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•°.☾.°•

The cloaked man appeared again.

My mother secretly meets two men at night, and I like only one of them.

He is kind to her like my brother was to me. He died, no, passed away, yes that's what my mother instructed was how people with good etiquette said it. E-T-I-Q-U-nevermind, I don't want to study English anymore. My brother was good at English. He taught me too much of it. I don't remember much of him, but I know that my mother still cries for him.

The cloaked man pats my mother's head, and she smiles warmly.

"Did you find out about her, bhai?"

I should stop eavesdropping on her at nights. I really should because I'll end up in trouble one day. But can I just eavesdrop from someplace else that'll allow me to see the man's face?

"Nafisa—" Cloakman's voice is nothing but a low grumble.

"No! I won't take any of your excuses. She is your sister, don't you care for her? Why aren't you trying to find her?" My mother's face is stained with tears.

"I am, Nafi," the man's voice dips lower, and my mother breaks out into sobs. Her body rakes. Maybe he, too, isn't nice, and I should take back the nickname I gave him.

He reaches out his hand into his pocket and brings out a ring that lies flat open in his palm, resting outstretched in front of my mother's face. She glows like she has found light again. She reaches out for it, and it graces her finger.

I squint my eyes to see what the ring looks like but can't make out much.

"Who knew your twenty days of freedom would end up this way."

"What makes you believe I have regrets?" She looks at him again, eyes brimming with a fresh challenge.

"I don't—"

She cuts him, "Stop pitying me. If you think Ruru is a curse of my twenty days of freedom, you couldn't have been more wrong."

Ice settles over me.

After a moment of silence, she speaks again, "Tell me about her. How is she?" She swallows a breath. "Does she miss me? Does she remember my love for her?"

Her throat bobs in anticipation.

The man heaves a sigh. "She must always love you. You're like her sister, after all, Nafi."

My mother scoffs. "Do yourself a favour and stop feeding on these lies." She's seething. "If it were an alternate universe and our realities changed, I would've married her, called her my wife."

I do not understand her. How can two women get married? Who'll support the household and earn money? Who'll leave for whose place? I croon my neck to hear my mother better as her voice keeps dropping. My eyebrows were still floating in the air.

Has my mother not loved father? Not that he deserves it. But she loves not a man but a woman.

"But for now, I'll love her till my last breath, and you can't label her as anything less. You've found Thawda and Naasir; I'll pack my bags and Ruru's."

My body stills at the revelations upon revelations. How can he find my dead brother?

"I couldn't find them, only this ring." He crouches beside her, his nose peeking out of the hood.

•°.☾.°•

There's a riddle in Japan that someone told me about, I'll ask you the same.

If an octopus should get a false tooth, what would it turn into?

It would turn into tobacco, they say.

You're not mistaken, but there's more to it. Sins are what define you, are they not? Do you know what they say? That someone who has been treated badly knows the gaps, knows what to do and what not to. But sane and emotionally stable decisions have never been my forte.

One of my weakest traits that qualifies me as unobservant is not that I do not see but that I do not understand. A quality that renders my tongue in a state of distaste. A residue, thick, sticking to the gaps in my teeth. Isn't it why I could only listen and not connect the dots when my mother had secret rendezvous at nights? Isn't that why I let the moment sway me as I met my new boss?

I frown.

I do not understand, not because I do not want to listen or make myself emotionally available to others but because it requires me to acknowledge my presence. It makes me sit on a bench with myself and expect honesty.

"You lie too much and too often; it isn't good for the partnership." he says, handing me a handkerchief.

Lies, partnership, deceit, honesty— they're all unfound realities at the back of my head by now. But I'll teach you this tree's anatomy.

Honesty is a papered bark that unwraps me not in a way that I am a present but in a way that I am the gift-wrap itself. I am the first thing you'll see. And see right through me. You will only see right past me to the desires you've bagged onto yourself.

Or was it your childhood and all the forms of love you've experienced- the present laying, your past self, the first kiss under the treetop, a searing touch that burnt you alive?

I've been burnt alive once, and I can tell you those bruises never heal.

They're the cock shoved into your mouth, pleasing the eye of an onlooker. It looks exactly like the person I sit with, myself. The cold bench pressed against my hips numbs my butt and sends a chill to my thighs. It won't be long until I quiver in the company of my presence.

As the falling leaf blankets the gravel, I look up again.

"Takes one to know one. Isn't lying and deceit all you Japanese have done so far to have half of East Asia in the palm of your hands?" I scoff and wipe one strike over my cheek. Then, take a look at the handkerchief and mentally cringe.

The curls of my lips mirror the impermanence of the hushed solace blanketing the gravel. I know that the touch could be searing enough to burn my insides and melt them for the ghosts to feed on. A bile threatens to rise. Threads of warnings slip into me, fogging me, tying my insides.

I keep my butt frozen.

"How dare you speak to Mr Monbatsu in that manner?" A lanky boy with a thick Chinese accent seethes.

I laugh before I retort with a pout, fluttering my eyelashes. "为什么，伤害了你可爱的小心脏?"

[Tr: Why, hurt your cute little heart?]

Silence descends upon the atmosphere before Monbatsu breaks into peals of laughter, and Mr lanky-boy-I-love-to-lick-a-Japanese-ass passes him the look of betrayal, mouth agape.

I've read his file prior to the mission. I've read all their files and have memorised them to a T. I know about when and why, and I've dug deep through their pasts, the dirty secrets they'd rather let stay six-feet-deep. The lanky Chinese boy is Jianguo Nung, and beside him stands Sai Daewe, a Burmese man in his late twenties. Thawda Daewe's son. The one who can lead me to my allegedly dead brother, Naasir Abd Al-Rashid, and my mother's ex-lover, Thawda Daewe herself.

Tell me about her, how is she?

Does she miss me?

Does she remember my love for her?

I gulp. Has she even cared for my mother? Has she ever tried to find her? If yes, then why hasn't she been able to reach out? Nonetheless, I know they're the ones who hold my mother's secrets. But in the wake of newfound secrets, I need to observe Sai before taking any rash steps.

"She's something, Nung," Monbatsu says in beautiful Japanese, facing the lanky Chinese boy, fluttering his forefinger towards me. It's bad etiquette to point your forefinger towards someone. I want to correct him. Instead, I sigh, tired. "She's really something, I tell you."

I'll give you a head's up in case you want to get into a business like mine. No file is perfect, especially the perfect ones. An unfound corpse is usually buried in your line of sight. A marionette's deceit lies in the limb movements during her performance.

From what I could lay my hands on so far, both Sai and Jianguo had perfect files. Too perfect for the work they had been doing, keeping up appearances of upright citizens, nothing that stains their image. I know they have their secrets, everyone does. But I also know that secrets are hidden in the garb of over-information, after all, they get traded for more and more information; removing the cloak, the mystery, the mystique.

You keep gathering secrets, trading them for information until a nose peeks out, a cheek becomes visible, the mask slips and your face is bared for the world.

By now, I'm staring at Sai as a short buzz of anger rings my veins. He catches upon it, our eyes meet and he graces a frown. I look away, the crowd is filling with Kuki migrants. I'm relieved that Nila could get an escape with it.

"So," Monbatsu turns to me again, commanding my attention with a singular word. "Other than the blatant lie that you're scouting the area, why are you here at the Burma road?"

He isn't wrong, and he knows my truth is only half-told. But will I admit to it outrightly? No. Why? This isn't how it was supposed to go. Blood is an icy thing in my veins, but I've always been one to turn the cards in my favour.

"Why else?" I say.

He raises an eyebrow at the mock indignation before his throat rumbles with words again. "Do you take me for a fool, miss? Burma Road isn't someplace where Indians come for scouting unless they're looking for something specific. Or someone."

It was obvious that he'll land up with the right guess and open with an unspoken accusation. It was the first thing that coerced me to lie. Doubts are an easy thing to sow, and sown they grow trees of patterns. Tracing patterns is the faster than the wait that comes with nurturing a companionship.

The higher-ups think I'm here to lick his boot for Japanese partnership but I'm really here to know about a certain marionette that was my mother. A lady whose secrets lie under his nose.

I palm my heart and coo like a cuckoo perched atop a tree. "You bruise me. Are you implying I was going behind your back when, in reality, I haven't even stepped any deeper in the Burmese soil than a worm? I wonder what the higher-ups will have to say about it."

The fury in his eyes was ablaze, its fire licking my throat dry. Parched, that's what I felt. My tongue went sore under the pimpling blisters that spilt puss as they burst.

When he spoke next, he made sure to enunciate each word. "The charade you're into, miss, won't happen under my watch." There was this thing about Monbatsu that everyone who had worked with him knew, his charisma wasn't raw but chiseled to perfection. He had an impeccable instinct, sure. But he had practised perfection like it was his second nature. If a job wasn't for him, he shaped everything around him till it was. He had a sheer devotion to what he did, and that made him an impediment to my current intentions.

"It doesn't matter, does it? After all, I'm just a marionette in the hands of the higher-ups." I twist my lips in an effortless scowl, and he mirrors the action. "You think pretty privilege would help you steal from the Japanese?"

He thinks I'm pretty?

Confusion is a rainbow with three colours, and I need to stop screaming it in everyone's faces.

"Why do you think I'm stealing from the Japanese?"

Confusion marred his face like someone as smart as me couldn't see the obvious. Then, he points to my hand with his eyes.

"The ring. You're either a Watermelon or someone close to them." Sai finally speaks. "But now, I'm second-guessing. Did you steal it? You wouldn't be flaunting it to us at least, if you had known."

I want to puke. "What are these Watermelons?"

Why hadn't Nila warned me?

______________________________

2,050 words

3,145+2,050=5,195 words

I have my doubts about this chapter, but I'm not sure if I can pinpoint it. If you find time, please let me know how you like it and potentially, where it can be improved. Do you want it to be more conversational? Or are her monologues getting redundant? I feel like these inner thoughts, despite being long, help us truly know the character.

Aaaanywho, do like, subscribe, share! By now, I'm a YouTube streamer. *snorts at her lame jokes

On a side note, I am now participating in ONC with two novellas. *fake tears brim my eyes. Please try out Metal Stench Academy, it is a completely different novel than this one and a bit more pace-y, if you're into that.

I know, I know. Phew! *Sweats* The cover is a little different from the above picture, but it was too pretty. I obviously edited it a bit, too, and it matched the content of the book so much. Ah, in short, I love it too much to just pass it. Tyvm for listening to me blabber!

Till next time, sayonara!
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