When I first met him, he told me he wasn't my friend.

He had an impish face with fascinatingly sombre eyes, hair fair as though it should remember the colour it once was. Slender and tall, he was cloaked in dark at a time when cloaks hadn't been in production since ages.

I’d run into him at the park where autumn had strewn the ground with yellow and orange hues, and the night sky had only the character of a waning moon unaccompanied by stars.

He sat on a lonely bench, head bowed. I stopped in my solitary walk around the curve of the pavement at his sudden appearance.

Encountering a man on a lonely night could put any woman's heart at unease and mine nearly stopped with fear.

I would've passed him by had he not regarded me as keenly as he did then — with eyes glinting, chin tilted up and lips set in consideration.

In a low, quiet voice that sounded as though he was whispering, he said, "You're cold."

I stilled my hands from clutching my coat.

"Why'd you get out when your back hurts?"

I stumbled back. How'd he know? I stared at him apprehensively.

He slowly stood up to a looming height and said, "You can't fear me now when you didn't think twice before stepping out of safety like this. There are worse than me that you could meet. Then, perhaps, you could not."

"Please, let me go, sir." I tightened my fists, ready to fling them with all my might if he so much as stepped closer to me.

He smiled — a startlingly capturing smile. "I’m no friend of yours — but I am a gentleman." He moved to the side.

I looked at him, then at the space he'd given me and then back at him again.

I bolted before I could scare myself into freezing up.

When I looked back at that spot from outside the park, I saw him still there, looking at me, his face shrouded by the dark.

Insistence

I didn't venture out alone after that night but when I sought the safety of the hazy afternoon sun at the lone orchard behind my house a few days later, I came upon him again.

He sat on a dried fountain in much the same manner and attire as that night, cloaked, head bowed.

I spun around to race back the way I'd come, to rejoin the openness of the bustling street away from the unsettling encounter.

But he called out to me, cheekily uttering sombre words, "Loneliness is familiar, hence why some seek it. It powers some, others it drives to insanity. Why do you seek it when it isolates you from your care of living?"

Those words pulled my feet flat against the ground, ringing so true to my ears they made me gasp.

I looked back at him.

He was standing, hands in invisible pockets of his cloak, head tilted to the side. He grinned at me.

"Who are you?" I demanded fiercely.

He shrugged, his cloak floating eerily around his ankles like water. "An adversity. A teacher. An unwanted companion. I am many things and at once I am a singularity. What am I to you?"

I frowned at his riddled response. "What?"

"You've known me for long, don't you know who I am?"

"A mad man, perhaps." I shook my head and calmed my heart. I turned away, forgetting my desire to observe the autumn trees.

The man chuckled, amused. "That, too, I am."

To live in comparison

I miserably put my head in my hands.

The house was simply too big. It was simply too small.

With measured words and a trembling voice, I said, "The world can say what it wants against me, I can take it. But it tears me apart to hear something like that from you."

My mother, aged by worry and grief more than by the passing of time, sat across from me on the other side of the table, her tea untouched and cold.

"I'm only telling the truth —"

I snapped. "How's that true! Have I not tried? Haven’t I tried to replace Father? Toiled like him, smiled like him and protected us like him?"

I was standing now, hot tears flowing down my reddened cheeks, my mind numb from my feelings.

My mother's face looked cruel to me. Her insistence on my incompetence was unintentionally drenched with malice.

I gazed at her despairingly and then fled.

But where do I flee to? Outside our door, I stood heaving, the cold air sucked up into my lungs, searing my throat with its intense temperature.

My solitude had twice been intruded upon by that eerie man.

I squatted against the door, weeping on my knees, my head feeling weightless by the seconds and my eyes growing heavier.

I wish I had looked up then. Sensed something then.

For that man had stood at a distance down the street, grim against the backdrop of homes, watching me as I carelessly wore my pathetic heart on my sleeve.

A friendly foe

I couldn't care anymore if my privacy was robbed from me.

Early in the morning, I sat petulantly in the orchard, toeing a dead leaf on the ground, waiting for an impish face to impose upon my solitude.

I anticipated his arrival for several minutes but found my expectation failing. He wasn't in sight.

Slowly accepting my privacy, I pressed my eyes against my palm.

I missed my father. I still grappled with his loss even though years had passed. The pain was fresh, I could still fall, forever be at risk of falling until I died. His absence tied me to the edge of a cliff, above roaring waves. Nothing could free me, nothing was strong enough or fulfilling enough. Nothing was my father to save me.

Nothing to save me from my mother's grief.

I inhaled deeply and shakily.

"Death's mark transcends time."

I whipped my head to the side.

Across from me, on the other end of the fountain, sat the intruder. His hands were in his pockets, eyes looking deeply at the horizon over the trees.

"Leave me alone. I beg you," I whispered weakly.

His blankness broke with a slow smile on the side of his face. He looked at me. "Unwanted companion."

I shut my eyes, feeling my hot tears squeeze out and spill down my cheeks. "Does that mean you won't leave me or that you can't?”

"My nature deprives me of both."

I frowned at the perplexity of his statement. Wiping my face, I asked him what he meant.

"Change or abandon me, and perhaps you won't see me. But I can't be abandoned and rarely have I been changed," he answered vaguely.

"Do you never make sense or is this especially for me?"

"I am especially for you."

I furrowed my brows. "That sounds like you're saying you are for me."

"I am."

"What?"

"I belong to you. I am for you and you alone, though, when I bleed, I bleed on others."

I bit my lip in frustration and revulsion at this sudden confession of possession. "You make no sense."

He smiled cheekily at me. "A little introspection with a clear head is all it takes to understand me."

Upset at his insinuation that I might not be thinking straight, I faced the front and crossed my arms across my chest.

We sat in silence for a while. An autumn breeze brought with it the smell of rotting leaves.

"How does one change you?" I asked finally.

"How do you change yourself?" He asked instead.

I rolled my eyes and muttered, "More riddles."

"It's a straightforward question, Reina."

I bolted to my feet to run away. I never told him my name.

Before I could run away, he grabbed my wrist, his grip firm but soft. And cold.

His eyes glinted mischievously. "I know your heart, yet what scares you is my knowledge of your mere name?"

It was a sensible contradiction he was presenting, so I sat down.

He didn't let go of my wrist and I didn't ask him to. It felt oddly familiar as it did foreign. I decided that maybe if he kept it there longer, I could figure out what it was about it that felt so intimate.

"Your mother is drowning. And, so are you."

I pursed my lips and fastened my gaze to my lap.

He removed his hand from my wrist and touched my chin with the back of his fingers to bring my attention back to his face.

"Yet, she is feeble, with nothing to live for anymore except you. She doesn't want you to become your father. She wants your success — and in her mind, she defines success as your father."

My lips trembled and tears sprang in my eyes again. "What do I do?" I whined.

He smiled. Gently. "Live as you can. Your father's life was unkind too."

I wept.

He'd said he wasn't my friend.

Comprehension of change

I sought him out after that.

For reprieve, I knowingly left the house when it was dark, when the new moon shone thinly through the cold night.

The park wasn't abandoned in that chilly weather, unexpectedly. A man with a child on his shoulders walked its boundaries, a woman only a step behind him.

"They have their struggles too. The woman grieves her freedom but wouldn't give up what she thinks shackles her down given the chance. The man lives in fear of failure, yet he'd rather fail than never try."

I looked at my sudden company.

His pale hair and skin had a ghostly glow to them, their translucent quality further enunciated by his dark cloak. Would I see through him if I looked hard enough?

"You know what they feel?" I asked him, inching closer to him to take refuge from the cold wind that had picked up. I found no relief.

"I don't."

"So you assumed."

He smiled sardonically. "Contrary to popular belief, sometimes, you're not all that unique as you'd like to be."

"Then there must be thousands like me. Millions."

"Billions and billions, from eons ago, near and far."

I chuckled mirthlessly. "Is that supposed to humble me?"

"Shared grief isn't humbling."

"Then what is it?"

"Humanising."

We fell silent as I considered his statement.

The small family walked closer to us and soon they passed us by with polite nods our way.

"Do you never go home? How are you always there when I'm out alone?" I asked at long last.

"I don't know if I ever sleep. Sleep is ignorance, and I have yet to be slighted like that by you."

"Huh?" I raised my brow.

He looked at me and I thought I saw warmth in his features, his usually upright eyes and lips straighter. But maybe the moonlight made me think so.

I tilted my face up to maintain a proper eye contact and he dipped his head to meet my gaze.

"Should I thank you? Or should I apologise?" He whispered. "Either must be out of my rights. I can't do them."

Baffled, I felt my brows waggle.

He laughed: a pure, deep laugh.

He touched my forehead with the tip of his finger. "Maybe you are changing me, Reina."

I lifted my arm and wrapped my fingers around his, lowering it. "I really don't understand you."

"You must. A little at least."

I shook my head and gazed at his slender finger in my fist. It was very cold. I let it go.

I didn't know him.

"You know me."

I looked up. "I didn't say that aloud."

"Do you need to?"

"No."

"So you understand me after all."

Recovering

I was eating when my mother's sobbing reached my ears. I paused, my spoon hovering over my bowl.

The sound of it tore at my heart, shunned me away from tranquility and begged for attention.

I trudged up the stairs and into her room where she sat on her ottoman, her back bent and her face in her palms.

Standing behind her, I put a hand on her shoulder wordlessly and she leaned towards me.

We spoke of nothing. We never did. Words were useless, our silence relayed our feelings well.

When her tears dried, she moved away and I turned to the door.

My legs froze, my heart beseeching me to say something to my mother. I pivoted back to her reluctantly. "I may have got a promotion at work."

She brightened up. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

Because I wasn't sure if I had and the weight of her hope was crushing.

"I may," I reiterated.

She nodded slowly. "Why not definitely?"

"There's another candidate."

"They're not better than you."

My lips pressed thin. I hated this about her. She thought I was better than anyone simply by virtue of being Father's daughter.

"She's better than me in certain aspects."

"Not at all, your communication and research —"

"No —" I clamped my lips shut. She isn't admonishing me, I reminded myself. "Nothing. I'll go back and finish my dinner. Why don't you turn in early?"

My mother looked like she was about to argue and I prepared myself for her overbearing expectations and lamentations.

She frowned when my eyes flitted to my feet in defeat.

In an odd tone, she said, "I'll...go to bed. Make sure the door's locked and the stove's off."

"Okay."

Change for departure

The weather was imperfect for a walk: the wind howled softly in my ears but fiercely rubbed away the warmth of my face and hands.

Yet, I trekked with him on that lonely winter day, the bleak sun illuminating our way.

When his hand brushed against mine, I was surprised to find it felt warm.

I halted in my walk and he did too.

"Your hand," I said, "is warm."

He lifted it to his face and aimed a studious gaze at it. Vaguely, he uttered, "I change with the seasons."

I looked around us at the dead trees and tilted my head towards them. "We're in winter. Far from spring."

He put his hand down and grinned at me. "Are those the only seasons to exist?"

"Aren’t they?"

"Isn't every cyclical change a season?"

I pondered over this and decided not to anymore.

He chuckled and stepped closer to stroke my head.

I swallowed uneasily at this intimate gesture but he only smiled gently.

Why was it that he was so gracious when he'd been a fright when we first met?

"You said you weren't my friend," I blurted out.

His eyes narrowed into smiling slits. "I’m not."

"But you've been kind," I insisted.

"Kindness isn't your friend."

I lifted a brow. "Wouldn't kindness be a friend if it's kind?"

"Isn't your father's kindness unfriendly to you now? Doesn't its memory mock you now? Doesn't it make you suffer through your mother?"

I shuddered, his words piercing my heart. "Don't say that. Don't make my father unkind."

He tilted his head to the side, an action that held an uncanny resemblance to when I had first met him. "He was not unkind. But kindness is not your friend."

"Then what is it?" I cried in frustration. "Spit it out right!"

He was silent for a moment before he slowly said, "It is a tool. To fight, to protect. It isn't your friend."

I inhaled and exhaled deeply, nodding. Coldly, I said, "Then, you're a tool."

A frozen smile softly lifted his lips, and in avoiding his eyes, it portrayed a concealed look of sadness. "I am."

"You're made for use. Not for company, not to be friends, not someone to talk or laugh with, or — or —" I broke off tearily and shifted my eyes to the distance where a line of homes stood together with camaraderie.

Being with him always pulled something out of my heart, it seemed. I had a dreadful feeling that I knew him perfectly well. I simply failed to recall how.

His hand was still on my head. He stroked it again, gently, gently, lulling me into the familiarity of it, its parental comfort.

"Who are you?" I croaked.

"At my core I am the price for humanity. Grief."

"Grief is the price for humanity?"

"Love alone can birth grief. I cannot exist without it."

The steps of standing

I returned home late from work.

My mother was sound asleep on the sofa, and a cold meal was on the dinner table.

She'd been waiting for me.

I touched her head, stroking it gingerly. She was lonely — and not because she wished for it like me. It was given to her.

I remembered what he'd told me about loneliness. It could drive one mad.

I had a widowed aunt living in a flat out of town. I wondered if she'd like to live with us, in the house of her late brother, with his daughter and wife.

The two ladies could keep each other company.

I hadn't met him in some time. Tomorrow, I would meet him.

Finality of a cycle

I didn't meet him.

Thrice I crept out into the solitude and thrice I was utterly alone.

He wasn't there anymore.

When my face became wet with tears, I realised in my heart was a strange stability that kept my boat from capsizing: acceptance.

I had changed him.

The second coming

When my mother passed away, I was truly alone.

Her absence was a burning ball of iron in my chest, it melted my flesh and bones and it would have burnt a hole into the sofa I was lying on. I hated the feeling so much, I clawed my chest as if I could pull out that ball with my melted heart stuck on it.

I was alone.

"In only one sense."

I looked to my left and a startled gasp left my lips.

He was here. After all these years, the same as he was the first time I saw him: the impish face, the hair and eyes of an old man, the dark cloak flowing to the carpet behind him.

He crouched next to my sofa, arms crossed on the edge, smiling eerily at me.

"You're here..." I whispered, tears slipping down my cheeks.

He bobbed his head. "Because you slighted me. I told you I don't like being slighted."

"How — how have I slighted you?"

He lifted a finger and caught my tear before it splashed on his hand nearest my face. "You ignored me. You tried to."

I was numb. I had distracted myself, I took on work that I couldn't possibly finish without working through the night. I took sleeping pills. I stayed outside, surrounded myself with the unwelcomed hustling and bustling of people so I couldn't be alone with my thoughts.

A whole month.

I touched his face. It was cool. He was as much a stranger as he was familiar.

My voice was tight. "I can't take it anymore."

He caught my hand. "The heart is a mere cup. You pour into it as much as it can take before it starts spilling. But it doesn't topple over. You keep pouring, pouring; it keeps spilling, spilling, until it falls over."

My entire face hurt as I burst into tears at his revelation, curling into a ball away from him. "No, no, no, no!"

He stroked my head silently but comfort failed to accompany his touch. It was just a cold touch to my numbness.

I couldn't care that he was there, I couldn't care had he not been there.

"Help me, please," I choked.

He dipped his lips in indifference. "I can't relieve you, you know how to accept me."

I shook my head. Everything was falling apart. I remembered my parents and I yearned fiercely to either die now or wake up as a child in their arms.

I could die as I could not rewind time.

Unkindly kind dreams

I slept and he watched.

He coloured my dreams with strokes of the past, of when I smiled and laughed, so when I woke up, it was to a hollow feeling in my chest.

There was a cavity where my heart was — it would fill up again with a sickening dread.

"You're crueller now than you were," I said to him as I looked at the blank ceiling of my room.

"I am what you make of me," he answered clemently.

"Cruel," I repeated.

"I can be more, I can be less."

"But you will never hurt me less."

He stood up from the chair by the window and walked over to me. He seemed like a giant as I gazed up at him.

"It is the nature of love to hurt."

"Then I forsake it. Never again," I muttered viciously, tightening my fists on my blanket.

He grinned wolfishly. "Only few have the ability to control their feelings."

"I'll be one of them."

The Writer and The Book

We sat side by side and we watched the leaves fall out of the trees as the cooling wind shook them vigorously.

The unforgiving summer had faded away for the mildness of autumn and we were in the same orchard behind my house.

"Does that grieve them?" I jutted my chin at the fallen leaves.

"Trees and animals alike bow their heads towards the will of God. Humans alone refuse to."

I stared at him. "God."

He looked back at me keenly and nodded. "God."

"Why does God make us suffer?"

"There is no meaning to happiness without suffering."

"But He's God. He could make it any other way."

He smirked slyly. "Only God can tell you why He does what He does. Does the book comprehend the writer?"

Stumped, I returned my observation back to the trees of the orchard.

Indeed, did the book comprehend the writer?

The Earning of Giving

Were the memories what hurt more than the absence?

"The ability to recall what has passed is what sets the basis of our intelligence and emotions," he said, breaking through my thoughts. "Without it, everything is meaningless. Love, hate, joy and annoyance — nothing exists."

I stared at him as he leaned in, tapping my temple.

"To refuse your memories," he said, "is to refuse your emotions."

"That doesn't sound too bad," I admitted.

He smiled broadly. "It isn't. But it doesn't make us too human."

"Better."

He leaned away and swung his arm over the back of the bench. "Bargains like this are fun. It makes you think of what was, is and will be."

"What are you talking about?"

He rolled his neck and stretched his lengthy legs out. The air stilled around him — or maybe it was him who was so still that everything seemed to be frozen as well.

I gazed at him, stupefied by his surreality.

"Couldn't it have been better if you couldn't love your parents? Live with them without feeling an ounce of love towards them, without remorse over their efforts, with indifference over their presence and absence alike?" He turned to me again and lowered his face enough that he was only centimetres away from me. "You wouldn't hurt now as you do if they never earned your love."

The weight of his words stole my breath in epiphany.

"Earn my love?" I whispered numbly.

His eyes softened. "Parents need to earn the love of their children, Reina. While children require unconditional love from their parents, the latter aren't entitled to unconditionality in the matter. They have to sacrifice, give up, give in and bear in silence to earn your love."

I furrowed my brows, tears brimming my eyes. "So?" I asked, my voice tight with emotion.

He pressed his thumb between my brows to smooth out my frown. A gentle action, but he sounded contemptuous in his speech. "So, to wish to unlove them is to wish to make them rewardless for their sacrifices. Would you deprive your parents of your love, Reina, for the sake of your aching little heart?"

I tucked my lips between my teeth and wordlessly pulled his cold hand away from my forehead. I shook my head.

If this grief meant my parents were fulfilled by me, I would never give it up.

The sorrow of madness

In my bed at night, I couldn't sleep.

I was thinking of everything that couldn't move me. Drinking tea by the window, the warmth of freshly laundered linens, the scent of food simmering on the stove.

"Ignoring me again, Reina?"

I sat up.

He was on the chair next to my bed, leaning forward, elbows on knees, the soft night lamp shining on his mystical, translucent face.

"Why are you here?" I asked, my voice raspy from hours of silence.

"I am wherever you are," he said before touching my temple. "I'm always here. I've never left."

I lifted my brow quizzically. "Where?"

He smiled sardonically. "In your head, of course. Where else would I be?"

"What? But — but that time, when that time at the park we met and — and that family they nodded —"

"They nodded at you. Nobody can see me, hear me, except for you. You have kept me well-hidden."

I touched my temple — his hand was still there. It wasn't warm, but it was real. Solid. "Am — am I mad?"

He slithered out of the chair, rested a knee on the edge of my bed. In his quiet voice, he said, "Sometimes, grief can be madness. Sometimes it can feel like madness. What do you think?"

"I can't be mad..." I whispered, studying his face. I could see every strand on the slanted brow illuminated by the pale blue night lamp, I could see the small wrinkle in the corner of his eye that I'd never noticed before, the permanent lift in the corner of his lips. "You're real."

He grinned wolfishly. "Madness isn't unreal, Reina."

"But you're not madness."

"Oh, madness is but a face of grief."

Perception of existence

In the park we sat, heedless of the silence and isolation. Dead leaves rustled and whispered at our feet.

"I will always be here. Since the moment you felt me. I will die with you."

"When did I feel you first?"

He shrugged his shoulders, the folds of his cloak shifting smoothly to rearrange themselves. "I don't remember."

I was surprised. "How do you not?"

"Do you remember your birth?"

"I can't possibly."

He smiled at me mysteriously. "Your first grief was my birth."

I made a noise of understanding.

"True grief can come at even the earliest ages. Rare is it that it comes at a mature age."

I nodded. "Right. Anything that hurt me even as a child could make me grieve."

"It's how empathy and experience is built."

I nodded again but reluctantly. It was unsettling. He was as young as me, younger even. But perhaps he was my true age, my experience.

I gazed at him a little sceptically. "How are you real?"

"Because I exist."

I shook my head. "How can I see you? When you're not there, how are you so tangible?"

He'd been looking out at the horizon, at the stretch of darkened trees. But now he looked at me.

"Because you feel me. Only you know me as I am. I am unique to you. Why should I be someone else's?"

"No, no, you don't understand — if you're my grief, how are you outside of my mind? As a human?"

"Because this is how you understand me."

"I'm sorry? You're like this because of me?"

He nodded. "Yes."

I pursed my lips. What did that say about me? That I was mad? Hallucinating? Was my coping mechanism imagining things?

He answered, "Perhaps."

"Then you're not real."

He shrugged. "My appearance might not be. But I am."

"What do other people see?"

"Different. Everyone is different." He shifted in his seat to face me, lifting and folding one leg over the bench. His cloak caught moonlight on its folds like strokes of silver. "Love is a person, a place. You can't feel it without the object. You understand that and you choose to engage with its consequences in much the same manner."

"Love isn't a person or place," I argued, offended by the idea. How could something like love be materialistic?

"What is it, then?" He challenged me with a cocky lift to his brow.

"It's a feeling."

"Which cannot come about without its recipient."

I thought for a moment and found myself agreeing with him. I avoided his eyes.

He smiled smugly. "You cannot argue about love with me. I'm its ending and its canvas, I have seen its beginning and its journey."

Foresight

As I had felt his company before, I knew when he was about to vanish from my life again. So I held his hand, felt its warmth only confirming my suspicion about his eventual disappearance.

His lips were down turned, his eyes endless pools of darkness as the sun set behind him.

"You're always sad when you're about to leave," I said, perturbed.

"Because I change. It's lonely to change, even if it’s for the best. I remain as I am for so long before I'm transformed, don't you feel you're losing a part of you?"

I bit my lip. It did hurt. "Because I don't have the right to move on. To be all right when they're no longer around, when I should be all right only when they're with me."

He touched my chin to lift my face up to his. "It's not a right to move on. It's your duty to yourself and to them."

I gave him a jerky nod. My voice was feeble when I said, "I'll try."

"Trying is good," he said softly. "Failing is good too, so long as you fail after trying."

I barked out a short laughter. Those were my father's words. I clutched his hand tightly between mine and pressed it against my forehead, fat tears welling up in my eyes.

He laughed too, the same mysteriously deep and pure and touching laugh.

"I told you he knew grief well. His unwanted companion."

I studied him, something dawning upon me steadily. "Did I — did I choose your form because it's endearing?"

He grinned. "Did you?"

"You answer me."

"I am what you make of you me, Reina. I frightened you when we first met. Every time you meet me, you change me a little. If you find me endearing right now it's only because you have changed me to be beguiling."

I scowled at the twisted concept, my tears drying up instantly. "So now I find my sorrow...adorable?"

He chuckled. "No, you simply recognise it as part of yourself. You feel tender towards it."

"And that means?"

A benevolent smile spread across his impish face. "That you've learnt to be kind to yourself."

I rounded my lips in surprise and he chuckled again.

"Your future might hold more grief, we might see each other again —"

"I'm learning. You'll have to make me warm up to you again. I'll be easier to soften, I believe."

He grinned fondly with a mischievous gleam in his old eyes.

"And you'll accept me again."

.    .    .