Chapter 1
Once upon a time, there was a boy who liked to see patterns in everything.
He lived in a clockwork fashion, in a design he had carefully set out so he could follow it with all the ease in the world. Every morning, the alarm on his phone would ring at exactly 8:20 and he would hit snooze and sleep for ten more minutes, then the alarm would ring again at 8:30 and he would turn it off and get out of bed. He would take a shower, brush his teeth, comb his hair, grab the first shirt on top of his pile of clean shirts, check the pants he wore the day before if they were still clean enough, get dressed, grab his backpack, and leave the house for work.
He would take the jeepney, 17B or 17C if he could manage it, because he liked the number 17 and he thought that if numbers had feelings, 17 must feel like the unloved middle child between sweet 16 and whatever 18 was that made it such a big deal for girls. Of course, there were some days he had to settle for 4B or 4C instead, but that was all right, too, since four was a good, solid number. Then he would laugh to himself because he knew these were silly thoughts, but he liked to think about them anyway. They were his silly thoughts, his little secrets, and he liked keeping them to himself.
His work never changed and he did the same things every day, but he honestly didn’t mind. After arriving in his office, he would nod to familiar faces, go to the pantry, get some coffee and biscuits, sit down at his desk, then turn on his computer and begin working. He enjoyed the repetition, the routine, the patterns that had etched their clean lines into his brain so strongly that every muscle in his body could move in perfect synchrony and he could simply marvel at how A would lead to B then B would produce C. It was a kind of art, in his opinion, and he created it every day.
He would have never said he was lonely.
Then one day, before he sat down to work, he saw that there was a burger on his desk.
“Hey!” The other person who shared the same desk space, the new guy he had been quickly introduced to just a few weeks ago before he promptly forgot the guy’s name, was smiling at him. “So, I bought a burger from Angel’s and they were buy one, take one, and I thought maybe you might like to have one. I hope it’s okay?”
“Uhm,” his mind floundered for words until he finally managed to say, “Thanks, but I’m not really hungry right now.” It was a lie, but it felt like the right thing to say in this instance.
“Oh, okay.” The other guy was still smiling, but his smile didn’t have the same openness it had earlier. “I’ll see if anyone else wants it.” He picked up the burger slowly. “You sure you’re not hungry? You could maybe eat it later?”
“It’s fine, really. You should give it to somebody else.” He quickly sat down and fixed his gaze on his computer until he was sure the other guy had turned to his own work.
It was strange. He felt strange. That was the first time in years that his routine had been interrupted and it was all because of such a silly thing. But, because it was a silly thing, he quickly put it out of his mind as he went about his usual tasks. He kept himself busy over the next few hours, and he was fully focused on his work until his fingers suddenly faltered while he was typing an email.
Alexander. Alex. That was the guy’s name. He really should remember that next time.
And there definitely was a next time. Except Alexander (“You can just call me Alex, you know!“) didn’t bring an extra burger the next time and instead tried to convince him to eat something weird that he swore was part of a chicken.
“What exactly is it?”
“It’s chicken proven, bai. It’s delicious, I swear!”
Then, there was another time.
“I am not eating pig brains!”
“You are such a killjoy! Tuslob buwa is life!”
And yet another time.
“What do you mean you’ve never eaten balut?!”
Soon, their conversation about all the things he had never eaten continued online when Alex somehow tracked down the Facebook account he only kept as a courtesy to his family, added him as a friend (which he only accepted out of politeness, really), and began spamming him pictures of food, links to food blogs, and neverending suggestions.
He tolerated it all because: A) Alex was just being friendly; B) he really wasn’t such a bad guy to be friends with; and C), well, the food pics did look delicious. Before he knew it, their semi-awkward (on his part) food-based (on Alex’s part) friendship had become a part of his daily pattern, a newly made point that reached out and connected to all the other familiar points of his life, so checking his phone for a new message became a fluid series of movements that felt completely natural and completely necessary throughout the day.
But he should have remembered one thing about patterns: something will always come along to mess them up.
He was thinking about this while trying not to grimace at the vocal stylings of Dave from IT during the office’s Friday Karaoke Night, a weekly event that he had carefully and successfully avoided attending for the past two years until Alex had somehow convinced him to be present for this one.
“You hate this so much, don’t you?” Alex grinned at him. His friend looked like he had been enjoying a little too much of the free-flowing beer, judging by the slight flush on his face.
“No, I’m having the time of my life,” he drawled.
Alex laughed. “Come on. Let’s go.”
He thought they were going to leave when Alex led him out through the fire exit, but the other guy stopped halfway down the stairs and lit up a cigarette.
“You know you’re not supposed to smoke here,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, I know.” Alex leaned back against the wall, giving him a strangely intense look that made him uncomfortable. “You want me to stop smoking this?” he asked.
He shrugged. “You can do whatever you want, man.”
“Can I?”
For a second, he felt confused. There was something in Alex’s expression that was — it felt like...
Alex slowly reached out and took his hand.
It felt like he had suddenly stopped breathing. All he could do was stare at their hands clasped together. Alex’s hand was paler than his, but its texture felt rougher. It felt warmer, too, and he continued to study it in sudden, consuming fascination until he realized that they were now standing so much closer and —
“What the fuck?!” he snarled, jumping back like he had been scalded.
Alex looked scared by his reaction, but he still tried to reach out. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. It doesn’t mean anything, I swear!”
He didn’t know what to say. He wanted to scream at his friend, accuse him of terrible things, ask him what he thought he was doing, what was going on, but all he finally managed to choke out was, “Don’t ever come near me again.”
He got home without remembering how he managed to do it. His phone had kept ringing and buzzing with missed calls and messages the whole time, but he ignored them all. He felt too overwhelmed, like he was drowning, like the air had turned to stone and it was bearing down on his head.
Why? Why did Alex do that? What was he trying to do? Was it all some kind of joke? He didn’t know what to think, what to feel. He spent the whole weekend in a daze, just lying in bed and trying to make sense out of everything. What had happened to the patterns? What had happened to all the things he was so sure about? What did it all mean?
When he came back to work on Monday, Alex didn’t show up.
Alex didn’t show up on Tuesday, either, and he finally got the courage to check his messages.
There were no food pics, no suggestions for new blogs to check out, no memes. Just Alex apologizing. Explaining. Confessing. It took some time but, finally, he saw a new pattern. It all made sense now.
He knew exactly what he wanted to say. He practiced it several times in his head. He was still muttering to himself while walking to work, trying to get the words right when his concentration was interrupted by the sight of people clustered around something — odd.
One by one, his mind picked out the details of the scene before him. There was smoke, and a car with a busted hood. A motorcycle that looked like a giant hand had crumpled it in anger and tossed it carelessly aside. Blood. A pale hand. Two burgers.
There was a pattern there. Maybe someday, he would make sense of it.
