This story tells the different lives of four individuals in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, however, same time my story shows some intervals from one character to another. Most important, it brings out the character to speak of culture, location and time. Though not much about the past or anything to do with history, it commemorates Malaysia national day on the August 30^th.

On this fertile soil surrounded not ounces of passion busting with dullness but a spirit united everything around them. The air began to push boundaries.

August 16^th, 2019. Hanif, a young chap spoke with a soft optimism in whatever drew attraction to his charisma knew he had to work on this quickly. He sat up early to work out some problems on few more pages. He was running a travel magazine – ‘Time Flies’. It wasn’t just chasing the advertisement columns down. There was more to it.

Near lunch he had plenty of dog-eared pages looking great that needed cleaning, in his own terms. For they were meeting the world differently this season and perhaps ending up more contracts. From what the secretaries had told him last night he needed to block out some nice columns till end of this year. Excited was certain. Last night few more advertisement deals were signed. He put down his glasses and did nothing but slouched into his long sofa near the open window. Arms enclosed his ears and he fondled his hair behind.

He stood up and walked out the balcony a sort of uncertain frown arched about. Holding a cup of black coffee in one hand and made a loud sound on his feet. The second scene greeted him, no noise but just a natural page of white and blue. Some slow moving beautiful soft crayon-like clouds acted if no audience were ever there. Sipping quietly, he was thinking again on the few more clients who made comments on the advertisements.

In his oversized pyjamas and the sweat around his thighs he was assuming the sun would chase after him later. Just some overworked thoughts tiring him made him uneasy.

Two needles pointed up so coherent upward to the heaven waiting for different impulses to emblem. Still, they looked astounding from afar. One of the world’s tallest buildings, watching over the cosmopolitan city with a pious eye, the same time, other cultural ornaments around it reflected its inseparable, indigenous and modernity to the cultivated land. Infrastructure around submitted to the strength of old and new and simply by staring completely without dreaming the overrated stunning view built another friendship. It was enriching enough to breathe like Hanif and his hair slapping on his cheeks like radar from unknown sources.

Though living in the city had always been a dream. Coming from a rural town Kelantan, these captivating small ornamentation lifted up the mist within his mild confusion – what city dwellers could be. After ten years of struggling, these bustling scenes, building monuments so intrepid he admired himself more. However small those tiny human beings along the street below, they looked like moving LEGOLAND characters. He felt like shifting them around and building another apartment for them. He pointed his fingers outward and started toying them. Vegging and flexing himself out at the balcony, second light shimmered casting over orange behind the white and blue very quickly exuding a handsome spell across the fertile land. Some of their lower parts cast over their silhouette to one end stretching so far the passengers ambulation spurred from mini gossips to what tomorrow would come yet forming no meaning, for him.

The old flats and houses on the lower platforms unveiled its virtues extended. Enacted during times when the city was still encircled with green and tough brown trees. Torn apart between lines of the past and present. In older days, tales from beginning tended to the sorrow and mild dysfunction and presented its natural assimilation today.

He walked back in still uncertainty and sat down in the same spot.

He wrote and drew another scenery twice better than the ones earlier on another page. The northern sun climbed so high and almost didn’t change the fact about yesterday. It marked a spot across the heads of the late bloomers. He was the first hand to experience and last to devour the sip closing another chapter for the day. Now, newer buildings opened up more opportunities for the young and old, he was overjoy not smiling. No, he didn’t feel like it. Quietly, he wrote about his childhood on another sketch of paper. For this season was about hometowns.

Yes. Everything below the crest reflected his direction in this surge of business. Another new opening to the world.

Suddenly his phone rang from the side table. It was his secretary, Alice tan. After a couple of words he gobbled down and swallowed hard.

“So, this is fixed and they want to publish it on the next issue? Confirm? The three in Australia?” She said something over and he typed in a couple of sentences stared onto the page for a while and said, “alright, I’ll book myself a night flight - tonight.”

Maybe just another flight.

On the other further end of the city near the airport a younger couple who may find noises a norm lived quite similar however married.

Nazadah was outside watering her plants.

“You’re up early. Aren’t you on night shift?” Asked Ali. Yawning so loud birds were afraid from a distance. Hugging and rubbing his side elbows to ignore his surroundings.

“Well, I like to get up and see what I can do for the house owners,” she said, smiling avoiding his changing weird expression. And she added, “today.”

A practice she usually did.

“Breakfast, love?” He asked.

“It’s in the kitchen, Nasi Lemak, chicken drumstick, and scrambled eggs, the usual ones. You can have some English Breakfast. Your favourite,” her back facing him. How in the world she could have lied better that she had prepared those. Thanks to the breakfast store lady seller across the neighbourhood. She saved her day.

“Let’s tuck in after morning prayers,” he said.

Two Siamese cats strolled by looked up and gently thrust their soft well-balanced heads against him. Alluring and meowing in a childlike manner. “Hey there, Sony girls, how’s your day?” He bent down and patted their necks, scratched one of them and pulled her tail. They may appear courageous whenever an airplane flew past above the rooftop. It wasn’t the noise they fled like Spiderman. It was that someone was watching their silliness.

For both, they had somehow got used to the sounds and bustling lifestyles of the airport near the housing area. Nazadah worked as a customer service officer at the reception counter and signed up her life to a twenty-four-hour shift job. Not something she could complain about. She loved everything that she watched from behind. Those different people who looked like celebrities but sometimes they had only a passport and complaints in them. That only made her laugh in the toilet all the time – alone.

While her husband, a military soldier committed often returned home in sixes and sevens. To both them, unnoticeably it was just part and parcel of being in the hums of professionals. Weird shifts, busy lifestyles merely meant they were advancing from being a working individual to someone progressive. No wonder the cats had inherited their differences perhaps including their own, they persevered.

Apart from their own differences amid other than mortal lives, they enjoyed each other company. Later they set out to a place different from home.

After breakfast, they had more food than those youngsters. Again downing some more coffee and chewing doughnuts in Pavillion Mall, they did the usual - buy some books, music and drawing blocks. It was not anomalous they would pick up different authors, singers, movies, and colors. To talk about it, they had to face it, though age difference was just one or two years away, Nazadah twenty four, Ali twenty five - men are from Mars, and women from Pluto remained true.

Two hours ago before choosing products from the mall, some surprises were meant for couples at home.

She believed.

“Love, is water boiled?”

“Yes, in the pot, have a look next to the kettle.”

“Tea for you?”

“No, coffee.”

“Coffee? I thought English Breakfast?”

“Nope. Because I like real hot …. Coffee.”

Lifting up the food cover lid, “they look really delicious, what’s the occasion?”

“Well, have a look at this and you may want to guess,” handing out a Breguet watch and looked away shyly.

“Oh my, this is the world’s most expensive watch. Have I just returned from a war or something.”

“Let’s just say you have just woken up from a coma.”

She turned and walked towards the calendar and pointed at the circled date.

“Oh wow! Time flies, isn’t it?”

“And to complement your temporary memory loss, we’re watching a movie this afternoon.”

On the opposite side of the city far end near the port, Subang Jaya, these young men readied to kick their college studies into a world goal. A month before was all about “Goal-Setting”.

“Goal!” Screamed Lee and Surangi almost breaking anything around as they jumped up and down on their seats in the twenty-four-hour restaurant. They joined in the full force energy surrounding them. They had been on the world cup for a few nights now nonetheless. Manchester didn’t seem to disappoint them each night. Drinking tea and coffee cup after another. They had their night-outs just the same as anybody else around them. Same topic on varying themes.

Two good friends in their third year American Degree Program would soon be studying for a year in the University of Michigan. Around this time, they hadn’t had the time to discuss about their applications and everything seemed to be ‘later-I’ll-do-it’. Lee had not been himself very much for he wasn’t letting go of Sally – his dog.

This procrastination lasted for a month.

Just last night, Lee over the phone told Surangi mumbling and joking about how he could turn mosquitoes into butterflies. Everything seemed to heat up so quickly during the world cup. He said in all different types of sentences to one meaning – he couldn’t breathe. From going around places to search for clothes, bags, shoes and whatever that was required. He was still stuck in his lungs and all the way up to his sentences.

Tonight, all four of them on different destinations would be stopping at the airport. Almost ready for anything that otherwise insipid. They got ready earlier than anybody else. Late in the afternoon however small talks over their phones drove them nearer. The road towards the ending or the beginning seemed to be raving another new adventure.

Flight at eleven before midnight had rendered them to see another life one would have only dreamed of.

As soon as one of them gave the taxi fare and got out from the vehicle. Lee and Surangi knocked onto Hanif’s briefcase. Before they could apologise, Lee’s wallet fell off and landed onto Nazadah’s palm. Almost as if the conversation was about anything apart from their flights. They nodded and agreed they would be missing home. They departed in different directions. Something caught Nazadah’s eyes. Hanif was wearing the same watch as Ali. Home then though near she believed she would be missing twice harder than anyone of them.

KC's story list and biography

Book Case

Home Page

The Preservation Foundation, Inc., A Nonprofit Book Publisher