Era's dormitory room was built to house one (1) woman and it shows. The bed is piled with her soft toys and bed things and books. The floor under her bed is stuffed with more books and assorted cutlery. The shelf is overflowing with stationery. There are boxes on the floor that used to hold A4 paper but now hold foolscap books and other things you think are probably medical equipment that she needs for classes. There is a hamper of laundry in the corner and detergent and softener near it. There is a rolled up sleeping bag in the corner that she begins shoving boxes aside to make space for.
"Sorry messy," she says. "You
pagi-pagi baru cakap , so
terpaksalah . Borrow from Jeff's house."
Normally you'd point out how she started with an apology and then turned it right around on you, but you've been out all day, you're tired, you're homeless, and you really need a shower. And somewhere to charge your dying phone and power bank. For starters.
"Bathrooms at the end of the hall," says Era, tossing you the key to the shared bathrooms. "Tomorrow I cut another one for you lah. Then show you the laundry room, kitchen, dee ell ell [1]." She frowns. "You got shampoo soap or not?"
"Have lah." You pull your toiletries from your bag and check them for damage. There haven't been any leaks, thank God, and you grab a towel and something that looks like it won't be too uncomfortable to sleep in. "Thanks ya." She waves you off. She's already pulling a coffee cake from her drawer - a glance tells you it is full of coffee cakes, and there are more coffee cake wrappers in her trash can. You frown. "Era it's midnight, you eat coffee for what?"
"Some more three days then exam,
apa boleh buat ?"
You frown even harder. "Era that's the 29th December. It's Sunday. Sunday you exam ah? You think this one Johor ah?" [2]
"After midnight already kan? So today is 27 December." She spins in her chair and imperially waves you off to the showers. "Go shower go go! I sleep later don't worry."
You're too tired to argue and off to the showers you go. There's no hot water, of course, but the cold water is honestly a refreshing change from the muggy humidity of Melakan night air.
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You're not sure when Era fell asleep. You do know she is still asleep when you wake up the next day. You putter off to the showers to get yourself done up for the day. You need to get yourself dyed again, you think with a frown: pink roots are starting to show, and the black is washing out - if you're not careful you're going to wind up with splotchy brown-pink hair. When you get back to the room Era is laying in bed scrolling through her phone.
"Breakfast?" you ask. "What time you sleep last night?"
"Tak tau," she mumbles. "Three? Four? Liddat liddat lah."
It's nine in the morning. You stare at her aghast. "Liddat enough ah?"
She gropes at a drawer. "Can lah. Don't worry." In the same motion she pulls herself up and slides the drawer open. Coffee cakes, stuffed into it, leap for freedom and she catches them. "Eh I ten o'clock got class. You want to stay in or go out?"
You check your phone. The roadblocks are still in place, still all the way up north in Ipoh. There is a police stakeout on your house, the Ches report (you suspect Che Din is planning to take advantage of the inevitable forced entry/ investigation to recover his stuff). There aren't any reports of roadblocks spreading southwards, and definitely no news about Transnasional which probably means you haven't been tracked down. Won't be tracked down, if you lay low and stay careful.
You consider the idea of staying in Era's small, cramped room all day waiting for her to get back from class, with nothing but your phone to use. "I'm going out," you decide.
Era raises her eyebrows at you. She has a point, because you spent all of November and December running around Ipoh and now you're homeless.
"It'll be fine," you say with confidence you don't exactly feel. "Can one."
Era sighs. "You just be careful then can lah. I not your mother." Then she catches her tongue and grimaces. "Sorry sorry. Brain not yet wake up."
You sigh. "Yeah. I'll be careful. Don't worry."
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The college is well equipped for crowds of roaming students. There are air-conditioned canteens and plenty of power sockets for anybody with a phone charger handy, and there is WiFi. Sure, you need to have a student account to sign in to use it, but Era already gave you her username and password along with keys to her room and the communal bathroom.
Right now you're in the library. You wonder if the librarian would notice if you snuck books into the bathroom to consume in
SPINs, and then decide that that would definitely not count as being careful so you do not do it. There's a random book in front of you, open to a random page, but you're flipping between r/malaysia and WhatsApp for news.
Nope. The news cycle has moved on. You're yesterday's news, if you were even news. It's oddly relieving, but also… you kind of miss it, in a weird way? It's the most important you've ever been, kind of? Not that you'd want it to happen again. You slouch in the chair, glancing about to see if anybody's paying you (and your pink-rooted black hair) any attention, and pull your hoodie back up. Thank goodness for air conditioning.
Era gets back to her room late that night, and the smell in the room almost drives her right back out, even though the window is wide open and the fan has been going full blast for nearly two hours.
"Sorry," you say apologetically. "
Tak sangka the smell so powerful." The room still smells of the ammonia-based black hair dye, though at least you'd made sure to cover everything in newspaper so nothing got stained except your hands. Still, you'd thought the smell would have gone in half an hour at most. Maybe it's because of the tiny room. "Tomorrow I buy some Febreze, k?"
She exhales loudly through her nose, dropping a pile of papers on her bed. "Ya, ya. Takpe." Era glances at you. "Dah makan ke tak?"
You nod. "Economy rice." You don't admit it, but you're trying to conserve money. You didn't exactly carry a lot of cash around before, but now you're afraid to withdraw money through the ATM in case they can trace you that way, and you're not even sure whether that's too paranoid or not paranoid enough. "Stayed at the library whole day today anyway."
Era only makes an exhausted nod. "You sleep first lah. I got to do homework."
The next day she gets in after you've given up staying up waiting for her and you know this because her phone torchlight gets you right in the face and you bolt up in a literal blind panic before she hisses an apology and you lie back down. There's no point keeping the lights off after that, and she putters around doing her pre-bed rituals while you sit on the air mattress and hug your knees.
"...sorry," she says again, later, when the lights are off again and both of you are lying down. You're watching the ceiling fan spin. "Tak sangka you so easy to wake up. Last time
masa kecik you
tidur mati aje."
"Last time la. Now old already." You've been a light sleeper ever since you came here. You'd been telling yourself it's just you getting used to sleeping somewhere other than your own bedroom, but that excuse is wearing thin on you. You're starting to think it's because the last time you slept well you woke up to the police banging on your gate. You wonder how easy it'd be for police to get into Era's dorm room.
Too easy, you think. "Era," you say, but she's already asleep. Fair enough. It's nearly 3am, after all, and neither of you are young any more. You turn and toss a bit more, thinking, and finally you fall asleep.
Era wakes you again in the morning by accident while she's leaving the room to go to classes. You bolt up again, but slower this time. You've only got so much surprise in you, after all. She's gone with only a short "sorry", and you're left alone in the room. You sit there for a while. Normally you'd roll over and go back to sleep, but you can't right now.
WhatsApp and reddit both are encouragingly quiet on the topic of you or the police. They've got other things to complain about - politicians being dumb again, is the gist of it. Something about Jawi and a middle school somewhere. None of it makes sense, but then nothing about politics usually does.
You leave the room with a backpack that day. It doesn't have everything you brought down with you from Ipoh, but it's got all of the stuff you don't want to lose. You consider whether to tell Era, and then decide to tell her later. Besides, you can always just go back to her room later.
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Staying in the library until it closes is a new experience for you, but you've got a sort of reason to be staying late - you've been walking about the campus all day and only got in there after dinner. The librarians don't bother going around chasing people out; they just start switching the lights and air-conditioning off, and most people get the hint and start wrapping up. Some people don't bother packing up, leaving their books and papers there as a form of chopping their place [3].
You dither about it, but eventually grab your phone and backpack and head out, too, though not to Era's room. You shoot her a quick text - Slp out to9 - and add a smiley. Then you start heading for the study benches scattered around. The phone rings.
"Eh you mad ah? Sleep outside? You not scared ah?!" Era is practically hissing down the phone. "You don't think this is college then very safe can? I show you the statistics -"
"It's fine I'll be safe! I very fast wake up right?" You don't say that you feel less safe in her room, where anybody might have noticed you coming and going, and which is difficult to escape from if you need to escape. Besides, you can always go back there. You just feel like not sleeping in a fixed place every night for a few nights. "I already know where is safe anyway." You don't know for sure, but there are a few benches that look promising: they're near roofed corridors so they're sheltered, and you figure there's a lot of directions to run from there. If you need to run. You've got the autographed shoes on for that reason.
"You wait until you wake up only run ah? You not yet wake up they catch you already can?"
You don't really have an answer to that, so you repeat yourself. "It's okay one, just one or two nights okay?"
She pauses. "This is because I so late come back ah? I can't help class timing you know?"
"No," you promise. "This one is me - anyway I just tell you where I sleep okay? You worried anything you can come see also."
She snorts and laughs. "You want me 3am 4am go out see you sleep ah? Amanda gila." Then she sighs. "But I not your mother, you want sleep outside then sleep outside lah. Just stay safe." Then she catches herself again. "Sorry."
You've heard her use that phrase way too many times in the past couple of days to take it to heart. "Yeah." You've got your shoes for running, and… that's pretty much it. None of your stuff right now is super great for fighting with, not that you're much of a fighter anyway. "Sleep well okay?"
"You also." There's a long quietness. "You wake up you call me okay?"
"Yeah okay. Night."
"Night."
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You wake up the next morning with a bit of a sore back, but you slept… surprisingly well. Or as well as expected. Certainly you didn't get interrupted in the night by Gerak Khas or campus security or anything.
Your phone rings. It's Era. "Hello?" You even sound freshly woken.
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On the 31st of December 2019 you go into town with Era and Jeff, staying up late in the car to watch the midnight fireworks being set off. It's a new year.
You don't know what resolutions you should make.
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She's still not happy with the idea. You're compromising by sleeping in her room at least once every three or four days, though you're trying to switch it up by doing it at random. You're also switching the spots you sleep in, and you've discovered the showers at the college gym. They don't have hot water and you need to bring your own soap and shampoo, but that's easily taken care of.
"It's like playing Don't Starve, right?" you say to Era, during one of those nights when you're sleeping on her floor. "You go around looking for safe places to stay at night so the monsters don't find you."
"I don't play games Amanda," says Era, looking at you over the top of her textbook. She's trying to look judgmental, but she hasn't turned a single page of that textbook in half an hour. "I have to study you know? I going to become a nurse you know?"
You turn your phone screen at her. You're playing her thirty-two-page-long Instagram story from earlier today. It has filters and hashtags and all sorts of flashing special effects on it. "Ya ya very busy. Study hard or hardly study ha?"
She flings a pillow at you, and you easily catch it and toss it back. "Anyway you saw the thing I forward to you?"
You shrug. "I sleep in library lor. You know they don't chase you out? They just off all the lights and air con then they go home. It's not even hot since the air con runs at 16 all day. Just that hungry then no food lah." Not that you've been eating very much anyway. You're starting to wonder how to get yourself cash for food when you don't dare use the ATMs, and you don't want to mooch off of Era.
Much, anyway.
"You keep on sleeping there some day they'll catch you." Era shakes her head. "And you sleep on what? The floor ah?"
"Sleep here also sleep on floor what." You thump the air mattress. "Same same no different."
"Oh like that lah. Tomorrow no more mattress see how you sleep."
Your eyes practically blaze at the perfect setup.
"But there was only one bed!!"
Era flings the pillow at you again.
She's right, though, you think the next day in the library. You're lurking the HMNC Facebook group and there are rumours of somebody roaming the campus in the late hours and… touching sleeping people in the naughties, and running off when the people inevitably awaken. Nothing's been stolen, and opinion is divided on whether that makes them a better or a worse person. There are plenty of guesses about who it might be, people calling for the campus security to release CCTV footage, and people half joking about setting up trap operations to catch them. There's the usual suspicion aimed at foreign students, who are an extreme minority in the college. You were planning to sleep in the library anyway so you're safe for the night, but you'll have to find somewhere else to sleep tomorrow night.
Assuming you don't decide to just keep on sleeping in the library, that is.
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It is night and you're in the library, emerging carefully from the shelves on the top floor after the librarians have gone home for the night. It's quiet apart from the shuffling of your shoes on the floor, and it's dark apart from the little light coming in through the windows.
"...hello?" says a girl in the darkness, and with the autographed shoes on you manage a perfect 1.65m jump, crashing right into a shelf behind you and falling on the floor with new pain blooming in your shoulders and back. You are extremely lucky that the shelves are bolted to the floors or you would be at the top of a comedic domino crash of books. You grab hold of the shelf to pull yourself up. And also how to make the person shut up. Oh god will they please stop squealing.
"SHUT UP." you say, scrabbling to get back down. "You want the librarians to come back find us ah?"
"Oh my god oh my god." She sounds young - and paralysed. "I didn't know-"
You pinch the bridge of your nose. "Are you hiding from the butt pincher?"
"...Yeah. same as you." Now that she's not screaming she sounds more confident. "I'm Isabella." She sticks out her hand. It's… really soft, even compared to your own hands that haven't seen any labour beyond cleaning and gaming.
"Amanda." You shake her hand.
Then she pulls out a tiny USB lamp from her backpack, followed by textbooks and a sheaf of notes, and you finally catch sight of your unplanned companion for the night. She looks barely older than you, though she has deep bags under her eyes. Her short hair looks like it's trying to escape the scarf she's trapped it in, and she looks - not Malay precisely - ah!
Orang asli , but you don't know enough to guess which tribe she's from. Her English is very good for an orang asli, though. "You want to share? Midterms coming soon."
You'd been planning to just game. You can't play Omima on the phone, but there's plenty of other games. But you're definitely not telling her you don't actually study here, even if there's not a lot of risk in it. Besides, you only need to stare at a textbook for what, two hours, and then you'll never see her again? That's fine. Keep a low profile, Amanda. "Sure," you say. You don't actually have textbooks or notes, but you grab something from a shelf - Introduction to Child Psychology - and get to the desk.
It's actually kind of fun. She asks you things every now and then, and you answer as if you were Era: second year, Nursing, uhhh no specialty yet? There's a boyfriend, Jeff, but you haven't seen him in a while (true). She trades information with you: she's in her first year but she wants to work with disabled patients, and she's already fluent in sign language (and she demonstrates, though it's hard to see in the USB lamp-light). The books in front of her are all for compulsory modules that she plans to barely pass because none of them are relevant to her interests (her exact words). She asks you a lot about child care, which you fumble your way through based on badly remembered childhood memories and snippets on Wikipedia, and it takes an embarrassingly long time for you to realise it's because you're holding Introduction to Child Psychology. You think you've managed to fool her well enough, though.
By the time the USB light gets switched off so you can both sleep, you've exchanged Instagram handles and have also gotten into a meme GIF war on WhatsApp (which you won).
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She's there again the next night in the library, but this time you see her, with her phone torchlight on and pointing up from under her chin so her face is all horrible jagged shadows like some kind of terrible low-budget horror film monster. It doesn't help that she's put on extremely bright red lipstick and that her phone is playing that jeng jeng jeng sound effect on loop.
"Hey Amanda!" she says brightly. "How were classes?"
You grin, and then your grin kind of freezes.
About three hours later you're lying on your side in the quiet darkness of the library internally screaming.
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"You're not going to the library tonight?" says Era, when she finds you in the room lying on the bed browsing reddit.
You turn your head towards her, groan, and flop dramatically over. "I can't lie anymore!"
Era's face goes through the five stages of schadenfreude [4] within two seconds. She dumps her book bag and pulls her chair up beside the bed. "Tell Aunty Era everything."
You squint at her. "You sulked for two weeks the first time anybody called you aunty. You're 18."
Her face intensifies. You get the feeling she's popped a mental bag of popcorn. "Tell. Aunty. Era. Everything."
One explanation later you're lying dramatically on the bed with your phone clasped to your heart. "I can't pretend to be a nurse for little children forever! It was okay the first time but last night was exhausting and then just now I caught myself Wikipediaing even more child care stuff to prepare for tonight and I did not come here to get educated, Aunty Era!"
Era looks entirely smug, which is not the expression you were hoping for her to produce. "Ah
tulah tulah don't listen Aunty Era. Sleep here sleep there same same
katanya , in the end run back here cry." She whaps you with the pillow. "You don't want to go there then don't go there lah, stay here can already. I still have the air mattress."
"But the WhatsApp!" you declare dramatically, turning your phone so Era can see its screen, and scrolling dramatically up the chat history so she can see what you're talking about. Isabella is very online, even more than you are. She's liked all your Instagram posts up to several months back and she's dropping helpful links to childcare resources and deaf-mute resources on your WhatsApp in between cute baby gifs and Spotify song recs. It's the third day of your relationship with Isabella - oh god wrong word choice - friendship, no, acquaintanceship, yes, that works - it's the third day of your acquaintanceship with Isabella and already you're learning more about the medical profession as it pertains to little children than you ever wanted to.
"You lie you die," says Era serenely, scooting away on her chair to retrieve her books for her night-time revision hour. "Or you just run away from the library forever. Change hair colour."
You raise your head just enough to glare at her back. "Not funny!"
But you can't go on this way. Or can you?
The phone dings. It's Che Din, a photo of your house way back up in Ipoh. It looks like the stakeout finally ended. More photos come in: it's not good. The gate and front door were smashed in and it looks like the police have gone and
raided confiscated just about everything they thought looked suspicious, so just about everything. Your room is a mess, your computer is gone, and Kau Number Three is gone. You're only surprised the police had anybody on hand to deal with Kau Number Three at all.
You flop back down on the bed, feeling helpless and angry. Mostly the former. So much for having superpowers.
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We're
finally out of 2019 and into 2020. With all that THAT entails. At my rate of writing it'll be 2030 by the time we hit 2021 in game...
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[1] DLL, short for dan lain-lain (lit. "and so on").
[2] In 2014, the Sultan of Johor announced that the state weekend would be Friday and Saturday, instead of Saturday and Sunday. This was ostensibly to accommodate Muslim prayers on Friday, so that families could go as a whole to mosques. However, because the private sector
revolted put up vigorous protests, this only applies to public institutions like governmental offices, schools, etc. while private businesses, banks, etc. keep the same weekend. As a result it has fragmented family time even more.
[3] Chop literally means to stamp, and in Malaysia/ Singapore is a way of indicating that a place is taken so buzz off and find yourself another table, please. The items used to chop are usually bulky and cheap so people don't just take the thing and run, but in practice can be anything from a packet of tissue papers to a backpack.
[4] Like the five stages of grief, but not happening to you.
🎲🎲🎰🎲🎲
12 SPINS AVAILABLE!
1 TEN-SPIN AVAILABLE!
1 ROLL AVAILABLE!
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Era's dorm is confining, Isabella is in the library, the Butt-Pincher still roams the campus, and your
sacred grove has been desecrated house has been busted up by the police. But there's only one of you.
[ ] Make a spin. (For the first spin, every material Amanda uses is treated as if it were one ★ higher than it actually is.)
- [ ] Write-in items to use. (Era can spare you old clothes, old textbooks, paper scraps, etc. You could maybe try to dumpster-dive for a whole heap of trash?)
NEW YEAR'S EVENT! Pick one:
[ ] Amanda instantly gets 10 SPINs.
[ ] Amanda instantly gets 2 ROLLs.
[ ] Amanda can boost one of her items by one ★, improving its capabilities.
Your house isn't being staked out anymore, but it's a wreck. Still, you could go back up. This also solves the Isabella situation neatly, right? Just tell her you've got a family emergency.
[ ] Stay in Melaka with Era.
- The police don't know you're here yet, or haven't acted on it.
- Resources are limited.
[ ] Go back home.
- The police might still be watching.
- There are resources, both human and material.
Lying to Isabella is forcing you to get educated.
[ ] Come (almost) clean to her: you're not even a student at HMNC, you're just trying to stay safe. You don't even like children that much.
[ ] Keep up the act, though it's only going to get harder over time.
[ ] Ghost Isabella and never go to the library again. (This means confinement in Era's room or risking the Butt-Pincher of HMNC at nights if you stay here. This automatically happens if you choose to return to Ipoh.)
You're running out of cash.
[ ] Get some from the ATM, even if it means risking discovery.
[ ] Trade SPINs for money with your friends. (Era in HMNC, the Ches or Ben in Ipoh.)
