Kai is chasing a dream.
This isn’t some metaphorical, poetic Rupi Kaur thing, either. Kai’s repeating dream is what led them out here, and Kai still couldn’t believe it.
The shadows danced and shifted by the flickering light of their fire as if they were doing a traditional lion dance, which seemed so laughable to him under their current circumstances that he snorted to himself under his breath. Those dances were supposed to bring good luck and fortune, which they were currently severely lacking. At the same time, he was filled with a wistful sense of nostalgia. He breathed in deep the smell of the cedar embers. Closing his eyes, he thought the crackle of the fire sounded almost like the pop of firecrackers at a traditional festival. “If anyone’s listening, we really could use some of that good luck these days,” he muttered as he stoked the fire with a long tree branch.
“What are you laughing about?”
A crunching of leaves grew louder as a familiar figure emerged from the dark and sat at the other side of the fire. Her face came into the glow, her trademark smirk widening in the warmth of the fire.
“Oh, just thinking about how much I’ve forgotten what a normal life is like, without the constant looking for danger, taking shifts to watch over each other during the night, and wondering if chasing this dream is ever going to pan out for us.”
“You mean you never had this delicious fake jook in your normal life?” She wiggled her fingers in air quotations as she said “normal.”
He snickered as he flicked some of the food from his bowl at her on the other side of the fire. It fell short and sizzled in the fire. “Don’t play! You and I both know that this cauliflower stuff cannot compare to actual rice. And yes, I will forever complain about how tasteless this fake jook is. Where’s the garlic? The ginger? The chicken? The sesame?” He brought his fingers to his lips to mime a chef’s kiss with dramatic flair.
She aimed and fired some of the cauliflower porridge from her bowl over at him and it landed on his shoe. He cursed.
She laughed and said, “You know we don’t have any of that stuff now. Nobody grows it anymore and the land can’t take it anyway because we’ve neglected it. All we’ve got is acres and acres of cauliflower.”
“Who knew cauliflower would be what took over the world,” he grumbled. He took a bite of his cauliflower porridge. He closed his eyes and thought that maybe there was a hint of real jook flavors if he pretended hard enough. He opened his eyes when he heard the fire give a louder sizzle.
She had tossed the rest of her fake jook into the fire. He laughed because he knew she didn’t like it either.
She gave her trademark smirk again and asked him, “What do you miss the most right now?”
He rolled his eyes and asked, “Didn’t we just play this game yesterday?”
“Yeah, but that was yesterday. A lot can change in a day.”
He sighed. To her, he seemed a little reluctant to answer today even though they asked each other this question almost every day. He rubbed his chin. “Yep, definitely reluctant,” she thought. He always started rubbing his chin when he was troubled by something.
She let it be silent for a little while until he sighed and begrudgingly answered. “I miss omurice. You?”
“Lechon kawali,” she said immediately, with a wistful expression on her face.
Then they looked at each other and exclaimed together, “With a little side of lumpia!”
They laughed. She always said the lumpia, no matter what she was missing.
She studied his face in the light of the fire and thought for a moment. “Okay, but you always say omurice when something’s bothering you. What’s up?”
He sighed deeply and put his face in his hands. “I had that dream again last night,” he said.
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