9:01 PM – Rooftop, Blossom Street

The rooftop air tasted like burnt dust and leftover rain.
The kind of night where sweat doesn't cool — it just settles.
The sky was stuck between purple and black.
No stars. Just clouds that glowed from city light like ghosts that couldn't leave.

Talia sat close, but not touching.
We were side by side like strangers on a train seat that never moved.
Her second cigarette glowed between two fingers.
She smoked like she was writing something with her mouth.

I drank the last of my beer — warm, flat, fizzy in the wrong way.

She looked over, slow.

  “So... what’s your family name?”

I wiped my lips with the back of my hand.
Didn’t look at her.

  “Don’t have one.”

  “What?”

She turned to me fully now, one leg tucked under the other.

  “Wait. You’re not Chinese?”

I tilted my head.
Let her stare.

She narrowed her eyes.

  “Okay... then Vietnamese?”
  “Thai?”
  “You’ve got the cheeks for Cambodian—no, maybe Korean?”
  “Are you half-Japanese?”

She wasn’t guessing to offend me.
She was trying to solve a puzzle.

  “Nope.”

  “Then what?”

  “Indonesian.”

She blinked.

Actually blinked.
Like I’d short-circuited her entire world map.

  “Oh. Bali!”

She grinned — like she'd found a hidden level in a video game.

  “I went there when I was like... ten?
  My mom cried at the sunset.
  I cried because I dropped my mango ice cream.”

I laughed.

Not because it was funny.

Because I didn’t know what else to do with that sentence.

  “You been?”

I shook my head.

  “Grew up in Jakarta. Never made it to Bali.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

Bona… isn’t it weird how foreigners see more of our country than we do?

She remembers sunsets and spas.
I remember floods, traffic, and my mom crying at the kitchen table.

She lost ice cream.
I lost sleep.

___________________________________________________________________

9:14 PM – Same rooftop, air heavier

Her cigarette burned lower.
The tip bright against her lips.
Her mouth was made for slow motion.

She sighed.

  “Well, that explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  “You’re the first Asian girl I’ve met here whose accent I can’t place.”

She raised her bottle.

  “And that’s hot.”

I rolled my eyes, but my ears burned.

She looked at my beer — half-empty, forgotten on the floor.

  “You done with that?”

I shrugged.

She picked it up.
Drank the last gulp without asking.
Wrinkled her nose.

  “Tragic. You can’t celebrate cultural mystery with this piss.”

  “Celebrate what, exactly?”

     “You.”
    “That you exist.
  That I’m not alone on this damn rooftop.
  That for once, First time I meet an Asian girl here who’s not from Singapore or the Mainland.”

She stood up.

The wind caught her shirt, lifted the hem just slightly.
Her stomach was smooth. Bare.
She didn’t fix it.

  “Come to my room. I have better stuff.”

I hesitated.

She raised an eyebrow.

  “Don’t overthink it.
  We’re drinking. Not eloping.”

  “Why me?”

She stepped closer.

  “Because you don’t look like Jakarta.”

  “And that matters?”

  “No.
  But it makes me curious.”

__________________________________________________________________

9:18 PM – Still rooftop

I stayed seated.
She didn’t move away.

The cigarette in her fingers trembled a little.
Wind maybe.
Or not.

  “My surname’s Lin.
  Dad’s Singaporean.
  Mom’s second-gen Chinese-American.
  I speak bad Mandarin and worse Hokkien.
  But I can fake fluency when I need to impress my grandmother.”

  “Does it work?”

  “She still thinks I’m going to marry a doctor.”

I snorted.

  “Girls like me aren’t supposed to smoke on rooftops,” she added.
  “We’re supposed to take the MCAT.
  Date quietly.
  Wear white on wedding day.
  And never — ever — bring home a girl.”

My breath caught.

She noticed.

Didn’t say anything.

Just finished her cigarette.

Bona…

I don’t know if she’s flirting.
Or confessing.
Or both.

But I didn’t come here to be safe.
And she didn’t invite me to be still.

______________________________________________________________

9:24 PM – Rooftop cracks and soft sirens below

She extended her hand.

Palm open.
Confident.
Like she was claiming something.

       “Come on. Let’s drink to not being what people expect.”

  “You’re really dragging me into your room just for that?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.
  I just don’t like drinking alone.”

She didn’t let go of my hand.

Her fingers were dry. Warm.

Firmer than they needed to be.

I stood slowly.
The rooftop spun just a little — maybe from the beer, maybe from her.

She walked ahead.

Still holding me.

Not like a dance.

More like a direction.

Bona...

I’m following a girl I don’t know into a room I’ve never been in
to drink something I might not like
because she told me to.

And somehow, I feel more alive now than I did in my whole past year.

To be continued…