Despite my brother's broad build compared to my wiry one, his old áo dài fit me like it was always mine. The silk glided like water across my skin. Gold embroidered dragons and circles with filigrees patterned the deep royal dress that extended down to my ankles. It must have shrunk in the wash despite being washed very carefully by my mom, and made comfortable that way.

Going into my apartment's living room, I found Tienne digging in her purse for something. Per her style she wore a pink polyester dress with small clusters of apricot blossoms that glittered in the rising sun's rays. Female áo dài had so much more variety.

"Here. Chúc mừng năm mới. (Happy New Year.)" With two hands she gave me a big lì xì with Mickey Mouse playing the guitar against a backdrop of fireworks. Even when we grew out of the kid envelopes, they were much more fun to look at than the ones traditionally decorated with ships or fish. She stifled a yawn. "Waking up is horrible."

"I didn't tell you to do paperwork until your hands fall off," I pointed out, referring to yesterday, when despite getting a day off from work she occupied herself with doing her clients' health insurance claims.

"It's my job. Don't tell me music doesn't take up all your time."

I shook my head. "Năm mới dồi dào sức khỏe (I wish you a healthy New Year)," I said seriously, and gave her a stiff red envelope embellished with Hello Kitty and roses. "Let's go."

We shrugged on our coats and grabbed the bags filled with fruit, red envelopes and coins as offerings to the temples we would visit together. The apartment was hushed. I imagined at our home, the house would also be empty by now; everyone else was on a trip to go to as many temples as possible for the Lunar New Year. While Tienne and I would only visit those in Toronto, both of our missions was to buy mooncakes, coconut candy and anything else made by the temples so we could stock up our fridge on New Year goodies and reconvene in Kingston at nightfall.

—

The weekday morning passed productively with three temples visited. Without the weekend crowds, we soaked in the atmosphere. Tienne meditated while I wandered back and forth outside on the red balconies, inspected the serene statues, and flipped between the hand-out pamphlets that talked about Buddha's journey to enlightenment. A few pictures were taken; Tienne liked posing with the fake cherry blossoms, and I liked the scenery of snow-covered rails, bright red Chinese lanterns and the Vietnamese striped temple flags swaying in the wind.

After buying spring rolls from the temple—we left plenty of room for dinner, where the real feast of steamed chicken, stir-fried vegetables and nian gao would begin—we settled in the car. Tienne usually liked to get take-out food for herself from a fancy restaurant, but she said she didn't feel like it. Since it was beginning to rain, she took the driver's seat and switched on the heating. Our munching and crinkling of the oily paper bags mixed with the slapping of water droplets on the windows. The remaining snow, which had sparkled weakly in the sun's presence, turned into brown-gray mush. While we waited for the rain to let up, I showed Tienne a video of a recent collaboration with an artist from Mississauga.

"Both of us wrote a mini song about the Lunar New Year, then swapped it so we'd cover the other's song," I explained. I already told her days ago, but I couldn't let go of how nice it was to share your passion—and profit off of it. Money earned from enjoyable work was invaluable. "I'd met her briefly during the Reach For Equality convention, but I never knew until she told me she was Autistic too! It was a nice surprise. We didn't relate a lot per say, since our experiences were kind of different. But I did feel more relaxed." The collaboration's impact was small but some of our audiences migrated to each other's spaces.

I played the edited clips for her to watch. "You should show Baba this. It'd make him nostalgic," she said.

"He'll sing it around the house."

"Why wouldn't he if it's good?"

Singing your own song and sharing it was one thing; having speakers or someone else sing it, especially if it was your own family, was mortifying. If I didn't know, it didn't happen. I looked down at the video I was proud to finish. "I guess I want to give them something more substantial."

"You don't know what you're talking about." She stopped chewing. One cheek was full of food, and that was our version of a squinted eye—something so annoying, you couldn't even swallow. "They're happy to see you successful. It's not how they imagined, but parents can't control the future, so us kids may as well. Show it to them. They won't humble-brag to our relatives, if that's what you're worried about."

"Okay. There's still a lot of spring rolls left," I said.

"You can have them."

I used to forget to show my accomplishments to my parents because back then, they didn't respond enthusiastically. I wasn't sure if I could call it a reaction. Now as an adult, they'd taken interest again in what I was doing, I trusted them with my career.

It was so ironic, but I just didn't know if I could trust myself.

Collaborations were easily done online, so that was a great advantage for me, but the recent one produced a misunderstanding between how I and the other artist marketed our songs. She had assumed I was fine with publicly stating my Autistic identity. It wasn't her fault, and we resolved it fast. But I felt bad because we had just finished ranting about society's ignorance of Autistic individuals when accurate information was so readily available by visible Autistic spokespersons and resources online. She had a vision for combatting that mindset, primarily by first making a safespace for her fans.

But who was I, an artist who shied away from talking directly with the audience, and who didn't really understand the nuances of social rights and societal change, to speak on the behalf of everyone else? Of course, I shut down all offensive comments on my online platforms. Just last week a follower was pounced on by internet trolls. It was a painful day and a half as I made sure that wouldn't happen again. At this point there was a mutual understanding with my audience that I was Autistic, and I empathized intensely with my followers who were like me. But I wasn't prepared to tackle the nuances of societal change. I wouldn't know what I'd be talking about, because I wasn't everyone; I was one person.

Maybe I should tell Tienne. Gathering the crumbs that'd fallen on my jacket and dress, I heard but didn't understand Tienne's words. "What?"

She took her thermos from the cup holder and unscrewed the cap. A sliver of steam rose up. "How do you know if you're happy with your job?" I frowned, but she continued, "It's not you, it's just...one of my co-workers got promoted to a higher position, and she's happy, and I'm happy for her—"

"You're not."

"—and everyone takes their job so seriously. And I like mine, but that's it. You know how indecisive I was in school, doing everything and quitting everything. I used to think if I did good things it'd fill my heart up and I'll be content regardless, but what happens if I don't really have a calling like you? Am I asking for too much?" She leaned back in the seat and turned towards me, and I felt the weight of her pleading stare, even as I turned the heating knob down, because I was starting to roast in my jacket. "Tai, if you never had music, what would you have done?"

Tienne knew I couldn't answer hypotheticals. I drummed my fingers aggressively on the dashboard. Her panic pumped a disturbing amount of vigor into my blood, like an energized bird trapped in its cage. But how could I protect her from her own anxiety? "I can't imagine not having a calling because it's the one thing that keeps me going. I've told you before but you don't really know what you want."

"But if this isn't it, then all of my schooling and work went to waste."

"Maybe it's because you're surrounded by old people who've all figured it out, Tienne. Grown-up people sacrificed their wants so we have more opportunities, not so we can become their dream." I shook my head. "I do better around older people, but that probably doesn't apply to you."

She laughed despite the tears. "You read my mind, didn't you."

I swallowed, remembering the late-night conversations that would take place when everyone thought I was asleep. Tienne followed me when there was nowhere else to go, but when my path branched off into music, her interests flitted so fast that I hadn't realized she was following the herd, not herself. Our parents and myself didn't realize that when she didn't know what her career wanted to be, she really meant it. By the ancient rule, the Vuongs always knew what they wanted to do. That was why our parents led with such certainty, trusting us to find our path no matter how life pushed us away from it.

Tienne shouldn't know about the comments. To my parents, it'd show I was too vulnerable for the industry; to my siblings it'd affirm pursuing one's passion was a lost cause after all. So I said, "Let's go to the restaurant you like. Then you can watch the dragon dance."

"All of it? But the noise—"

"I'll wait for you outside."

"But you don't like being outside for so long."

"This is for you, and I hadn't expected you to deprive yourself of what you usually love to do this year."

"Okay. I'm not a lost cause, right?"

"You're my sister," I said matter-of-factly, reaching for the seatbelt. "And you're the nicest person on earth except when it comes to yourself."

Tienne's breathing evened, and my own chest loosened. Tires crunched on gravel as she started to drive out of the parking lot. Misty rain came in undulating waves, and the monotonous slate-coloured city was punctuated by the occasional festive Lunar New Year decorations, reminding us another year had gone by, and how much and little had changed.

—

Tienne's favourite temple was a large Chinese one with four floors. Inside it was lit warmly with three golden Buddha statues at the front. Our arrival was timed strategically; by then the mass chanting had ended, so we filed into line around the tables covered in tasseled buttercup tablecloths. At the front, we stuck our lit incense sticks in the ceramic sand-filled bowl. Tienne prayed using all the proper acknowledgements (name, location, living and deceased family members, then wishes). On the other hand, my mind dissipated into a yearning for courage. Half-a-dozen other prayers in the room cluttered my mind and prevented me from focusing, but I said the prayer in my head. I wasn't sure if Tienne included Liam in hers, so I pictured him in my mind, and combined with a wish for courage to face the future. When we had finished our business, we obtained a tangerine and a red envelope from the side baskets.

Usually the Vietnamese temples taped slips of coloured paper fortunes to the fruit, but this temple printed their fortune on a plastic card inside the red envelope. It had English and Chinese translations. My favourite one came from the third Vietnamese temple we visited: "khỏe như rồng, mạnh như hổ nghĩa là về sức khỏe": "Robust like a dragon, strong like a tiger; you will have good health."

Then we went down to the basement for the dragon dance. I wore my silencing headphones for the beginning, where the dancers, wearing sparkling yellow and red pants, would control the dragons in pairs and dance to the beats of the big drum, cymbals and gongs. The instruments reverberated in my chest. When one of the dragons came down the aisles for the first round, I held out a ten dollar bill. The white-and-gold dragon peered at me with its giant eyes, tilted its head, and batted its eyelashes before "swallowing" the bill down its painted mouth.

"You can go," Tienne shouted over the drumming. "After this we'll drive back home. I have something to show you, 'kay?"

Leaving her to enjoy the show—it looked like this year they'd re-enact a short play too, which was the kind of stuff she loved—I wandered to the temple's gift shop. A song would not be the best thing for my sister's identity crisis. Looking around the shop with redwood lacquered statues, jade jewelry and books, I sighed. The best gift was one with utility, and I didn't want to give her a gift she wouldn't really appreciate.

I had half an hour's worth of time to kill, so I climbed up to the second floor and onto the balcony. The sun was peeking out again, casting tired light on the stone statues of meditating monks that lined this side of the parking lot. Drumming thrummed faintly from the basement and through the wet metal rails I rested my hands on. The red paint was peeling in places to reveal metal rusting underneath.

"It's just Tai. Relax."

Since my noise-cancelling headphones didn't always apply to voices, I turned to see Monty and Joachim who rounded the corner on my left. Monty held a tiny calamondin orange tree, which I recognized thanks to my dad owning one of his own. Joachim had his arm out like he expected to defend himself against my wiry frame.

The last time we'd seen each other, he'd asked me for a proper interview for his university newspaper, and it'd gone smoothly over text. We found common ground with his nostalgia for 1970s pop music, which he said his dad was fond of. Had I said something strange to elicit that reaction? I did veer into a tangent about how pop music was becoming standardized and unitary nowadays thanks to formulas that sold, but wasn't that integral to discussing why current music couldn't hold a candle to the past? Did I offend him by being too argumentative? Too opinionated?

And what about now?

Get it together. Embarrassment prickled my skin like scattering spiders. I couldn't tell what Joachim was thinking, since his thick jacket hid the nuances of body language, and I couldn't think straight. With the energy left in my reserves, I strained my facial muscles and signed to Monty, "What are you doing here?" to act as natural as possible.

"Jo likes the celebrations," he replied, elbowing his partner, "and I asked him to come with me. It brings back memories."

The two nudged each other and signed in short rapid bursts. It would've been funny if I didn't want to flee. I was rooted to the spot, like my center of gravity had clawed down into the center of the earth.

Come on, think of something. Tienne would clam up but smile politely and excuse herself to browse the red envelopes on sale. Sure, in our extroverted Asian family she and I attracted glares because silence was disrespectful. But outside our family circle, she got away with not talking because of her shyness. It was seen as endearing.

No, that wasn't right. When she thought no one was looking, her lips would pull into a grimace.

I groaned inwardly. How could we be so similar but different? I'd assumed she could afford to be more honest with who she was, when really it didn't serve anyone for me to hold my tongue and perpetuate this discomfort.

"I need to go," I managed. "Because...because I need to...work something out with my sister, and I'd appreciate the space. It's not personal."

"Oh, r-really?" said Joachim. "Well—"

"That's cool," said Monty, holding the potted calamondin orange tree. "We need to get this little guy in the car anyway. He linked arms with his partner and leaned into him. "We can talk later. Xīn nián kuài lè, Tai."*

Sheer relief eclipsed the trepidation that I might have offended Joachim. My legs walked me past the main prayer hall and down to the other side of the parking lot where my car was. My mind receded like repelled magnets that finally clicked back into space, sparing me from the strain, and the whiplash gave me a headache.

Vaguely, I was glad Monty respected my decision instead of immediately taking the wheel. I did the right thing. By some miracle, I'd been the one in control.

Before, I questioned if others were nice and I was one who messed up, or if it was the other way around. I always had a more reliable track record of keeping friends I'd met online rather than in real life. But telling Tienne to adjust her way of meeting people would plunge our relationship into churning waters. She'd take it the wrong way, thinking her real self was unlovable, when really that was ridiculous. We had our methods with enduring life's shortcomings.

JOACHIM: I'll only include those quotes in the article. I'll send you the finished draft once it's done so you can confirm it before it's published

JOACHIM: Hey so you're offline now and this isn't part of the interview....just me. Do you think I make a good interviewer? I thought journalism was my thing but I feel like a fish out of water—I know a lot of theory but in practice I'm clumsy.

JOACHIM: Also do you think Monty's been unresponsive lately?

JOACHIM: Are you there?

TAI: Hi. I don't reply to text messages until I'm ready, so I don't want you to feel like I'm ignoring you, because usually I just need space

TAI: You asked interesting questions. I appreciate the thought that went into it. Although, the amount of times we veered off track made me think you liked conversing better than interviewing. Because interviewing is one person asking questions and the other answering, right? Don't get me wrong, I liked talking about music with you and I don't know journalism etiquette but that was my perception. And could I add a suggestion?

JOACHIM: Go for it

TAI: I did feel uncomfortable with how idealistic your questions were directed. Like the one about being an inspiration. Someone told me that they didn't want to be put on a pedestal. When I grew a larger audience I understood; people treat you as superhuman, and I just wanted to be treated like a human. But I know you didn't mean any offense. Not every Autistic person will see your questions the same way, so bear that in mind

TAI: I don't understand what you mean by unresponsive.

JOACHIM: Oh. I see now. I mean, I'm trying to ask Monty for advice, since he has it figured out with going into computer science. One second he's hugging me and the next he refuses to talk when I'm trying to seek support.

JOACHIM: Sorry I'm oversharing aren't I? I don't mean shade to Monty, really

TAI: Why don't you ask him?

JOACHIM: Because whatever he really thinks might hurt me

TAI: I'm not qualified for relationship advice, but I can sympathize with that sentiment. All I can say is that Monty's always bragging about how many languages you can speak, how he is envious of your connection with people. And talking about you seems to put him in a better mood.

JOACHIM: You think so?

JOACHIM: I wonder how it's so easy for others to see me so clearly, when I barely know myself.

—

The next day, still in Kingston, Tienne all but shoved a cheesecake in my face.

"It's pretty, isn't it?"

The smell of graham crackers, powdered blueberries and sweet cheese tickled my nose. Whipped cream flowers formed a bouquet of exploding pinks and purples amidst the darker wine-coloured cake. It looked soft and deep like velvet. "It's the nicest one you made. Is it firm or soft?"

"I worked so hard on decorating, and you're already thinking of demolishing it!" she huffed, but she lightly spun in a circle with her socks before placing the cake on the table. "Firm, obviously. It'd be rude to show you the cake—"

"You mean smacking me with it—"

"—if you can't eat it." She lowered her voice. "I haven't told you I wanted to quit my job or anything."

She saw! I swiftly closed my laptop, cursing, then opened it again. I navigated to a Word document. "You're the one who distracted me. But anyway, I thought this would be more helpful."

She read over the T-chart. "You're telling me I don't know how to manage my time?"

"You don't! Maybe your unhappiness stems from being stressed all the time."

I hated arguing, but she seemed genuinely confused. "Everyone tells me I'm cheery."

"What we look like and what we're really feeling are two different things," I said. "And before you argue with me, I'm sure I know you better than anyone else."

She drew her arms together and made herself small. "How is it I let my friends and co-workers in on everything, yet they know so little of me? And if I let them go, I'll have nothing left. I want this year to be a fresh start, not just more wasted time," she said more to herself than me. "Hey, you're not as religious as me but do you believe in unconditional love, the way Buddhism teaches it?"

"In my interpretation, it was never unconditional," I said. Buddhism encouraged living beings to love each other, but you needed to know how to pour your love in moderation, not let it flood yourself or others. It wasn't contradictory; for some people it was necessary—to protect yourself, to care for others, to retain a precise sense of self, and not be swept away by ego or self-depreciation. Like all things, it was easier said than done, but not impossible.  

Notes: 

Xīn nián kuài lè (新年快樂) --> Pinyin for "Happy New Year" in Cantonese. Pronounced "sun yeen fai loch." I personally prefer the pinyin version "xin1 nian2 kuai4 le4" since that indicates the tonal accent, plus it's super confusing as a Vietnamese to see Vietnamese=like accents on Chinese pinyin. (Also you usually hear "gom hai fat choy" around Lunar New Year but in my family that's like the fourth thing you say on the list when you're calling up family members in the morning to give them their dose of good wishes.) 7

Also, I'm sad I wasn't able to include it in this chapter but below is a picture of the set up my mom did for the 2022 Lunar New Year, minus the steamed chicken.

In the middle are caramelized lotus seeds. The pink green and white swirlies are sugar coated coconut strips. The pandemic meant that there was a shortage of the classic Chinese candies we'd buy so we improvised.