lesley was yelling now, voice getting higher and louder with every word she spoke. “But stop talking about him like that. He’s my friend, and he’s been there for me more than you ever have!”
“Don’t you get it?!”
Her father slammed his fists on the table, causing some of the silverware to fall onto the floor. The large candle in the middle rocked gently back and forth, finally toppling over with a loud, metallic clang.
“Your little friend isn’t real.”
She was running as fast as her feet could take her. The cold wind and the occasional twig whipped her face, but Lesley was ignorant of the pain. All she could feel was a deep fear in her chest, a grip so tight that she was sure it would squeeze the life out of her. The air was starting to grow thin, and she felt herself gasping for breath.
But she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
She ran herself ragged and still didn’t reach the end of the forest. She spent almost all her breath and still didn’t find the house on the other side. And for the first time in her entire life, Minghao didn’t appear when she needed him the most.
Lesley didn’t know when the rain started to pour. She didn’t know how she found her way back to her house. But by the time the fluorescent lights reached her eyes, the rain had just stopped, she was dripping wet and tired, and her brain felt fuzzy. Finally, with one last step, her legs gave way and she collapsed onto the wet grass.
The last thing she heard was her parents’ frantic voices, calling her name. She thought she could hear Minghao’s soft voice, too.
It’ll be alright, Ley. I promise.
The next time he was in her room, Lesley took comfort in the fact that at least he wasn’t a would-be thief.
She was sitting at the edge of her bed, staring at him with her hands placed on her lap. He was standing a few feet away, always a few feet away, his hands in his pockets. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something, and Lesley had spent a whole three days thinking about what she would say if she ever saw him again.
“Why weren’t you there?” she finally spoke.
There was a sadness in his eyes, so stark that it shocked her, so deep that she wondered if she could ever see the bottom of it. Perhaps his sadness was mirroring her own. Of that, she could never be sure. And he never offered an answer.
“I tried…” she gulped. “I tried to see you.”
Minghapo responded with a weak lopsided smile. “You mean, you tried to conjure me? I’m not a spirit, you know.”
“But if it’s true that you’re… you’re… a figment…”
“ Your figment.”
“ My figment…” Lesley said, feeling a notch in her throat. “Then why is it almost like you choose when you come to me? Why do you only show up when I need you the most?”
“Because you made me when you needed me the most,” he said softly, sadly, almost guiltily. “Don’t you remember, Ley? When we met, you were running away because you were upset that your parents wouldn’t play with you.”
Lesley knew that.
The reason why Tris always brought just one glass of milk. Why the ballerina had only told her that it was good that her “mother” came but never acknowledged the little boy sitting next to her. Why her cheerleading captain had scolded her for going off alone even though he was right there beside her.
Minghao was only ever there when her parents weren’t around, when they failed to show up for her. And in her lonesome, she had Minghao to fill in the gaps that they left.
“But you’re real ,” she started to cry. “You’re right here .”
“And I’ll always be right here, Ley,” he whispered, closing the distance between them in a heartbeat and placing his hand over her heart. “ But sometimes, you just have to accept that there are things that will never be real, and some things are only meant to exist in here…” He placed a finger upon her forehead. “And here…” He moved his hand to the skin above her heart. “And not…. here.” He gestured around her room, filled with tangible things she didn’t want, not as much as she wanted the wisp of a boy kneeling in front of her.
The tears wouldn’t stop, and Lesley wasn’t sure she wanted them to. She wanted to let out the pain, the anger, the frustration. Crying didn’t feel enough. She felt like she was dying from the inside out. “What am I supposed to do now?”
“You keep your promise,” he smiled. “Make those memories, and bring me back those fun stories like you said you would.”
“What about you?” she whispered desperately, hoping he’d hear her begging him to stay.
He smiled softly, and Lesley cried knowing that it would be the last time he ever smiled at her. She could feel it pierce through her heart, so sharp and so painful that she clutched at Minghao’s hands and felt her hands pass through him, felt her own hands meet. He was becoming paler by the second, and it tore her apart that he was almost transparent. She tried to gather him into her arms, but he simply stood still, kneeling on one knee, smiling softly at her.
“It’s time for me to leave. You don’t need me anymore.”
“Don’t say that,” she sobbed. “I do.”
“No, not anymore, and it would be wrong for you to keep clinging to me like this,” Minghao said. “You’re so strong, Ley. I’m proof of that. You made me because you didn’t want to give up, but you needed something to hold onto. But now, you can stand on your own two feet.”
“What happens if I let you go?”
At that, Minghao smiles. “Then you can fly.”
She remembered a conversation she had so long ago. Sure, you can fly if you believe enough , that little girl had once said. And so, she took a deep breath and believed — in both her own words and his. Then, Lesley smiled through her tears, a grateful smile for the only one who stayed with her through everything. “Thank you, Hao. Goodbye.”
Minghao smiled back, no trace of sadness left in his eyes, only hope. And though he was completely translucent now, he had never looked so alive. “It’ll be alright, Ley. I promise.”
And finally, she lets go.