Epilogue
CASSIEL
A THURSDAY IN MAY
Cassiel woke to a stifled sneeze. His body knew the time instantly.
There were two types of light against his eyelids he could feel—artificially warm on one side, pale and dim on the other.
He opened his eyes and shifted toward the warmth.
The screen of May’s laptop lit his face in the pre-dawn, illuminating the shadows under his eyes, the tongue stuck out at the corner of his mouth in concentration.
“Morning, angel,” May said, clicking something on the trackpad. Cassiel watched him for two, three seconds, the reflection of the screen in his eyes, before he shifted upright. The spring air off the ocean was damp but cool on his skin and it made him more awake.
“It’s almost sunrise,” he said. He didn’t need to look at the clock to know, but he peered at the corner of the laptop to confirm. 5:35 a.m.
May cracked his neck and removed his headphones.
New, because May had not owned proper headphones in years and Cassiel could not watch him edit audio with a pair of broken earbuds any longer.
The new ones were the result of one almost-argument and one reluctant acceptance and one week’s worth of consumer research.
He rubbed his ears, then reached a hand to take his mug from the nightstand.
The pink house still looked pink despite the light.
He drank and Cassiel frowned because he could smell the dark roast and knew exactly how long it had been sitting, cooling.
“Don’t get up,” May said, but Cassiel had already shifted, his legs over the side of the bed, feet finding his slippers.
“I need coffee,” he said, ignoring the eye roll aimed at his back.
“You don’t even drink black.”
He didn’t.
“I’ll start today.”
He wouldn’t.
He slipped on a sweatshirt and moved to the other side of the bed.
Cassiel picked up his hair clip from the nightstand.
He drew back a strand of mussed hair at May’s temple, felt the tactile bump run through him as the clip secured.
Click. May looked up at him with eyes slightly unfocused and a grin on his lips as he handed back the pink mug.
Cassiel glanced down at the dregs of the old coffee still at the bottom of it, then at the flash of purple in May’s hair, and nodded, satisfied. He left for the kitchen.
The galley was small, only enough space for one person at a time.
This aspect of his apartment that had not been an issue for three years had recently morphed into a small complication.
May had insomnia-fueled ambitions about cooking and Cassiel was reluctant to leave him to said ambitions, despite having no cooking ability himself.
May considered any surface he wasn’t sitting on to be fair game for Stuff Accumulation.
May liked to sit on the counter to preserve space despite there being cabinets overhead and was liable to forget about the fact eight out of ten times, always accompanied by a joke about having pre-existing brain damage.
Which was to say, May lived here now.
Cassiel found him unmoved, headphones around his neck, still working. He placed the Otagiri mug on the nightstand and returned to his side of the bed. Hours to go before he had to be anywhere but here.
“Miss Mary’s gonna know you didn’t sleep,” May muttered at the laptop. “She’ll know I haven’t been taking care of you. Watering you. Tending to your leaves.”
“I slept. You didn’t sleep.”
“I haven’t slept yet.”
The semantics were ridiculous and Cassiel was not being pulled into the nonsense, so he took his own phone out.
His mother had sent three messages past 10 p.m. the previous night, the first about making sure that May wore a jacket to dinner, the second a blurry picture of what looked to be Jaewon’s eye, and the third—
He exhaled softly.
“What, what?” May looked up.
Cassiel turned the phone. A tray of jeonggwa, glistening orange, each catching the light that poured freely into that kitchen in Fremont.
A single kumquat blossom sat at the corner of the tray, white and small.
His mother would have taken the picture over and over again until she was satisfied.
May stared, seemingly transfixed, then smiled, and that smile broadened into a beam.
“Kumquats.”
Cassiel imagined pressing one past his lips, and he smiled back. A three-noted hum rose from his throat, involuntary, something that had started without his noticing.
“Y’know, that’s been a mystery,” May said.
“Hm?” Cassiel looked at him.
“The humming. Is it from something?”
He rubbed his thumb over the place where he had worn a child’s fidget ring for a year and a half and considered. The hum was a stim. The hum could have come from anything. Possibly a cereal commercial, or a South Korean cartoon from two decades ago.
“I don’t know,” Cassiel admitted. “Something I watched as a child.”
“Maybe that’s the next mystery,” May said, closing the laptop and moving it out of the way. He shuffled closer and Cassiel’s arm slid around him as May hummed the phrase back at him.
They had found Wong Suet Ying’s voice, in the end, though it hadn’t been the song from the grandson’s memory, hadn’t been the record. A lo-fi snippet from an old cassette recorded in a crowded room. But the voice had been there, a bright alto above the noise.
May’s head dropped against his shoulder.
“No mystery,” Cassiel said. “It’s just a sound.”
“A happy sound.”
Cassiel looked down at him, at the purple hair clip, at the eyes looking back at him, the lazy curve of the lips that if he kissed would taste like coffee, and answered with a hm.