The Diary With The Rusted Clasp

The stagnant mix of house dust, old furniture polish and stubborn dampness of the monsoon season left a thick and heavy smell in the Saturday morning air. It seems to live in the walls of a Petaling Jaya double-storey house no matter how many windows you open. Hong Binng Yuan stood in his room, surveying the wreckage he’d made. Cardboard boxes littered the floor, bubble wrap tangled around his ankles, and twenty-three years of his life were laid out like a crime scene.

“Bro, you really keeping all this?”

Hong Jing Yi’s voice drifted from the study desk. She held up a Transformers action figure, its arm long lost to time. She raised an eyebrow so high that it practically vanished into her hairline.

“That’s Optimus Prime, lah. Have some respect.”

“He only has one prime directive now... go straight into the rubbish bin.”

Binng Yuan snorted, returning to his t-shirts. He was packing his suitcase with the same stressed, frantic energy that had defined his entire morning, sorting life into ‘keep’ and ‘leave’ piles.

Sunlight cut through the window in long, golden stripes, illuminating dust motes that hung suspended, blissfully unaware that in three days, everything in the room would be taped up and shipped 8720 kilometres away.

Downstairs, his mother’s radio crackled to life. Jing Yi had cranked the volume earlier, and the sound drifted up the stairs, filling the house with the familiar hum of Glide FM 91.3.

“...and that, listeners, is Mr and Mrs Tan’s fifty-eight-year love story!” The DJ’s voice was polished to a syrupy, cinematic sheen. “Married in 1956, just one year before Merdeka... can you imagine, falling in love while the whole country was falling in love with the idea of independence? Her family had money, his family didn’t have two cents to rub together, and everyone said it would never work. Years later, they’re still arguing about whose turn it is to walk the dog, take out the trash, or cook dinner... That, my friends, is what we call TRUE love. And for sharing this beautiful story, Uncle Tan, you have just won an all-expenses-paid trip to Langkawi, courtesy of our friends at Glide...”

“Ooooh, Langkawi!” Jing Yi yelled from the hallway, dropping the broken Transformer. “I want to win something from this show one day, mannnnnn. Imagine the luxury hampers, or dinner at KLCC, wahhhh.”

“You’re seventeen, what story are you going to tell them? ‘I have a crush on the boy who sells curry puffs outside school’ ?”

“Excuse me, Amirul is very good looking...”

“Pack the box, Jing Yi.”

She stuck her tongue out but complied, grumbling as she sorted through the graveyard of old notebooks, broken pens, and dusty Form 5 textbooks. The room was a disaster zone: bookshelves half-emptied, drawers pried loose, and the wardrobe vomiting clothes onto the floor. In the corner, the stand fan clicked in a rhythmic, six-year-old loop... a sound that would surely outlast his departure.

He glanced at the two suitcases by the door. That was it. That was the sum total of his migration. Ten days of clothes, his laptop, hard drives, his passport, and a handful of essential documents. Everything else... the boxes in the hallway, the clutter on his bed... was for the shipping company. It was surreal. A company in New Zealand was footing the bill for a full container, sparing no cost just to secure his arrival. Three weeks ago, he was a guy eating cold instant Maggi noodles at 2 a.m. while debugging legacy codes; now, grown men in Auckland were synchronizing their schedules to ensure he didn’t land in an empty apartment. They were terrified of losing him to a competitor.“If you go with anyone else, we lose you. We’d rather that didn’t happen.”

His new manager had said it over a video call with a smile that felt disarmingly sincere.

“Hey, Bro, what’s THIS?”

Binng Yuan didn’t like her tone. That specific inflection was the harbinger of trouble. He turned to find Jing Yi holding a slim, dark green notebook. It featured a rusted brass clasp and edges worn soft by time. On the cover, his own messy, seventeen-year-old handwriting was etched into the leather.

His stomach dropped. “No.”

“Ooooo,” she said, practically buzzing with that chaotic younger-sibling energy who had just struck gold.“Your diary. From 2011. SPM YEAR. Wah, Bro, you kept a DIARY?”

Her eyes lit up with an unholy glee as she unwrapped a particularly juicy piece of gossip.

“Give it back.” He moved toward her, but she darted away, clutching the book to her chest like she was guarding state secrets.

“Let’s see what teenage Binng Yuan was sooooo sad and dramatic about...”

“JING YI!”

She let out a high-pitched shriek and bolted. Her bare feet slapped rhythmically against the cool tiles as she took the stairs two at a time. He scrambled after her, clipping his shoulder against the doorframe. His heart hammered, an irrational reaction to a stack of old paper.

“Mum said don’t run on the stairs!” he shouted, a hypocritical protest as he lunged after her.

“Mum’s not HOMEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

They barreled through the living room, weaving around the dining table, which was buried under boxes of his mother’s fine china. The radio in the kitchen continued its broadcast, oblivious to the domestic crisis, as the DJ began reading sponsor messages for Valentine’s Day luxury hampers.

Jing Yi burst through the back door into the garden, breathless and hysterical. She skirted the curry leaf plant and the half-dead bougainvillea bush they constantly promised to discard.

The morning sun was punishing, and the air held the scent of wet earth and a neighbor’s early barbecue.

“Give it BACK, Jing Yi, I swear...”

“Say the magic word!”

“I will set your phone alarm for 4 a.m. every day for a WEEK...”

That slowed her down. She glanced back with a wicked grin, and in that split second of distraction, she caught her foot on the coiled garden hose. She stumbled, arms flailing, and the diary flew from her grip.

It hit the cement with a dull slap. The rusted brass clasp finally gave up the ghost and popped off.

The book skidded and flopped open, landing face-up in a patch of harsh sunlight.

For a moment, they were both still. Jing Yi remained on the ground, chest heaving; Binng Yuan stood frozen, his hand still suspended in the air.

Jing Yi looked down.

Taped to the center page was a crooked, yellowing photograph. It was a girl in their old school pinafore, her hair braided into one thick, heavy rope that reached her knees. She wasn’t smiling... it was a candid, likely captured for the school magazine during a debate or cultural event.

And underneath, in his own unmistakable, cringe-worthy handwriting:

Rajalakshimi...

The name was ringed by a series of wonky, lop-sided hearts drawn in blue ballpoint... the frantic, desperate scrawl of a seventeen-year-old boy who had no idea how to navigate the weight of his own feelings.

Jing Yi’s mouth fell open.

She stared at the photo, then up at him, then back at the page, as if verifying that reality hadn’t shifted.

“Broooooooo.” She sounded like she was choking on the air, her eyes wide with bewilderment. She pointed at the page, her other hand clutched to her chest as if she were suffering a cardiac event.

“Didn’t you... didn’t you HATE her????”

Binng Yuan didn’t say a word.

He simply stood there under the scorching sun, in the middle of his mother’s wilting garden, two weeks away from abandoning his entire history, staring at his own teenage ghost and a face he hadn’t allowed himself to think about for a very, very long time.

Glossary For International Readers

lah : a Malaysian/Singaporean English speech particle used for emphasis; it has no direct English translation, it gives sentences “flavor” and allows Malaysians to soften commands, express exasperation, or show agreement based on their intonation

double-storey house : a two-floor house; common Malaysian real estate term

Petaling Jaya (PJ) : a major city in Selangor, Malaysia, bordering Kuala Lumpur

Merdeka : Malay for “independence”; refers to Malaysia’s Independence Day, August 31, 1957

SPM (Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia) : Malaysia’s national high school leaving examination, taken around age 17

curry puffs : a fried or baked pastry snack filled with curried potato and meat/vegetables

Maggi (mee) : a popular instant noodle brand, used generically the way some cultures say “ramen”

wahhh : a Malaysian exclamation of amazement or awe

KLCC : Kuala Lumpur City Centre; home to the Petronas Twin Towers and a major shopping mall

Langkawi : a popular island resort destination off Malaysia’s northwest coast