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The day Wemmbu had met his best friend was bright and uncomfortably hot; he was only five years old, chubby fingers still clasped at the soft fabric of his mother's flowery dress, a damp patch at the hem to where he had drooled on for the past hour. It was not his first time here, and it certainly would not be his last, listening to sermons. He could barely comprehend what the preacher was saying—words with too many syllables in them and long, drawn out sentences and the choir singing in high tones—so he did not bother to even attempt to pay attention. The melodies and harmonious notes of the organ faded into the background; all was well.
It was a small church; cramming the small town into the church was a good idea in theory, but executed poorly. The sweat, lingering body odour, was pungent; poor attempts of saving face came in the form of expensive colognes and sweet perfumes—washed out by perspiration and Sunday heat. Ladies stood and fanned themselves with fold-ups, inconspicuously patted their faces down with powder; men rolled their shoulders back, adjusted their collars; but it was futile, hairlines and bouncy curls wilted by the half hour all the same. Wemmbu stood in the middle row, eyes barely peaking over the pews. He traced traced various indescribable shapes into the polished wood at the back of one pew in fromt of him, trying not to sweat too much in his white button-up; the fabric of the shirt stuck to his back.
For a while, Wemmbu lived in a bubble of ignorance and prosperity—the only aspects of life that stayed as a constant to him in his five years of conscience being: home, his parents, and Wube—days shrouded in uncertainty and expectation, it was hard not to be as ignorant as the rest of your town.
Many of his days had passed in quiet prayer and pristine pressed down polo shirts; he had read the tales of the Prophet until his eyes drooped dangerously low and the words swam in circles. It was not like Wemmbu, yet he tried to like it. He tried— but to him it… Lacked sustenance.
There was a lack of action. The world was still, too still. Day after day: wake up, pray, read, eat, pray, sleep. Was there any future to look forward to? Was this all there was? Tough steak and sprouts was hardly appetising; getting sand and dirt on your shorts was a disgrace; talking to the wrong man sitting on the edge of the sidewalk or the average porter boy stopping for a sip of the communal water fountain was a shame on you and the faces that raised you. Sometimes, he wondered how he had heard of these rules and decided they ever made sense at all.
Talks of letting him go live in the church sprouted like invasive weeds during dinner time (full of fancy table cloths and eyes glazed over), the proud glimmer in his mother's eye as she slowly turned away from her dull plate of meatloaf and to him, twirling the fork in his hand. What a good child, she'd mutter as her cold hands would pat the messy purple strands growing below his ears, what a dear child. Such profund parenting methods. His parents were the type of proud people to stick by their principles; they did not curse (only on the one off chance that a merchant was being particularly rude); they did not engage in alcoholism (only on the occasion that they had received fine liquor from a distant relative on another server); and they did not disavow their promises, ever. To everyone else they were honest, good people. But to him, they were truly, earnestly serious about sending him away. If he were smarter—less feeble brained and TV addicted—then he would've ran away sooner than he had.
Wemmbu, five years old, doesn't ruminate over that, though, but how sticky and uncomfortable he felt. How the wood felt scratchy and rough against the soft pad of his finger; how the crowd, still standing, shuffled impatiently; how his mother finally swatted his fingers away from her dress; how the flies drifted in between pews with a low yet irritating buzz.
As he was tracing his fingertip along the groves the pews, something slightly bumped against his shoulder.
Ivory locks of hair, curled over a pair of strikingly blue eyes; a mini suit—fitted with a too big tie that suggested that it was his father's—that looked utterly ridiculous; a small mouth forming a hushed 'Sorry'. He shook his head at them, and tapped on their shoulder playfully.
That was when the world began. The summer whizzed by almost instantaneously, days spent outside in the sun in Eggchan's backyard—paths lined with flowers and at the back, a greenhouse brimming with crops. (Egg once told him that his father took him out sometimes to stick seeds into the pots: carrots, tomatoes, onions. Said the family liked to grow their own food, that his parents met in the countryside—choosing to move to the town in search of better farm business.) They'd run through the flowers and peek into the greenhouse to see how Egg's tomato was doing; sat on the patio in the shade colouring (more so smearing crayons onto the paper in Wemmbu's case) two sides of a colour book. Eggchan's mother would sometimes come in from the backdoor and tell them to come back into the house with promises of lemonade, glasses clinking on the tray as it bumbed against her—not huge but otherwise not small—belly; when Wemmbu had pointed it out and asked if Egg's mother was fat, the boy had explained that she was carrying a baby. ("Mom says that it's a girl. My sister." He said, slightly enunciating the last word as if it were from a foreign language.)
He spent his time at Egg's house until the sun begun to dip below the horizon, the sky washed in shades of pink and orange. He'd eat dinner, then pray, then sleep; then wake up to go down the street to continue whatever they had been doing yesterday. Life was simple as can be; a scraped knee was the end of the world, Egg's slow methodic reading of The Screenshot of Dorian Grey was the most agonising torture he had experienced, and that giant house on the end of their road that smelt like lillies and lemon was the closest thing to a save haven, aside from Church.
They'd swap question papers in class; would pick eachother up from the mud pile on the sidewalk home that always stayed wet, even on the hottest days of the year; classmates said they were 'stuck together at the hip'. And, well yeah. They were practically inseperable.
"We think it's just the best for you."
Was it? Wemmbu fiddled with the cuff of his sleeve, flexing his hand into a fist; opening it like a blooming flower, fingers splayed outwardly. His mother coughed. Father adjusted his collar.
"Son, you know in the tales, why those who defect are cast into the void?" He shook his head.
"Because they have betrayed Wube, and they have betrayed themselves. Because they decided to forsake the beings that love them, they forsook their family, friends, life. It is all a terrible, lonely thing—they have nothing, now, and they will never have anything within their reach again. No home, no love, nothing. We just want you to be closer with your maker so that… Those poisonous thoughts would never affect you. So that you are strong." His father was saying, chin tilted up, "We want the best."
The best.
Slowly, the tiniest seed planted into his head. He nodded at his father, forced the upward curl of his lip, revelled in the brilliant gleam in his parents' eyes. Mother cut the birthday cake and father prepared the plates. The buttercream was sweet and the chocolatey scent was cloying— yet it still felt like swallowing a vial of poison, syrup and candy burning his throat. All was well.
Then, in the dead of night a day after his tenth birthday, his parents ushered him out of the house with a small briefcase—clothes, scriptures, toiletires—and into a small carriage. His mother watched as he clambered onto the seat, ghosted her frail hand over his shoulder, them stepped back.
And that was all. Wemmbu watched them retreat back into the warm light peeking through the doorway, the horse trottling away with one crackling whip at its hind.
An old lady greeted him at the doorway, an arch over-reaching into the night, faintly smelling of polished wood and old wool, dressed in long, dark robes; she firmly rested her hand on his shoulder and guided him through narrow halls, passing through expansive rooms with elegant tiling, towards the quarters all the way at the back of the building.
"There you are, son," she was saying, slowly—a certain tone of patientice that had bewildered him, even now, "Go in."
And he did. There it was: a dozen other kids, all varying in faces and heights and gowns unpacking their luggage at the base of their beds where a small chest rested; the warm overhead light blinked blearily, casting soft shadows that danced across the room as bodies shuffled around; there was a low murmur that seemed to unanimously agreed that they'd rather be anywhere but here. He swallowed thickly and looked back to see that the lady was gone, a closed door was all that there was.
The only bed avaliable was at the end of the room, he slowly drifted through the mess, ignoring the glances at his hair, at the way he hobbled, the way his hands shook. He dropped his briefcase on the chest—deciding to unpack in the morning—and almost flopped down onto his bed when he heard it. A low giggle. He immdiately whipped his head around.
"No way." Yes way. Absolute way. There was Eggchan, sitting on another bed—right across from his. Egg slapped a hand on his mouth, eyes darting towards the front of the room; no one seemed to have noticed. "They took you away too?"
Egg nodded. And to be honest, he almost sighed with relief—at least there was his best-friend around to talk to.
"Happy Birthday, boy," Wemmbu watched as the mentors patted Eggchan on the shoulders as they walked through the hall, "You're growing quick. Soon a man, son." He watched as Egg's brow twitched violently—for only a second, so revealing and so open, like Wemmbu was only meant to see that—and schooled his expression back to normal.
Snacking on dinner leftovers (a stale bread roll that deflated sadly when he pinched it between his fingers. Yeah, okay, whatever. Food was food) that he had sneaked into his robe pockets, "Thirteen," he said between bites, "How's that a man? You're a tiny baby."
Egg grimaced and scooted to the edge of his bed, "Stop talking while you're eating. And you're twelve, what do you know?" Wemmbu, decidedly, spat crumbs at Egg's face and dodged the hand that came to smack him on the head.
"You have baby cheeks!" He said, reaching over and jabbing his finger at Egg's—indeed, very—chubby cheeks. Egg squawked indignantly and swatted his hands away, scooting further away until his head smacked the wall.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." Said the liar with the pinched face, who was still rubbing the back of his head. "I'm not hurt."
"Oh," He wondered, "You don't feel pain anyone. I guess you're a real man, now."
He was met with a pillow in his face. Cackling, he didn't bother to block it, simply falling onto the bed.
"I mean," Egg was saying from above, "Time feels like it's going quick. Maybe too quick. Sometimes, I still feel like I'm still ten years old and I'm carrying a lighted candle on the tray to all of those stupid lanterns before sunrise, but I keep getting my fingers caught on the heat… And before I would be rubbing at the burns all day and thinking: 'It'll get better, I'll learn how to light it properly.' Except it didn't. I'm a teenager and I'm still going to have to wake up early and have all these blisters on my fingers. And what happens when I'm fifteen, or seventeen, or twenty—what would happen to me then?" The thought of a bald, old Eggchan was quickly shut down, "If I burn my hands on those candles for the rest of my life, I'm seriously going to die. Or something. I don't want to burn my fingers on the flames anymore."
Back then, Egg was really dramatic. Dramatic in the way that everything seemed to be the end of everything; uncertainty to him meant something bad. Something dangerous, or serious, or whatever other idealistic apocalypse scenairo he could think up in a second. But, they were still kids—impressively idiotic, dramatic, god-fearing children whom only got two hours of sunlight per day and constantly feasted on dry bread and white chicken like it was their last meal, with their knees always sore from kneeling on cold tiles, with skin peeling at the palms of their hands. There was a dozen other boys in that building but they didn't get one another like how Egg got Wemmbu and Wemmbu got Egg; they had no one, they had eachother. Like two mirrors reflecting eachother's reflection; like a endless labyrinth.
"You're not going to die, Egg. You can just tell them if you don't want to light the lanterns anymore. That it burns your hands, or whatever… They'd probably ask someone who isn't as clumsy as you are to do it." He tried to joke.
A beat. "They make me do it because I'm the tallest. Because I can reach them."
"Then why can't you…" The words die out quickly on his tongue.
Another beat. The silence was unberable, his skin itched for something—something.
"I miss the library." Egg quietly admits.
Thats right, he always did love the library. He was a born natural with the texts, a real philosophical prodigy. As children, Egg had spent his days wrapped up in various stories; read it out loud slowly, like his tiny brain in that bobble head was savoring every word as if it were Wube's itself. On school days, he'd camp out at the school's (much smaller—but still expansive) library. Egg dropped his head downward like a sick, grieving man, rubbed his hands together like the only thing that could consolidate him was a passage divorced from any sort of religiosity.
"We can go there in our free time, tommorow," Eggchan perked up, head suddenly lifting up, "That's enough time? Right?"
"Yeah." Egg agreed.
The wagon clattered as Egg dropped another book on it, the barrow rocking once to the left and stilling at the right. Upside, the title read: Meditations, printed in great yellow text; blocked behind was a cyan background, elegant gold patterns curved around the title. Wemmbu grimaced.
"We walked all the way here just so you can buy a book on meditating?" Egg, fingers trailing along book spines, paused.
"That's not what the book is about," Eggchan said to him, exasperated. He slid another book out of the shelf and dropped it into the barrow. Player's search for Meaning. "It's philosophy."
A beat. "And what the hell is phee-ol-soapy?"
Egg smacked him.
"Whaaaat?" He whined, rubbing at the sore spot on his head.
"Wemmbu—dude— its like. Like the questioning of life. There's these old guys from like–ancient Sosri who's job was to sit in their homes and to think about why they're alive; what was the true meaning of—" Egg gestured around them, "All this."
"I think it's for keeping books." Egg kicked him in the shin.
"Dude, shut up. Anyway, these old guys wrote a bunch of stuff about what they thought—and it's like a million different views on being alive. Some of them talk about people, too. And figures. Like, important figures in history." He took out another book, inspected the back of it, and slid it back into the shelf.
"Oh. Do they have one about Wube?" Wemmbu asked.
Egg looked away.
"Um. Maybe, I guess. It's probably in another section."
Wemmbu whipped his head around to scan the library. And— there it was, a vibrant shelf of brilliant purples and highlighter greens caught his eye. Egg was still picking his way through the philosophy section.
He turned back, puffed out his cheeks, and skittered away towards the opposite side of the library.
Above the shelf was a silver plate; a singular word engraved on it in big, bold letters: PVP. In the shelf were thin—bright pink spines with catchy titles in a pop font—and thick—hard spines adorned with golden spirals and elegant text, like it commanded respect. He slid a thin book out, analysing the cover intently; it was some guy in tailored clothing—broad, angled chin with a slight stubble to it, big shoulders and huge biceps bursting out of his sleeves, two tall legs that bulked around the calves—posing with a weapon. It was made out of a dark ore, edges all sharp– like it could end you with one slash—glimmering yet intimidating; the man on the cover hoisted the sword upon his shoulder like it was nothing, muscles bunched up at the elbow, veins popping out. Wemmbu flipped through pages of awkward stances that somehow made sense in the context, weapon poised up, struck into the hearts of mobs, kicking the shit out of some other guy—winning, winning, winning.
He breathed out. Hooooooly shit.
Egg had moved onto the sociology section by the time he returned, flipping through a thick manuscript. "Hey Egg?"
He hummed. "What is PVP?"
The other stopped, finger suddenly caught in between two pages. "Yo, what?"
"What's PVP?" He asked, waving the book in Eggchan's face. Egg gingerly picked it from his fingers and quickly scanned over the front and back covers, eyes confusedly glancing back at him—seemingly wavering between gracing Wemmbu with a proper response or dismissing the entire topic once and for all.
"It's an acronym. Player versus player," Egg sighed, handing the comic book back to Wemmbu, "It's basically just fighting other people, really."
"Why would someone fight someone else?"
Egg shrugged. Huh.
Wemmbu dropped the comic book into the wagon, suspicious overflowing with Egg's ridiculous philosophy picks. He tasted the words on his tongue. Swallowed his spit. "Egg, that guy looks so cool."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," he echoed, "So, so cool."
Egg had begun to drag the wagon to the front desk, humming, "That's nice."
"I want to be him—like, a PVP-er." Wemmbu said coolly, then let the silence drag out as Egg checked out the abundance of books; the receptionist took one look at their barrow, exhausted, and basically let them go with the promise that they'd return it all next week. They never did.
The air was breezy outside, loose strands of hair blew into his eyes; sun slowly beginning to hunker down for the night, edges of the sky washed in a yellow-tinged cyan. Egg spoke up then: "… You can barely lift up a metal tray. How're you going to become a PVP legend, bro?"
Wemmbu scowled. "Do you have no faith in me?" Then, determinedly, "Just watch me. You'll see."
Egg laughed disbelievingly.
"You'll see."
Later, the doorkeeper scolded them for tracking dirt through the doorway.
The Church was silent after Egg finished speaking. A woman silently stood, slow clapping. A few other churchgoers had begun to reluctantly applaud, too, but the heaviness refused to dissipate. Downturned frowns and furrowed brows; wide-eyed children asking their mothers of heretical ideologies and being shushed with a tug of their ears; men awkwardly shuffled down in lines to the big oak doors, the continuous creaking of its hinges as normie families and the devout alike went through the door. Egg waited silently at the podium, head bowed like he was expecting a masked executioner to burst through those doors and swiftly decapitate him.
Wemmbu stared at Egg from his seat, feeling a whole lot bad for him.
"So…" He said uselessly. Egg shot up instantly, eyes scanning the room until they found his, in the row of emptied chairs for boys like him behind the stage. Silently, he patted on the seat of the chair next to him.
Egg reluctantly seperated himself from the podium and drifted to the back, lowering himself down onto the stiff chair; his head leaned back onto the marble wall.
"That went horribly." Beside him, Egg breathed out heavily. He quickly tacked on a half-hearted apology, "Sorry. Didn't mean— you know. Yeah…"
Egg huffed, "Well, I mean you are right. Did you see that one mother, bro? She was genuinely raging," he laughed, then quietly, "But I wouldn't have it any other way."
Wemmbu turned to stare at him, "What? You wanted it to go bad?"
Egg scatched the back of his head sheepishly, "Yeah."
"What? Why?"
"Because I knew that what I would say wouldn't matter, it was who I was, the guy who's saying it. Honestly, I wouldn't have known what to say or do if it was actually received well."
Confused, Wemmbu cocked his head.
Egg elaborated, "Everyone knows who I am. What I believe in or how I interpret the tales of the Prophet or whatever—so even if I said something like 'Wube wants you to commit tax fraud' or whatever another guy who they actually like would preach, they still would've reacted the same. Sometimes, I just don't get it… It's like there's this big glass wall between me and the rest of the town and I just can't seem to cross it, I guess. All I can do is observe you all go on with your lives and pray and incoporate those lessons they preach of every week into your daily routines flawlessly and not feel like it's some burden. Or whatever. Like… this part of myself that couldn't be normal—believe in the same things everyone else does. Even if I truly, really, genuinely tried."
Wemmbu leaned his head back on the wall, letting Egg speak. They weren't the type to console eachother. He could only listen.
"Man, why would they even send me here?" Egg said, putting his head in his wrapped hands, "I could've stayed in school or… Or something. My sister thinks I'm some distant cousin who comes over to spend the holidays."
Wemmbu remembered his parent's cold gaze; how they had already packed his bag for him before he even knew where he was going. He never visited them after—no, not at all—but he distantly recalled the single letter he sent when he was eleven—wobbly knees and puffy eyes, still unable to accept the situation he was forever put in—that never gotten a response back. His mother's greyed, violet hair, smile never reaching her eyes; the tie his father always slung around his collar, as if he were never taught how to tie it himself. Clouds of mist obscured their eyes, the way their nose must've sloped similarly to his; static overlayed on how their voices should've sounded. That silhouette of a one-story house that always loomed in the back of his mind, always present but never thought upon.
If Wemmbu knew his parents for longer, he could've mourned them.
"Do you miss them?" He asked.
Chuckling lamely, Egg said: "Sometimes."
Wemmbu blinked through the ray of light peeking through the stained window. Okay, that tracks. Egg turned around to look at him, with a sort of peculiar glint in his eye.
"Do you?"
No. But he lacked the will to speak it out at all.
"Sometimes."
He woke to rain lashing on the windows. The pit-pattering of droplets onto the shingles, the loud drumming of footsteps came down the hall, quickly passing through and fading once more. Somewhere, a door slammed.
His head felt like it was going to burst—a pressure on his eyes, his temples, coming down to just below his jawline—and his neck ached, no matter how much he tried to move. Propped up on that stiff pillow, the back of his head felt like it was weighed down by a boulder. He wrapped the thin blanket around him tighter, the binding tickling the bottom of his chin. It didn't aid in his discomfort, but it kept him from running cold. He closed his eyes, faintly feeling it thrum and pulse; only a inky blackness—static film layered thinly over it—greeted him. Tentatively, he opened his eyes again, staring up ahead to the dark ceiling above him.
His throat was parched, lips chapped. He ran his tongue along his teeth, mapped out his canines, swiped at the gross plaque building up at his gums.
Across from him, Egg snored lightly; another person shifted to the other side, blankets ruffling against their nightwear. After a deliberate pause, Wemmbu warily got up from bed, forgoing his shoes. The floorboards creaked underneath his weight; he danced on the edges of the oak, stealthily passing through rows of sleeping teenagers and chests filled to the brim with robes that smelt of stale dust, thickly overlaying the hints of detergent. Wemmbu reached for the handle, cold metal against the padded balls of his fingers; the unoiled hinges groaned as he turned the pulled the door back.
Shit. He whipped his head back to scan the room. Not a single soul stirred. When he was sure, he slipped between the crack.
The walk wasn't long; the tiles were cold beneath his feet, freezing. He drifted through the hall, self-conscious of how his shirt ruffled when his arm swung paralell to it. The rain continued pattering on the windows, sharp flashes of lightning illuminated the hall, thunder rumbling past the the heavy downpour and shaking the world with a fierce determination. Wemmbu briefly watched the window with muted curiosity before continuing onward.
He lounged on the pews like a sinner, stretched on the wood like he owned it, felt his joints pop and click, tearing the silence apart. To his left was a row of empty benches, his right identical, and straightforward was a towering image of saintly figures. Heavy wings on their back, spread out like they were taking flight. Bony fingers put together delicately, curling around their loose robes that hung off their slender hips; curly locks of hair framed their flushed, chubby cheeks. On top, a spiralling ring of light floating just above their heads. They were majestic, beautiful, but all too godly; choosing to look alike to man in attempt to strengthen the connection between divinity and flesh. They could try to elevate the similarities of this unstoppable evil and this unshakable good all they wanted, but it only fell flat.
Man would never rise up, but the saintly could never ascend down.
They were all wrong, he could never kneel to this. No matter how he prayed, the words that spilt out were only empty wishes and half-minded courtesies; the fingers that interwoven in eachother were nothing but cold, useless, numb. As if they were desperately trying to find a respite, a gulp of fresh water, a shade from the sun on a dog day.
If there was a salvation for him, it would always be in Egg's backyard, running through the bushes of flowers, the wind taking away his breath. It would always be in school, on him and Egg's shared desk, sharing poorly muffled giggles that always got them sent straight to the supervisor. It would always be in those big words that never made sense, the way that Egg's laugh sung through the haze of doubt that constantly clouded his restless days, the fact that it was both of them against the world.
Or, maybe, they were the world.
… If there was a respite for him, it was never this.
"Egg. Egg."
"… What?"
"Wake up."
"Dude." And, "What are you doing, bro?"
Wemmbu slung the bag over his shoulder, feeling the newfound weight. "How long does it take you to pack all of your stuff?"
Egg only stared at him.
"Can you be done in five?" Wemmbu asked him.
Warily, still blinking awake, Egg finally shuffled out of bed.
As they slowly opened the window, unused hinges creaking in the dead of night, Wemmbu knew that'd this was the end of the restless days.
As they tumbled onto the damp grass, hit with a barrage of rain, Wemmbu knew those burns would someday heal.
Running, wind whipping on their faces, knees aching; respite will come someday.