28 year old Eddy always admired his 1 year older boyfriend Brett's beautiful complexion.
"Eddy? What are you doing?"
"Huh?"
"Why are you looking at me like that."
"I'm... I'm just admiring your skin. It's like porcelain.."
"Hmm am I getting a bit pale again? I might need to go out for walks a bit more. Get some more sun."
"What ? I mean, if you want to, sure we could go on walks, I'd love to. But only if you want to."
"Well.. you know me, Eddy, I'm really not that keen on exercise, but..."
"But what?"
"Haven't I ever told you?"
"Told me what?"
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During the summer when Brett was 7 years old, he visited his relatives in Taiwan. Even at night time, it was soooo hot inside his uncle's house. So he snuck out of his cousin's bedroom where all the children slept. He made his way into the kitchen to get a drink. He opened the fridge and poured himself a glass of cold barley tea, always kept in a large jug during summer. He glanced at the clock and was surprised to find out that it was past 2 am. He knew it was very late as the rest of the family were also already asleep, so it must have been at least past midnight, but 2 am must have been the latest hour he'd ever been up at that age.
He decided to step out into the backyard to cool down a bit. Opening the back door of the house didn't make much of a difference as far as the heat was concerned. It was still stiflingly hot. He stood outside trying to catch some of the gentle night breeze in an attempt to cool down. It was very dark outside, with no moonlight. The only source of light came from the streetlight a few metres away from his uncle's house at the street corner.
Brett then heard a gentle squeak of bicycle breaks. He looked up, over the backyard fence and saw a policeman with his pushbike stop in front of his uncle's house, eyeing out Brett.
"... Are you.. alive??"
Brett was wearing is cousin's oversized nightshirt which looked like a white nightie. His hair was dead-straight and pitch black. And he was very, very pale as he had just arrived from winter Australia to summer Taiwan. It was in the middle of the night and he was hot, bothered and somewhat disorientated. Without thinking much, he blurted out..
"Sir.. you can see me..??"
The policeman suddenly looked absolutely terrified and he quickly jumped back onto his bike and pedalled away.
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"...You see, Eddy, I didn't know why he pedalled away like that.. policemen are usually quite inquisitive and I thought he would ask me my age and my parents' names and stuff but he just asked me one weird question then left.... Oh my god Eddy not again, oh c'mon!!"
Eddy was in stitches. Sometimes when Brett was too busy telling his stories he wouldn't notice Eddy was dying of laughter because Eddy gets so quiet when he laughs this hard. Eddy would eventually get louder as he would "resurface" so to speak and start gasping for air.
"Look... Brett..., I'm so sorry.. Look, ..I love your stories.. they are the best... please, tell me what happened next. Did the policeman come back the next morning?"
"Oh my god how did you know !?"
'Well, he must have freaked out but would've had to make sure there wasn't a murder of a young child at your uncle's house, right ?"
"Oh my god, that's exactly what he said !! And of course, my uncle completely freaked out. Like there were 5 of us kids there, me, my brother and our 3 cousins. And the police arrived at the crack of dawn, like 5:30 in the morning or something, asking if any of the children were missing or dead!! We were awakened by my uncle's scream and his footsteps charging towards our bedroom we shared."
"Oh my god"
"And the relief on his face when he saw all 5 of us, even though my uncle's two youngest ones got so scared they started to cry."
"So did you tell your uncle or the police about you being in the backyard ?"
"No!! I was too scared..."
"And the police didn't recognise your face?"
"Well, I don't think he recognised my face.. but I was the only one that was so pale, he picked me out from the bloody lineup of us 5 kids...!!"
"Ooooh you poor thing. Did you get into trouble?"
"Well, not really.. like I can't be held responsible if a policeman decides he's scared of a pale 7 year old!! But I didn't appreciate being mistaken as a ghost...!!"
"No, of course not..."
Eddy tried really hard not to laugh.
"So I swore to myself that I gotta make sure I don't look too...."
'Too what ?"
"Ghostly."
"Oh my god"
"Which is why I need a tan.... Eddy! Stop laughing!!"
"Sorry..!!"
"It doesn't do any good to your self-esteem being mistaken as a ghost y'know."
'Well, I wouldn't know, but I can imagine..."
Eddy burst out laughing again as Brett pouted.