Kopi Peng

The kopitiam she used to frequent looks precisely the same, except now it’s located in a row of shop lots stuck in between two shiny skyscrapers. The noise in the city is overwhelming, prompting her to switch off her hearing aid the moment she got down the red and white cab. Kuala Lumpur was, is, and always will be under construction. She smiles, reminiscing days of the past; some blurry but some that will always remain crystal clear.

She enters the kopitiam, switching on her hearing aid to low volume again as she grabs a seat in the middle with little effort, for it was already past lunch time. She waits eagerly for someone to take her order, hoping that she will surprise Navindran with her appearance, but also half-expecting the fact that one could not have been waiting tables for the past fifty years. She knows that the chances of meeting him here was incredibly slim.

“Aunty, minum apa?” She turns around to a strangely familiar voice. There he is! Except he isn’t dressed in his usual white singlet and he looks precisely the way she remembers him to be—but she also remembered that people need to age, and that instantaneously made her realize her simple mistake. “Aunty, you ok ah?” He asks again.

“Yes, yes, ah boy, I’m okay. You just look a lot like someone I used to know. Say, do you know if there’s anyone named Navindran who used to live here a long, long time ago?”

“Oh, I’m not sure lah aunty, but I can go ask my grandpa.  Wait ah.”

He leaves to call for his grandpa. She sits alone at the marble table, thinking about the Kopi Peng he used to make for her. Always a tad bit sweeter than the usual, just the way she likes it.

“Who is this aunty you’re talking about? Your own grandfather’s name also don’t know ah?”

It’s unmistakable. It has aged, but she can recognize his voice from miles away. She smiles widely, knowing that the man approaching her from the back of the shop is the Navindran she has been looking for. She stands up and turn to greet him, gracefully as she was half a century ago.

“Hello, Navindran.”

He was speechless.

“Oh my, oh my. Hello, Su Lin. It’s been so long... What took you so long?”

“My flight was delayed. I’m so sorry, Navindran.”

They hug, leaving young Raju completely confused.

The Moon Museum

“Luna, the portal room is going to be full again if you don’t clear it! How many times have I told you that you need to do inventory on a regular basis, so that the room doesn’t pile up like this?! Your attitude is intolerable! Luna? Luna! LUNA!”

Ugh, give me a break.

I didn’t ask for this job.

It’s going to last for an eternity, anyways. I’ve got way more than enough time to clear it up, but still Bach will nag endlessly at me.

Uuuuuuuuugh.

“LUNA LEE! YOU GET TO THE PORTAL ROOM AND CLEAR THAT PILE OF LOST GOODS RIGHT THIS MOMENT!”

Gah. Fine.

I look at my watch. 12:02PM. The concept of time doesn’t actually apply to us here in this dimension, but I was given a single request when I was given my job here, so this was what I asked for. I wanted to hold onto something that was familiar to me. Having time on my side, whether it’s a real thing or not here, keeps me sane. It keeps me grounded.

Looking back, I should have just asked for Bach’s eternal silence, or earplugs—lots of it.

I get dressed, in the only set of clothes I have. Well, a lot of other things also don’t apply to us here at the Museum de Lunar. I’m too lazy to explain right now, but maybe I’ll do it later when Bach isn’t screaming at me at the top of his lungs from the other end of the building. Which he’s doing right now.

I brisk-walk to the portal room, officially known as the Quaerere, but I’ve resorted to calling it the ‘portal room’ because nobody except Bach can pronounce the names of the rooms here perfectly, and I’m not even going to try.

“THERE YOU ARE!” Flapping his large wings, Bach is hopping from one pile of junk to the next, his feathers flustered and seemingly more frustrated than usual. Oh, didn’t I tell you? Bach’s an eagle owl. Not the species, but actually part-eagle and part-owl. More nerd than anything else in the Universe, though. Bach keeps the records around here. I just help him update it. It’s a really ancient system, but to put it simply, it’s devastatingly boring and infinitely repetitive work that’s fit for eternal punishment. This is what you get for stealing from a Greek god. Well... If you were stupid enough to get caught like me.

“Luna, how many times have I—“

“I know, Bach. I know. I’ll get started.”

“All these lost goods aren’t going to sort themselves out, you know. The Museum de Lunar is a prestigious facility made by the gods where—“

“—‘Where all things lost are found and returned to their rightful owners.’ As if anyone ever gets back their bobby pins or ballpoint pens, Bach.”

“THAT’S because we’re severely understaffed.”

“Because I’m practically the only staff here, you mean. Under legislative bindings. Forever.”

“You are correct.”

Oh, it’s going to be a very long day.

The Prestige

One. You show the subject to your audience. A pigeon. You make sure it looks common, ordinary, normal. You earn the audience’s trust by getting one or two people to check the subject. You gain their trust.

Two. You perform the trick. In a split second, the blinding white pigeon vanishes within your fingers. The audience gasps in wonder and confusion. You lift your hands up for them to see, reassuring them that the trick was not a trick, that it was real. Your hands are empty now, but it’s not over yet.

Three. The prestige. This is the most important part of a magic trick. Anybody can make something disappear, but what makes you a true magician is conjuring the subject back into your hands. You pull up your sleeves and do so, with little effort. The audience smiles and laughs, clapping vigorously at the end of your magic trick, completely impressed. The show is over. The crowd pours out of the small room with bright smiles on their faces, leaving you behind, smiling flatly at the last child who waves at you as she leaves with her mother, too.

You exit the stage, and looked at your hands. There’s traces of blood. You cuss silently at your carelessness. You need to make sure that doesn’t happen the next time. A good magician makes sure there are no clues to his secrets being revealed, and a great magician shouldn’t even succumb to such lowly tricks. You sigh and remind yourself to purchase more new pigeons from the market tomorrow, as you carry your things and prepare to leave the tiny backstage. The lone pigeon is quiet in its small cage, perhaps thinking about its friend’s disappearance. You clear out from the place and enter into the streets of London, filled with mud and people and smog. You wonder optimistically about the chances of ending up in the hall of fame with the greatest magicians. You hold your head up high, trying not to take a whiff of the nearby horse droppings as you head home.

Tomodachi / Kawan / Friend

Amir was snatched away before my eyes all of a sudden, thrown into the blazing flames right in front of my house by a gang of Japanese soldiers. I watched in horror as his skin burnt black into ashes, not knowing what else to do. I did not know that he was accused of stealing then. I did not know the punishment was so heavy. I did not know we were the ones who decided the weight of punishments. I didn’t know. He was screaming my name, over and over again. It felt like a dream. It wasn’t a dream.

I knew we moved to this land because of Father’s work, but I had never inquired about it. I only knew that Father was respectable because of his work, and that his work was of a noble nature. I had never asked, because I didn’t want to burden him with my silly questions when he was home.

The new neighbourhood we lived in seemed very odd to me, because everyone spoke so many different languages and looked so different from each other, entirely unlike Kyoto. Even the flowers smelled so much stronger here than the sakuras we had back home. I missed Japan dearly then, but Amir showed up one day in front of our new house here in Ipoh with his bright smile, selling fruits. Amir became my friend.

Malaysia is my home now. I had been living here for the past sixty years, but what I saw then will always be etched clearly at the back of my mind, like it was branded with fire. I lost my best friend when I was 9, and life was never quite the same since the incident happened. I want to laugh about it, cry about it, talk about it, but this is all I can do about it: I reminisce. I remember Amir’s young face very well, every curve and every strand of hair. I remember his smile the most. He smiled with all his might; his lips would curl upwards to as far as it could, his eyes would disappear into a thin upwards curve, and his face would just wrinkle up like an old plum. His smile always lifted me up, even on the worst days.

That was the last I ever saw of him. Amir: sweet, young, innocent, fruit-seller boy Amir. I’ve always missed him the most, even though I’ve lost so many friends along the way. You would think at my age, I would have stopped missing people. I would think so too.

“Yuki, we be kawan forever okay?” I remember him saying.

“What does ‘kawan’ mean?” I asked, for I did not know Malay then.

“It means ‘friend’ lah, aiyo,” Amir said, wondering how a child could not even know such a simple word.

It felt like a dream. It wasn’t a dream.

The Fall.

Stefan has always been peculiar. He’s different from the rest of the kids, often scribbling in his sketchbook, eating raw carrots, and dressed in that one jacket he always has on.  The jacket looks much older than he is, and it seems to carry more weight and history than anything I have ever seen before—even more than the artefacts from the countless museums I’ve been to. There’s something about it that I can’t quite put my finger on. I’ve never had a close look at his drawings before, either. Once, I caught a glimpse of something he was working on—a door of sorts—and when he found me sneaking a peek, he slammed the book shut immediately. I suppose he’s just a very secretive and introverted child. Maybe he lost a loved one when he was much younger, and the jacket belonged to that person. It still doesn’t explain why the piece of garment looks like it’s from the Middle Ages, though.

I don’t usually pay extra attention on my students like this, but Stefan’s quite hard to miss. He has this unique aura unlike other children, and I wonder why the other teachers don’t seem to agree with me. “Stefan? He’s just always kind of there, isn’t he? Which class is he in again?” I tell Ms. Chan the class that he’s in, but she can’t even recall what he looks like. I ask the other teachers in the office, yet nobody hardly remembers the boy’s last name. Only his existence is sure to everyone; everything else seems like it’s been wiped out of their memories.

The school bell rings, signalling the end of classes for today. As I exit the teachers’ office, I find Stefan standing outside the door, waiting, the old sketchbook in his hand, his jacket still on his shoulders, covering almost all of his small frame. “Hi, Ms. Heather. I’ve been waiting for you,” he says. He doesn’t smile, but continues: “I have something to show you. Do you have time?” I look at my watch. I’m not going to get anywhere with the peak traffic hours anyways. I nod, and trailed behind him as he quietly leads me to a secluded corner of the school field. The grass on this side of the field is beginning to yellow due to the season, welcoming the season of perpetual death, slowly but surely. He opens his sketchbook to the page I had previously caught a glimpse of, places it on the ground, and a door appears in the grass. A door that looks exactly like the one in his sketchbook. Except, the page now has a door-shaped hole in it.

“I’m so sorry, but you’ve run out of time, Ms. Heather.” His jacket transforms into a hound. Black as night, it consumes me. Stefan’s last name is Todd. Tod. Death, in German. Of course.