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There's a child living under Pigsy's roof, and it is not his. The child has two hands with five fingers each, two feet with five toes each. He has a small nose with small nostrils, and the child’s skin is not pink enough in hue. Like other humans, it has two ears shaped like the cooked flesh of clam, and has an excessive amount of hair on its head as though compensating for the lack of it on the rest of its body.
The child asks, "You’re my dad, right?"
And just like that, the afternoon ruins itself.
Pigsy presses the wet rag into the countertop a bit more aggressively, wiping away soup stains and drying flakes of scallion left behind by customers from the lunchtime rush. They do not even have the courtesy to tap with a napkin at the beads and ponds of broth collecting beneath their bowls before hopping off of their stools to leave; their parents must be so proud of them for being mannerless slobs who take their etiquette by the throat and stab it through the back.
The wood beneath the rag begins to darken and grow soft from the rag’s moisture. “I’m not anyone’s dad, kid. That’s a dumb thing to suggest.”
He feels MK’s stare burn like heated iron into his forearm, or perhaps like a spray of hot oil from a greased pan. It tingles, it stings, it makes him aware of each pump of blood passing through his veins. When he dares to look in the child’s direction, he sees MK, tiny fingers gripped clumsily around a pair of chopsticks, taking a slow slurp of his remaining noodles — despite his usual habit of gobbling down any food in his vicinity voraciously.
MK says nothing, out of choice or out of the inability to speak whilst having both cheeks stuffed round with noodles. Enough is said with his eyes alone, however, remaining questions burning just as strongly as the gaze itself.
But you house me.
But you clothe me.
But you feed me.
But you just cooked me this bowl of noodles.
Pigsy throws the rag at the tap of the kitchen sink, leaving the sad thing to hang limp on the faucet lever. He then dries his right hand on his apron before slamming it next to his corkboard of photographs — to make a point. To make a statement.
“You see this? This photo of me — the pig — and the other pig? The lady pig?”
MK blankly chews on the noodles occupying the full attention of his oral cavity.
“The lady pig is my mother. And you can tell, ‘cause we’re both pigs. The son n’ the mother. And you, kid, what are ya?”
MK swallows back whatever disgusting mass of wheat and vegetable that must have formed within his mouth. “A pig?”
“Go look in a mirror, y’ain’t a pig. You’re a human.”
“I don’t feel like one.”
MK lifts his bowl to drink it dry of all its remaining soup, then stands up from the stool with two socked feet pushing into the seat’s cushion. He stretches his short legs to place one foot on the counter, then the other, before walking over moist wood to place his bowl into the kitchen sink.
Pigsy grits his teeth. “I just cleaned the counter.”
The words settle on MK with no effect, and the boy jumps to land unceremoniously on the floor. As the child’s eyes fix onto the photograph of Pigsy and his mother, Pigsy is consumed by a sudden and violent wave of regret; he never should have brought the photo-board to the kid’s attention at all.
“I didn’t know I had a grandma,” MK walks to the corkboard, the pitter patter of small socked feet skittering across the floorboards mind-numbingly loud to Pigsy’s ears, echoing in his skull, “When am I gonna meet her?”
The breaking point approaches all too quickly, without warning, or perhaps only with warning Pigsy failed to register.
“Go back upstairs,” Pigsy points at the ceiling, “Now.”
He sees MK’s throat bob. A minute movement of dry saliva swallowed. “If she’s your mom, that means she’s my grandma—”
“I told you, I am not your dad, she is your nothing.”
“...”
“Upstairs. I gotta start preparin’ for the dinner rush.”
—
As though irresistibly instructed to by some innate childish instinct, the moment MK arrives at the playground he tosses off his shoes and runs straight for the monkey bars, leaving small clouds of sand to settle around each small footprint left behind.
“Not such a freeloader anymore, am I?” A smug grin drapes itself across Tang’s lips, though the fondness in his gaze towards MK negates the effect of his grin — somewhat. “I think I make for a pretty top-tier babysitter, if I do say so myself.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Just don’t ask ta be paid with money this time, this is just you scratchin’ old debt off your tab.”
Tang whispers petulantly under his breath, something about a “cheapskate” and a “pinchpenny,” before looking around for a place to sit and rest his sore ankles. He settles for the unoccupied swing set; two seats hang from its iron frame by iron chains beginning to rust. It is early in the morning, an hour before the opening time of Pigsy’s Noodles — meaning, other children have yet to come out of their homes to play — meaning, Tang is entirely free to occupy a swing seat without the looming threat of children pushing him off of what is rightfully theirs. The low-hanging sun is still clouded enough to leave the sky rather gray and bleak, and the morning chill makes Tang’s thick scarf and gloves entirely appropriate to wear. Autumnal chill is cruel in the way it penetrates the skin, attacking only what has grown comfortable in the temporary nest of summer's heat.
Quick as a chimp, MK shoots his way up the monkey bars and swings his light body from bar to bar, until he has successfully ventured the entire way across. He then pushes himself up so that the bars are under his body, before attempting to crawl across the bars in favor of swinging. Pigsy catches a reflected glimpse of the scene on the lenses of Tang’s glasses, and Tang, unrightfully mistaking the look at the glasses for some kind of judgemental coup d'œil at himself, raises a skeptical brow.
“Come on, it’s far from the first time you've made me watch MK. I’m not going to nod off on the job — oh yikes, it is chilly this morning.” A dynamic shiver pulses its way through Tang’s body, and Pigsy watches as Tang clumsily tries to pull the scarf up to his chin. “How does MK even stand being barefooted in this weather?”
“I dunno. Kid’s built like an unstoppable machine.” Pigsy pauses, taking a moment to observe MK, the way his plump cheeks grow rosy in the cold. “All kids are. They radiate heat from their skins n’ refuse to grow exhausted even after hours n’ hours of spendin’ their energy.”
“Aw, look at you. Only a few months into parenting and already sounding like a tired old dad.”
“Don’t ya fuckin’ say that to me, Tang.”
“Yeesh, mind your tone. Sounding rougher than Sandy, you are.”
The quip is followed by silence. Just the quiet giggles of MK from meters away, distant as the next-door joy of a neighbor's party in a poorly soundproofed flat. Filtered through concrete and drywall to ring hollow — or in this case, through light gray morning fog.
Tang gestures at the empty swing seat next to his, rocking meekly back and forth to draw only the most unnoticeable of arcs in its pathetically short trajectory. It is an offer to sit and pass the time, Pigsy knows.
With a grunt, Pigsy takes a step back. “I don’t have the time to sit n’ do nothing. I gotta go back and get ready to open.”
“You call watching a kid ‘nothing?’ Don’t you know how much work and effort goes into—”
“MK’s a quiet one. Says stuff sparingly. Says even less if ya give him a pack o’ crayons and a sketchbook. All you gotta do is sit down, and stare at him.”
With the frictional squeak of jacket against iron, MK nearly slips off the monkey bars, and barely catches himself before falling into the sand; Pigsy and Tang suck in a breath and wince in perfect synchronization. It is the kind of behavioral unity that can only come from years of tied history. Pigsy feels the fuzz over his skin rise and stand on their edges, feet frozen to the ground, unable to move and see if the kid’s injured himself. To move and see if the kid would cost him a trip to the hospital.
It is an ugly passerby thought he should not voice, and he bites it back. “Y’don’t know what it’s like, living with him. Living in the same space as him in that little shophouse. It’s only supposed to house one person, it was supposed to be a temporary arrangement ‘til I could afford to buy a separate house o’ my own. Then, I dunno, I could house tenants in that space. One person at a time, ‘cause the residential space was only ever meant for one person. I’d get to have extra income on the side. Then business wouldn’t be the economy’s prisoner anymore. I’d hold out ‘til the shop had an appropriately realistic four-point-eight star rating, ‘til business was booming. Then I’d get to wake up in the mornin’ not just to earn money but to do my art.”
“Uh-huh. Getting conceptual.”
“But I can’t get any damn privacy in there anymore. I can’t get good sleep, I have an extra very ravenous mouth ta feed. It’s crowded and I wake up frazzled every day and I haven’t the slightest what I gotta do with the kid.”
He hears every stomp into the floorboards, every needless flush of the toilet, every experimental turning of the faucet in the dead of night. And he knows he is supposed to chastise, to reprimand, to discipline, to mold every inch of himself to become whatever the hell this kid who suddenly barged into his life needs him to be: a figure of authority and patience. But that’s what he is supposed to be, not what he actually is. He’s never been very good at being what he’s supposed to be; it’s why he and Sandy used to click. They were good at straying from expectations, in both the good and bad ways.
He wonders what Sandy would think of him now, if they were to meet again. Look, Sandy, I haven’t touched a guitar or a proper mic in ages. I have a kid to feed and the first thing on my mind are the bills I have to pay. My fist hasn’t drawn blood since forever ago.
So much for being monsters together, I feel like an average fuckin’ salaryman.
Tang takes a surprise-snack tangerine out of his left pocket — bless him for never changing — and takes off his maroon gloves. “If you didn’t want that financial load on you, then well, why did you take him in?” With the gloves pocketed where the tangerine used to be nested, Tang digs a slender thumb into the base of the fruit, beginning to peel the thin skin over his lap. “I mean, you could have just taken MK to the authorities. You didn’t need to bring him into your living space, clean him, clothe him, feed him, house him." He pauses, both to ponder his statement and to lick the tangerine juice off of his fingers. "Well, maybe the clothing part was pretty necessary, but still.”
MK laughs again in the distance, quietly. Keeping the sounds of laughter to himself, packaging it, holding it close. It should be louder, Pigsy thinks. It should be as loud as the kid’s actions are. Pigsy has a terrible gut feeling the kid is supposed to be a lot louder than this.
“...He looked hungry, and I wasn’t ‘bout to leave the kid starving. Y’know how it goes. Never leave a customer unsatisfied. The whole creed.”
At the reference of the creed, Tang nods sagely, serenely, before visibly snapping to a realization; he swivels on the swing at breakneck speed, strands of neck-length hair making its way into his mouth to leave the man sputtering — more.
“I thought—" A cough erupts from Tang, sending the strands to fly, "I thought you said I needed money to be considered a customer!!”
“Well sorry for makin’ a toddler an exception to the rule of money, damn! The kid was covered in dirt and peat from head to toe, what was I supposed to do? Just leave him to waddle across the hot asphalt on his bare feet? Unfed? Naked?! Maybe I'm not a fan of kids, but leavin' a kid out like that is kinda criminal if ya ask me!!”
"Look at you, spending your sweet time lecturing, when you refused to even sit down next to my swing for fear of not having enough time to prepare for — don’t you have a shop to open up?!"
"Yeah, as a matter o' fact, I do! What am I doin' 'ere?!"
"GO!!"
"I SHOULD!!!"
Tang gets up to push Pigsy out of the playground, peeled tangerine clamped between his teeth, and Pigsy trips on his shoelaces — skips on his right foot a few times maintaining thrilling balance — before regaining footing, and speed-walking back to the restaurant. Not running. He has dignity to maintain.
A whirlwind ending, just like that. That is how their interactions often went.
Whirlwind.
This time, with the muted smile of MK playing in the eye.
—
The truth is, it is not just about the money. It has never just been about the money — for both Tang and MK. The truth is, Pigsy owes a lot to Tang, and no amount of money or free bowls of noodles could ever make up for what he and Sandy made Tang put up with through their bloodier years. Every instance Pigsy and Sandy dragged their blood-drenched bodies over the doorstep of Tang's cramped off-campus flat, every time they went to Tang instead of the expensive hospital that would only report them on counts of battery and aggravated assault — every instance of Tang’s face going blue, of him nearly tripping over the leg of his own chair, of his unbalanced stack of paperback books nearly falling over; it would be disgraceful to think any amount of money could ever pay for all of that. Because every time, despite the way he went weak in the knees, despite the way the sight of blood and open flesh infected him with ancient fear whispered by the limbic system, Tang would bite his tongue and carefully patch the two of them up anyway.
Every time, without fail.
And if Pigsy saw Tang wipe with his eyeglass cloth both his glasses and eyes in the dark corner of the unlit bathroom, then that was a secret Pigsy would gladly keep without cost.
The truth is, Whether Pigsy decides to dub MK his son or not, Pigsy will still have to care for him, spend money on him. Money is a problem, always will be, but it is not the deeper problem. This specifically targeted abhorrence towards the idea of a son comes from somewhere deeper and trickier to reach. Submerged in the cesspool of discarded thoughts is a concept he is unable to articulate well enough. A concept laced heavily with consternation, drenched in it until a viscous film forms around the idea.
And it is not the damn money that keeps him from fishing the idea out, from staring right into its ugly face and acknowledging the nature of its putrefied nucleus.
The old ceiling fan spins above him. Oldly.
Each rotation is painfully slow, and comes accompanied by the sound of buzzing wires. It does nothing to bring sleep and everything to chase it away, even with the two hours Pigsy devoted to closing his eyes and trying very, very hard to pretend he was slowly but surely falling asleep. Through the low yet loud hum of electricity, the usual sounds of MK’s late-night activities can be heard from the kid’s bedroom — or as Pigsy still calls it in his mind, the repurposed storage room. A bit of clinking, a bit of clattering. Shuffling cloth and chirping throat, zipping zipper. All in all, nothing noteworthy.
Something’s amiss.
He can tell from the way his innards clench. Guardian instinct, or some other pseudoscientific thing of the sort.
With a grunt he pushes himself out of the stiff mattress, and walks over to the door with the peeling paint. Before he can twist the doorknob, however, the door opens inwards with a loud creak unbefitting of the gentle way it was opened. An MK dressed in outdoor clothes reveals himself through the gap between frame and door, an old desk lamp on the floor providing yellow backlight that frames the boy gold. It is a desk lamp from Pigsy’s university days, one that used to be placed on a proper desk — the way its name instructs.
Behind MK is a small backpack with an open flap — this one from Pigsy’s primary school days, he wonders how the kid even found it in the junk pile — packed full of peach chips, a pair of adult-sized socks, the map of an amusement park, among other items that are obscured but are surely contributing to stretching out the bottom of the backpack.
“Hi Pigsy.” The boy says, then turns to check the wall clock behind him; it too, like the desk lamp, rests mislocated on the floor. At the foot of MK’s air mattress. “Looks like it’s three in the morning!”
“Three in the damn mornin’ indeed. What’re ya doin’ out of your pajamas, what is all of,” Pigsy gestures at MK, the backpack, the backpack’s contents, “This.”
“Don’t worry. I know nighttime is inside-time.” Crouching close over the backpack and observing the cargo at a proximity that leaves his nose almost touching a chip bag, MK nods to himself as though satisfied with what he’s managed to pack. “We never go out at three. This is an indoor hour.”
Pigsy freezes still as MK flips close the flap of the backpack.
His innards clench further. “What?”
“I’ll only leave in the morning. Pinky-promise.” MK pauses, looks at Pigsy’s limp hands. Hooves. “Oh, no pinky. Just promise, then.”
“Leave?”
MK readjusts his oversized socks, then stands up. “Can you teach me how to tie my shoes before I go? I dunno how to make the ribbons.”
“Leaving,” Pigsy mutters. “For what.”
“Well. I mean. Everyone has parents, right? Mister Tang has a mom and dad. Mister Tang said people pop into the world because of their parents.” MK looks away, then looks back. “If you’re not my mom or dad, then they’re probably, uh, out there. Somewhere. ‘Cause if I exist then they have to exist too.” A fake cough, high-pitched and childish, comes from MK’s throat. “I think that’s how this works. I’m gonna look for them.” Then, something brighter enters the boy’s expression, a spark of excitement ignited by the prospect of a grand quest. “I’m gonna go on my own journey! Maybe not to the west, but still!”
Pigsy’s brain feels bleached. White. “A kid can’t leave on his own. Especially a kid your age. Streets will eat you the hell alive.” Sheet-fucking-white.
“Streets can’t eat. Streets aren’t alive.”
“You know nothing. How old are ya this year.”
MK shrugs, averting his eyes, feigning calm. He has no idea. He has no fucking idea about anything. He’s a kid, a blank canvas, tabula rasa, white-fucking-sheet, he’s going to get eaten the hell alive by the figurative wolves if Pigsy ever dares to let him go.
“Some people just don’t have moms n’ dads, y’hear me?” Pigsy stands in the storage room’s doorway like a barricade, wide body effectively closing off the only exit. Cold sweat cascades sharply down his back like hoarfrost. “I don’t have a mom or dad either and I’m still here, aren’t I? Look at me, don’t I exist? Aren’t I breathing and alive, can’t ya see that I don’t have a damn mom either and I’m somehow still miraculously alive?!”
Despite the lack of activity, Pigsy feels out of breath. His lungs ache.
Huff.
Huff.
Huff.
MK blinks. Slowly.
“...Yeah,” MK mumbles, a thick waver in his voice, “I see it.”
“There. You see it.” A coward’s breath erupts from Pigsy, something coarse. “If ya had parents, you wouldn’t have been walkin’ around naked and alone, covered in dirt. There’s nothing for you to find.”
The spark in MK’s pupils, ignited by adventure on the horizon, extinguishes itself with the moisture collecting at the bottom of his eyes.
Pigsy’s lungs feel like they will explode the way water balloons do, in a perversely cartoonish manner. He feels each rapid thump of pumped blood in the thin flesh of his forehead and temples; he feels the even thinner skin there shrivel and buzz with paresthesia. Television snow has painted his vision opaque.
“Change back into your pajamas n’ lie down.”
“You want me to stay?”
“Go back to sleep.”
The boy nods, and closes the door — this time too, the hinge creaks, failing at all to read the atmosphere.
As the door clicks shut and MK disappears, so does the desk lamp’s yellow light: no longer shrouding Pigsy’s feet, belly, chest. He walks through a room coated with static noise, ungracefully maneuvering his body back onto his stiff mattress, not bothering to pull the covers over himself.
Through the thin walls he hears one muted sob, then another, not distant enough; it makes him want to fold his ears and hold them flat to his head, shame, shame, all the fucking shame, every bit in the world that can be scraped together, grisly successive reminders of every shame, every fuck-up, hammering into his head all night, keeping him up all the way until the morn.
—
Pigsy is not cut out for being gentle. He is not cut out to handle things as fragile as children and their hearts; that is what it all boils down to. As Tang’s static-filtered voice flows out from the phone's speaker, Pigsy feels this is the man who'd be better equipped — for handling all things fragile with the care not to shatter them.
“And MK is?”
“Still sleepin’ in his room. I’m downstairs, in the shop. Won’t wake him up.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“I’m not made for this, Tang. I’m really not. I ain’t prepared to take care of a kid — financially and just… knowledge-wise. I don’t know shit.”
“But at least you know to be downstairs?”
It’s a lacking response and Tang knows it; Pigsy knows Tang knows it. Sitting on the floor in front of the kitchen sink next to colorful bottles of dish soap, Pigsy lets the seconds tick and tock on to really let it sink in what a lacking response that was. Only then does Pigsy open his mouth again.
“I didn’t think ahead enough. For some reason I didn’t think about all this lastin’ for months n’ years. I didn’t think about the kind o’ state I was in.”
“Yeah, that tends to happen when people are making lifelong commitments. For some reason, they don’t exactly think about the fact that it’s going to be ‘lifelong.’ Like when I decided to go to grad school and earn a doctorate and become a professor and live as a cramming academic for the rest of my life. But I buckled and dropped out. So I guess it’s no longer ‘lifelong.’ Oh...”
“What was I doing, takin’ in the kid? I don’t know the first thing about ‘em!”
“Maybe you could try contacting Sandy? He might know a thing or two. Some pearls of wisdom about caring for street critters — he did that a lot, didn’t he? Feeding street cats.”
That, Pigsy thinks, is the worst, most nonsensical thing Tang could have said.
“He’s not at all the right guy to consult on things that fall into the category o’ bein’ ‘gentle.’ He breaks stuff better than I do.” Still seated on the tiled kitchen floor, Pigsy aggressively pulls open one of the shelves next to him for no particular reason. Just to give himself something to do. “Cars, bones, you name it. The only thing he hasn’t broken before is his guitar.”
“But at least he gave pretty good piggyback rides to you. Literally.” A snort. “Get it. Because you’re a pig.”
"That's the fifth damn time you've made that joke."
"And it will not be the last."
“Whatever, it doesn’t matter anyway — the thing about Sandy, I mean. Neither of us could get in touch with him if we tried. I don’t even know if he kept his phone number.”
From the other end of the line, Pigsy hears a clatter, a thump, and a sigh.
“...Yeah, yeah.”
Here is how their final night with Sandy went: frantic knocking that dented the entrance of Tang’s flat, Tang cautiously looking through the peephole then slamming open the door in fright. The open door, fully revealing a bloodied Sandy cradling an unconscious, even bloodier Pigsy, both in worse states than the blurry preview through the peephole managed to indicate. Upon recounting the tale, Tang explained he felt his own blood thump in his ears to overtake his head, each thump as blunt and powerful as the drumbeats of Pigsy and Sandy’s songs. All-consuming music, bass pulsing from modified amplifiers in a dingy venue with a stage of waxed wood. A small audience still too large for the size of the venue, small and crowded together but devoted to the ultraviolet lights and the voices on stage — Tang, shoulders pressed between the sweaty crowd, senses coming awash with electric sound in the tinted dark. That is how it felt to open the entrance door of his flat that day, two forty-six a.m., inviting the miasma of violence into his small living room.
It drummed like youth, overtook like youth, but the youth seeping into the air of the flat smelled of underground fighting rings and betted money. The bad kind of youth. The kind of youth you’re supposed to discard before your thirties.
As soon as Tang gave Sandy the go-ahead to place Pigsy on his bed, effectively smudging red on the white sheets, Sandy broke into shivers and sobs in a way Tang had never seen before, muttering through hiccups and hitched breaths about what a bad influence he was to Pigsy — about how Pigsy’s mother would never forgive him for what he’s done to her son. She loved me too and I made a mess out of him in return. Every injury and fight a sign for caution Sandy did not look in the eye, letting the worry within build — and oh, how loud the straw on the camel’s back had dropped, muffling all else in the world, layered with the sound of Pigsy’s body meeting the ground. Sandy had fought and fought and fought and Pigsy was learning from him to part with grief through his fists. Sandy was breaking Pigsy more than he was breaking himself, and that was how he knew he had to disappear to never be seen again.
That is the lowdown Pigsy received from Tang. Pigsy was not awake to bear witness himself.
“...Haha, if only he didn’t live in his van, yeah? We would have long since found him. Who knows, maybe we could have forced him to keep in touch.”
By four fifty-eight, Sandy had twice confirmed Pigsy would recover and left Tang’s flat like a runaway, leaving only tire tracks where his van used to be parked.
It was a week after the funeral of Pigsy’s mother.
“I shoulda been up that night, to stop him from ever leavin’ like that.”
Another week later, he discovered MK at his doorstep.
Two large cavities and a boy too small to fill it.
“You were an unconscious, bloodied piece of pulp decorated with derision patterns that could be mistaken for tie-dye. Of course you couldn’t stop him, don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“What, ‘cause I’ve gotten beaten up enough times already?”
“That too, you’ve got mileage to last a lifetime.”
“Ha. Yeah. Still had my mustache before all that went down.” The mustache of an artiste, culinary and musical. When Sandy made his exit, so did the music — so did the mustache. “...Do ya think the kid would like songs? Do kids that age even know what good music is? Aren’t they satisfied enough with ‘wheels on the bus go round n’ round,’ or stuff o’ the sort?”
“What, planning to introduce him to some of you and Sandy’s works?”
“He’s five years old at best, I’m not gonna make him listen to rebel-rock—”
The ringing of wind chimes from the now open door of the shop cuts the sentence short. Cold air floods into the heated indoors. Pushing open the heavy door with impressive ease is MK, still wearing his monkey-patterned pajamas, having ventured down the external staircase of the shophouse immediately upon waking. Unable to tie a knot behind his head, he's left his headband unworn and hanging from his neck like a thin scarf, leaving dark hair to spill powerlessly over his forehead.
Phone still to his ears, Pigsy clams up.
“Pigsy? Pigso? Hello?”
“Are you talking to Mister Tang?” MK’s feet are wrapped only by his oversized socks; hooked to his fingers are his pair of red sneakers, blue shoelaces pulled and tangled horrifically — evidence of a valiant past endeavor towards tying presentable ribbons.
"Yoohoo, earth to Pigsy?"
Pigsy presses the speaker button of the phone and places it down face-up on the countertop. “...Yeah, it's Tang. Go ahead n’ talk to him if ya want.”
In an instant, a toothy smile opens on MK’s face. “Mister Tang!” The boy hurries over to where the phone lies, almost slipping on his socked feet much to Pigsy’s spiking anxiety. “Hi! Good morning!”
“Oh — oh, MK’s here, I get it — you’re here, okay! Hello MK!”
Pigsy swears he can hear the gears in Tang’s head turn and click into place.
MK lets the shoes drop from his fingers, instead letting his hands grip the edge of the wooden countertop too tall for him as he begins to ask Tang about what the man is up to, if he is doing anything interesting, if he has finally decided to practice drawing with him. Slowly shifting out of his chair, Pigsy crouches down next to MK’s feet like a weak-kneed fawn attempting to genuflect before a great tree. Guilt and awkwardness are forever wedded; that is the common truth of the world. It will take being a whole new person to stop feeling this way. He takes the discarded sneakers into his hands, places them close to MK’s feet, and dares to look up.
“Hey, kiddo.” His voice sounds foreign to his own ears: a poor mimicry of someone Pigsy knows. Someone who knew how to take care of children, even when they weren’t of her own flesh and blood. “Jus’ slip your feet into the shoes. I’ll tie the laces for ya.”
This is it, Pigsy thinks. The hour of judgement. Kid could kick me in the face and I’d take it lying down.
But all MK does is nod with the same smile he gives to Tang over the phone, and slip his two small feet into his two small sneakers — one by one. Exactly as instructed.
It hits him, like a sobering strike to the abdomen, just how easily children forgive.
It is as though nothing happened at all.
Like he did nothing at all.
Tree that keeps on giving.
‘Til it shrivels up fruitless and dies, his mind supplies.
The task of tying MK’s shoelaces into double-knots feels like a trial; he feels every grain of dirt on the floor bite into his knees, he feels every groove of shoelace polyester burn against his skin. What should be a task of muscle memory suddenly demands he devotes all of his conscious attention, lest he’d somehow fuck up and make an incapable fool of himself. Turn him into an even shittier guardian.
MK’s eyes, two beady orbs, burn worse than the polyester. “Pigsy, you’re shaking.”
“Pigsy’s shaking? Did he forget his magnesium supplements? MK, tell your pops to take his magnesium supplements!”
“Ma- magnuh, uh?”
"I ain’t his — nevermind, nevermind. I'm done with ya, Tang."
Pigsy blinks the fuzz away from his vision, and before his eyes appear two perfect knots resting over sneaker tongues, set to place by a criss-cross network of shoelaces pulled tightly back into standard formation from their previous state of disarray.
The world slowly stills, strength returns to his knees, and Pigsy stands back up to end the call with Tang.
"Come before the lunch rush if you're plannin' ta freeload," he says, before immediately pressing the red disconnect button on the screen. A cheap tactic to award himself the last word.
Overly agile for his age, perhaps due to all the time spent on the monkey bars, MK makes his way up one of the tall stools in the blink of an eye. He looks into the now darkened phone screen, and lets out a tiny but nonetheless audibly disappointed sigh. It rings louder than it normally would, within the characteristic quiet of a shop outside its opening hours.
"I was talking to him," MK mutters, before perking back up. "But I'm gonna see him for lunch, right?"
"Ya will, don't worry about it." But Pigsy is worrying about it — very much so. He should not have disconnected that call. There is so much silence to fill. "Hey, you're hungry, yeah? What if I make your favorite for breakfast? Noodle bowl with extra bamboo shoots. I’ll even cut ya some peach slices for dessert."
Too afraid to address the night's happenings, wondering if it may somehow make the fucked-upness of it all properly register within MK, Pigsy offers food in place of a verbal apology. A coward’s play, one that MK is all too eager to accept. As he watches MK bounce on his seat with breakfast-induced excitement, Pigsy bets MK doesn't even know there is something to forgive, here.
—
There is a page of lined paper stuck by a magnet to his refrigerator; it has been there since three months ago, when Pigsy’s Noodles first opened to the world. Text is written onto it in ballpoint ink, with minor smudges where her right hand must have rested while penning the letter.
To my dearest piglet.
I know you hate it when I call you a piglet, but you’ll always be momma’s little piglet to me. But look at you, opening a shop of your own! That's the step of a grown boy. You're off on your own, paving your own path to travel. You have your own kitchen now, complete with a refrigerator for me to leave bothersome notes on. Working all those years in your momma's lil' shop really paid off (in both skill and money), didn't it?
It's so nice to be able to retire and kick back, knowing you'll be there to keep doing our family's recipe justice — or improve it, even! You can always improve things, you know. Be warned, I may drop in unannounced from time to time as an impartial customer to judge your cooking, to make sure you aren't letting yourself grow rusty. Consider this note your one and only warning, piglet. I may even snap photographs of you, Sandy and Tang while you aren't looking. Never underestimate the dexterity of a mother with a camera. I'll get you. I will.
Anyways, above all, I just want to tell you congratulations, and that I am immensely proud of you. Hopefully you'll see this note when you get ready to open tomorrow morning. And hopefully I will get to be there in the morning myself, for the honor of being one of Pigsy's Noodles' first customers.
Stay on the lookout for me!
Much love,
From your forever Mom
P.S. — I put some of my oyster sauce in the fridge too for your use. It's on the door shelf, second row from the bottom.
Pigsy has no intention of taking down the piece of paper, browned from collecting airborne molecules of cooking oil, anytime soon; he forever intends to keep it exactly where he first discovered it. And maybe, maybe if he leaves it exactly as it was three months ago, then things will become all right, just as they were three months ago.
It is a passing fleeting fantasy and he knows it. Three damn months had all the tools to tear structure to shreds. Three damn months and no more was Sandy’s company, his mother's life, his sonhood. He is no one's child, there is no one who will visit his store with both love and criticism in store. He is no one’s child.
Children are mirrors of the adults around them, Pigsy’s been told. In Mk's eyes, Pigsy sees his own image reversed in accordance with the nature of all reflections. The non-son reflected in the eyes of what he too used to be. The image of the non-son reversed on a glistening cornea to print the exact picture of what he used to be. Someone opposite. Someone far more whole. Non-son, minus non. The sight of the picture makes him rock with ancient intuitive fear, the same kind Tang feels at the sight of blood.
To give out of an empty basket is impossible. To give what he does not have to MK is impossible. And Pigsy is mortified, because every day he is being asked to feed and satisfy out of an empty basket.
Pigsy does not know where he is heading with this horrifically disorganized train of thought.
Point is, Pigsy is everything that the kid is not, and the kid is everything that Pigsy is not.
And Pigsy is angry.
—
Pigsy once told Sandy, if we go down, then we go down together. It would have been all right if Sandy stayed — even at the cost of more fights and blood. He would have been willing to pay that price had it meant reducing his two losses to one.
If we go down, then we go down together. But Sandy didn’t want to bring Pigsy down anymore.
Shame.
They should be going down together right now too, Pigsy thinks. Sandy should be stuck with this dilemma of a child, right next to him, two rough adults struggling not to crack an egg.
He still has Sandy on speed dial, number three in his phone. They called often, met often, created art often. Quite a bit of their art was about giving the finger to the world — though Pigsy had no fingers to give. Maybe a hoof. The spirit of the middle finger was imbued into many of their lyrics and grating guitar solos, and while they of course did not shout fuck everything if you see a monster then I’ll show you the monster into the microphone, it certainly felt like they were doing just that. They were also culinary artists — even Sandy was, with his cocktails and horrifically experimental tea blends. Abominations those brews were, especially when set next to Pigsy’s pristine dishes for maximum contrast. Pigsy was and still is a culinary artiste. He presses his noodles like threads of silk and plates that shit like every bowl is canvas to a masterpiece. Many things, regardless of their quality, pale in comparison next to Pigsy’s food.
When Pigsy and Sandy would create dishes and drinks, things around them would fall uncharacteristically quiet, and their hands would become uncharacteristically delicate. As though the only blood they’ve ever had on their hands were their own, beading from a mistaken stroke of a kitchen knife.
Maybe that was their greatest act of rebellion towards the world: being gentle.
There were days, in a time that now seems like a lifetime ago, when Pigsy was allowed to lie down on the roof of the blue van that left behind only tire marks. Under him would be Sandy in the driver’s seat and Tang in shotgun, having traded places with Pigsy due to backseat-nausea. If the van stayed parked behind some edifice for long enough, eventually they’d spot smokers, and Pigsy would scramble back into the van complaining what’re they smokin’ for, they’ll ruin their taste buds, to which Tang would reply well, not everyone is a chef holding onto the well-being of their taste buds for dear life. They would then be met with laughter from Sandy, asking if he should start the van again, get out of the smoke-infested alley, drop Pigsy and Tang off at their homes. Once the engine began to tremble Pigsy would invite Sandy to stay the night, Mom would love to have ya over, she’d be overjoyed that y’ain’t sleepin’ in your van for at least a night. She’ll even cook your favorite for breakfast, she loves ya.
What a gentle routine. Why does it feel so far away to him now, he wonders. Far away, yet coded into his every cell by the woman he was raised by.
He needs her back so fucking bad.
Pigsy looks at the time; he needs to get ready to mimic gentleness again, and welcome MK back.
—
The thing about children is that they often say puzzling things.
For instance, something like “There was a colorful butterfly in my room last night.” The kid says it through a mouthful of noodles, because no matter how many times Pigsy teaches him that talking while having food in his mouth is an example of horrid table manners, he just doesn't listen. Through one ear, and out the other.
Tang raises a skeptical brow as he tightly ties his hair back — ritualistic preparation before digging into his own bowl of noodles. “MK, your ‘room’ doesn’t have any windows. How could a butterfly have gotten in without Pigsy noticing? Trust me, Pigsy notices insects in his space.” The man taps the tips of his chopsticks on the surface of the counter, evening out their heights. “It’s like, a chef thing. Being super sensitive to bugs.”
MK shakes his head and says, “It’s a special butterfly. This butterfly talks. And if it can talk then it can get into my room too.” It is simple, matter-of-fact logic to him. “Talking is a lot harder than getting into rooms, after all. For a butterfly.”
As though rehearsed, Tang and Pigsy shoot synchronized glances at each other — the kid has an imaginary friend, they signal. The kid is lonely, and he really needs to make some friends his age. Real friends. The only conversation partners he has are two grown men, and one of them barely engages with him outside of communicating the necessary things. The gutting weight of inadequacy drops on Pigsy to crush him flat under something invisible.
Tang takes a sagely bite of his noodles and leans closer to MK, sweet naive MK, whilst boasting that grownup look of I don’t believe you but I’ll most certainly play along flashing behind his round glasses. “And what did this special butterfly friend of yours talk about?”
Putting the plastic soup spoon to his lips, MK drinks the vegetable broth with a noisy slurp; Pigsy has attempted to correct MK on that, too. Repeatedly. “He told me that he knows things are difficult right now.”
MK picks up and chews back a single noodle string.
“He told me to hang in there. That he’s gonna come back for me one day.”
Tang stops chewing.
“Said he’s gonna take me somewhere new. That he’ll get me out of here.”
The air grows viscous. Insulated.
The hot humidity of the kitchen feels thick enough to choke on. For an ugly moment, Pigsy wishes he'd suddenly cease to be; to not "be" would mean not to "be" here. The idea of not being here, to suddenly exist in a void where all past and future interactions are null, sounds so, so incredibly attractive. It is a fancier, more artistic way of illustrating that he wants to crawl into a hole.
"What… else, did this butterfly friend of yours tell you?" The question is broken carefully by Tang, like he is treading over a frozen stream, like the thin ice could shatter under his shoes at any moment; as Tang asks the question, he looks not at MK — the recipient — but at Pigsy. A cowardly skirting of his eyes towards Pigsy, all while keeping his head facing MK. Coward. Coward. Pigsy wants Tang to look the hell away. It is humid and uncomfortable, the moisture is beginning to make the folds of his skin stick.
Eyes jolting around the vicinity, MK shakes his head, careful and slow this time. Nothing else. The atmosphere has gone sour enough for MK to taste, and Pigsy does not know if MK truly has nothing more to say — or if the child is simply choosing to spare his feelings.
Butterflies. Damn insects. Damn bugs. They don’t belong in this shophouse. They don’t belong in a place of pots and stoves. In a place of food and children.
Tang’s eyes, still trained on Pigsy, widen for a brief moment, before finally removing themselves to look at MK as they should have all along. “Hey, MK, you have about… let’s see.” Tang reads the wall clock — hung on the wall where it belongs, unlike the one in MK’s room. “Thirty minutes before we should leave. Pigsy’s shop opens in about an hour, yeah? Why don’t you go up and pack your art supplies?”
MK stares at his unfinished bowl of noodles, hard, trying to make a point without talking. Awfully quiet, repelled by the idea of talking too much. Every time, it makes a deep sense of wrongness seep into Pigsy’s very bones, letting him stew in the error of it all. That child is not supposed to be quiet.
“Don’t worry, Pigsy can package it and put it in the fridge. I think.”
MK nods, and leaves out the front door to head upstairs, into the residential space. In his wake, he leaves behind the sounds of ringing wind chimes and sneaker soles hitting the ground. The shoelaces on both shoes are perfectly tied, double-knots. So is his red headband, tied securely around his head with a knot as pretty as the one on Pigsy’s apron.
Soon, the chimes fade to nothing, and Tang knocks on the countertop with his free hand as he slurps and swallows his next pinch of noodles. “Let go of the ladle.”
Pigsy slowly loosens his grip on the ladle — he was not aware he’d been holding onto it so tightly. Any tighter, and he may have caused fractures to run down its stainless handle.
“...Thanks,” Pigsy says, setting the ladle next to a pot of bubbling broth.
Silence.
The electrical hum of the lights fill what little space thick humidity leaves for it. There is too much presence stuffed into this little box of wood and concrete. If Pigsy struggles, he can almost hear the chilly autumn air outside: much more crisp, much less humid. Absent of kitchen-steam. Much kinder to him.
“You really need to do better,” Tang places his chopsticks over the bowl, “A lot better.”
“Oh, har har, tell me somethin’ I don’t know.”
“MK's wary of you. He sometimes looks at you the way we used to look at Sandy when he got that expression on his face — you know, the bad face. The one that made it look like he could mow down a building with people still in them. We had to confront Sandy about schooling his expression a little more, remember?”
“Didn’t realize we were here to reminisce on the olden days.”
Tang grimaces, dabbing the corners of his lips with a napkin. “All I’m saying is, if you weren’t so weirdly distant and angry towards him, maybe he wouldn’t have to conjure a butterfly bestie to be his conversation partner. And to indirectly call you out on your failings as a parent.”
Pigsy’s fist slams into a surface dangerously close to a stack of porcelain bowls, leaving the china to rattle. "I am NOT his fuckin' parent!!"
"That, that attitude! Every single time, Pigsy, where in the world does it even come from?!” Tang pushes his bowl of noodles aside, oh gods, this is serious, “You curse to deny it, you hang up our call to deny it! This isn’t some ‘cute’ initial stage of attachment-denial anymore — there's something going on, here, you're scared, you have issues, and it's going to mess both you and MK up if you don’t learn to get it together, fast!!"
“The kid is a damn kid, what is there ta be afraid of? What would I even be afraid of?!”
“I don’t know, that’s your puzzle to solve!!” Tang is standing up, a sharp and accusatory finger pointed at him, “Listen, I understand that this is a tough time in your life, and that tough times make people behave — differently, but you need to figure out whatever the heck is going on in that head of yours and make your peace with it." A moment is taken to collect his breath, spare his weak lungs from excitement. "It… it really is tough times, I know — I know. ...I miss her too. I miss her. Sandy — wherever he is — still misses her too, I’m sure. And you miss her the most.”
Her, her, her.
It all comes back to her.
Like a specter, he thinks. Something ectoplasmic floating behind his back, a presence, something large enough to cast him fully in its shadow despite its lacking opacity. It is the looming reminder of better times, and the constantly taught lesson that those better times are nowhere in the horizon he finds himself facing.
Pigsy’s head slowly sinks.
“It’s throwing you off, and you have every reason to be thrown off, but…” Tang attempts to look into Pigsy’s lowering eyes. “MK, Pigsy. MK. He’s young, and you’re affecting him."
Her.
Him.
All these ideas, of people and the webs between, floating around in his head. Like sewer sludge.
“There ain’t no way I can be like her for him,” Pigsy mumbles. “Some perfect parent the kid needs. I can’t be her.”
“I — Pigsy, nobody’s perfect. You’d complain to me all the time back in college about how your mother drove you like a drill sergeant when teaching you how to cook. You specifically told me that during your early-to-middle teenage years, it felt like she was trying to suck all the fun and joy out of cooking.” A breathy sigh leaks from between Tang’s lips. “She was amazing, yeah, but you never insisted she was completely flawless. It was only after she…”
It was only after she died that Pigsy silently began to refuse addressing any past flaws. The dead are at times twisted to perfection in the minds of the grieving — but that is something Pigsy is well aware of. The contortion in his mind is something Pigsy knows has occurred; by logic, no parent can be fully perfect. No being can be fully perfect. The unsettlingly sanctified image of his mother that his mind tries to feed him contradicts that fact of life.
Tang must know of it too, of Pigsy’s awareness. Which is why he can suggest: “There’s… something else, isn’t there. To all this.”
There is.
The specifically targeted repulsion towards the idea of a son, the one that repels him from anything fatherly. The one that floats in the cesspool of discarded thoughts, collecting grime. The one he refuses to fish out not because of whatever sum of money he’d need to bleed in order to raise a child, but because of something else. That thing, the rotten thing with the rotten nucleus he does not know what to call. The thing that avoids articulation.
“I don’t…” Pigsy sucks in a breath. “I ain’t got a clue how to put it into words. I haven’t the slightest idea how to make it make sense.”
Tang purses his lips. “Then… just try to get the idea across, maybe. Communicate it. Doesn’t have to be perfect. Nothing’s perfect.”
Just the general idea. Just a little something.
Something about.
What? About what?
Steady, steady. It's okay. Just something is enough. Even if it can't be articulated to satisfaction, to truly embody the magnitude and encapsulate it fully. Something is a start.
Something about a son.
Something about no longer having a mother to be a son to.
Something about the concept of sonhood, tainted by loss trailing behind it.
How’re you gonna raise a son when you ain’t one yourself?
Tarnished sonhood.
Held air erupts from his throat. It is volcanic.
“How’m I—” His breath hitches, the body’s final pathetic attempt to keep the words in and not out , “How’m I supposed to know how to have a son when I’m not a son myself anymore.”
Tang’s face falls. “Oh, Pigsy—”
“I know, I know, it’s stupid n’ it barely makes a lick o’ sense.” He interjects quickly, before Tang’s face falls any further. “It’s so… conceptual. It's abstract. I don’t entirely get it myself, either. I care about the kid, I care enough that the thought o’ him packin’ his bags and leavin’ me freaks me the hell out. It terrifies me. One night, the kid was getting ready to just up n’ leave, and I could just sense that things were goin’ to shit.”
Tang does not cut Pigsy off, not like Pigsy did to him. He simply stays standing, looking at Pigsy with sadness; for what, Pigsy wonders.
“I want him to stay, but it’s like he came into my life at the worst possible time. I need the kid to stay, but I can’t see the kid as my kid. The kid tried ta call my mother his grandma and I couldn’t wrap my damn head around it. Am I jealous, ‘cause the kid gets to be a kid and has someone to look after him? Is that what all this is? I don’t think that’s what it is. It’s just — I couldn’t think of the kid as a son if I tried.”
Because Pigsy is no longer a kid or a son. And there is no giving that can be done out of an empty basket.
“I think he’s supposed t’be loud, Tang. I keep gettin’ the feeling he’s supposed to be so much louder than this.”
More animated than this.
More vivacious than this.
Much happier than this.
This little shophouse, with only a storage space for a room and a mercurial guardian to be wary of, is not the right place for MK to grow up loudly in.
Tang looks up at the ceiling — the flat border that divides the restaurant from the home. From beyond it comes a muted yet still recognizable click, likely of the plastic latch on MK's case of crayons. Despite the fact that MK is packing his bags now too, Pigsy is not stricken with the same kind of panic that coursed through his system many nights ago. MK is not getting ready to leave, he is getting ready to head out with Tang; it makes a world of difference. Tang always comes back, unlike all others — and MK too will always come back, if with Tang. In the same vein, Pigsy can and will always come back to Tang as well, no matter what — whether he be bruised, bloodied, unconscious and carried by someone larger, confused and lost with a small child inexplicably holding onto his hand. Tang’s shabby door will always open for him. Always.
They know they’ll have at least each other forever. That is the one thing that avoids change.
Pigsy releases another breath.
“Losing MK would be… very hard for you. As you’ve indicated.” Finally, Tang speaks again, sending a degree of relief to settle over Pigsy’s shoulders. "So maybe, you need to make this place the kind of place MK would want to stay in. You know, the kind of place he wouldn't mind staying in until he grows up. Not the kind of place he’d just… ‘up and leave,’ as you put it.”
But that’s so difficult, Pigsy wants to say. That is difficult, and no matter what I do or who I mold myself into I will always be lacking.
“This is something my own mother said once, and I don’t know if it has any relevance to your situation, but…” Tang clears his throat. “There's a word for kids who don’t have parents, like MK. We call them orphans. But there's no term to describe a parent who's lost their child, you know? You can't condense the magnitude of that loss into a word, apparently. And — this piece does come from my mother, so yeah, maybe there’s a bit of a ‘listen to your mother’ quality to it, but, well—” A sigh, a twiddling of the thumbs. “What I'm trying to get at is… don't let yourself lose MK.”
Tang sits back down in his seat. He picks up the chopsticks again, and awkwardly pinches up a few strings of noodles. “Even if you can’t be some perfect parent for him, just, be better. Be better so that you don’t have to lose him and he doesn’t have to lose you either.”
The man begins to eat, hasty in his motions. Small droplets of soup splash onto his glasses; his filled mouth gives him an excuse not to speak on the matter any more than that.
He truly surprises Pigsy sometimes, he truly does. An involuntary, dry chuckle forms in Pigsy’s throat from who knows what; he lets it exit his mouth, and sees Tang sneak a glance at him from behind condensation-fogged glasses.
“...Thanks, Tang. You’re pretty sagely for a crammer, sometimes.”
“I don’t need your backhanded compliments, sire.”
The wind chimes of the front door ring once again; MK, with Pigsy’s childhood backpack slung over his shoulders, enters the shop. The knots on his sneakers have returned to blue tangles, likely from being undone upon MK’s entrance into the residential space. Pigsy can picture the scene, of MK crouching by the door, picking at the ribbons to better slide the shoes off his feet — only to have trouble redoing Pigsy’s work upon putting the shoes back on.
Both Pigsy and Tang turn to look at the child, falling into sudden silence; MK sniffles, and looks down at his unruly shoelaces.
The boy stretches down, fidgets with the shoelaces for a moment, and nearly falls frontwards as the weight of the backpack causes it to slide over his shoulders and onto his head; the backpack, heavy and rattling with art supplies, pushes MK’s headband out of place. It rather feels like a scene of slapstick comedy, and as MK stands up straight again with gravity-pulled blood tinting his face pink, Pigsy can’t help but feel that the horribly viscous air has thinned at least a little.
Son or not, that child needs him.
“C’mon, kiddo,” Pigsy comes out from behind the kitchen counter, taking off his flour-powdered apron. “Lemme take care of that for ya.”
—
“Speakin’ of your mother, Tang, why’d she never give any of us an invite? I mean, Sandy’s an understandable case, considerin’ he’s on his own. But you’re pretty all right with your mother, no?”
“That? She thought you and Sandy weren’t the ‘right crowd.’ She always told me, ‘oooh, stick with the wrong people and see where you end up!’ She said it… really often, actually.”
“Oh. Ya know what, that’s fair. Honestly, both Sandy and I were kinda surprised every time you let us back into that flat o’ yours.”
“Eh,” Tang smiles with a shrug. “I was in too deep to get out.”
—
He is well aware that the reason for his alarm towards fatherhood, when read the way he phrases it — poorly — fails to make a great deal of sense. It makes no sense to Pigsy himself either — failure to be a certain something does not equate to an inability to take care of that certain something, so on and so forth. People have never been cats or dogs but still manage to take care of them just fine, after all. The ancient fear within Tang is easier to shape into words: the biological fear of blood, of the telltale sign of injury. The fear within Pigsy is not ancient enough, newborn and green. This reaction of his is a difficult one to justify, logic spoiling like curdled milk to leave adrift a foul taste in his mouth. He’s left his heart unrefrigerated, left it for the vermin to thrive on, and here he finally has it in his own two hands: the heart, the thing, fished out from the cesspool. He should get a better look at it, study it, crack it open, and read what is within so that he can finally learn how to be done with it.
His head stopped making sense two hours ago.
He really needs to go to sleep. Or, rather, manage to fall asleep. He’s had his back to the mattress for four hours now, the stiff springs creaking under him like a low, sarcastic applause. Congratulations, champ. A whole four hours. The death number. Do you want to go above and beyond, go for the record-breaker?
There is rock music playing in his head. Rebel-rock. Familiar lyrics, penned lovingly by Sandy and Pigsy himself in the past, repeat in his head like a glitching audio file to chase away any feeble hope of sleep that manages to form. Among the music only audible to him, the ambience of boiling liquid and a burning stove. He is thinking about what to make for MK’s breakfast in the morning, how to best plate the bamboo shoots over the surface of soup. He wants it to look like a beige flower in bloom. Flower in autumn.
That is something both he and MK are, Pigsy thinks: artists. There is most definitely hope there; it’s something to work off of. An artist taking another artist under his wing. Yeah, he could work with that, for the time being — until he finally figures his shit out.
The storage room door creaks open, and Pigsy finds himself unsurprised as he sees MK still awake in these ungodly hours; the sigh of relief that nearly rips out of him upon noticing the boy is still in his pajamas is a different matter, to be mulled over at a later time.
Something about.
Something about what?
Something about a third loss, as if two weren’t enough.
He will mull it over. Later.
Kid, you should be sleeping, Pigsy wants to say, but the hypocrisy of it is too blatant for Pigsy to go through with voicing the statement. They both should be sleeping.
“Oh, it’s cold out here,” MK shudders with exaggerated motion, body framed today too by the golden light of the old desk lamp. “It’s way warmer in my room.”
With a grunt, Pigsy manages to sit up from the mattress — his thin blanket slips down his torso as he does. “Yeah, ‘cause it’s got no windows. And it’s small. ‘Course it’s warmer.”
“Have you always slept out here?”
“Yeah. ‘Cause this is my room. And that one’s yours.”
The words, to Pigsy’s curiosity, makes MK smile, if just a little.
“My room,” The boy mutters the two words under his breath, like he’s trying to cradle them gently between his baby teeth.
“...Yeah,” Pigsy breathes out. “Your room.”
The smile on MK grows wider — much more noticeable now, lit by the background lamplight. “If you ever feel cold, you’re invited.” Gold. He’s lit gold. “It’s my room, and I’m inviting you.”
“Yeah. Uh huh. I’ll — I’ll keep it in mind, for winter. When it really gets cold.”
MK beams, and disappears into his room once more with the door creaking shut behind him, leaving Pigsy to stare at the door with the peeling paint with a head that has gone oddly quiet. Only the ambient sounds of a meal being prepared remains.
—
…
—
When the dinner rush subsides, and MK as always returns to the shop with Tang in tow, Pigsy falls back into the same old routine of welcoming them with a plate of steamed vegetable dumplings. It is a tried and true method of ending the day on a pleasant note, a pattern that has been maintaining itself for many months now. But today is a different day from yesterday, and their difference is far greater than whatever the minute difference between yesterday and yesterday’s-yesterday was. Pigsy knows it from the way the door of the shop is shoved open with far more energy than is usual, from the way the chimes’ volume respond in kind to the energy.
Covered in playground sand, MK runs into the shop — and Tang, out of breath and smiling in a way that almost looks exhilarated, meets Pigsy’s eyes from behind MK.
Even behind his fogging glasses, he looks positively thrilled.
Before Pigsy even has the chance to ask what is going on, MK bolts right up to the counter and begins to wave his arms around, does not stop, “Pigsy, Pigsy, listen to me!”
“I, I’m listenin’, kiddo—”
“Mister Tang and I were at the playground today too, and normally we’re so early that there’s nobody else there but there was this girl this time and she had a dress and a stick-sword, I’ve never seen people in dresses swing swords!” The boy skitters up the stool and almost climbs onto the counter again, realizes he is still wearing his shoes with a downwards flick of his head and jumps onto the next stool instead, “So I thought, woah, she’s super cool, I’ve never seen people like her, and I was wondering if I should talk to her but she came to talk to me first, and she said ‘hi, I’m Mei,’ and I said ‘super cool name! I’m MK!’ Then she asked me what MK stood for so I told her and she was like ‘woah, that’s mega long,’ and I said ‘I know right?’ Then she taught me how to build castles in the sand — she made a really big block of sand out of a bucket and I got to carve and decorate it! She told me that I’m really good at art stuff! And Mister Tang tried to name the sand palace something kinda weird like ‘Tang-man’s summer home’ but Mei had a way better name, right? Called it the palace of dragons!”
Pigsy feels his jaw go slack.
“And then we competed to see who can swing up the highest on the swingset, and I would’ve beaten her if I didn’t fly off and land right on the dragon palace!! Mister Tang told me that makes me di- dif- disqualified, and I felt really bad and sorry for ruining the palace but Mei laughed and said it’s totally fine, they can always build another one, plus it’s not even the real dragon palace — are there real dragon palaces out there? I think she kinda implied there’s a real one. She said she’s not supposed to be at the playground but that she can come to hang out whenever she wants!!”
As though compelled to by a force he cannot comprehend, Pigsy finds himself walking out from behind the counter, into the seating area where MK and Tang stand smiling wider and louder than he’s seen either of them do since — forever.
“So I’m gonna see her tomorrow too, I’m gonna see her the day after that, I’m gonna see her all the time and she wants to meet you too! I told her about your food and she told me that she would kill to try some of it, like actually kill, especially your noodles but I don’t think she’s that big of a fan of bamboo shoots? You can take ‘em out for her, right?”
Behind Pigsy, the bamboo steamer nesting dumplings begins to let perspiration bleed into the air.
Look at you.
Oh, no, I knew you were supposed to be loud, I just knew you were supposed to be loud.
I just knew you were meant to be loud, happy.
Oh gods.
“You’re loud,” Pigsy whispers.
“Ah — I’m loud?”
MK is about to reel it back in, no, that’s not what Pigsy wants. Not at all, he’s realizing now, he wants the kid to be as loud as he was born to be.
“Yeah, you are!” Pigsy shouts, a big grin forming on his face for the first time since who-knows-when, “Loud as a rocker — be proud of it!”
MK’s face begins to mirror that of Pigsy’s. A reflection of Pigsy’s grin appears on MK’s face, and gods, that is a picture Pigsy has very little trouble keeping his eyes on. He could look at it forever.
“I’m loud!!” MK shouts, throwing both hands in the air.
“Yeah you are, shout it like a rocker!!”
“I’M LOUD!!!”
“HECK YEAH YOU ARE!!!”
—
…
—
This is not yet the story of a father and a son. This is the story of a quiet battle, localized to a shophouse, fighting to one day become the story of a father and a son. And given time, the desk lamp on the floor will find a new desk to be set upon, the wall clock will be hung on a cleared spot of the storage room’s wall, the deflating air mattress will find itself replaced by a proper twin-sized bed.
Sonhood will register itself again as warm, welcoming.
All in due time.