Always one to keep his promises, a few days later, Monty and I set into the streets to find places for me to book gigs at. Most of the ideal restaurants and bars rejected me thanks to past experience. During my rather short time in Toronto, I had to diverge further and further away from my neighbourhood to look for new places. Thankfully I hadn't used my Shield ability on them yet, though that was a double-edged sword. My hand quivered as I signed the short-term contracts under their oblivious gazes. Beyond the guilt, I was terrified that I'd mess up something again. I played it cool though, smiling and nodding where it seemed appropriate.

They liked indie pop/folk music, they said. They thought I had talent. I knew those things better than anyone, but still, I latched onto their words. I had to play to their expectations to make this work. Even if I ended up failing in the end. When Monty asked about what kind of venues had reached out to me before, I closed that line of discussion. We were focusing on one thing, and that was the present, not the past.

Back at our apartment, he insisted on looking up more places online. My brain was fried from calculating my financial needs, but Monty was on a roll. "Better to be proactive," he said between the furious clacking on his keyboard.

I had enough of researching and thinking of all the ways it could go wrong. Instead, I went to the kitchen. By the time Monty had given up, the smell of fried rice filled up the apartment. Simple to make, and delicious every time.

I scooped a bowl for Monty and placed it in front of his face, so that way he wouldn't 'forget'. "Here."

Monty closed his laptop. "I'll pack it up for later. Thank you. Again. You don't need to cook for me."

"I don't need to, but it makes me happy." I mulled over his phrasing of words. "Do you not want me to?"

"It's just that—nevermind. It's nothing to do with you. Thanks. Since we're done, want to play Game X?"

I jumped up at the prospect. "Yeah! But you need to come up with an actual title for your own game."

He'd been working on this personal project ever since I first met him at a Tim Hortons shop. His coding knowledge allowed him to make a pixelated visual novel. It combined lots of mini games with scenarios where the player's choices would decide the story's outcome. The plot was simple: an unnamed protagonist was on the run, hopping from city to city, and meeting good and bad people along the way. Monty admitted that the story wasn't super original. What he really cared about was the programming side, though. It'd be good to put on a resume, and it occupied his time.

"I still think this would work better as a first-person RPG," I signed after playing the latest part. My mouse hovered over the landing screen, absorbing the new information I'd learned. "And for the title, maybe Chain Reaction? Since you have that motif in your mini-games, and what happens is..."

"Okay, Chain Reaction it is. General feedback?" Monty had his notepad out, ready to record my answers like a journalist.

I hummed the 8-bit music of the landing screen, letting it calm me down. Monty didn't realize how much of an emotional impact the game had on me every time something bad happened to the secondary characters. It was why I could never watch any Disney movie without bawling. I got attached to the characters, because games were written in a neat plotline, where everything had cause and consequence, and it made sense. But damn, this most recent part? Absolutely brutal.

"Adding those couple music tracks really helped. The 8-bit theme fit. That could just be me, since I live for game soundtracks. You changed the pixel art and that fits the serious tone, since you can see the people's facial expressions better. On a programming level, you might want to have different levels of difficulty for the mini games. But what's going to happen next? Did she actually get arrested? Does the MC know? What if he was in kahoots with the criminal, but--?"

"You'll see," Monty said with a wry smile. "I'll resume it once exams are over."

He was in his last year of Bachelor's for Computer Science. I remembered how impressed my parents were when they first met. Thanks to Monty being Hongkongese, and my family being Vietnamese, the common cultural ground helped us get along. (The two cultures were distinctly different though—it irritated me to no end when people referred to East and Southeastern Asia as a collective melting pot). After graduation, Monty planned to continue with a Masters' degree in order to get a leadership position in IT.

As he typed up my feedback in a spreadsheet, I recognized the feeling that churned in my gut like a ship in rough waters. Sometimes I wondered why I didn't push myself further. Monty was twenty-two, two years younger than me. He'd gone into university like every other on-track student. If he didn't let his Deafness stop him from seeking higher education, was I just making excuses because I was lazy?

No, I couldn't trap myself in my parents' thinking. They meant well but they didn't know what it was like to be me. I was a musician; I was more than just my weaknesses.

"Something's wrong?" Monty asked. "You look angry."

That was another thing; people misjudging my facial expressions. I didn't want the conversation to shift back to my music--he was going to push me about that issue with the music venues, I just knew it--so I grappled for another conversation. Seconds stretched by like a rubber band. It was like my thoughts had rammed into a brick wall. Why hadn't I read the morning newspaper today? It was an old tactic for conversations that didn't really work in the long run, but when I had to suddenly switch gears to another topic, I floundered.

"My girlfriend and I have been dating."

"What?"

I wanted the ground to swallow me up. Thankfully he couldn't lipread that."Um, what I meant to ask is why you keep showing me your video game, but not your boyfriend? Aren't couples supposed to be close with those sort of things?" I wondered.

"It's not a matter of closeness," Monty laughed. His ears turned bright red, and his fingers slipped on the keyboard. He cursed and punched the backspace. "He's a super nice guy, like don't get me wrong. But he also gets critical with how I write the storyline. Why I'm doing something that I'm not super passionate about, why I'm holding myself back from opening up, etc. Then he'd go all English Literature on me and analyze the symbolism and whatnot behind Chain Reaction, and...I just want to make my game without judgements, you know?"

Never had I heard him ramble like that. "I get that. It's annoying when people give me feedback with my music but they don't really know the craft like I do. It's why I stopped sharing my music."

"Really? I thought you didn't do that because you get embarrassed."

"Nope. Never," I confessed. "As long as I'm not improvising and I know what I'm doing, I'm cool with singing in front of people. I avoid it in academic settings though. Anyway, now I sing my songs to you, Nora, and my family. My parents can actually get annoying about it, so that's when I'd give them my pre recorded videos and call it a day. They weren't enthusiastic about pursuing it as a career, though, so I'm hoping to prove them wrong." The words gushed out like water flowing out of a dam.

"But I thought you had a good relationship with your parents?"

"Why wouldn't I?" I signed, confused.

I followed Monty's gaze to the wall where he'd hung up all his academic plaques and medals. His face was warped on the surface of a trophy that read, Monty Zhao: Recipient of the Academic Award.

"Nevermind. It's cool you're choosing the career you want. You're not giving up on it, right?"

"No," I said cautiously, dreading where this was going.

"Good. Get ready in half an hour, Tai. I know a friend who knows a friend who'd be able to help you with your music career."

"You didn't tell me this before--"

"Because you'd get cold feet. I promise, they won't bite. The only way you're moving your career forward is by grabbing it yourself."

--

My thoughts cycled like a washing machine before crashing into an epic tsunami wave as we reached our destination.

I looked up at the boarded up storefront, squished between two other businesses in the plaza. Between the rips in the paper that covered up the glass windows, I couldn't tell what was inside. The only clue was a stock posterboard coloured with glowing chalk markers. Harmonic Balance - free yoga sessions for everyone! It showed a bunny doing a yoga pose under a rainbow.

Like soda pop, my stress dissolved into skepticism. "This doesn't look like a music studio."

Monty snorted and grabbed the door's handle. My heart clawed up to my throat when he disappeared inside. I was still unprepared. His hand propped the door open. "Hardly," his voice said. "Come on! You don't want to freeze outside."

I would rather do that, but December had descended with a gut-punching negative twenty degrees celsius, so common sense took over.

Inside blocked the wind, though it lacked adequate feeling to warm up my fingers. We stomped out the snow on the carpet before taking our boots off. On our socks, we treaded through the hallway padded with giant foam puzzle-pieces. The hallway opened up into a studio room with mirrors along one side, cushions that reminded me of the ones I'd sit on at the temple, and a pile of yoga mats against a corner. There were two people occupying the room. A man wearing a parka was sleeping in one corner. And then there was another person sitting cross legged, chewing a pencil while glaring at what looked like biology worksheets. Their pair of chunky Doc Martins was kicked off to the side.

With a successful dash of the pencil, they stood up and brushed eraser shavings off their jeans. When I blinked, they were standing right in front of me like they've sprung out of the ground. I didn't have time to prepare as they said, "You must be Tai, right? My name's Rajathiran, and I'm the entrepreneur of this wonderful establishment. It's great to meet you!"

A beat.

"You're not wearing yoga clothes."

Through their thick square glasses, Rajathiran peered at me. I shrank under their gaze. Their black hair was tied in a loose side ponytail. They wore a blue windbreaker over a flaming Trasher shirt, and washed out jeans flared out to Star Wars socks.

They laughed, a warm deep alto. "There's like an hour before yoga class, so I'm doing kinesiology homework here til then. There's no strict clothing code as long as you're wearing stuff that's comfortable to do poses in. Sometimes people like to come here early though," they explained, glancing towards the man in the parka. We made eye contact for half a millisecond, and when he closed his eyes again, I realized he'd been awake this entire time.

Monty jutted a thumb back towards the entrance. "Are you renting this place permanently? You need a bigger sign so this doesn't look closed-up."

Rajathiran groaned. "I have no idea if I will. I'm trying to get a better place, but it's kinda hard for a broke student. I mean, this place is roach-free though, so I'm tempted to hold onto it, even despite the lack of heating. Anyone can wear stuff here."

I glanced at Monty, hands ready to interpret, but he shook his head. The place had good lighting, so I guessed he could lipread...but didn't that make it hard on his end? Why would you refuse help if you got it?

It took every ounce of my energy just to keep the endless list of social rules flashing at the back of my mind, ready to refer to when Rajathiran spoke. Sweat gathered at the back of my shirt despite the chilly studio.

He rolled his eyes. "If you hadn't noticed yet, Tai, Raj conveniently forgot to mention that they're not an actual entrepreneur--"

"I am! A non-for-profit entrepreneur--"

With Rajathiran speaking a thousand kilometers a minute, I left the conversation and returned to the hallway. I recognized the signs of an oncoming meltdown: shortness of breath, pressure building in your skull, and the world slipping through your fingers like grains of sand. My foot tapped the ground by itself, following an irregular rhythm as I slowly calmed down.

I should have asked them to just get to the point. Talking just wasn't my forte. But with horror, I realized that I had just messed up my chance to elevate my career, like Monty promised.

My phone buzzed.

MONTY: Raj gave me the contact info for the music manager, Phiona.

Someone's voice floated from the studio; Rajathrian's. They were probably speaking their words outloud as they typed something for Monty to read. My heart seized as I listened for words underlined by disappointment: that I was rude, that there was something wrong with me, that they weren't interested in talking to me anymore.

Should I use Shield again?

Monty appeared at the end of the hallway. "Tai, are you--"

"Let's go," I signed, holding out the door for him. I knew he thought he was doing a favour for me, but I couldn't thank him right now.

Fun Fact: According to Avery in one of their guest appearances on the Gender Rebels Podcast, Doc Marten shoes have both presumed men's and women's size on them.