Chapter 23 #2
May was oxygen-deprived from not breathing. How long did it take for your brain cells to start dying? A minute? Something like that. It hadn’t been a minute. His fingertips were starting to slide against the edge of the table, which he’d been gripping.
“So,” he tried again. “Are you actually here for the rice? Did you come to pick me up?”
Cassiel did not answer immediately, which was Cassiel mulling something over.
May watched him, and let the potential answers tumble around in his own skull while he waited.
Cassiel’s hand came out of the coat pocket and produced the hair clip May had given him between his fingers. He clicked it once, slow.
Click.
“I’m here because your sister told me about hide-and-go-seek.”
“Okay, you’re really messing up the whole dynamic we’ve got going on, Cassiel, do you know that? Because I’m the one who says a bunch of non-sequiturs and you go ‘What,’ only now I’m—”
“We spoke at the restaurant,” Cassiel cut in. “When you took Louis outside.”
Right. May had known something had happened at the table at the same time he’d been begging Louis not to be a chode for one night. He had known it on the night, and he’d known it at breakfast because Anna had been holding something back.
“Yeah?” May said.
“She said you find a hiding place and don’t come out because nobody told you the game was over.”
“Anna’s great at metaphors.”
“I know it about you,” Cassiel said, “because I’m the same. You don’t come out until you’re found. The rules.”
“Cassiel—”
“When we weren’t talking, that’s because…
I didn’t know what to say to you.” Cassiel was looking at May, had not stopped looking at May.
“I didn’t come find you because I reasoned that you needed space.
—I was the one who needed space. I didn’t know what it was you needed.
Anything I said or did would be inadequate. ”
May’s lips felt dry. Inadequate. As if—
Snap. Click. The hair clip again, Cassiel’s fingers twitching.
“I should have said something sooner,” he said. “I should have looked harder.”
May couldn’t say anything for a beat because it felt like the inside of his chest was a balloon someone had just stopped pinching off, all the air rushing back in at once.
He took a breath and slid his hand across the surface of the table.
After a beat, Cassiel’s came to join it, just the fingertips against the glass, barely touching May’s.
“You hate this place though,” May muttered.
“I don’t,” Cassiel replied.
“You’re going to if you stay any longer,” May insisted, standing up. “Do you wanna—I’ll get Ah-Keung to chop us some siu yuk. We can wait in the alley. It’s got ambiance and we might see a bird.”
Cassiel didn’t protest the move, simply stood and followed. May gave Auntie a sheepish smile as he ushered the civilian through to the kitchen and then to the back door, shouting an order to Ah-Keung over his shoulder.
May dragged out the premium milk crate for Cassiel, which he took for himself after seeing the look in Cassiel’s eye. Cassiel stayed standing, and was still looking at him.
“I wasn’t hiding from you, you know?” May said. “I’m not going to disappear just because you’re not looking at me, or—Ha, fuck, I mean. That’s not the plan. You know what I mean.”
May wrapped his arms around himself, a chill blowing through. He wanted the bomber jacket.
“I’ve been doing some research,” he said. “Meant to tell you earlier but I got distracted. It’s… I think it might be depersonalization-derealization disorder. DPDR. Depersonalization is when you feel like… not a person. Derealization is the world being fake. I think it’s mostly the first.”
He looked up.
Cassiel had not moved. He inhaled sharply, then he said: “I’ve read about it.”
“Oh. So you have been thinking about what’s wrong with me.”
“I can’t not think,” Cassiel said, his brow furrowed. “I started with your description. Dissociation. Then I found some similar accounts. The literature on long-term low-grade DPDR. I read about TBI as a trigger. The comorbidity.”
May’s face grew hot. That was more than he had done, deeper a rabbit hole than May had dared to dive into in his late night scrolling.
“Why didn’t you—”
“I’d already said you should see a doctor once. How did that go?” Cassiel’s voice was tight. “I only know how it works from what you described. I couldn’t know if it was the right word. I can’t not think.”
“Cassiel,” May said. His voice came out scratchy. “I have a brain injury, depression, the attention span of a gnat, and sometimes I forget I’m a real person. What if the doctor says—what if it’s something else? Or what if they tell me a number and—all the king’s horses.”
“What?” Cassiel’s brows were knitted.
“You know, like—”
“All the king’s men. You’re not an egg, May.”
“Okay, but maybe I am an egg.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Cassiel said, and because May couldn’t argue, he fidgeted. The milk crate dug uncomfortably into his ass as he shifted.
“You can’t put me back together again,” May said, after a few seconds of silence.
“I have no intention of doing that. Because you’re not an egg.”
May mused on that for a moment longer.
“You came to find me.”
“Yes,” said Cassiel. “Game’s over.”
There was no pause before it. May had asked the question and Cassiel had answered immediately. May would think about that later, he knew. He would be thinking about it many times.
* * *
They walked out of Lau Kee at half past four into Chinatown. The sun was setting earlier than it should have. The streetlights had not yet come on but the buildings on the east side were already in shadow.
May had not asked Cassiel if he wanted to come to his apartment and Cassiel had not asked May where they were going. They were walking, which was the agreement, and May’s hand was in Cassiel’s coat pocket because his own pockets were small.
“How long can you stay?” May asked, when they were halfway down Stockton.
“Where?”
“Just, here. Chinatown. Before it’s unbearable.”
“Historically, forty minutes. Today, I think longer.” Cassiel was walking with his head tilted slightly toward May. “I had something to do here.”
“That’s dangerously romantic.”
Cassiel looked away, in the direction of the buildings, his face careful and impassive. “Retracted.”
“No, no, you can’t. I’m keeping it.” May tugged the pocket. “You hear me? I’m keeping it. It’s in print.”
Cassiel didn’t say anything. The clip clicked in the other pocket. Snap. Click. May listened to it the way he used to listen for the beads on the little ring. It wasn’t quite the same, but it was its own thing, and May had been a part of that.
They reached the bus stop on Sacramento Street.
The 1 California pulled up before they had to wait.
It wasn’t May’s usual commute home, but that didn’t matter.
May got on first and Cassiel followed and they sat hidden in the back like a couple of teenagers.
May leaned his shoulder against Cassiel’s, breathed in the dumb cologne, and thought about nothing for a few stops.
The bus rocked through the streets, sunlight falling through the gaps in the buildings. Cassiel’s hand found May’s again on the seat between them and stayed there.
“Hide-and-go-seek,” May said, eventually.
“Yes.”
“You were the kid who never got found either.”
Cassiel paused. “No one wanted to play with me. I don’t think they looked very hard.”
May pictured serious little Minseok with his tidy clothes and furrowed brow, tried to reason whether little Wuyue might have tried.
Maybe they would have found the same perfect hiding place.
Maybe they could have crouched there together, silently, waiting to be found, not realizing the game had already ended.
“So, we’re both screwed,” May said.
“Hm,” Cassiel agreed.