A Normie's Guide To Mind-Reading | ONC 2023

Ten ∆ Notice Suppression

I've been diligently recuperating at home for a week. I reply to Siti and Li Zhi's texts (they check on me occasionally and share loads of good news like Siti's volunteer work and Li Zhi's excitement for National Service, and I have been doing the best I can to convince them all is well), sleep a lot, eat my cereal, slow-dance with my grandparents' ghosts, talk to Yorick about procrastination, watch the news with my parents (we act as though nothing happened at all the past few days, as though I was never terrorised by mind-readers), talk to Yorick again, yada yada. Will you look at that! So many people are concerned about me! Concern is never boring until it bores through you. Nothing is boring until it bores through you.

Caleb never appeared. Li Zhi says the old man's busy with other customers. Is he really an urban legend? Somehow I can't dismiss the feeling he's involved in this somehow. All the days I spent with Caleb are days of peril. His absence is strangely welcome.

Feeling the hunger pangs, I leave the house and take the train down the East-West line to Bugis, nine stations from home. It's for the takoyakis.

Kinokuniya sounds good so I head over after licking the box of ten takoyakis clean, leaving not a trace of sauce or bonito flakes. When did I last indulge in peace like this? I take the escalator to the third floor and enter the bookstore. It's a quiet Monday. With Christmas around the corner, however, crowds will come streaming in over the next few days. I shall soak in the peace when I can.

Past the teak walls of the entrance, shelves brimming with magazines and books and manga invite me into their worlds. Books are the renewed lives of trees, their leaves given an alternate meaning, knowledge processed like respiration and osmosis. The vanilla aroma wafting about tickles my nostrils as I wade towards the local literature section, just beside the Asian literature shelves. Fingering the collection of poetry by Cyril Wong and plays by Alfian Sa'at, I barely notice the shuffle of a beige coat to my side till a voice like a hammer to the head confirms it's not an illusion.

"Parents, teachers, government-they all teach you how to live the dreary, deadening life of a slave, but nobody teaches you how to live normally."

Only two people stand along this aisle. His weighted whisper goes unnoticed by the woman at the nearby counter. This person's talking to me.

I flick my gaze at him as he closes a scarlet book with an obscene cover, titled In The Miso Soup by Ryū Murakami in one hand and picks up Cyril Wong's Oneiros with the other. His black hair, neatly-combed, nests on his head. His green eyes glimmer over the verses.

"Imagine picking up a book to have the first poem speak of death. The antinomy of life." He sighs and peers over the page at me. "Isn't easy being a reader, yes?"

"Y-You're Murakami Man."

"I never went by- What an adorable name you've crafted, Bryce Millwood." He puts both books down with the visage of a vet putting a stray dog down, though with an ounce of mockery playing on his lips. "The name doesn't matter. Names never really mattered."

His is a subversive existence.

"You spent a week in the Shakespearean void," he adds, shaking his wrist so his Rolex Submariner slips down.

"You stalked me?"

"C'mon now, don't be paranoid. Not everyone is out there to get you. No." He inhales sharply and slides his Ryū Murakami book into his coat. "No one bothers to get anyone at all. All our attempts at understanding other people are merely ways to seek their understanding of ourselves."

When Caleb said nothing would happen till a week later, was this what he meant?

"It can't be a coincidence you're here."