Hey guys i rewrote most of part 3. enjoy.

And disclaimer still applies:

All characters and events in this story are fictional. All resemblances to persons living, dead or soon to be dead are entirely coincidental.

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“Frank. Get. Off. The. Phone. NOW.”

There’s something about my mom that gets on my nerves. It might be her tendency to blow her top about nothing in particular. It might be her need to use me like a child labourer. Or it might be her tendency to harangue me about my “excessive” phone usage. Everyone needs to use the phone sometime right? She should understand. She uses it every night too. Long conversations with some mysterious guy.

An hour a day is not what I call “excessive”, anyhow.

I rolled my eyes and just capitulated. SMS worked fine in any case.

I took a quick glance to ensure my safety before replying. “Call you back later. Mom’s being a pain again.”

The voice on the other line was a little miffed but she completely understood. After all, she was quite an understanding person. Understanding, open, witty, amiable... I could go on forever. But I won’t.

This time, I was smart enough to get her number. All her numbers. I had her home phone number, her handphone number, her other hand phone number, her address. Ok I lied. I didn’t quite have all of her numbers. (When I asked her for her vital stats she rather coyly told me it wasn’t quite time yet. Drat.) I had them all in my head already.

I reached for my handphone. It was Friday night and only 8 o’clock, I figured, so the cyclopean stack of homework on my desk was happily ignored.
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Hey you free tomorrow? I’m really bored stiff. Let’s do something. Like watch a movie or do lunch or something. Anything. As long as it gets me out of here. I typed into my keypad, desperately trying to use up 160 characters.

Yeah I’m free. Where do you want to go anyway? I’m ok with just about anything. As long as its fun. There came the short reply. I briefly mused about the reluctance of people to fill up 160 characters before furiously jabbing my keypad again.

Actually I haven’t really got anything in mind right now. Any suggestions? Oh my gosh this is so lame. I’m bored but I can’t think of anything else that I wont find boring. Actually why don’t you give me a surprise?

Sure. Meet me at City Hall MRT at 10am tomorrow morning.

Wow. That was it. Easier than I thought. I didn’t have to go down on my knees to beg, thank goodness.

Now for the bigger problem. What to wear. I tore open my wardrobe and wondered why everyone else’s parents bought them nice clothes for Chinese New Year and all I got was a few new pairs of socks.

Sigh.
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The sun was blazing hot, and its heat perforated every pore on my cheek. The white glare of its eye filled my eyes with white light. The desert winds whipped around my feet, scattering sand into my sandals.

Every step was agony. Every breath I took seared my lungs, and all I breathed out was pain. My parched throat pleaded for water, but all I could give it was an empty promise and what false hope I could spare.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I collapsed onto my pillow.

My pillow?

I opened a lazy eye. The alarm clock said 9.15.

9.15?

I jerked up from my bed with sudden revelation. I was going to be late. For my first date.

My scream must have woken up the whole neighbourhood. Those that were still asleep anyhow.

Frantically, I looked for the stuff that I carefully picked out last night and found that my granny had packed it all in again. Murphy hated me. I grabbed a pair of jeans and the t-shirt on top of pile and dashed into the toilet like a man possessed.

Late.
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10.01.

I reached City Hall MRT.

I made it.

After dashing past 2 flashing green men, leaping onto the 14 with a jump that would have made Jesse Owen proud and bulling, bashing and shoving my way through some Big Walk that was going on, earning myself a few rude signs and some probes into my ancestry along the way.

Still, I made it.

The ironic thing was that Cate was nowhere in sight. I silently cursed Murphy and his stupid laws and reached into my pocket for my phone.

Or rather, for the phone that wasn’t quite in my pocket. Any of my pockets. I started to get down on my fours and scour the marble floor for it when I heard a giggle. A tap on my shoulder confirmed my suspicions.

Of all the positions to be caught in it had to be this one.

“There you are. I was wondering when you’d show up.” I wondered why she liked to do that so much.

“Hey. Sorry I’m late…” I began… and my jaw dropped.

She was wearing a faded T-shirt and some ripped up jeans. I was about to protest until I saw my reflection in the mirror and it suddenly occurred to me that I wasn’t the only one who was in a rush that morning.

“ No problem. I’m the one who’s late.”

“ So where are we going?”

“ You’re going to find out.” She smiled a crooked little smile. “By the way, isn’t this yours?”
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It was a misty summer evening.

All was calm and quiet, quiet as the hunt, quiet as death.

If I wasn’t such an old hand at this, I’d have been curling into a ball on the floor bawling for my mother.

As quickly as I could, I equipped myself with the tools I needed to survive. A flashlight, Kevlar, my sidearm and a M4A1 assault rifle. Taking a deep breath, I slowly lowered myself into the tunnel. The stench was overpowering, but I barely even registered it. My mind was on the mission and only the mission. To eliminate the terrorist cell and rescue the hostages. All else, even my life, was secondary.

Quietly, I waded through the knee high sewage and walked down the pathway as stealthily as I could. Seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, I screwed on my silencer and turned the safety off. With a little prayer to the powers that be, I ran the last ten metres and threw the smoke grenade out.

Eight. Nine. Ten. I counted mentally. Eleven. My muscles tensed. Twelve. And I climbed up the ladder, sidearm in my hand. My trusty M4 was useless in these quarters. A quick look at the surroundings revealed nothing. Breathing a sigh of relief, I jumped out, happy to see the sun again.

Bang. I was dead before I even hit the floor.

“ 15-0. You’ve got to try harder, Frank.”

I always thought I was good at Counterstrike, but she was better. Time to change my tactics, I figured.

“Want to play something else? Like Warcraft III?” I prayed she didn’t have any idea what an orc was. Or what Warcraft III was, for that matter.

Boy was I wrong.
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“ I can’t believe you’re so bad at this stuff.”

After losing every single match, I was forced to concur. She should stop studying and enter some competition or something. That way, she would at least make some money out of it.

“Hey Cate. Have you ever thought about what you’re going to do in the future? Like when you were a little kid was there just something you knew you wanted to do?”

To my astonishment, her eyes grew a bit clouded, and her grin vanished, melting into a slight frown.

“ I don’t know really… could we talk about something else?”

I was at a loss for words. I had obviously touched a raw nerve, but what was going on I couldn’t tell. I considered probing but discretion took over and I decided that it wasn’t really worth troubling her just to sate my curiousity.

She seemed to read my mind, then and just gave me a wan smile, which widened into a grin.

“Hey how come all the messages in your phone are from me?”

“ Cos I have no time to delete them recently.”

“Yeah. Right.”
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We were having lunch at some food court. My wallet had taken a savage beating the past week, with all the “class funds” (extortion) and “miscellaneous fees” (highway robbery) going on, so I couldn’t afford more than that. Surprisingly, Cate was quite happy about eating food court stuff. (“Why waste money?”), so we decided that the Plaza Singapura Food Court was our next stop.

Fortunately, it was already 2 in the afternoon, so there weren’t any long queues or dirty tables around. I decided that while I was impoverished, I still needed something that didn’t taste like concrete, so I ordered Japanese food, as usual.

Thus, my eyes nearly jumped out of my sockets when I saw Cate had ordered the very same thing.

“Are you psychic?” I wondered aloud.

“ No I just happen to like Jap food.”

“Oh you too?” Happy to find someone who could enjoy a good meal as well as I did, we launched into a long conversation about the loveliness of sushi and the best way to drink miso soup.

I had another thought. We should do stuff like this more often.

But something in her eyes seemed haunted, even as she laughed and smiled.
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All good things had to come to an end it seemed.

The sun was already winking into the distance, leaving the pale glimmers of red light as the only comfort for its absence. Time passed too fast, it seemed, when we were having fun.

And so it was that we were on the road to her home, once again. In marked contrast to the animated conversation we had earlier, we were both silent, just breathing in the night air with a mixture of fatigue and longing. Every step we took was a step closer to the destination and a step further from the journey.

Thus, we were walking quite slowly, enjoying every second.

It was quite dark, then, when Cate suddenly stopped and spoke up.

“ I’m sorry…” She gave me a pleading look.

“Sorry about what?”

“About just now. When you asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing really,” I replied gently, sensing her discomfort.

“No no it’s my fault. I mean… it’s just… hard for me to talk about stuff like that. Ever since…”

She took a deep breath, as if to brace herself for something.

“I’ve always admired my uncle. He was a very good doctor. So when I was young, I always wanted to be like him. I always wanted to be a doctor. Not just a doctor. A psychiatrist like my uncle. Then something happened.

My uncle specialized in treating criminals, you see. He treated them, healed them. But sometimes he had to see if they were really crazy or just feigning insanity to get off the hook.

There was this man. Stephen Hok. He killed his own brother over money and pleaded insanity. My uncle was assigned to verify his claim. And he found that Steven was just another of those who thought they could escape justice.

In the end, Stephen was convicted of murder, and my uncle was happy to have exposed the fraud. But the troubles began there. Steven turned out to be a gang member of sorts, and his gang was furious at my uncle for imposing what they felt was a death sentence. And so they plotted their revenge.

And four years ago, they had it. My uncle was found dead on his apartment floor. My aunt followed soon after, dying of grief. And since then…I’ve been wondering whether I’m doing the right thing? Or am I just setting myself up for tragedy again… ”

Cate was sobbing softly now, tears running like raindrops down her cheeks. Her hands at her temples, so helpless, so fragile.

“I’m sorry…” was all I could say.

“ It’s ok…just felt that you should know…”

I ventured a look into her eyes. In them I saw something vulnerable, unlike the bold and confident look that were usually there. And for few moments, we just kept eye contact. I smiled, trying to perk her up, and was happy to see her lips starting to tug upward, if only a little.

“Thanks for telling me, but I feel you should do what you believe in. In the end, what really matters is what you have, not what you don’t. Don’t be afraid to live your dreams There will always be someone to hold your hand and lift you up when you’re down.”

And then I reached out and took her palms in mine, and said nothing, nothing at all.

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