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5.
The first time Ruka meets Pharita, they are five and Pharita is fresh off the boat from Thailand, unable to speak a word of Japanese. They have nothing in common except the fact that their fathers are friends, and Ruka's father makes her promise to look after Pharita in Japan from now on.
Ruka nods obediently but casts an impatient look at Pharita. She has no time to babysit a small, boring-looking girl who she can't even communicate with and is too shy to meet Ruka's eyes as she mumbles awkwardly in broken Japanese, "Nice to meet you. I'm Pharita.”
7.
By the time they have turned seven, Pharita's Japanese has improved by leaps and bounds thanks to the immersive environment, but is still accented and halting. Out of all their classmates in elementary school, only Ruka has the patience to decipher it.
“Ruka neechan!” Ruka hears from outside her window, and stumbles off her bed groggily to see Pharita standing in her navy sailor uniform on the road outside her house, waving and smiling hugely. "Wake up! We're late for school."
Along with her improving Japanese, Pharita's confidence has also increased imperceptibly but gradually. Ruka learns that Pharita takes time to warm up to a new person, but when she does, she does completely. And even at the tender age of seven, Ruka realizes that being wholly accepted into Pharita's quirky, eccentric world is one of the greatest pleasures life will give her.
9.
When footsteps rustle up the staircase, Pharita hauls open Ruka's closet door and throws herself inside, hissing, "Don't tell her I'm here!"
She barely has the time to shut the door with a bang that makes Ruka wince before the doorknob of Ruka's bedroom is turning. Pharita's mother walks in with her hands on her hips. "Sorry to bother you, sweetheart. Have you seen Pharita?”
"N-no, auntie!" Ruka squeaks unconvincingly.
Pharita's mother narrows her eyes but doesn't push the matter. When she leaves the room and her footsteps fade down the stairs, Ruka heaves a heavy sigh of relief and pulls open the closet door. Pharita is crouching at the bottom with her knees folded to her chest, looking like she's hyperventilating.
Ruka helps her out, worried. "Are you okay?"
"I couldn't breathe," Pharita gasps, but she's grinning, an impish, infectious grin that creeps unwillingly onto Ruka's face too. "Thanks. Oneechan's the best," Pharita gushes, flopping down onto the floor again to continue their video game.
11.
Two days before her eleventh birthday, Pharita botches a flip on her new skateboard and fractures her ankle. Thankfully, the doctor says there's no lasting damage to the ligament, but Pharita is ordered a month of bed rest till her ankle heals.
Ruka rushes home every day after school, her bag heavy with both her and Pharita's notes. They do their homework together, and Ruka grudgingly allows Pharita to copy off her for once since she's a patient. Pharita is delighted and declares that it was worth the sprain.
They spend their afternoons in Pharita's cluttered bedroom as Ruka clumsily spoons porridge into her mouth, and Pharita's mother allows them to watch all the Netflix kdramas they want because she feels so sorry for Pharita.
And so Pharita's birthday is spent on a day like that. They don't go to the amusement park or organize a party as Pharita's parents had originally planned, but ten years later Pharita will tell Ruka that her eleventh remains her most memorable birthday so far.
13.
”Fighting, Ruka-chan!” Ruka hears a hushed but familiar voice cheering as she pirouettes across the stage in her ballet class’s first official performance, and smiles achingly. A few more graceful dance steps, then her partner takes her by the waist and lifts her slightly into the air.
When the curtains fall, a perfect finish, the auditorium explodes into standing ovation. But Ruka can only hear Pharita's voice, now unrestrained as she ecstatically yells Ruka's name over and over at a volume that Ruka has never heard from her before and never will in future.
15.
Three months into their second year of junior high, Pharita finds a piece of foolscap paper folded into an envelope on her desk when they walk into class, etched with careful but nervously wobbly penmanship.
She opens it curiously and they read it together at break. Dear Pharita, it reads. I like you. Can you be my girlfriend? From, Ahyeon.
Pharita's wide eyes meet Ruka's. Ahyeon is cutest guy in their class, and most of the girls have a puppy crush on him. Ruka sees Pharita's throat work, her face growing pink.
Pharita clumsily scrawls OK on the letter, sliding it back into the envelope and dropping it subtly on Ahyeon's desk as they saunter past casually. After a few steps, they hear the clatter of someone falling out of their chair behind them.
Pharita and Ahyeon spend their breaks together for a week while Ruka eats lunch sitting alone. After that, Ahyeon haughtily announces that he's breaking up with Pharita for no apparent reason and proceeds to start dating a girl from Ruka's ballet lessons the next day.
Pharita doesn't seem all that devastated.
17.
When Ruka's parents tell her they've invited Pharita over for a sleepover party to celebrate her seventeenth birthday, Ruka nearly chokes on her spit.
"Why?!" she screeches, and her mother stares at her, baffled.
"I thought you girls spend your birthdays together every year."
Ruka resists the urge to mutter an expletive. If her parents weren't so damn clueless, they'd know that Ruka hadn't seen Pharita since they graduated junior high and entered different senior highs. Without being schoolmates and classmates, it was far too easy to drift apart.
The doorbell rings. "Oh, they must be here," Ruka's mother beams, bustling to open the door.
Mr and Mrs Chaikong are standing in the doorway, bearing wrapped gifts for Ruka. Ruka's stomach flips when she spots Pharita hovering awkwardly behind them, looking like she wants to be here as much as Ruka.
They sit opposite each other at the dinner table, carefully trying not to meet each other's eyes. Pharita is scarfing down her meal with her head practically buried in the plate and all Ruka can see is a whorl of her braided hair, which has grown longer in a way that now makes her soft features stand out.
Ruka was surprised by Pharita's growth spurt, and could see that Pharita was surprised by hers too. She stared at Ruka, as if thrown by the tiny height difference that had suddenly sprouted between them. Pharita has always been tall and lanky but now she's slender and willowy, all sinuous limbs and gazelle-like grace.
After dinner, Pharita's family goes home but not before dumping Pharita in Ruka's house and telling them to have a good time on their sleepover. Pharita looks like she wishes the ground would open up and swallow her.
Ruka trudges to her room with Pharita trailing silently at her heels. The mute tension between them is something new and unfamiliar, contrasting vastly with their effortlessly flowing and rambling conversations about everything and nothing before they turned sixteen. Ruka wishes they could've stayed as kids forever, before puberty came along to ruin everything.
Ruka lounges stiffly on her bed as she watches Pharita root in her overnight bag, frowning. Eventually, she takes a deep breath and mumbles, "What are you looking for?"
Pharita turns to look at her warily. "I forgot to bring a shirt," she says, sheepish.
Ruka nearly laughs out loud but bites her lip. At least Pharita's spaciness is one thing that hasn't changed. She gets up and opens her closet, fishing out one of her sweatshirts and tosses it to Pharita.
"Thanks," Pharita mutters, disappearing into the bathroom.
When Pharita comes out of the steamy shower ten minutes later, smelling of citrus shampoo and chamomile soap, the minute size difference between them becomes less obvious. The sleeves of Ruka's faded blue oversized sweatshirt hang loosely over Pharita’s wrists, her fingers peeking out from the cuffs as she tries to roll them up her elbows. The sweatshirt engulfs her body, making her look even skinnier than she already is. Ruka clears her throat and looks away, gathering her own clothes to take her turn in the shower.
When she comes out, Pharita is hovering by the wall, looking lost when once Ruka's room had been as familiar territory to her as her own. Ruka climbs into bed and beckons her. "Come on."
"I... I can sleep on the floor," Pharita says, but Ruka clicks her tongue and lifts a corner of the duvet.
"Just come here."
Pharita opens her mouth to protest, brows furrowing, before closing it in resignation and obeying. Ruka smiles with satisfaction. Pharita has never been able to say no to her.
Pharita curls up into herself at the edge of the bed, not touching Ruka, but when Ruka wakes up the next morning, she finds Pharita sleeping soundly as a child in her arms, snuffling softly. Her face looks exactly like it did at ten years old in sleep. Ruka clenches her fists and resists the urge to tuck Pharita's hair behind her ear.
Pharita wakes up fifteen minutes later, and proceeds to brush her teeth and go to the kitchen for breakfast. Ruka watches her quietly, her panic building as she feels her last chance slipping away.
As Pharita pauses on the threshold of her front door, Ruka finds the courage in the nick of time. "Rita-chan," she calls, voice thick, and Pharita turns around, eyes unreadably bright.
Ruka gulps. "Even though we're in different schools... we can still be friends, right?" she stammers.
When Pharita nods, breaking into a tremulous smile, Ruka feels like her life has begun again.
19.
When they graduate from high school, Ruka and Pharita are still firm friends. They make plans to go to the same university, although Pharita is pursuing a degree in Languages and Ruka in Arts. They try to meet up as often as they can on campus, and different as their majors are, they still manage to find common topics of conversation, such as their childhood memories and mutual friends and families and always, always music.
Ruka and Pharita have shared the same burning passion and eclectic taste in music since their girlhood. They switch playlists so often that Ruka can no longer distinguish which is hers and which is Pharita's, but it doesn't really matter since most of the songs in their Spotify libraries are the same anyway. While Ruka has a penchant for indie music, Pharita prefers R&B and ballads. But they have taught each other how to appreciate both genres, and Ruka sometimes idly wonders if in another life, they could've been part of a girl band together.
21.
“Ruka oneechan!” Ruka hears the familiar words in an even more familiar voice and knows even before she turns around exactly who she is. There's only one person in the world who uses that nickname.
When she turns, Pharita is loping across the courtyard towards her, long hair loose and sunlight splashing liquid gold over her mischievously sparkling eyes and dimpled smile, and Ruka stares.
Pharita laughs her inimitable laugh as she reaches Ruka's side and loops her arm easily into the crook of Ruka's. "Whatcha looking at?" she says, voice tinkling with amusement.
"Nothing," Ruka coughs and stammers. You.
23.
Pharita enters the army for a stint soon after she graduates from university and packs her bags, heading for the barracks in the suburbs. On her part, Ruka enters the workforce too.
Military service is cold and backbreaking, Ruka imagines, and at night when she drifts into a restless sleep she worries about frail Pharita and feels her own rapidly burgeoning body heat up with urges and needs that surprise her with their intensity.
But instead of the idols her peers used to go crazy over in school, or the male colleagues who try to woo her, what flashes into Ruka's head as she drifts in and out of lonesome and restless slumber is Pharita in her bedroom on her seventeenth birthday, looking fragile and rumpled as Ruka's sweatshirt swallowed her.
25.
Ruka is waiting outside the gates of the camp on the day Pharita is discharged from service, tresses cropped to a bob and looking older and more mature but somehow exactly the same. Her eyes are still lamblike as Ruka remembered as she smiles brilliantly, waving. Even more.
Ruka updates her on their families and friends as she drives Pharita home in her new car. She herself has gotten a job as a dance instructor, unsurprisingly to Pharita.
"Oh, and..." Pharita mentions casually as Ruka pulls up outside her house, smiling so wide her eyes crinkle. "I met somebody.”
27.
”Does it bother you that I'm... gay?" Pharita asks one afternoon when they are waiting at a bistro for Chiquita, who is running late. Her tone is carefully casual in a way that makes it immediately transparent to Ruka she has been thinking of how to broach this question for years. She'd always been able to read Pharita like a book.
Ruka hesitates, and is startled when she looks up to see Pharita's heart in her eyes.
"Of course not!" she reassures, but Pharita doesn't look convinced. She remains slightly green around the gills as Chiquita rushes into the bistro with a bright clanging of the door chimes and crashes down at the table, making her usual flamboyant entrances.
"Sorry I'm late.” Chiquita flashes an irresistible grin. "What were you guys talking about?"
Pharita's face lights up like a Christmas tree the moment she sees Chiquita. In the two decades that she's known Pharita, Ruka has never seen Pharita as animated as Chiquita makes her. When Pharita first introduced Ruka to Chiquita two years ago, their first meeting hadn't exactly gone well. Ruka was testy and suspicious, skeptical about Chiquita's character.
But two years later, Pharita and Chiquita are still happily together, and Ruka has to admit that maybe this is the real thing for Pharita. She knows she should be happy for her best friend. But Ruka can't help the chilling premonition that Chiquita is going to hurt Pharita irreparably one day, and Ruka will be left to pick up the pieces.
But she has no right to interfere when Chiquita makes Pharita so blissfully happy. After all, Ruka is only Pharita's best friend.
“Kawai Ruka!" Pharita is waving a hand in front of her face, laughing in exasperation. "Hello? Anyone in?"
Ruka snaps out of her reverie to Chiquita eyeing her with a sharp look she has been seeing more often lately, and doesn't miss the way Chiquita's hand closes proprietarily over Pharita's on the table, keeping her eyes on Ruka as she leans in to whisper in Pharita's ear, “Baby..." followed by something indecipherable.
Ruka flushes and tears her eyes away, but she can still feel Chiquita's knowing gaze on her, seeming to effortlessly see through all of Ruka's deepest secrets.
29.
Caving to her parents' increasing admonishments to get married and give them a grandchild, Ruka agrees to the proposal of her current and second boyfriend a year before she turns thirty. Asa is a polite, gallant and intelligent young man. Not to mention handsome. Ruka can find no faults with him. In a rare display of unity, both her parents and friends approve of him. Even Pharita declared with admiration that he was a "cool dude”, and Pharita never gave out compliments loosely.
All these makes Ruka even more sure that he is The One. Asa has a heart of gold and natural paternal instincts. She knows without a doubt that he is going to make a wonderful father to her children. Most importantly, Asa is head over heels in love with her.
Ruka had no idea what she did to deserve the adoration of such an amazing man, but she knows he shouldn't let him pass her by. She's lucky, Ruka thinks, incredibly lucky as she watches Asa walk smiling down the aisle towards her in her ivory veil and gown of Chantilly lace. But for some reason what she's looking at when she thinks that thought is Pharita standing beside her in her bridesmaid white, smile pristine as the day they met at five and eyes filled with nothing but unconditional blessings and love and happiness for Ruka.
When Ruka closes her eyes, she can imagine for the briefest moment that Asa doesn't exist and it's only her and Pharita standing before the priest, side by side. Just the most fleeting, ephemeral moment, before the illusion shatters and she opens her eyes back to reality.
31.
Asa organizes a birthday party for Rami when she turns one, and they invite Pharita, Chiquita, and the adorable little girl they have newly adopted from Korea, Rora.
As the four of them sit across the dinner table and converse over a refined meal served on Asa's antique ceramic dishes and silverware, Ruka catches sight of Pharita and can hardly believe that they're parents now. Mothers. She still feels like the snivelling five-year-old kid meeting Pharita for the first time, especially when Pharita murmurs across the table, candlelight flickering over her pixieish smile, "Can you believe this, neechan? We have children. Children." Pharita shakes her head, looking dazed.
Her Japanese is almost as fluent as a native speaker's now, having lived in Tokyo almost three decades. Ruka wonders about the trajectories of fate that led the four of them to cross paths -- but Ruka feels more affinity for Pharita than anyone at this table.
An infant's gleeful chortle jolts her out from her musings, and Ruka looks over to the living room to see Rora and Rami crawling together on the floor, giggling and babbling in their own little game. She loves these two children with all of her heart, as fiercely as she loves Asa and Pharita and even Chiquita, who Ruka has accepted as a dear friend on account of Pharita. The six of them -- they're family. And as she looks at Pharita, Asa and Chiquita's faces in the glow of the candlelight, she knows in her gut that they will protect this little, unbearably precious family unit alongside her, just as lovingly.
33.
As Rami and Rora grow up rapidly from babies to toddlers, they become as inseparable friends as their parents. Watching the two baby girls, Ruka is reminded of her and Pharita when they were young -- joined at the hip, knowing each other like the back of their own hand.
She is contented that she has been able to preserve her friendship with Pharita, even after marriage, that she is still constantly able to meet up with Pharita (even if Chiquita is usually present too), as often as twice a week. Pharita's presence in Ruka's life has always been something like a stabiliser, a mainstay, and Ruka can't imagine how lost she would feel without her.
Asa is as loyal and dutiful a husband as Ruka could wish for. She has nothing to complain about. However you look at it, her life is perfect. She has a comfortably-paying job, a kind-hearted spouse, a beautiful three-year old daughter. Ruka has no reason to feel that anything is lacking.
35.
It’s an otherwise uneventful evening when Ruka is startled to find herself alone with Pharita. It seems like years since the last time they've managed to have a private conversation, just between the two of them, without Asa and Chiquita hovering on the edges and listening in.
But today, they are waiting at a candlelit table in a new Italian restaurant Chiquita wants to try out. Because her office is closer in distance to the cram school downtown where Asa is a tutor, he usually picks her up after work when the four of them meet for a meal.
They were pleasantly surprised by how well Asa and Chiquita ended up getting along, after the initial awkwardness. On the outside, they didn't seem to have compatible personalities, but they matched each other strangely well and often squabbled about trivia to Pharita and Ruka's amusement.
Pharita checks her wristwatch, seeming impatient to see Chiquita, and Ruka feels an odd pang. Does Pharita mind spending time with her alone that much? Pharita sips her wine as the silence lengthens, but Ruka finds it more comfortable than stilted. She has known Pharita for thirty years now, and sometimes it feels like a lifetime.
Others, it feels like a heartbeat.
37.
”We're not working out, are we."
When Asa says these words, Ruka thinks she's dreaming. She frowns in incomprehension as she stares up at him, puzzled what he's talking about. Asa just smiles tiredly, tiny creases fanning out at the corners of his eyes, which meet hers honestly and unresentfully.
"I've held on so long because of Rami. But I think she's old enough now."
"Old enough for what?" Ruka repeats, and Asa's smile is bittersweet.
"Ruka," he says quietly, placing his hand on top of hers. "Thank you for loving me. Thank you for giving me Rami, and these seven years of happiness. But honey, am I really the one you want to spend the rest of your life with?"
Ruka opens her mouth to reflexively answer Of course but Asa places a gentle finger on her lips.
"Think carefully," he says, and his voice is wise and understanding.
39.
Ruka weaves through the mass of bodies and smoke at the bar, finally locating Pharita's familiar elegant profile sitting on a barstool in the corner of the room and drowning her sorrows in alcohol.
Ruka quickly approaches, placing a concerned hand on her shoulder. “Rit, what's wrong?" she says, trying to hide her worry.
Pharita raises her head running a hand through her long wavy locks, and her eyes are ravaged and dull when they meet Ruka's. "Chiquita left," she mutters, the sentence trailing off in a sob.
Ruka's heart clenches. "What?" she says, feeling her blood boiling in her veins and her hands curling into fists. "How dare she, that little --"
She pivots on her heel, shaking with anger, but Pharita's light touch on her shoulder stops her, stills her effortlessly.
"She said..." Pharita's voice is husky, and she clears her throat, eyes glassy and pitch dark. "She said I was in love with Ruka. Can you believe that?"
"... W-what?" Ruka breathes, the bottom falling out of her world. Pharita's eyes burn steadily, inscrutably into her.
"Why did Asa-san divorce you?" she murmurs almost inaudibly.
Ruka swallows over the lump in her throat, feeling her pulse pounding in her ears. “He said I was in love with you.”
41.
The next time they meet is at Chiquita and Asa's wedding. After that fateful night at the bar two years ago, Ruka had not contacted Pharita and neither had Pharita contacted her. They were both too fucked up, too cowardly, not brave enough to face the fallout of the questions that had been raised that night, the gauntlets that had been thrown. It had been easier to run away, to try to forget Pharita, Pharita Chaikong who Ruka had known her whole life and apparently always loved without realizing.
But no matter how far she ran, Ruka couldn't hide. She couldn't hide from the memories that haunted her daily, that were as much a part of her as her own lungs and heart and internal organs. Pharita Chaikong was a part of Kawai Ruka she couldn't just cut off with a neat incision.
Ruka is laughing and playfully herding Rami and Rora, who are eleven years old and the most exhausting girls in the universe into the church to prepare for their duty as flower girls when she stops in her tracks.
It's an understatement to say that Pharita knocks the breath out of Ruka when she sees her. Pharita is clad in a simple pastel sundress and heels, her svelte shoulders and delicate pale collarbones revealed by the sweetheart neckline, hair youthfully styled up and belying her indefinably older features. Ruka had forgotten how breathtakingly pretty, how achingly familiar Pharita was.
Everyone says Asa and Chiquita are the happiest couple they've ever seen, but Ruka barely notices them because she can't take her eyes off Pharita; Pharita standing in a corner of the banquet hall looking like she wants to fade into the wallpaper, Pharita thoughtfully sipping a glass of champagne, tapered fingers clasped gracefully around the stem, Pharita standing there, doing nothing but looking so captivatingly, devastatingly flawless just being herself.
Pharita's eyes widen when she sees Ruka, the emotions flickering across them raw and exposed -- happiness, regret, an overwhelmingly fierce missing. Unconditional, unspoken understanding. She takes a hesitant step closer, as if afraid Ruka is a hallucination who will vanish at a touch.
”Ruka-chan?” Pharita says shakily, fighting back tears.
”Rita-chan,” Ruka replies quietly, steadily, and steps forward to gather Pharita unresisting into her embrace.
My best friend, Pharita, Ruka thinks. She's said these words countless times, both out loud and in her heart, throughout the past thirty-six years, that they've all but lost their meaning. And yet, it strikes Ruka like an epiphany that Pharita was so much more than that. She had been Ruka's sister, friend, soulmate. Lover. She had been Ruka's unwavering pillar of support and the silent, invisible wings behind her back, the hands that caught her when she fell. She had been all that and more.
Ruka recalls the elapsed years, from the time they met, in increments of two. Pharita was always beside her, her safe harbour, the home she would forever return to. And when Ruka arrives at the question of what she should do at this crossroads; which path she should choose -- it dawns on her that when she remembers nine, fifteen, twenty-one, thirty-three, Pharita had been the only constant in an ever-changing world. She had been the only absolute certainty.
And when Ruka realizes that, she knows with simple clarity that there's no question about which road she's going to take this time. There never has been. Because wherever and whenever, Ruka will always take the road that leads to Pharita.
The road that leads home.