“Eva of Greece, how is your study so far?”, Cay sip his mojito after asking Eva.
“it was rough at first. Learning French was one of the many problems.”, she answered while tapping her pint glass with her fingers.
“I can imagine. I was born in Malaysia and had to learn three languages at birth.”. he chuckled at his ability to speak these languages.
It seemed so common to him to have learnt different languages since he was a toddler that he found funny why people think it would be surprising. His English and Chinese Mandarin faired in every aspect (Chinese being force learnt at school, while English was more self-taught rather than properly improved within the education system), his Malay obtained only a certain degree in speech communication. Eva reminded him of how much he needed to relearn Malay, not because of how bad he was but the hardship of learning an unlearnt language foreign to her.
How much would people give, or give up, to learn a certain language, albeit only useful in certain regions only? Sometimes, Cay contemplated about the value of speaking and writing Malay when even countries near his homeland such as Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar could not even understand the Austronesian language. However, once obtained could never be forgotten, not at least completely.
“The idea was crazy at first, but I really do like the thought of staying in a different country for a change.”, she took a small gulp that made her looked new in drinking alcohol.
Cay nodded, “I was in England for about three years. Although I did well in English before university, it had been a struggle during my first year studying there.”
“But how did you manage? Your English is great, it sounded more British than the stereotypical Asian version.”
“It was probably due to the prolonged exposure in England. No, rather, it was mostly due to my British Girlfriend.”
“You had an English Girlfriend?”, she asked with enthusiasm without a hint of scrutiny.
“Yes, I met her in my first semester when I just started my life there.”
Judas went back to the house and saw no one present, only the neighbor cat sat staring at him across the hallway. Visibly, the cat’s jade-coloured eyes could be seen within the darkness, illumination an uncomfortable glow inside the consuming darkness. He switched on the light, remembering where it was, and proceeded to fill up a glass of water from the kitchen tab. The cat came into the small kitchen looking harmless than it had been a minute ago, it’s gentle purr reminded him of its’ friendliness and needing backrubs.
He went up to the creaking stairs with the cat following suite, the attic seemed cozy under the visible stars shown from the upward window. He turned on the LED string lights strung along the wall and sat down beneath the illuminating metal lamp. He was not exhausted but felt that he should have a lay on the bed to search for comfort from an unknown origin.
As he turned his head on the pillow, he saw Cay’s clothing scattered but somehow looked neat beside the collapsible stair and stretched his right hand for the book. A message was sent to his phone:
“Hey, I won’t be coming home tonight. Enjoy the comfy stay!”, it was from Cay.
Judas was not much of a reader, but he opened the book and skimmed through its’ chapters, slowly.
*
A heartfelt moment suffices any hearts of the cold and isolated; the lonesome could be surfaced from the depths of sinking despair. But as the broken ones were fixed or surfaced, they would not be the same ever.
They were repaired by hands that could only do so much with such limited ability. A steel rod, however sturdy and impervious to hard force, once bent could be treated with care but changed within its’ composition. It would be more likely to bend than the undamaged ones.
That change was not necessarily a bad one, it could still support and cope with whatever it previously had. More precisely, it would earn a new trait or two, if it chose not to partake in the same, tedious life as others have been doing since their creation. Why went through the process of straightening the steel rod again if it could be used as a crowbar to forcefully open the sealed door to an alternative way?
The ongoing ethnic-cleansing in Myanmar went as accordingly as the silence of media, the government within killing without hesitation while the ones from outside only condemned its’ act of cruelty. The Rohingya Muslims were being rounded up and slaughtered like pigs and their faces of terror still fresh inside Judas. It was one of the event that not only changed the world but the hearts as well. Who said terrorism was exclusive only for religion?
The memories eventually landed on Mya. How was she? Was she hurt again? Has she been helping the poor souls still since Judas’s recall back to England? It was better not to dwell on the topic that might have scarred him for life, however remorseful he felt towards his abandonment.
It was a cloudy weekday that Judas decided to apply for a job on High Street, he felt the need to be somewhere busy and away from home. His parents had seemed to put their minds at ease after that faithful day when he decided to talk to them, to sound the events that transpired when he was a social worker in Myanmar. His father’s calm but warm eyes and his mother’s motherly affection. However, the period during his months laid dormant had him thinking about something else.
There were the usual pedestrians in scarfs and cardigans, their dogs on short leashes, and full-time housewives stopping each other for conversations. An old man sat on one of the wooden benches on Above The Bar Street, reading a book that Judas could not understand because of how far it was from him. Waterstones with its’ usual soaring prices and café-imitation chalk board sitting just outside its’ door. The English Autumn was made apparent by gloomy clouds, but when has England not been mostly gloomy?
A job hunt was easy since most of the retailers did not require people with exceptional experiences, although they had always wanted to hear it from interviewees. He went in several of them and passed numerous Current Vitaes, hoping to receive a phone call from either of the employers at the end of the week.
He was a bachelor’s degree in social science holder at the local university and there was a time he aspired to be a statistician. Lately, he had been trying to be in the field of numbers as minimum as possible (the fear of the fatality count arose in his mind every time he did even the simplest of calculations). Being optimistic was not a feasible option then, he longed to feel at lost.
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