"Can you hear that?" P'Song asked Korn before their Monday morning meeting began.
"What?" Korn asked worried that something had gone wrong over the weekend and P'Song was about to commiserate with him on his upcoming misery.
"Nothing," she said dramatically, "It's so quiet."
P'Dan heaved a sigh then smile broadly at Korn, "The interns are finally gone."
Korn laughed at his colleague's exaggerations. His only experience with internships, prior to this, had been when he'd completed his own. It was definitely quieter. The manic energy the interns exuded no longer affected everyone within a few feet of them. There was no one asking questions every ten minutes or insisting on his company when he would have much preferred to sit by himself.
"It's nice not to have the children underfoot," P'Dan said sounding like a sagely old man.
Korn agreed—but only in part.
He was moving into a more sensitive phase of the company's certification process and he needed to figure out a timeline of events. There were stakeholders to approach and convince. Picking the wrong person could scuttle his entire plan if he didn't find someone receptive to his idea. Then there was the matter of the budget.
"There's a lot left to do," Korn reported to the group, "But I think there's enough progress to prove it's worth it."
Korn didn't mention that it was enough work to keep him busy for a long time to come. He should have been glad for the lack of interruptions and the stray moments with nothing to do while waiting on feedback. But all that extra space left him with too much time to think.
Thinking was dangerous, especially when it automatically turned to Mew.
Yet everything made him think about him.
Like his last conversation with Nack. It had been imperative that he shut the intern down to establish an appropriate boundary. But that hadn't been the real reason for keeping Nack at arms-length. Korn couldn't talk about Mew with anyone. Not when every thought, every feeling left him off balance enough to know the earth beneath him had shifted.
"I..." the words 'miss you' stuck in his throat when Mew called him, a regular ritual he liked more each time it happened. Instead, he admitted, "...was just about to call you."
"I missed you," Mew said, stealing his thunder and making him wonder why it was so hard to say what he thought and felt.
He had good excuses and bad ideas. Everything about their relationship was different from how it had begun. He wasn't ready to define the new terms of their association. He'd lived with the uncertainty for long enough to find comfort in the familiarity. But uncertainty was its own kind of hell.
It was the by-product of the haze he'd been in when it all started. Korn's grief and pain had coloured everything. Things were only starting to change around the time Mew showed up—or maybe they changed when he showed up. By the time he was more aware of his choices, being with Mew didn't feel like a choice anymore. He hadn't fallen in love. He'd slid into it with remarkable ease for something that terrified him so deeply.
Korn wanted to know when it had happened. When had he gone from thinking of Mew as part of his past, to thinking of him as part of his future? When had he crossed that line? If he could understand what he'd done (or not done) perhaps he could figure out what to do to make sure it didn't fall apart the same way it had before.
If there was a moment, he couldn't find it.
Perhaps there hadn't been one.
"How is work going?" Mew asked.
He had a way of leaving space for Korn. It was as if he knew there was a fast and easy answer and there was the honest one and he needed time to process the difference. Korn tried not to disappoint him. "I feel like I'm square dancing."
"We should try that—I'd love to dance with you. But what is it about work that makes you feel like that?"
You. He didn't say that out loud. This wasn't Mew's fault. It wasn't even a problem with someone to blame. It was a good thing yet Korn didn't know how to process it.
"It's more like hurry up and wait. Too much work all at once, then waiting on someone else to decide if it's good enough. It feels like getting an annual review three times a week."
"Then it's a good thing I called, isn't it? I wanted to tell you about the prototype I got today. It exploded when I turned it on," Mew said with exaggerated horror.
"Exploded?" Korn asked, leaning into the joke.
"There were sparks and smoke. Definitely some life-threatening sounds," he said. The seriousness of his voice made the situation sound even funnier.
"This is what you called to tell me?"
"Yup.... Then again...it's always nice to hear your voice."
This was what they had going for them. None of the certainty of a flash of lightning—bright and indisputable, yet gone just as fast. It felt more like he'd been living in darkness only for someone to turn on the faintest light and increase its intensity over time. He didn't know when he went from blindly stumbling around to living in such clear illumination.
"Then we'll have to do this more often," Korn said testing his ability to speak freely, "You can tell me more about those exploding prototypes."
"Looking forward to it."
He couldn't go back to the dark.
To the time before Mew, when he felt like he'd lost his mind and feared he'd never find himself again. The time between his self-destructive behaviour and the desire for more. He'd prayed for something to happen and it had. He'd just been too preoccupied to realize that Mew was the answer to that prayer—no matter how unlikely.
Korn might have been able to stop himself if he'd given it any thought at the time. He didn't delude himself into thinking he'd had enough of his faculties intact to make a worthwhile decision. His mind was clear now but the decision had been made for him. There was no going back, it was no longer an option.
~
Forcing himself to concentrate on the work in front of him, he felt the overwhelming satisfaction when he finally had a budget report that didn't make him look like a lunatic for trying to help CYZ Fabrications step up its game. There was even a contingency to look into Lean Manufacturing guidelines but he put it in only because he could make an argument for recycling and repurposing some of their waste.
He was just about to turn off his computer when the alarm on his phone went off. Opening the reminder, he felt his heart skip a beat; his father's birthday was in a couple of days. Korn sat down again. He stared at his phone. He resented it for giving him this information. But it was just information. It only mattered what he did with it.
Korn didn't want to do anything. He'd managed to push his father's words out of his head; to forget how easily his parents had cast him aside. Without much thought, he'd opted to do nothing, not even when P'Kavitra has told him to think about it. Perhaps this was an opportunity to do something different.
Thinking about all the things he'd bought his father over the years, Korn decided he'd send him one last gift. If it didn't lead to anything new, he'd have an answer. He dared not hope for the alternative. He wasn't prepared to deal with the disappointment if he was wrong. He couldn't go with any of the usual gifts; cufflinks, a tie, craft beer or high-end alcohol. He wanted something meaningful.
Instead of heading straight home, the way he usually did, Korn went to the nearest mall. He hated window shopping but this was the fastest way to find something that spoke to his intentions. The clothing store was appealing but the likelihood of anything he bought ending up in the bin was too high. Cologne or cufflinks might have fared better if they weren't too easily regifted.
Korn was twisting himself up in knots. He wanted to call Mew but that didn't seem right. He didn't want to burden him with something he wasn't really a part of. It would have been nice to have someone there with him. Someone to keep him even when the hurt threatened to overwhelm his good intentions.
Trying to channel every sensible voice he'd ever heard, Korn centred himself. He was trying to control his father's reaction through a gift. If that's what he intended, he was better off not bothering at all. He had to give him something he might like and hope it was enough—for his own sake. Not for what Korn hoped to get out of it.
The minute he made up his mind, he saw it. The pour-over glass coffeemaker suited his father perfectly. A selection of gourmet coffees from around the world completed the present.
Korn didn't trust that he'd get the job done so he paid a little extra to have the gift wrapped for shipping. Using an overnight courier, he instructed them to deliver the gift on the morning of his father's birthday. The hardest part was letting that be all he would do. The card he'd added to the gift clearly indicated it was from him so there was no confusion, but he didn't know if that was a good thing or not.
Korn tried to get back to work in the days that followed. He didn't keep himself busy that happened whether he wanted to or not. He was just preoccupied. If not with Mew, then with his father's reaction. He was at work when his phone rang and thinking nothing of it, he picked up without looking at the caller ID.
"Hello, Korn speaking."
"How are you?" A familiar voice asked.
He had to check to confirm what he knew. Give himself a minute to breathe through the feeling of ice-cold dread squeezing his insides.
"I'm fine, Dad."
"Good."
Good? That was not what he wanted to hear. It was nowhere near enough to make up for months of silence. Korn wanted to ask what this was about but he dared not in case he broke the spell.
"Are you taking care of yourself?"
"Yes."
"Then you should call your mother more often."
"Yes, sir," Korn agreed readily.
That was it. Korn looked at his phone like he was waiting for something more. Perhaps someone would jump out from behind his filing cabinet and shout, "Gotcha!"
Nothing happened. He swallowed convulsively.
Wondered if the instructions were immediate or not. He considered calling his mother to make sure she was alright. Maybe they'd both been abducted by aliens and this was a strange doppelganger messing with him. Only one solution came to mind.
"Hello?" Mew answered after a couple of rings.
"Hi."
"Korn? Hi. Are you calling me from work?" He asked sounding a little out of breath. Perhaps it hadn't been the best idea but Korn needed someone to talk to.
"Yeah...is it a bad time for you?"
"No. It's...you don't usually call in the middle of the day. Hold on," he whispered. There were some weird sounds Korn couldn't figure out, then Mew came back on the line, "How are you doing?"
"I'm good...I mean, uhm...my dad called."
There was a short silence Korn did nothing to fill. Mew sounded a lot quieter when he finally asked, "How was it?"
"It was...weird. But...he called and spoke to me. He told me to call my mum."
"Are you okay?"
"I don't know yet."
Mew was silent—again. Korn knew the drill. Understood what the silence meant. But there was nothing to add. He was only willing to admit he desperately wanted Mew with him. Korn wanted to see his face and know what he was thinking because he could always read his expressions better than he could figure out his voice. But he also felt better because Mew had let him say it out loud.
"Thanks," Korn said.
"For what?"
"For listening."
"Welcome...?" Mew asked doubtfully. "Are you going to be okay?"
"I think so. I just need to figure out what I want from this," Korn didn't mention that he wasn't just talking about his dad.
"I'm here if you need someone to talk to."
"I know. Thanks...again."
"Any time."
It was one of their best conversations, even though they barely spoke. Korn finally understood what had been bugging him. What had been missing? For the first time, Korn felt the need to put his feelings into words. He'd been resisting the new awareness. Resisting the fact that he already felt enough to justify saying it out loud.
Resisting telling Mew he loved him.