Revolving Door: Volume 2
Chapter 30: A Needle in a Haystack - III
Honourless’ feet collide with stone in the centre of a blinding town plaza. Glass walls soar into the sky, reflecting clouds and trees onto the street. Rectangles of light glare down on her, and moving images scurry across them, brilliant as the crossing gates of Wonderland.
Then her elbow is knocked away by a man in a garish pink costume like a child’s stuffed toy, tearing Orobelle’s wrist from her grip. Someone points a handheld machine with a lens at her, flooding her vision with white.
She only lasts that long, and then she keels over and lands on bent knees, palms slamming into the ground. All around her is a whirl of voices she doesn’t understand and the glistening eyes of strangers, some reaching out to help her. Dorian gets there first, offering an arm that she grudgingly takes.
On one knee, she clutches her head. The world spins, it spins too much. “I can’t…keep doing this,” she groans.
“Could we find some lodging?” Dorian says urgently to Vesper.
She mutters something, and then takes off into the crowd.
“Wait here while she finds a hotel,” the duchess’ protector says, supporting her to the roadside, where she bends unsteadily to the paving. “She wants you not to move until she’s back.”
“Hah. Now I’m embarrassed.” She grimaces. “Look at me.”
“You did very well, my friend. You deserve a rest.”
A pair of pink shoes appears in her vision.
Orobelle swipes a pair of bills towards Dorian. “Get her a drink,” she says. “I’ll keep watch.”
Honourless stares. The duchess does not meet her eye, even as Dorian scrambles away in search of the first of several market stands. They listen to the racket around them, the clicking of handheld machinery, the roll of alien syllables off tongues.
“Awful nice of you to care, Orobelle.”
“You’ve proven yourself,” she replies curtly. “We shall need you again. Don’t get used to it.”
Honourless snorts. It is as if this child despises the very thought of being in her good graces. Of course she does. She’s the duchess. I’m a criminal.
In a day, Hong Yi relearns the fickle system of the New York subway. It’s all a ritual in basking in its tepid warmth and trash and excess, something he throws himself into so that the past month finally starts to evaporate off him.
The train he’s meant to catch at Madison Square Garden only stops at every other station, and he checks twice to be sure he’s boarding the right one. But he isn't on the right one: it takes him all the way up north to the edge of the Bronx, and even then he doesn’t notice for all his people-watching, the chatter of four different languages in his ears.
By tomorrow, he thinks, he will be home again. Boston still takes pains to remind him he isn't there for good. But right now, he is not there.
He wanders up streets of cigarettes and buskers, stops to pick up a bagel and coffee at a corner store. He finishes lunch leaned against the brick wall of a hair saloon.
There's a wistfulness to being here in this old and storied city—a kind Hong Yi cannot place, as if it belonged to another person. Lunch long past, he strolls under a red and white canopy in Queens, and watches people pass whom he will never know.
The plazas before shops are the territory of guitar-toting buskers, and the street corners outside clubs are patrolled by loiterers looking for spare change. As he passes the last row of shops and wanders past the first hedge of the public green, he closes his eyes and listens to it all—the thud of a basketball on a pavement, the beep of a car.
He has never been sure of his place in all this: in the world, in reality, in time. Maybe that is why he likes the streets more than any tourist landmark: there is no need to be someone, after all those years of having to be everything. Time could stop now, and he could live suspended in this moment, and he would be happy.
And maybe he could, too, if he understood his powers over gravity. There is something odd about them—though just why they exist, he accepts he may never know. They upend just about every theory ever written about gravity and relativity and space. They can't have arbitrarily appeared. But where from?
Hong Yi falters to a stop. A white gazebo has emerged from around the verdant bend in the path. Before the gazebo, a woman in a dark tank top peers up at the vines curling around its pillars. As he creeps closer, he hears her clicking her tongue, watches her beckon up at the leaves with her fingers. Two steps closer and he notices a tiny green parrot, perhaps a budgerigar, nestled among the ivy vines above her.
“Hey, ma'am! Can I help you?”
Her head whips around. He waves. She wears her hair in an afro and her glossy red skirt goes up to her knees. Tear-streaked mascara stains her cheeks. “Oh uh, yeah—I'm outta ideas, honestly,” she answers. “That’s my boy Mango up there…won’t even come down for his favourite snack.” She sags, waving the sealed bag of birdseed around. “I guess it’s good he hasn’t gone and flown off, but that's got me worried, too. You think you could reach him?”
Bravado surges like heat through him. Hong Yi steps up to the pillar. “Sure, I've got a trick or two…”
He studies the pillar, the vines weaving through the trellis. Then—with a weakening of gravity—he springs, clinging with four limbs like a lemur. Boost by anti-gravitational boost, he scrambles weightlessly along its height.
“No way! No way, that’s crazy!” she cries. “How are you doing that?”
The ground, and the woman, are a dizzying height away by now, but still he peers down and winks. “Superpowers,” he says. Hooking his left hand into the ivy, he stretches the other towards the budgie. It grows heavy, the vine sagging with its weight. The creature barely has a chance to cry before he swipes it off the branch.
With a screeching Mango firmly in his grip, Hong Yi shimmies down the trellis, breaking twigs on the way. The moment his feet hit the ground among scattered leaves and gravity returns, the woman flies to him, taking the bird.
She scrubs its head with a finger. “Mango! You silly thing, going off all on your own like that.” Then she raises her huge eyes to Hong Yi. “Thank you so much! You’ve gotta be an angel sent from heaven or something.”
“Hah! I can be an angel if you want.” He grins. “But call me Hong Yi. Nice to meet you!”
“Hong Yi? I'm Terri,” she says, extending a hand for a shake—but he hesitates, noticing an itch on his arms.
“Wait, wait,” he says, flipping his palms up. The beginnings of a red rash are surfacing on his hands down to his elbows. “Oh boy, yeah, that’s the ivy.”
Terri chokes back a sound between a laugh and a cry. “I can’t believe you copped that for my sake! Come back to mine, I’ll get you some lotion.”
Well, Hong Yi can't say no to an invite from a cute stranger. Beaming thoughtlessly, he tags along as she dashes to the closest traffic light and then across the road, to the block of brick apartments gazing over the traffic. The sky is stark blue and burns like a stove, though the sun is sinking over the antennae.
“So, where'd you learn to climb like that?” Terri asks at the far end of the junction, and giggles. “I mean, superpowers aside.”
“Oh, you won't believe me, but…playing pranks in college. I’m a big fan.”
Her chortle turns into a howl of laughter. Mango chatters back. Hong Yi wiggles his arms to ease the itch, stepping over the sidewalk cracks as she wipes tears from her eyes. “Man, you're something else. I love it.”
As they scale the creaky apartment stairs, Hong Yi trails a step behind. “My roommate may be home,” Terri says—but opening the door reveals an empty unit, bigger than his own dorm room, but no tidier. Jackets are draped over the couch, and Xbox controllers sit among the cushions and delivery boxes.
At the door, Terri pops open the wheeled birdcage and hums. “I'm gonna take him to the vet later this week,” she mutters as she returns the budgie to his roost. “You need that, don’t you, sweet little thing.” Then she strolls into the kitchen and he follows, becoming uncomfortably aware that the itch has advanced to stinging.
While she shuffles cabinet odds and ends about, he runs tap water over the welts. The white cabinet doors are peeling. The floor is a mosaic of unevenly white tiles and the fridge opposite the sink is plastered with gaudy magnets and faded notes. He can hear children laughing outside the window.
“Here we go,” says Terri as she pulls her head from the pantry, presenting a bottle of pastel pink liquid labelled calamine lotion.
“Ooh, I've always wanted to try that,” he replies, as he takes it.
“You've never used calamine lotion?”
“My family used tiger balm for basically everything.”
“That shit smells so good though.”
“Oh yeah, I know.”
Terri fills two glasses of water and brings him to the living room. They laugh as he sweeps clothes and controllers off the couch, sitting in their place.
The lotion is earthy pink and cooling on Hong Yi's arms, and the itch dulls almost at once. “Hey, thanks, by the way.”
“No problem—I mean, you got Mango down from the gazebo thing. It's the least I could do.”
“Mango is adorable though. Who wouldn’t wanna help him?”
“So true.”
He looks up as he pats the lotion dry with his palm. She's already staring at him.
“Hey, we should totally catch up again,” Terri murmurs, her eye contact unbreaking.
“T—that'd be amazing,” Hong Yi answers, heart leaping to his throat. “But there’s just something you should know…I don't live here. I'm leaving tomorrow.”
Five seconds of shell-shock. “Oh.” Terri tries to smile. “Where to? And what time?”
His heart hammers wildly. “I’m catching a bus to Boston tomorrow evening.”
“Oh, uh, so you're free in the morning?”
As Vesper jogs in search of a hotel, she notices it: the electricity. It crackles under the street and it surges up the glowing screens around her, and it shines out of the brand names on the walls. Everything is electric—screens in pockets and screens on walls and so much electricity she suddenly feels like she could disappear into the scene, a part irremovable of it all.
She runs down two blocks between dizzying screens with flickering faces—where are the bloody hotels? She swerves around other pedestrians, hair wild in her reflections, and turns onto a perpendicular street.
Hotel Riu Plaza presents itself just as she is about to backtrack—a black marble facade, pinnacle lost in the brilliance of the sun. She studies it for a minute, watching guests wander in the lobby and through the doors. It'll do. She commits its location to memory, then turns on her heel and sprints back the way she came, jostling other pedestrians who barely bat an eyelash.
There are too many things here: crowds and carts and shop names glaring down in light and steel. Times Square is declared on every shopfront and sign. She has heard its name before, but never seen it till today. These crowds put the ones in her London to shame, and these lights, they render it all a heavenly vision.
Vesper veers onto the fabled Square and along the pavement among the stands. Honourless now sits with her head in her palms, a half-finished bottle of bright green juice beside her.
“What the devil is that?” she asks as she skids to a stop, pointing at the bottle. Gatorade reads the label.
“Some kind of rehydration potion, as far as we can tell,” Dorian answers.
“It certainly looks like a potion,” Vesper mutters. Honourless snatches for another swig. “Well, you'll be happy to know I’ve found us our hotel.”
*
After some bickering, Vesper books a night in a family suite at Hotel Riu Plaza with cash out of Orobelle’s luggage. Then they are sent to the elevator with keys and their heartiest compliments.
Not one of the four can keep a straight face as the gleaming lift doors click shut, deadening the air, and the floor begins ascending with a breathy hum. Orobelle studies the buttons and doors with wild eyes; Honourless curls up in the marble-floored corner and makes a gagging sound. Vesper is readier for her third time on a lift, but this one rises like a bullet, faint lights flashing through the crack between the doors.
At the twenty-second floor, they pile into their reservation. The others head straight for the desks and beds, but Vesper pauses to take it in. It is a beige-carpeted room, outfitted with all the plush comforts of the royal suite, except with three beds and a tall window that makes the most of its elevation. Beyond the white armchairs, it's nothing but sky, roofs and windows of other towers, some yet taller than this one.
Weaving her way to the window, she gazes out the glass. Twenty-two floors up, and they are still walled in. Everything here, in every world, grows towards the sky.
Honourless groans and tumbles onto the innermost bed. “No one wake me,” she mutters, pulling the pillow over her eyes.
While snoring takes the place of her voice, Dorian and Orobelle have already set to work. The duchess has her watch, corefinder and map laid out on the gleaming desk, and she pulls the chair with the same severity as always, glaring at the instruments and the map in turns.
“Northeast,” she says. “There are no other cities in that direction—none on the map. We could well be in the right place.”
“If so, we’ve still got our work cut out for us,” Vesper mutters, staring down at the crowds as they flow like water. “But surely we can triangulate this Core’s position across the city, too.”
“This document may be of help,” Dorian says, laying his offering of a garish brochure before the duchess.
She picks it up, flips it over, and unfolds the sheet. As she shakes it out, she shouts, “Dorian! This is brilliant!”
Vesper cranes her neck. The brochure is a map, more intricate than a monk’s manuscript, criss-crossed by a net of routes in ten different colours. Threads of streets and bridges bind the three bright yellow pieces of this city together.
“We venture tomorrow,” Orobelle says with a hardened voice. “I shall allow one day here. That should be enough to tell us if our mark is in this city.”
Hong Yi wakes up with butterflies. There's no way, he thinks as he is brushing his teeth in the downstairs bathroom, even as he is shoving his toiletries and laundry away. No way I just scored a date here.
He's checked out and boarded the MTA almost an hour before Google Maps said he needed to, lugging his comically boxy maroon trolley bag between standing passengers.
At this hour, it's all yuppies and high school kids on the subway, conversing in undertones or lost in frantic phone calls. The train wheels roll on iron, lights scattering rats in the dark. It lets him off on 3rd Avenue where he lugs his trolley bag up the grimy stairs with his eye on the map onscreen.
*
Then he is there at the nameless cafe, dappled light sprinkled on the paving, umbrellas outside to catch the sun and faded birds on strings in the door.
Under the umbrellas, Terri is wearing a new tank top, this one pink with a print of two cherries on the front, and velvety purple lipstick. When he flies to greet her, she laughs, hand brushing his. His heart flutters at the brilliance of those brown eyes.
They find bar seats facing the window, but are almost at once caught up in each other. “Hey, so, how'd the packing go?” Terri asks.
“Oh, I didn't unpack much in the first place,” he replies. “Pretty much just shoved my laundry in one compartment and skedaddled. Hope I wasn't too late.”
“Oh, nah, I've been here for five minutes.” She is wearing mascara, this time unmarred by tears, and once his gaze catches on hers, it cannot turn elsewhere.
She takes his hand, and he fights down a compulsion—to get attached, to want her too much. He won't be here to see it through. The palpable film of temporariness coats everything—the words exchanged, the gleam of their coffee cups as they sip, and the warmth of each other’s skin.
“You worked at the big aquarium? That’s so damn cool.”
“Yeah, as a research assistant. It’s mainly ‘cause I’m studying Marine Bio.”
“Wait, the whole degree’s about marine biology? Like you stare at fish all day?”
“Well, that, and octopuses, and sea slugs…”
“And shrimp?”
“Yeah, heaps of shrimp.”
The fact that he has scored his first date in months in a city he doesn’t live in has to be fate's cruelest trick yet. For all of five seconds, he toys with the idea of postponing his departure. They can do without me for a bit longer…can't they?
“So when you get back to Boston, what’s the plan? Semester is a couple weeks out still, right?”
He props his chin up on the table, smiling as his mind wanders. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure my friends are planning a party for when I get back.”
“That’s so sweet, what? You totally deserve it.”
“Aw, I'm sure they missed me after like, one whole month out of town. But enough about that, what are you up to?”
“Not much, honestly. I work down at the grocer’s two blocks from where I live. But it's just a holding pattern, kinda. What I really wanna do is start a band…get a buncha folks together, hit up an open mic or two, get our name out there…”
It’s hard for Hong Yi not to smile along, despite the growing ache in his chest. The conversation unfolds as naturally as breathing, as it hops from music to aspirations to weekend chores. Their coffees sit unfinished for an hour.
Terri giggles at a joke, shoulders hunching, and in that sunny light, her smile pierce his heart like a lance.
They’re both here grasping at this tenuous bond, though it is doomed to end by tomorrow. She knew this, and she still asked him out. And he knew this, and he accepted. Maybe she’ll become a distant dream, just like her dreams of starting a band.
But hey, they could do something about it. Boston is only four hours from New York, and if Terri wants to keep this going, however unlikely, she would be worth it…
After waking, Vesper is not to have more than two hours of quiet. While Honourless snores in bed, Orobelle and Dorian drag her off on what is to be the most hurried introduction to the city possible, beginning with the Times Square station. Picking up the flat-priced tickets, they invent their journey as they go—one trip northbound and then another south, plotting the bearings of their mark as they go.
There is little that can be perceived from underground besides the names of stations, and a blur of people hopping on and off. Orobelle spends the whole thing staring at the map with her pen while Dorian holds up the corefinder for her.
Vesper watches and nods along. It was a distant dream once, riding the London Tube. She doesn't know how this compares, but there is no mistaking it for London. She hears snatches of English and Spanish: chatter about the mundane, a father berating a child, and a flutist busking amid the faint scent of urine and tobacco.
Her pondering is cleft in two by Orobelle shrilling, “This is the right city! Look, they're somewhere southeast now. Dorian, hold the corefinder for me!”
*
Within three train rides, Orobelle narrows their mark's location down to “southeast of Central Park, and not by far.” Vesper follows the girl as she marches them up the block, across the road at the flashing light, and then down the next left, keeping apace with Dorian.
As they go, Orobelle’s eyes narrow on the instrument. She slows past a small crowd of diners in outdoor tables, muttering to herself. Dorian and Vesper slow behind her.
When she comes to a halt and turns to peer through the cafe clientele at the shop's facade, the two exchange a glance. Orobelle has ploughed straight down to the door, waving her instrument about like a metal detector. And then…
“It's you!”
The inevitable disruption. Her voice is loud enough to penetrate the front door. Vesper and Dorian sprint in after her.
Orobelle has accosted a young man with a pair of rectangular glasses perched on his nose. He squints back, brow furrowed. He’s dressed casually, as is the woman beside him, with whose fingers his are tangled.
“What do you want? Cash?” they hear him say.
“I'm no beggar,” Orobelle answers, effecting a grave tone. “I said what I said. I am here for you. I am the Knot of Worlds, and you are a Core of this multiverse. I require your protection. I have come seeking you out for that singular reason.”
“Protection? Uh, sorry, kid, I’m a marine bio undergrad.”
Vesper winces as Orobelle seethes, but she keeps a rein on her rage this time. “Yes! You have abilities you do not understand, I know you do. You must wonder why! And I can answer that for you. I am the reason your abilities exist. Your duty is, and has always been, to protect me.”
He freezes for too long. And then, haltingly, he answers, “I'm kinda in the middle of a date? Can I at least finish up here?”
Vesper rubs her temple, meandering up to Orobelle’s side. “Sorry about that, sir, we’re…working on the introduction.”
“You must understand! I come with a mission for you, one that was written for you all those years ago, when you first assumed the role of Core. You must become a part of it. There can be no avoiding it. Fate demands it.”
“Okay, how long will this mission take?”
“Sixty days, in the Queendom's time. Perhaps three hundred days in this universe.”
“You want me for a year? I mean, an adventure sounds cool and all, but I have a life. A degree. My friends are throwing me a party tomorrow!”
With a huff, Orobelle turns to her companions. “One of you, make him see sense. With force if you must. But we are not leaving until he agrees to come with us.”
Dorian glances helplessly at Vesper. Drawing in a deep breath, she steps forward and pulls the chair on his other side.
“Good morning. I’m Vesper, pleased to meet you,” she says. “What's your name?”
The furrow of his brow eases. “Hong Yi,” he answers. “Okay, Vesper, what is going on here?”
To that, Vesper can only sigh. “This might take a while. And before we dive into it, ma'am, you are…?” She gestures at the woman beside Hong Yi.
“Terri.”
“Terri, do you mind if I borrow him for a few minutes?”
“I get the feeling I wouldn’t be able to stop you,” she laughs.
Vesper chuckles back. “I promise I’m not as mean as I look. And, Hong Yi. Am I saying that right?”
“Better than some I've heard here.”
“All right. Can you answer this honestly? Do you have any abilities beyond your comprehension? Ones that seem to defy reality, even?”
“Oh, like my good looks?” he says. She sighs. “Okay, okay. Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't be entertaining this…weird interruption if I didn't.”
“I thought so,” she replies. “We all do. That's why we came here. Orobelle has an instrument in her hand that has one sole purpose: to find the likes of you and I.”
At this, he blinks. “You…?”
She nods. She can see the realisation hit, like a train crash in his eyes. “As recently as a week ago, I was a soldier in the British army, fighting the biggest battle on the Eastern Front. And then, well, I deserted—on account of Orobelle calling on me to join her…”
“Wait, wait, wait, how old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“What? You just said you fought on the Eastern Front. World War Two?”
“The very one.” From her shirt, she fishes her bullet pendant. His eyes widen on the metal trinket.
“But that was seventy years ago.”
Vesper shakes her head. “The story is…strange, but bear with me. When she appeared, Orobelle—our young duchess here—claimed she had come from a different universe in search of me. And I thought it some kind of improvised theatre, too, at first. But then she took me here, to this place. This world. It is both like mine and not. There are civilian aircraft. And…rehydration potions. Things I have seen, and things I have never seen. And the more I think about it, the more I’m realising that nothing about the situation—the things they've done in my presence, the things I can do—make sense unless they're telling the truth. I have always thought my powers must serve some purpose, and I think that purpose is this one.”
“No way. No way.” Hong Yi has been clutching his head the whole time she’s been speaking. “You're gonna have to give me a few minutes to process this. This whole time I've amused myself thinking these gravity powers were—”
“—oh, gravity?—”
“—were like some sort of superhero thing…and now you’re telling me there’s a multiverse, too? Just more universes that we can travel between? It's just like in…” He pauses short of speaking the name of whatever tale he was about to reference, then looks Vesper in the eye. “Okay, I think…I think, I think I could believe you. But...what convinced you to just up and leave like that? Surely not just Orobelle's words.”
To this, Vesper smiles wryly. “I had no reason to stay. My world, my time, was a cruel one. I suppose I relished the room to breathe.”
Hong Yi nods, pausing for a spell. Then he says, “That’s where we’re different, I guess. I have a whole life here, and it's one that I like. I’ve got studies to complete. Friends to see. I'm in the middle of a date, dammit!” He glances at Terri with a pitiful smile and says, “I swear I had no idea this was gonna happen.”
“It's, that’s alright, man. It sounds super important.”
“I'm sorry,” Vesper puts. “I understand. You should finish your date.”
“We can't wait forever!” Orobelle hisses. “Promise you'll come with us after you're done.”
Hong Yi’s face is scrunched up in thought as he meets Vesper's eye again. “So, you must know how absurd everything you've just said would sound to a stranger.”
She nods, hands parting in concession. “I was that stranger last week.”
“But you did find me, the one person with powers, among all the people on this earth. There's gotta be something going on. But…just one more thing, help me out here. You've got them too? Powers?”
She nods.
“Okay, can you show me?”
Vesper lifts a hand, palm up. Hong Yi watches unblinking. A blinding electric arc loops between her fingertips, snapping, waving like a ribbon in the wind. Terri yelps, then her eyes brighten, like polished mirrors.
Solemnly, he continues to stare for half a minute, studying her face. She becomes aware that the shop has gone dead quiet, except for the two of them.
Then he says, “You won't let me refuse, will you?”
“I'm afraid finding you is the only reason we are here.”
Hong Yi nods slowly, swallowing. “Alright.” Pauses. “I've made up my mind. I'll wrap up this date, and then I'm yours.” Another pause, this one more sheepish. “Erm, one more thing. What…are your pronouns?”
“Mine? As in, how I'd like you to refer to me? Well. I generally think of myself as a woman.”
Once Vesper and her companions have stepped outside, Hong Yi fights to push the date with Terri to the front of his attention again. But his thoughts are feverish and refuse to stop racing, and he can see from her intermittent frowns that her mind is wandering, too.
Hong Yi isn't sure why, but he feels an unbreakable thread pulling him along now, towards some invisible destiny. Maybe it is that this is the first time the greatest mystery of his life has seemed solvable. Maybe it is that Orobelle's summons feel inevitable—something that will come back to claim him if ignored. It is a glimpse, of a plot so strange and momentous it makes the cafe feel paper-thin.
Or maybe it is just that he is oddly fascinated with Vesper. Something about her—perhaps the scars on her neck and arms, perhaps the steadiness of her gaze and voice—tells him every word she spoke was true: she was a soldier, one without compare, and powerful in a way he cannot yet imagine.
That, and she's stronger than him, and probably has fewer qualms about putting him in a sack and dragging him off.
But no matter the sensible arguments to the contrary, Hong Yi cannot muster up the will to resist the pull. He has grown familiar with this feeling, of pulling his future apart at the seams, and he could do it again. A hundred times over.
Well, if he must leave, then now is the time. Now, in limbo. Before Boston sinks its hooks into him again.
“What were they saying? That they need you to join them?” Terri asks, finally accepting the new course of the conversation. “That you have powers or some shit?”
He nods slowly. “Man, people always joke about superheroes hanging out in NYC, but this is just absurd.”
“So…you actually have superpowers?”
“Yeah…they’re no big deal, honestly. I can change the pull of gravity. Make things heavier…lighter…I used it to rescue Mango yesterday.”
For a revelation so world-rending, Terri seems quite unperplexed. “So, you’re cute and funny and you’re an undercover superhero,” she says. “What don’t you have?”
“A clue about what I’m doing with my life,” he chuckles, eyes unfocusing on her. God, this is going to hurt, isn't it? “Hey, you’re amazing, you know? And if I come back in one piece from…whatever the hell they want me for…I wanna hang out again.”
Both cups of coffee sit empty. Terri gives a smile. “Promise?” she murmurs, laying a hand over his.
“One hundred percent.” But even he isn't sure. The universe has such a way of changing without warning.
She hands him her phone—her Facebook homepage is open. A bird video autoplays silently. He types his name and city in the search bar—Hong Yi, Boston—and taps on his profile picture, which feels embarrassingly nerdy when he hands the phone back.
All the while, he feels the stare of Orobelle burn into him from beyond the cafe glass, severing him from Terri by the second.
Before she leaves, Terri gives Hong Yi a head-spinning, soul-rending kiss. As the door swings shut and she vanishes from his periphery, he sucks in a deep breath, and steps outside himself, the afterglow of her company quietly fading.
By now, the strange party of three has diminished to one: Vesper waits by a tree on the sidewalk. Her eyes lift at the sound of his footsteps.
“Where did the kid and the tall guy go?” he calls out.
“Orobelle and Dorian?” she replies, reaching into her pocket.
In her hand she fans out two cards, and from the cards issues the shrill voice of the duchess, crying, “Don't you dare sweat all over me!”
He stares at the card for several seconds. “Okay, so, you've turned them into cards.”
“They turned themselves. It's one of their Lightly arts or something suchlike.”
All considered, he this doesn't bewilder him much. Vesper can generate electricity, and those two can turn into cards. It's not the comic book opener Hong Yi fantasised about, that's for sure.
*
Amid the chatter of the MTA and the rattle of a boombox, Hong Yi files a leave of absence form on the BU website. He becomes aware of Vesper staring at his smartphone when he glances up at a baby's wail.
“You wanna try my phone?” he asks.
She hastens to look away. “Not at all, I didn't mean to be nosy. Is that a phone? It appears more like a book, of light.”
“Oh, it's so much more than a book. Like…what did you do when you were bored at home in the 40’s?”
Vesper shrugs. “Go outside, read the news, watch the television, write journals…”
“You know, you can do all those things with a smartphone.”
“Even go outside?”
“It can definitely help with that.” Chuckling with a shake of his head, Hong Yi opens the Skype app, which haltingly loads all his chat groups.
Even as his heart pounds with knowing he is about to veer off course again, the ache in his throat grows to drown it out. Never one for the beaten path, this one. He's torn his life a thousand times, but no one said it would ever get easier.
If nothing else, he has a feeling Vesper will be decent company, at least.
There is, however, one more loose end to tie.
Guys, I have some…weird news. I won't be coming back to Boston for a while. The reason is too wild to explain. But you might not see me till next year.
Still, throw that party in my honour, OK?