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The age of blossoms nears its end, and the coldness of a long autumn knocks on the glass. It makes itself known, as Chow opens the door of the restaurant for her.
The interior glows in a sickly green, and there’s something rigid about the air that night. The jukebox sings out an old melody, flying against the walls. Like clockwork, mostly out of habitual cautiousness, the two pick out their usual spot by the place’s farther reaches, settling on its plush, crimson booth chairs.
Conscious as the two usually are whenever they dine out, of eyes that’ll think they’re wed or ones that’ll recognize them, tonight those eyes are blurred, matters little. The world, for this brief moment, is the person sitting across from the other, contently enjoying every ounce of their meal. Some days, more often than they’ll admit, watching the other eat their dinner as the green lights bounce off their skin is enough to make them satisfied, which is why commemorating the finality of it all is something they wanted to fulfill, even though what it brings is more hurt than consolation.
A familiar silence invites itself to their table, and it’s something that really happens at dinner’s first few moments. The first time it washed over them was during their first meeting, when they figured the revelation over the neckties and the handbags, a conclusion so clear it was like an overripe fruit waiting to be picked in front of them.
Here they are again, sitting, paralyzed by that quiet, but this time it comes like a crackling tide, and they’re standing on the shore watching as time quickly passes by over the horizon and the end of their companionship is nearing as they know it.
None of their actions can postpone that end, no matter what they do. Once they realize that, and that they can’t sit without words forever, Mrs. Chan finally starts.
“Order for me,” she says, force of habit.
He looks down, then meets her waiting eyes. “No,” he answers after thinking, “order what you want. It’s time we eat for ourselves. You said it yourself, we won’t be like them. Not anymore. Not tonight.”
A halt passes over her gaze, taken aback by the sudden refusal, the sudden independence of the choice. For a brief moment, her mind mutes and she forgets what she usually orders whenever she’s dining out with her husband. A hunger slowly rises from her stomach, and she’s a bit unsure whose hunger this is - hers as her own, the part of her bound to her husband, or the her that’s been playing Chow’s spouse when they go out together - and what taste it craves.
“Okay,” she replies to him a little too late, picking up the menu. After a moment; “I’ll have the steamed cabbage rolls. Some coffee as well. How about you, what would you like?” The question isn't because she wants to order for him, necessarily, but out of genuine interest of what he really likes, uninfluenced, like the chance he’d given her. There’s a sliver of the person in the food they choose.
“I’ll stick to the pork chop,” he says, not touching the menu at all. Her expectant breath falls, and he notices. “I’ve grown quite fond of the flavors. And coffee too.”
The coffee arrives first, in those jade cups that have become familiar for them, and Chow’s the first one to sip.
“What do you see for your future?” Chow inquires, fingers inside the cup’s handle.
There’s a faint change in her expression, like she’s finally letting herself settle in her seat, “what a big question.”
He smiles. He knows she’s saving the answers for later.
The coffee arrives shortly.
She takes the cup beside her and cranes her neck as she sips. Chow watches.
Dinner hasn't started but he already feels full.
The meals arrive, juicy and rising with smoke, the steam leaving a trail in the still air. She takes the chopsticks on her side and with a gentle finger, she splits them in half, and Chow almost flinches, like it’s an absurd analogy of present things.
For the most part, dinner feels like a funeral. It’s not entirely wrong - funerals are meant to be in memory of someone, and right now they both feel at a loss; Chow’s not exactly headed for heaven - at this point he doubts he is - but he’s bound for the unfamiliar land of Singapore, and Mrs. Chan’s bound to be in the arms of her husband again, no matter how cold they are. This is all the time they’ve spent together eating dinners, playing the other’s husband and wife, and crafting martial arts serials together, concentrated and encapsulated into a steaming meal of pork chop and cabbage rolls. So yes, this is a funeral.
“I’m not sure of the future,” she breaks the silence, swallowing the food in her mouth, “I’m not sure if I want to be a secretary for a long time. I can’t picture myself being in the office any longer. But I don’t know what else to do besides it, so I can’t really leave. Maybe I’ll migrate to another country with my husband, just like you.”
Chow wants to ask her for a final time if she wants to come with him to Singapore, but there’s no use in tiring questions you know the answers to. He’s making peace with it, slowly - she’s too faithful, and knows she can’t risk letting Chow sweep her off to her feet to Singapore when her husband, who she’s known much longer, is here. He’s sure of the answers in her mind because somehow, they’ve grown familiar with each other’s thoughts, just like the back of their hands, like when she made sesame soup when he was craving some.
He reaches for his coffee and takes a generous gulp, taking the thorns down his throat.
Now it's her turn for a heavy question. "So," she says in between bites, "what awaits you in Singapore?"
He stops eating for a minute. "I've no idea. I'll just go where my feet and pen takes me, search for available apartments, keep on writing serials. Ping's there to help. I'm sure I'll manage. Like I told you, I'll just play it by ear and hope for the best."
In all actuality and hesitancy, he cannot see a clear image of Singapore, only hazy blocks of light. He cannot see Singapore without seeing Mrs. Chan, or a life without her, at all, which makes him treasure this moment, her in front of him not in memory but in flesh, more.
She takes a bite out of the cabbage roll perched on her fork, and bit by bit her eyes linger over the pork chop on Chow’s plate.
“I wonder how that tastes,” she muses, the freshness of the rolls making her long for a taste of the pork’s richness. A part of her misses the steak she always orders, with that small dab of mustard, just like how Chow’s wife likes it. "You must like that an awful lot to choose it again."
“Want to try some?” Chow asks.
“Do you mind?”
“Not at all.” He smiles. “I’ll cut you a piece.”
Chow brings the knife into the pork, slightly oozing with oil and moving along the knife’s direction tenderly, and he pricks a fork into its meat. Chow hovers the fork into the air, but stops halfway.
Mrs. Chan looks at him, freezing along, face in a questioning expression, anticipating his next move. She waits for him to budge.
And suddenly, his eyes melt into an almost pleading gaze as he points the fork towards her mouth, and he’s acting like this is all routine until he slightly falters, unsure of the advance he’s doing. She looks at the fork and the sparkling pork perched on it, and it takes her willpower to stop her mouth from fully gaping.
With a hesitation, she inches her head forwards, closer to the fork, and with a final look at Chow, she closes her mouth in on the fork and then gradually chews.
She reminds him of a shy doe, with her round, twinkling brown eyes, eating out of his hand. The thought curls his mouth into a small smile.
“So, how does it taste?”
Her face is tinted in a light rose blush, and she almost covers her mouth, looking below her and fiddling her fingers. She takes a handkerchief and dabs her forehead with it, almost timid to have his eyes watching over her as she gets flustered over nothing. Except, it’s not nothing to her - she’s never seen him this bold; maybe because it’s the final time, and he has let his courage take the reins, even for the briefest moment. Her heart flutters.
She composes herself, adjusts her posture as if nothing happened. “It tastes fine,” she says, in a small voice, as she dabs her mouth with her handkerchief.
The quiet washes over them again as Chow had begun blushing as well, a small redness tinting his face. He takes a sip of his coffee to calm him down, but it does little to mitigate his speeding pulse.
“That was too forward,” he apologizes. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no,” she assures. “I just didn’t expect it.”
They spend a minute gazing at their plates, too flushed to meet each other’s eyes. Then, in a move totally unexpected by Chow, she moves in his peripherals, taking a cabbage roll in between her chopsticks, and slowly hovers it to him, looking as if her hand was moving on its own.
Chow stares at the roll, held steady by that pretty hand, her face unsure, and carefully brings his mouth to it, eyes looking in to hers, surprised at her gesture. He chews, like he still can't believe it, taking in the initial taste. Cabbage and beef fall apart in his mouth, letting out a burst of fresh, saucy flavor.
He pulls back, and they share a long glance, awaiting the other’s voice, the music in the air finally pervading their ears. In what felt like a cold eternity, she melts and a snicker bubbles out from her, a giggle growing into a laugh, and she soon covers her mouth to cut her laughing. Upon the warm sound of her laughter, Chow begins cracking up as well. Their stifled laughter's almost heard throughout the restaurant. Maybe tonight, just this night, they’re the happiest table in all of Hong Kong.
That's the closest their lips would ever touch.
The warm, green tones of the restaurant almost feel like a distant time inside the cab’s harsh shadows.
“I don’t want to go home tonight,” she whispers as she lays her head on his shoulder.
Chow inches his hand to hers, and this time, she returns it, twirling her finger on his, their wedding bands shining in the passing streetlights.
The last petal falls. Autumn awaits to meet them once they step out, but while they’re in here, heading home, maybe they get to share a bit more of that waning warmth.