four.

ngủ trên bê tông.

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Job hunting has you on a train to the shopping district. The ride is.. sandy, like there's a rock in your shoes or.. there's a game, ping pong, probably, playing in your head. The shopping district smells like rotting; something sinister in it's underbelly.

You don't care enough to spot the beggars two won when you can't decide if you can afford dinner and breakfast. Your ribs ache; maybe, maybe you should have sleep for dinner. You're well accustomed to it. Maybe tonight, it―you won't focus on that right now.. it's. Draining. You can only do so many computer programming jobs for well under price range― well under minimum wage, how are you supposed to live like this? You focus on tomorrow. It's all you can do.

Beg for jobs― you wander for hours and hours, your accent burns in their eyes, you slip too many words. They crowd around each other and hiss out wrong. At the end of the day you have three phone numbers and no mind for Korean. You would call your ba, tell him he doesn't need to send money anymore. That you'll find a way to cover rent and eat something―and school.

(You don't know where the time to sleep will go, but― you'll figure it out, you always do. It cuts your entire soul in half to crumple so prettily to the hands that beat you, still; you must survive. It's not for you, so your feelings have nothing to do with this. This mess is your fault anyway and you should cull the fire blistering in your bleeding heart. It makes you so irreversibly angry, though.

Just. The whole of it sparks the gasoline under your skin like a mother to flame. You would drag your death out, you will drag your death out so your parents can keep beating the dead horse of your ambition until it stops spitting out money.

What is prosperity to the rich? You are bloated with envy; so much so you bleed it, green.)

Your student card doesn't go this late so you―you have an idea to walk it. To follow the tracks and your phones' shitty GPS and find your way home, weary and half dead.

Food―the thought of it―makes your stomach roll up in knots. You haven't eaten all day and yet―you're a coward, always.

The train ride home is cold.

Your phone rings, you look at the contact. Sighing, you pick it up. "Hello, cousin."

"You're slurring," he sing-songs, if he's going to talk with his first mouth you are too, "how's my favorite baby?"

"Not a baby," you say, getting a look from the mother across from you, "I think I got a job, how're you?"

"Good." He says, "You didn't answer, before, I mean."

"Tired," you say half-witingly. "bet you don't even know what that feels like, hah? Som-sak? Hows Thailand treating you again?"  You hum, "D'ya like it, Som?"

"Actually―" you can hear his grin through the phone, "I'm going to Korea soon, get a job. To pay for bà's―for her medical bills, ya know, maybe to help cô and bác ơi ― "

"Ahh, where are you gonna be working, I changed schools."

"Oh―why?"

You don't say anything for a few seconds. Silence sinks terrible in the air. "I got into a fight."

"―hello? Why?"

"I―" your voice bleeds, "―he called them.. I couldn't. Som, he said that―" you don't focus, the doors close. The next stop is yours and you don't want to keep talking about this, about him, anyway. "I gotta go, I'll talk to you later."

".. Bye, baby cousin."

You feel your chest kill itself. "Bye, big cousin."

The night blares in your brain until the stars swirl and you can't seperate your hands from the air. What happened when you look at boundaries too close? They fade. Don't they? You know all about atoms and chemistry, about hydrogen fires and nuclear explosions― you know of tempture and it's measure of speed, you must be so fast. Burning up. The gasoline under your skin would light if you weren't underwater. Your teeth feel molten in your mouth.

The night swallows you whole.

_

"Get one of  your parents or guardians to sign the permission slips before Wednesday!" You teacher―or ssaem? You hate this language―says. "If you don't you can't come to the park!"

It's a free trip to some amusement park for second and third-years. You don't have a concrete job until next week, and the trip is on Friday, so you'll make do and forge a signature. Class skims by and you drift mockingly, finishing up an assignment and wracking around your empty stomach for change. Maybe you can get some street food, or ramen—or snag some lemongrass from the shopping district. Lemongrass chicken sounds so good right now, and you'll never make it as good as your mother, but you can just have her on call, telling you what to do. 

You miss cooking with her after school. 

You miss a lot of things. 

(You don't regret it, still. You don't think you ever will, not even with a gun to your head.)

Choi sits across from you. Her glasses glint under the florescent  lights. "You aren't hungry today?"

You grin as assuredly as you can muster, "Ah, no, my appetite's just gone."

A curl in your stomach almost has you clutching it, but you have utilities to pay. Lunch isn't in the budget until you have a job. It makes your mouth taste sour, like acid. Suddenly, lemongrass chicken doesn't sound all that appealing. You miss cheap fruits from before. 

Your bà's mango tree. Summer. Before everything went to shit and your ba needed to move here for work, and your mà followed him. Before your tongue was split in half. Before the plane ride that cost too much of a monthly budget they were too young and dumb to set. Your father with his doctorate and ambition thought that he would make it big. Neuroscience stringing through his hands—your mà thought that it would be enough, too.

"Still," she pushes her plate toward you, "you should eat something. You're really skinny."

"I—" you start, but you're so, so desperate. Your stomach twists in wanting and you comply to it's wishes, "—thanks, Choi."

(You try to savor it, you really do. Still, perhaps you are destined to devour everything in your path. Consumption bleeds black in your ever-beating chest.)

(With a heart full of violence and veins full of candor, you're made for misery.)

There's something teetering toward.. a destination― your head almost spins, but the taste of fish keeps you here. Maybe―maybe you deserve this kind of hell, maybe this is the hell in which you at one for the sins you've committed before you see born once again. Grief makes you who you are.

Always missing things when they're gone.

(Summer is so, so far away.)

"Hey, Huỳnh —" Choi starts, her glasses push down her nose, you can see the worried look in her eyes, "—are you, uh, going to the picnic?"

"There.." you try to think back to what the requirements are, "..there's no fee, right? I can't go if there is."

"It's free!" She sputters, "And there's, uhm, lunch.. included."

Her voice spins out, near the end. Some guy from the vocal department in staring. You could punch his mouth so hard that he teeth break, like that guys nose. Snap those glasses clean in half, but you can't afford the get in trouble and only cowards start fights over every little thing. Teeth like hot iron sit on your tongue. 

You taste blood trying to sit still, nails blunting into the flesh of your palm. Chewed down so far that your cuticles bleed. Only cowards start fights, you remind yourself. Gasoline may live under your skin but your don't need to spark at every little inconvenience. Only cowards start fights.

Guilty pleasures are not for the likes of you and if you can't afford to eat ramen on some off day than you definitely can't afford to pick a fight with someone who could destroy your whole family in one request. The cusp of your life resides on a tight wire of choices you are too young to make — not that it stops you. In middle school, when you had friends from the same houses as you; ones that had second tongues crowding one mouth, the one with an allowance from Singapura who had an affinity for cheap beer and cigarettes. He offered you one — a cigarette— once. The taste clouded your whole mouth. 

You spit out the smoke, and with concern riding the edges of his voice and his teeth in the wrong place he says are you alright? Are you—are you alright? You laughed then. You hated it, and you told him and he laughed too. 

Your names melded together and you were glue to each other's sides. Then he got rid of his accent. Then he got rid of his nerves, his will, his fears. Then, like any sequence, he got rid of you. He got rid of all of you—Limei, Hahn, Chuluun, and Svetlana — Lili, Haha, Chu, Lana, and you— Hawen. And you were thick as thieves and just as just as mischievous. 

Then Limei moved to America, and Hahn got into a better school, Chuluun moved back home to the countryside in Mongolia, and so he left you and Svetlana to the wayside. Then—then everything went to shit. You blew your fuse and then you blew it again. Still, you think. 

You don't regret it, you should have killed him. 

You do regret leaving Lana. You should have said something. You should have told her how you were feeling—that rage sparking on your gasoline veins. Salt on an open wound. You digress, "Thanks for the food." You murmur, and then you head to class. 

Choi waves goodbye to you and you smile something small and pathetic at her. 

You should quit reminiscing. It never does you any good.

_

The city is so thick with smog that since you have moved here you have not seen the stars once. You miss  them, from the land of summer and sweet, sweet fruit—nectar running down your chin and laughing so hard it cuts into your soul like glass. Constellations that were so visible in your little home with your family split into darkness and smoke. 

Night calls your name; a lullaby you barely remember the words to. 

"Ba," you murmur, "you don't have to worry. I'm fine."

"I know, I know, just—here, talk to your mà."

There's shuffling on the other side of the phone. You can picture your ba ; back hunched and hands rough. "Honey?"

"Mà?" You whisper, a half-wish, a plea. "Mà? Are you alright? Did you get sick?"

(What you don't say; please be okay, I miss you, I love you, I remember you, please stay in the kitchen with me at home cutting up vegetables and cooking noodles. Please kiss my forehead goodnight and tell me that when I grow up everything will be better. Please please please be okay.)

"Only a little. You know how I get, honey," she says, you try to ignore the home-deep ache in her voice, "I'll be fine, how's school? Did you make any friends? You're not in trouble, right?"

You think back to Lee Tae-sung, to the spit on your face and the crescendo in your chest rising an rising, a spike of blood pressure that made you clench your fish and burrow the urge to break his nose (you don't regret it. You should have killed him—), "No, I—I made a friend. She's, ah—in the fashion department. She's.. nice."

"Like that Lana? Are you going to bring a girl home? Oh honey—"

"No! Mà!"

"Alright, I'm just teasing!" She laughs, but it turns into a cough halfway through, you can see her wringing her hands around her sleeves. Frayed. She's falling apart, but it's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of break; you don't want to be three hours away when she shatters into a hundred pieces. A bottle of rượu gạo shattered on the floor when you are nine years old. A memory so blurry you can only stop and think to yourself that the light reflecting on the glass looked like a galaxy. You don't want to see her like that, broken along wooden panels. The remains of something bigger.

"Mà?" Your voice doesn't crack, you don't let it, "Mà?"

"Don't worry, don't worry." Her voice croons raspy on the other line. "Do good, do good."

"I will," you say, because a promise without the word is just a hope. Your tongue won't crawl around the words quite right—in the way she'd fit them in hers, "I will, I'll be good."

"My baby, my honey." She says, "You should be studying, here I am, distracting you. Say goodbye to your ba now, you're on speaker."

What she means: I love you, do good.

"Goodnight mà, ba." I love you, you don't say. I miss you, I remember you every day, you don't say. It sputters around in your mouth like a song you don't know the words too, again. You're reminded of fruit in the sweltering sun, and laughing so, so loudly even when it gets lost in the wind. 

"Goodnight, honey."

_

"Huỳnh!" Park Hyung-Seok calls out to you, "Hey, wanna walk home together?"

You think to him, to all the pretty people that have faked a smile and slithered up to you with the promise of friendship. To Dawin, no accents, and how your words never seem right in this place. You think: never again, and you smile.

"I don't want to be friends," you say cheerily, face stretched awkwardly,"please leave me alone."

There's a gap, possibly, in the wedge where you're done speaking and he registers. The response gets all caught up in his mouth, this, you realize, is probably the first time he has ever been rejected. How, then, does he smile like that? So, so sadly.

You turn, afraid that if you look too long it will morph into your bathroom mirror. That if you look too long it will break apart into a facsimile of the stars. You turn away fast, because if you did any slower— you think he might see the gasoline flickering under your skin like a live wire. He calls out, garbled, "Huỳnh—"

You run. You're always running, you think, when you are not fighting. Fight or flight—you know to your very core that you are always in danger. "Just—leave me alone!"

A bomb sets off in your throat, you don't cry though. Crying, too, is for cowards. You want so badly to be brave that you scrape weakness off of yourself like clothing; bare in the eyes of your parents. Pride whispers under their skin like — 

"Huỳnh," he says, breath bursting in his lungs, "it's—are you alright—is there. Did I do something? I'm sorry—"

Your teeth taste sour in your mouth. Like acid. Like bile. "I said—go away. Fuck off and leave me alone, I hate you Dawin—" 

This is a memory that stays in your skin like sickness—something tar-like and bruised and bleeding.  Salt in an open wound, wasted on the floor. If you could sell his soul you'd give it for free; you hate hate, hate—

The floor is twisting around you. Skirting away and running to your shitty apartment scrapes at your throat. Maybe you are a coward in the end, but your conform to your selfish cowardice like a frog to water; you skim under it. A full body rush— you breathe like a landline when you lock the door tight  behind you. That is to say you breathe tenderly, softly, like anything could set you off. You're like your cousin in that way. Somsak would laugh if you said that — you and me, we are good-tempered — but you know in the deep end of your chest that rage spills like blood in your veins.

Like it belongs there. Gasoline under your skin. 

It's the same color as your eyes; the same color as your soul. Murky with rage and grief and things that don't belong in a body that's more rib that skin. You stretch like the fever end of apple-skin that bà used to cut for you. Summer—that summer, way back when. When you barely reached your fathers bowlegged thighs. If you close your eyes you see it in watercolor. Broad, loose strokes that only capture the idea of a childhood, rather than one in actuality. Thin like that paint. Thin like bone. Thinner than the girls in magazines that you know have to weigh less than fifty kilo's. Thinner than you, even. As thin as your patience. 

(You don't regret it. You don't, you swear.)

You can taste the acid, the salt, the mercury in the air and you heave it out. You think of sweltering heat and laughter and gap-tooth grins. Victory back then was catching the biggest beetle before your parents called you for dinner. When you get like this you like to pretend you're still home in the land of eternal summer—

That you're waiting inside, because it was raining today and Somsak got sick again, like he always does when he travels for the summer. That bà offered you oranges, pealed and sectioned off but you were being a brat and said that you didn't like them because they're too sour! You pretend—and you think you've gotten pretty good at it all things considered—that yesterday your ba graduated from his university — one in the big city so far away from you. Tomorrow you're going to Korea so tomorrow things will be different; not today, though.

 Today is the same as every summer, even if the house is falling into itself and there's a hole in the bottom since bà got sick and bugs keep crawling in. Today is the same even with the mold hanging in the corner of the ceiling—no maintenance in this house since bà got sick. Today is the same, even if you're living through the coldest summer you ever have. Even if the fruit is so expensive it puts a hole in your wallet when you look at mangoes and feel something— even if you shatter your resolve and starve for the sliver of a memory. All watercolor. 

You look at the floor. Your breathing evens out. 

You can smell the fumes of a gasoline flame, but it's alright. It's probably long blown out, anyway.