THE STUDY ROOM, ONCE his sister’s growing up, has been modified for two. A yellow conjoined desk with a partition stands prominently, desk lamps, their spines curved like an egg sits on each side turned during the day. Ergonomic studying chairs, more for Oyin’s benefit than his, completes the setup.

It is either his house or hers. They’re studying together, side by side yet somehow divided. Going through coursework. This routine is as easy as breathing, yet not as simple. When they’re sitting at this desk in this room, all bets of playing are off. It’s seriousness and hard focus.

Focus being the key word, yet Park is far from focused. The tall window facing them is draped open, natural light streaming in and bathing the room in golden white. The walls are painted a calming yellow, the floorboards varnished gleaming wood. There’s space enough for three, but they’re forced together like sardines to bolster their competitive spirit.

It is easy for Park to crane his neck and peek over at how fast but efficient Oyin is going through her work, but that is who he’d been until three years ago. Oyin outgrew it before him, as she usually does things. She’s fast and efficient, swiping away distractions.

That is what he should have done. Swiped away. Not down. He shouldn’t be hiding his phone in his textbooks, periodically texting Owen. Owen made good on his promise and never texts him unrelated things but that rule doesn’t exist within Instagram DMs. Owen had sent a simple “hi” and a wave emoji. Easy to ignore, isn’t it?

Park, the fool, replied back and was immediately reeled in. Park begrudgingly accepts that Owen is easy to talk to. 

Owen talks about the things he finds interesting: the waters and how fascinating it is humans haven’t found the end because what if it doesn’t end? What if it goes deeper and deeper and the end is found but that isn’t the end but a new world and the exploration doesn’t end?

“What a poet,” Park had written back, chewing his cheek impatiently before Owen shoots back,

“A compliment from you? I’ll take it.”

Owen talks about the beach. How when he was seven, he had been tricked to find all the seashells at the beach. But whenever his stock kept piling and he was sure he had found every seashell possible, his mom would ask him if he had found everything because what if some seashells were buried so deep in the ground his little eyes couldn’t see them?

Owen later realised he had been tricked to give his parents breathing space after he took the seashells to school and sold everything. 

“A good endeavour, if I do say so,” Owen writes, ending it with dollar signs.

Belatedly, Park remembers how stressedOwen’s mom had looked, forgetting to ask the other day as he was preoccupied with guessing what the repercussions of giving Owen his number would be. Of being so unlike himself.

“I forgot to ask but how's your mom? Did she come down with anything?” Park types.

Bubbles appear but disappear. They reappear seconds later before a text comes through.

“We made sure she rested and we took over the bakery. And she is fine now. Thanks for asking.”

Park’s about to reply but feels eyes on him. He slams the textbook shut and turns to Oyin’s inquisitive eyes.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Nothing,” the lie comes out thicker than it should’ve.

Oyin narrows her eyes at him. “Are you looking at something indecent?”

“What?” he squeaks. Clearing his throat, Park raises his chin high. “No. No I'm not. I’m not you. Hentai.”

Oyin only rolls her eyes. “I’m a red-blooded woman—”

“Girl,” Park interjects.

“—and you should not have been with my phone that day.”

“There’s no embarrassing you.”

Deciding that it’s unnecessary to uncomfortably look over at his partition, Oyin reclines in her chair and slightly tips it back. “I’m pretty vanilla. What I’ve seen is nothing you haven’t seen.”

“Nope,” Park shakes his head. “I’m a good Catholic.”

“Pretty funny, if not ironic, to bring up Catholicism when you don’t practise it.”

“We say grace. We attend mass—”

Oyin snorts. “Only during Holy days.”

He ignores her. “We partake in Lent—”

“Is that a brag?”

“My point is,” Park stresses, “I’'m not into,” he gestures at her, “your red-blooded lifestyle.”

Oyin laughs mockingly. “Yeah, right. I’m sure you masturbate ten times a day.”

"No more than your twenty,” he shot back.

Oyin laughs so hard the chair wobbles. Seeing an opportunity, he kicks the chair, toppling her over. She softens her fall by rolling over. On her back, she curses, flips him the bird and jumps up.

Dusting herself off even though there’s no dirt on her—the house, this room has no speck of dust anywhere in sight. The air they breathe in is clean, purified and bleached.

Park glances at the window. Beyond the transparent glass are pitch pines, once green but changing to yellow, a few of them have turned completely brown, brittle and fallen—the leaves swept and thrown away. 

Their house is a landscape design of pine trees, lilacs and perennial flowers carefully cultivated by his mom. By his mom, he means her gardener. No stray leaves or weeds can ever be found on the ground. Mom isn’t paying a pretty penny for her compound to look bare and ill-fitted.

That’s the actual word mom used. Ill-fitted when last autumn, the gardener hadn’t been quick to tidy away dead leaves from their front yard. Ill-fitted and unprofessional.

Like what Park’s doing now. Chatting. Wasting time. Taking undeserved breaks. Oyin is positioned at the desk again. Forgotten about him and is looking ahead. It’s bad enough he wastes four hours in a week tutoring, he is doing what exactly?

Opening the textbook, Park glares at the offending phone. He unlocks the phone meaning to tell Owen off. To butcher their tutoring sessions to thirty minutes, cut him out of his life, block him but as the screen turns on and he unlocks it, his hasty thinking runs away from him.

“I FOUND IT!” Owen typed in blocks. “I WENT AROUND DIGGING HOPING THERE’S A KEEPSAKE AND THERE IS!”

Attached is a picture of a dainty looking seashell, small in Owen's open palm.

“My room’s a mess but it’s worth it.”

The seashell is brown with dotted cream—plain but transparent. It has a glass appearance. The flash of the camera bounces off Owen’s palm through the seashell and the dots are captured like tiny bulbs and the shell itself beach sand.

“Your very own Cinderella glass slipper,” Park sends off without thinking.

Owen’s reply is a minute late. “If only you’ll be my Prince Charming.”

Park drops the phone as calmly as his racing heart allows. He blinks once, twice before bowing his head, gripping a pencil in his fist. He stares at an equation, the numbers and words swirling in his vision.

His heart speeds. Gallops and drops in his stomach. At one point, Park gets to work, banishing any ill-fitted thoughts but it’s as if he’s looking at himself through the hole in the ceiling.

A giant Park on the roof peeking at him through the peeping hole wondering why this small, inconsequential boy can’t get a freckled smile out of his mind.