Gravity's Cross Station

Boarding : Jim Teriyaki's Treating Treats

My life felt unanticipatedly unanticipated that day.

It always did, but that day specifically, I had no idea how to react to the situation. What feelings and messages to convey or whether to convey any at all. Nothing came to me. I felt numb, if it was something that could be felt.

One of my childhood friends, whom I hadn't seen since quite long, had tracked me down with the help of two of my other childhood friends, and broken the news to me.

When I saw Tyson at my office first, I couldn't immediately recognize him, but there was a vague familiarity. Our eyes connected for a few seconds, seeming as though both of us were trying to remember. Something, anything at all. When I spotted the two brunettes behind him, all of it came back to me in a bolt.

Jon and Teddie, their names hovered.

Tyson, Jon, Teddie and I were like one being when we were kids. There was barely anything we didn't do together. We even swam together to take baths. Although both Jon and Teddie were dumb and couldn't utter understandable words, Tyson and I used to blabber enough for the sake of those two. And them arguing with each other in sign language was at a different level altogether.

The moment I recognized them, I wanted to go back and invent something so that we could have stayed in touch with each other more efficiently. Letters could only work for a while, and passing them back and forth for eight years was pretty damn tough. We sometimes never got each others' letters for months even if we wrote every week. With countless and useless wars around, the letters might have reached an eighty years old Mrs. Dunkus instead of Tyson Dunkus, for all I knew. Or most likely, they might have been reduced to ashes before they even reached someone.

I had smiled broadly and walked up to the trio. With me, our grubby gang had become complete, once again. Jon and Teddie, the huggers of our gang, spread out their hands as they recognized me and I obliged.

I suddenly felt more at home than in all these years in London. Almost as if they brought a little part of our childhood along with them. Hugging them felt like hugging a part of Surrey I had left behind.

Tyson smiled back at me, but only for a brief moment. A lot might have changed during those years, but it still instantly got me worried. No matter how long it had been, I remembered that Tyson was a boy who smiled about everything and nothing. It was a literal hobby of his. No joke, he even used to sleep with a tiny smile attached to his fat cheeks. But when he didn't, it meant matters were very, very serious. The last time I hadn't seen him smile was when his dog Rufus died.

"What happened?" I asked him, after our brief greeting got over.

He did not meet my gaze and looked down at my brown leather shoes. "Arthur, do you remember Jim Teriyaki?"

"Of course," I suddenly recalled the face with a large smile. "What about him?"

"He passed away last Tuesday."

~~

Jim Teriyaki, the proud owner of Jim Teriyaki's Treating Treats, our favourite childhood sweet shop. How could one ever forget a personality like him? He had the hair of a grizzly bear, body of a giraffe and eyes of a crocodile. Because of this analogy, our innocent minds used to call him a zoo at that age. The four of us had named him The Zoo, quite literally. Whenever our parents asked us where we were off to, we'd say to The Zoo. The looks on their faces the first few times were unmatched and it delighted us.

Although the four of us liked to call him The Zoo, we mostly called him Jim Teriyaki itself. Because the name was absolutely, and I do mean absolutely, fascinating. I'd always wished to have a fancy name like that instead of Arthur Coins.