Chapter 19
the Artery of the Past
The silence in the garage was absolute, heavy with the scent of degreaser and the lingering metallic tang of grinded steel.
The shop lights were off, save for the single, buzzing fluorescent tube in the hallway that led to the back rooms. It cast long, skeletal shadows across the concrete floor, turning the hydraulic lifts into looming gallows.
Ran Coetzee stood by the utility sink, his hands trembling slightly—not from fear, but from the bone-deep exhaustion that only physical labor and emotional suppression could produce.
He filled a chipped glass with tap water.
The pipes groaned, a mournful sound that echoed in the empty shop.
He drank it in one long gulp, the lukewarm liquid doing little to wash away the taste of the lie he had told Liam earlier that evening.
I cheated on her.
The words still hung in the air, invisible toxins. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his knuckles grazing the fresh bruise on his cheekbone from the basketball court.
He turned to head to his room, but his feet stopped of their own accord next to the lift.
Liam’s Sportster sat there.
In the dim light, the motorcycle looked less like a machine and more like a dormant beast. It was blacked out, stripped of its chrome, waiting for the heart transplant Ran was performing. It was a beautiful piece of engineering—American iron, solid and unforgiving.
Ran reached out, his calloused fingers hovering over the handlebars. He didn't touch them. He couldn't.
Looking at the bike didn't make him think of horsepower or torque curves.
It made the walls of the Koreatown garage dissolve.
For a terrifying, vertigo-inducing second, the concrete floor turned into the red dust of a Pietermaritzburg road.
The smell of oil was replaced by the smell of ozone and jacaranda flowers.
He saw himself. Not this broken version with the tattoos and the scars, but the boy with the man-bob and the sun in his eyes. He saw the Road King. And he saw the girl clinging to his waist.
Ran squeezed his eyes shut, pulling his hand back as if the bike were red hot.
"Stop it," he whispered to the empty room. His voice was a rasp, swallowed by the darkness.
He turned away, forcing his heavy boots to carry him toward the back.
His room was essentially a glorified closet—a storage space Michael had cleared out.
It contained a single mattress on a metal frame, a plastic crate for his few clothes, and a small fan that rattled rhythmically. There were no windows. It was a box.
He stripped off his grease-stained tank top and jeans, leaving them in a pile on the floor. He collapsed onto the mattress. The springs squeaked in protest. The air was stale, recycled, dead.
He closed his eyes, praying for the nothingness of exhaustion. He wanted the black void of sleep.
But his mind was a traitor. It didn't give him the void. It gave him a time machine.
The Dream
The light was blinding. It wasn't the harsh glare of New York; it was the golden, syrupy light of a South African afternoon. The sky was a blue so deep it looked like painted glass.
Ran was eighteen. He felt light. His body didn't ache. His knees didn't creak. He was sitting on the Road King, the engine thumping beneath him—a heartbeat of steel and fire.
"Faster, Ran!"
The voice came from behind him, right in his ear, warm and alive.
Emi.
He could feel her. He could feel the press of her chest against his back, her arms wrapped tight around his waist, her fingers interlocked over his stomach. She smelled of vanilla and that cheap, sweet shampoo she used to buy.
He twisted the throttle. The bike surged forward, kicking up a cloud of red dust. They were flying down the back roads of Pietermaritzburg, past the sugarcane fields that swayed like a green ocean.
"We’re going to be late!" Emi laughed, the sound vibrating through his ribs. "The game starts in ten minutes!"
"The game doesn't start until the King arrives!" Ran shouted back, grinning into the wind.
He felt invincible. He was the Golden Boy. He had the girl. He had the bike. He had the world in his pocket.
The scene shifted. The road dissolved into the hardwood of the basketball court. The noise was deafening.
Stomp-stomp-clap. Stomp-stomp-clap.
The bleachers were packed. Faces painted green and gold. And the chant—it was a roar, a physical force hitting him in waves.
"Ran! Ran! Ran!"
He had the ball in his hands. It felt perfect, an extension of his body.
He was soaring through the air, gravity loosening its grip on him.
He saw the hoop. He saw the defenders frozen below him.
He saw Emi in the corner, under the oak tree, smiling that quiet, secret smile just for him.
He dunked the ball. The rim rattled. The crowd exploded.
It was pure, unadulterated joy. It was the feeling of being chosen by the gods.
But then, the light changed. The golden sun turned grey.
The air grew cold and damp. The smell of vanilla vanished, replaced by the scent of salt water and stale coffee.
He wasn't in Pietermaritzburg anymore. He was in Cape Town.
The basketball court was gone. He was sitting in a sterile office with glass walls. Outside, the Table Mountain loomed, covered in a shroud of clouds, looking like a tombstone.
Across the desk sat the representative from CarbonBlack Energy. The man wasn't smiling. He was holding a file—Ran’s academic transcript.
"We expected excellence, Mr. Coetzee," the suit said. His voice was distorted, booming like thunder. "We invested in a diamond. We received coal."
"I can fix it," Dream-Ran pleaded, his voice small, the stutter returning violently. "I-I just need m-more time. I c-can study harder."
"The contract is clear," the man said, stamping the paper with a heavy, red ink stamp. TERMINATED. "You are in breach. The scholarship is revoked. The stipend is revoked. You owe us everything."
The office walls began to close in. The floor tilted. Ran slid out of the chair and landed on a locker room floor.
"Get up!"
It was his coach. But the Coach wasn't cheering. He was purple with rage, looming over Ran like a giant.
"Where is your head, Coetzee?" the Coach screamed, spittle flying. "You’re missing plays! You’re sluggish! You’re out there dreaming while the other team is scoring!"
"I'm sorry, Coach," Ran whispered, looking at his sneakers.
"Sorry doesn't win championships!" The Coach threw a basketball at him. It hit Ran in the chest, heavy as a boulder, knocking the wind out of him. "You’re done. Get out of my gym. You’re a distraction. You’re a liability."
The scene swirled again. Faster now. A kaleidoscope of failure.
He saw the letter from the university.
ACADEMIC EXCLUSION.
He saw his bank account balance blinking red.
He saw the faces of his teammates turning away from him.
And then, the worst part. The part he couldn't wake up from.
He was in a phone booth. It was raining—a hard, stinging Cape Town rain that soaked through his clothes. He held the receiver to his ear. The plastic was cold and greasy.
"Ran?"
Emi’s voice. It was hopeful. It was full of love. It was the sound of the life he was about to murder.
"Don't come," Dream-Ran said. His mouth moved, but he couldn't stop the words. He was a spectator in his own nightmare. "I got the offer. New York. I'm leaving."
"Ran, wait—"
"I have to go."
He felt the lie ripping his throat apart. He felt the phantom pain of severing the cord—not a telephone cord, but an artery. He was bleeding out in that phone booth. He was killing her hope to save her from his shame.
"Goodbye, Emi."
He hung up the phone. But in the dream, the phone didn't click.
It screamed. It let out a high-pitched, agonizing wail that sounded like Emi crying.
The booth filled with water. The rain wasn't falling anymore; it was rising.
He was drowning in the booth. He was drowning in his lies.
He pounded on the glass, but no one could hear him.
The water rose over his head. He looked out through the glass and saw Emi standing on the other side, dry and beautiful, watching him drown with sad, confused eyes.
She reached out a hand, but the glass was too thick.
You did this, a voice whispered in the water. You are the architect of your own ruin.
"Gah!"
Ran woke with a violent, guttural gasp, his body jerking upright on the narrow mattress.
He was suffocating. His lungs grabbed for air that wouldn't come.
His chest was on fire—a sharp, constricting pain centered right behind his sternum, radiating out to his left arm.
It felt like someone had driven a chisel into his heart.
"Hhh... hhh..."
He clawed at his throat, his eyes wide and unseeing in the pitch black of the closet room.
He was soaked. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead and made his t-shirt cling to his skin like a wet shroud.
The sheets were damp beneath him. For a terrifying moment, he didn't know where he was.
The scream of the phone booth still echoed in his ears. The feeling of drowning was visceral.
Am I in the warehouse? Am I in the booth?
Then, the sound of the fan rattling brought him back.
Koreatown. New York. The garage.
He slumped forward, putting his head between his knees, trying to force his diaphragm to work. He rocked back and forth, the pain in his chest slowly subsiding from a sharp stab to a dull, heavy ache.
It wasn't a heart attack. He knew what it was. It was the physical manifestation of the nightmare. It was panic. It was grief. He brought his hands up to his face. His cheeks were wet. He was crying. Silent, hot tears that mixed with the cold sweat.
"Damnit," he whispered, his voice cracking.
He wiped his face aggressively, angry at himself. Five years. It had been five years. He had paid the debt. He had moved continents. He had rebuilt his life from the ground up.
Why wouldn't the past stay dead?
He looked around the dark room, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. The shadows in the corners looked like ghosts.
He thought of the lie he told Liam. I cheated on her. Her name was Anna.
It was such a convenient story. It made him the villain, yes, but a villain with agency. A villain who made a choice to chase pleasure.
The truth—the nightmare truth—was so much more pathetic. He hadn't chosen anything. He had just collapsed under the weight of expectation. He had been crushed by the pressure to be the diamond, and when he cracked, he hid the pieces so Emi wouldn't cut herself on them.
He lay back down, staring up at the invisible ceiling. His heart was still hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
I miss you, his soul screamed into the silence. I miss you so much it hurts my physical body.
He squeezed his eyes shut again, but he was afraid to sleep. He was afraid to see her face again—not the happy face on the back of the bike, but the face through the glass of the drowning booth.
He turned onto his side, pulling his knees to his chest in the fetal position, shivering in the damp sheets.
Outside, the muffled sounds of New York City filtered in—a siren wailing in the distance, the rumble of a subway train deep underground.
Ran Coetzee, the former King, the current mechanic, lay in the dark at the back of a garage, wishing he could fix his life as easily as he could fix an engine.
But there were no replacement parts for the past. There was only the long, suffocating night, and the hope that when the sun rose, the pain in his chest would dull enough for him to stand up and pretend, for one more day, that he was okay.