The sky outside the airport is as gloomy as Luuk's mood. He's sitting at the corner of a café, far from prying eyes. His welling tears drop onto the table when he talks on the phone.

He puffs out the heaviness in his chest. "I'll let you know once I reach Manaus. I love you, Alex."

"Yes, you damn will. I love you too, baby brother."

-Part 1-

I groaned at the milieu of the airport as thousands of humans swarmed the terminal like fire ants. Better give them a wide berth. One could never be sure of their agendas. They could be concocting a plan to sell someone's kidney to a dialyzed Belarusian for all I knew.

I took my black mask off the table and looped it around my ears again.

Only an imprudent fool is never cautious. My vigilance hovered implacably at the back of my brain when I schlepped along the curtain wall, passing the group of research delegates.

Eleven of us were going to the expedition site. I was the Principal Investigator of the research in lieu of Norman, supervising his Ph.D. student and research assistant—who had become my burden; those burdens apparently felt as light as feathers, laughing and selfie-ing in front of the chocolate kiosk. Three forestry students were buying beverages at the café I just left. Dr. John, his medical assistant, and Dr. Chen from the School of Medicine tried to get me to engage in their conversation, but I decided that the talk about aero engine system was too humdrum for me, so I checked in my luggage.

I was about to head to the security when a voice stopped me in my tracks.

"Good dawn, Professor Smit."

Vapor warmed my face under the mask when I sighed.

Should I laugh? Forget it, too late.

My eyeballs had to glide upward to look at Professor Chaves's face. A small tattoo of a queen in a tutu marked the skin under his right ear. Chaves bore a resemblance to the Brazilian footballer, David Luiz—save for the hair. Though it annoyed me to admit it, he looked rather cool in his pompadour. Not everyone could pull it off. I tried, once. I looked like Brienne of Tarth.

He extended his stocky arm to me. I stared at it, feeling no urge to take it.

I hate countless things in life. One of them is handshakes.

Handshakes are kind of an uncanny ritual. My father's company had a tradition at the beginning of the year where everybody lined up and shook everyone else's hand. The social hand gripping wasn't gripping at all, and it started to feel surreal after awhile with the constant blur of faces going by and the different styles of handshakes (limp, firm, grabbing only the fingertips, not letting you get a good grip). And by the end, your hand felt gross, while you imagine the places they had touched.

But for the sake of civility, I took his hand briefly. "Morning."

As if on cue, the sun glinted off the metal rails of the curtain window.

"You good?" He gesticulated a circle around his mouth. "I can call John if you're not feeling well." His unibrow hoisted toward Dr. John who was rummaging through his backpack at the security.

"I'm healthier than a horse, so no, thanks," I said.

“Funny, cuz horses have a lot of underlying diseases.”

"Sure, Dr. Dolittle."

His laughter sounded like he needed a Heimlich maneuver. "I believe we haven't met yet. You left right after the final meeting. Aarón Chaves, Forestry."

"Yes, I saw you at the last meeting." I knew I would need to engage in a conversation with him at some point. He would be going for his own forestry research, on top of being our tracker for the expedition.

He gave me a once-over. "So at last, I get to meet the celebrity professor. You're damn popular in our department. You do look like one, especially with the mask getup." The nuance of jocularity laced his voice.

I laughed. "That's what they call me in Forestry? My students call me a pompous alien if not an asshole."

"Alien? If all aliens look like you, I'd love to blow in on your planet to find some chicks." He scratched his five o'clock shadow. "But how are you holdin' up? I'm sure this expedition is not what you bargained for. Nobody expected Norman to associate with a Brazilian drug cartel. He looked so... urbane."

"I knew a seventy-five-year-old woman with a knitted sweater that stank of mothballs who used to traffic children to Russia. You shouldn't expect someone to be a principled human in the first place."

He nodded. A small grin crooked his lips. "That's another way to view the world."

"That's the only way to view the world."

"Oh?" He was about to say something when his phone blared. "Excuse me." He shoved his hands in his black cargo pants pocket and craned his neck toward the entrance. He took the call and spoke in the smoothest Spanish dialect—one I hadn't heard for a long time. Peruvian. "¿Dónde estás? Estoy en la terminal A." [Where are you? I'm at terminal A.]

I took the opportunity to flee the scene.

"Oi! Estou aqui," [I'm here,] a petite man shouted in Portuguese a few steps away from me.

I couldn't see the face as he drank from his plastic cup, but his voice sounded familiar. The exotic karate sensei.

He passed me, then halted and looked at me. His eyes bulged behind his glasses, and he choked on his drink. A fountain of spluttering strawberry milkshake dribbled down my face as he coughed up the rest of the beverage into his tissues.

"Jona. Dios mío, ¿qué pasa?" Chaves asked him what was wrong.

I pulled off my wet mask and wiped my forehead. It felt as if Hell's door just opened and burned my face. I swallowed the heat in my chest together with a big gulp of air, and I could taste the strawberry on my tongue.

"How... What... Oh, sir, I'm so so sorry!" He shoved his cup into Chaves's hand and dabbed my milkshake-saturated shirt with his filthy tissue.

Lord! Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us... as we forgive those who trespass against us... Fuck it!

I pushed his hand away. "Stop it, kid."

He bowed over ninety degrees and apologized ad infinitum. His ears were redder than his bright shirt.

I glanced at the cynical-looking small crowd beside the check-in counter. A damn brat was pointing at me with skepticism on his round face. A distressing foreboding rose in my throat. I grabbed the sensei's arm. "Pode parar? Vá lá, estás a fazer-me fazer figura de ursa." [Can you stop? You're making me look bad here.]

He sprung up with wide eyes, probably didn't expect to hear me talking in Portuguese.

"Come here, querida." Chaves wiped his boyfriend's chin with the hem of his long sleeve.

Querida? What is he? A girl?

"Never mind, Aarón." The sensei glanced at my shirt and said, "Today it's me who made the mess. I'm so, so sorry."

"You know Professor Smit?" Chaves asked.

The sensei nodded and passed me a clean tissue.

"That's the thing with living in a census-designated place. You tend to know everyone in the damn county," I said, dabbing my shirt with it.

"El mundo es un pañuelo," [The world is as small as a handkerchief,] Chaves said to the sensei.

I wasn't familiar with the idiom, but contextually, I got the meaning. So I said, "Yes, the world is indeed as small as a handkerchief, but I'd appreciate it if you have a handkerchief with you right now. Jesus."

The sensei pulled my arm when I turned around to find a clothing store.

"Sir... Professor Smit, wait. I... Let me buy you a new shirt. Please." Before I could reject his offer, he said "See you in a while" to Chaves and dragged me toward a souvenir kiosk behind us.

I glanced at his slender fingers around my forearm. "Is this how martial arts instructors act all the time? I don't remember any of my jiu-jitsu instructors ever acted as touchy-feely as you."

He let me go as if my words were some galvanizing current running through my arm. He didn't say anything, but his nape flushed.

I stared at the kiosk he brought me to. "My mother would prune me out of the family tree if she saw me buy a cloth from this dime-store." I threw my wet mask into the wastebasket on my left. I picked the first shirt I found in my size (a preposterous black shirt with SAN FRANCISCO stamped on a coconut tree and a beach) and took out my wallet to pay.

He almost pushed my hand. "Let me, please." Three platinum cards tumbled onto his yellow sneakers when he tried to get one out of his wallet. "Kuso," he whispered and shoved another credit card into the store assistant's hand, who stifled a laugh.

I shot her a look that shut her augmented tits and picked up the cards.

"Oh, sir, don't pick them up!" He took the cards with two hands with a small bow.

Tsk. Japanese.

"You don't have to pay for me," I said, but not feeling guilty in the slightest. He owned the same credit cards as me. I read about him in the alumni magazine after his accident. He was twenty-four, yet he already had three combat gyms in Santa Clara County. He was a martial arts wunderkind.

"I insist."

I raised a shoulder. "Alright then. I guess you're well-heeled enough to pay for me."

"No problem. It's just a dime-store shirt." He passed me the paper bag with a simper.