Fraser City, October 2019

On cold, October nights like this, where the rain seemed never-ending and the allure of a warm summer seemed to grow with each passing day, Alexander Alcantara wished he was curled up in his bed, under the warm covers of his blanket. But fresh out of his seventeenth birthday, his father had him work a shift at the café; a cruel birthday gift, Alexander thought.

Alexander mopped the raindrops that had been left behind on the hardwood floor of the café, an hourly ritual typical for a winter’s day. His childhood friend, Wendy Chen, worked diligently around the corner, wiping down the counter. Within ten minutes of closing, many of the customers had left. Only the two of them were left at the Alexander’s Baking Co., his father’s café.

“What do you think, Xander?” Wendy asked, snapping Alexander out of his thoughts; he turned around to face her. Having lost track of time, Alexander hadn’t heard her. And from the confused look on his face, Wendy noticed and sighed. “Do you think someone’s gonna come and buy the last Perfectly Perfect Pandan Cake, Xander?” 

There was something about the way her tongue rolled awkwardly at “perfectly perfect” that made him chuckle. They knew how odd the name of this particular cake was and of course had many questions for whoever named it. It was a concern Alexander brought forth to his father, the head baker, for even his Uncle Javier wanted to have the name changed. But his father didn’t budge, and his uncle begrudgingly let him have it.

Ring, ring, ring! 

The sound of windchimes rang through the air. As a gust of wind blew through the open door, a man ran inside, short of breath. Wendy turned to greet the customer, while Alexander grimaced at the raindrops the customer’s umbrella left throughout the floor.

“Excuse me, are there any cakes left over?” the customer asked, his voice breaking out in wheezes. Noticing the pale blue scrubs the man wore underneath his jacket, Alexander figured he was probably a nurse from Fraser City General Hospital across the street.

“We do have the last Perfectly, Perfect Pandan Cake available,” Wendy said. The man grew some kind of look on his face as he heard the peculiar name; not some confused look Alexander would have expected. As far as Alexander could tell, it looked to be something in between grief and nostalgia.

“That’s a strange name, huh,” the man said, tapping his credit card onto the reader. “Though it does bring back memories for me. Who came up with the name?” Alexander and Wendy exchanged a confused look.

“From what my dad, ahem, the head baker, told me,” Alexander said, scratching the back of his neck. “An old friend suggested it the first time he made the cake.” Alexander crossed his arms as the customer looked at the cake with a purposeful gaze. “Though I’ve heard from my uncle, my dad’s ex came up with it,” he chuckled.

“The name’s too corny to have come from Mr. Alcantara, I think,” Wendy chimed in.

“Mr. Alcantara?” the customer repeated hesitantly, and Alexander nodded. “Your father… the head baker?” and Alexander nodded again, exchanging yet another confused look with Wendy as she put the cake in the box.

The customer set his wallet down on the table. He looked at Alexander, the kind of look that seemed to be searching for something, and Alexander noticed his knuckles had gone white from gripping the mop handle a little too tightly. The man’s eyes scanned over Alexander’s body. 

Alexander crumbled under his gaze, immobilized by the man’s prolonged stare. Whatever the deal with this man was, Alexander found himself consumed more and more by the growing sense of nervousness in his stomach.

Alexander found himself observing the strange man in turn. Alexander figured that underneath his baggy scrubs, the man had a slender frame, with his delicate, yet slightly wrinkled face, unobstructed by his brown, slightly disheveled hair. The man appeared to be well into his forties.

As the man stared even further into Alexander’s eyes, he began to tear up. Then, all too suddenly, Alexander felt himself getting pulled into a tight embrace; as if time stood still. Alexander flinched at the contact; the feeling of a perfect stranger enveloping him in an embrace. Then, just as quickly, as if the man had some kind of realization, the man let go.

The man held his hands close to his body, as if to not cross that boundary again.

“I’m sorry,” the man said, voice cracking. “I’m so sorry, it’s just…” He shook his head, unable to finish the sentence.

“Sir, that’s enough,” Wendy interrupted the man as she held the packaged cake in front of him. The man turned toward Wendy, who shot him a stern look while maintaining a fixed composure. The man, mortified upon realizing what he had done, stepped away from Alexander. Yet the fierceness in Wendy’s glare had not been extinguished yet.

“Ah, sorry,” the man stuttered, red-faced, as he yanked the cake out of Wendy’s hands and bolted out the door into the rainy street outside.

“Wait, your wallet!” Wendy yelled out as the man had rushed out the door. She took the wallet and ran out of the café straight toward the sidewalk, but any trace of the man had faded into the crowds of passersby. 

With an exasperated sigh, she turned around and locked the door, before making her way toward Alexander, who was shaken by what had just happened. All he could say was, “What the hell was that?”

His mind began to clear up, but the more he tried to think of what just happened and why, more questions began to surface. As much as he wanted to consider the strange experience something to brush off eventually, he nevertheless couldn’t help himself from thinking about the man and what his father had to do with him. Perhaps they were acquaintances from the past, Alexander thought. Perhaps they had a falling out many years ago and hadn’t spoken a word to each other since then. Perhaps this was all part of a whole complicated mess his father kept hush, and by pure chance, he got dragged into it.

“Hey, Xander, let me look for his name or something,” Alexander heard Wendy say from afar. Cut short from his thoughts, Alexander was surprised to find that Wendy had gone back behind the counter, fiddling with the customer’s wallet. He gave her a disapproving look. 

“Hey, let’s not go through the dude’s stuff!” Alexander said, making his way over to Wendy. 

Just as Wendy continued to sift through the many cards the man had haphazardly stuffed into the credit card slots, Alexander firmly grabbed her shoulder with one hand and tried to grab the wallet with the other. The wallet slipped out of her hands, falling toward the floor below.

As the wallet bounced off the ground, a small, wallet-sized photograph slipped out and laid face up. While Wendy quickly snatched the wallet back from the ground, Alexander picked the photo up from the ground and gave it a closer look. 

The photo itself was well-kept; neither fold nor mark could be seen. The image itself was of two men side-by-side, the shorter, more relaxed one wrapping his arm tightly around the taller one, who stood upright with a slight blush on his cheeks. Alexander could tell the shorter, confident looking one was the man from just now. But for the taller man who had stood there stiffly, Alexander saw a familiar face.

Observing the photo further, Alexander noticed a message on the other side of the photo, carefully handwritten in black ink: “I have always loved you, Iñigo.”

“Dad?” was all Alexander could mutter. 

The idea of seeing the two in love didn’t particularly trouble him. But when by mere chance he saw his father, the same man who stood by his mother with sincere devotion for as long as she was alive, in the arms of this other man Alexander just met, Alexander began to question if this was something he was never meant to know.

“Xander…” Wendy placed her hand on his shoulder, but Alexander continued to stare at the photo in his hands, lost in thought.

Letting go of Alexander, Wendy continued to rummage through the man’s wallet and found his driver’s licence. Looking at the photo, she saw how, unlike in the photograph with Alexander’s father, the look in the man’s eyes showed no shine. She muttered to herself the name written on the licence: Kenji Yamashita.

“Xander,” she called out to him a little louder, pulling Alexander out of his thoughts. “I can close up shop,” she continued, placing the driver’s licence back into its sleeve before placing the wallet in Alexander’s hands. “Can you take Mr. Yamashita’s wallet, bring it up to your father, and talk?” Alexander took one look at the wallet, feeling the heaviness in his chest, before nodding yes. 

Wendy patted his back before turning around to finish their closing duties. With Mr. Yamashita’s wallet in hand, Alexander made his way into the kitchen to look for his father, to no avail.

Sighing to himself, Alexander looked down at the photograph again and began to think, not just of the relationship his father had with Mr. Yamashita, but of the man’s anguished look on his face. Alexander knew that there had to be a story behind the pain in the man’s eyes, a story which involved his father in its very core. 

Though immensely troublesome this story may be, and as much as he wanted no part of it, Alexander began to feel as if this new development in his seemingly mundane existence would be something that would change his life, and the lives of the people around him.