Tao and I walked through the mall connected by pedways just talking about how school had been. It seems like Asians never really have a conversation without eventually mentioning academics. He admitted that school didn’t seem like something for him, and his mom always compared him to Kris and I. I could only imagine the pressure he goes through at home.

            “Hey, are you thirsty?” He asked out of the blue. We were passing a food court on the second floor of the mall, and it looked his he had his eyes on a menu listing different fruit smoothies.

            “Yeah, a little.” I lied. I wasn’t actually all that thirsty, but he seemed like he really wanted something to drink. He nodded and we lined up at the counter, waiting for a cashier to call “next”.

            “I’ll have a small mango smoothie.” I ordered. I pulled out my wallet as the cashier asked,

            “Is that everything?”

            “Y—“

            “And I’ll have a medium mixed berry.” Tao added in. With his strong shoulders he gently shuffled me over so that he would be in front of the debit machine, and smiled at the cashier to let her know that was it for the order. She punched it into the register and he paid.

            “What was that?” I asked, a little surprised at what he had just done.

            “My victory.” He smiled back, slipping his wallet into his back pocket.

            “I’m paying next time.” I assured him. “But thanks.”

When the smoothies came, we took them gladly and stabbed our straws into the lid.

“Let’s sit down for a bit. All we’ve been doing was walking.” He suggested, and then led me to a few seats facing the window. From the second level, the view was rather nice. The large downtown buildings all used tinted windows as walls, and the pedways that connected them each had their unique designs. We sat side by side, just staring out the window. Our elbows rested on the table surface, and we took occasional sips as we continued talking. I was amazed at the fact that we had no awkward silences so far. We’d been walking for two and a half hours, but it hardly felt that long. Despite our long gap in communication, and years of catching up, our conversations felt utterly natural.

“Anything exciting happening at your church?” He asked. We talked often about religion. If it wasn’t school, or our families, or our childhoods, it was usually religion. I smiled, remembering the action plan my youth leaders had made for the month of August.

“We’re doing this thing called homeless month. Every week at fellowship we do a new activity that helps combat homelessness in our city.” I began to explain. My mind drifted off into a little daydream. I was probably the most excited youth in my whole fellowship for this.

“That sounds pretty sick. What kind of activities?”

“We have a few volunteer positions booked for different charities around the city, and one week we’re doing a sort of simulation. My leader called it ‘A day in the life of a homeless person’, and we basically sleep over at church for the weekend. The moment we wake up on Saturday, we’re handed persona profiles and a job position where we do manual labour for 8 hours a day, which is really just church maintenance work, and are given food rations just as homeless people are in our city when they’re conscripted for temporary jobs.” He listened intently as I explained. I couldn’t stop my excitement from seeping through. The whole objective of the simulation was to develop our empathy and understanding of certain difficulties that are faced by actual people in our city. In fact, the whole month was for developing empathy for this.

“Do you have a heart for helping homeless people?” He suddenly asked. At first, it didn’t seem like such an in depth question, just one that could naturally follow a conversation topic as this. But I realized that Tao had an intricate way of thinking and sought answers deeper than the easy, superficial responses. I thought a while before answering this one.

“I do… but I think it’s more of just helping people in need. Sometimes I wish I could do more, but I just don’t really know how. After all… I’m young, and I’m a girl. You can imagine my set backs…” I was still articulating as I spoke. He nodded as he listened.

“You know that street you see down there?” Tao pointed at the street just below us that bordered the building we were in. There were people waiting at the crosswalks, and lines of cars whizzing through. It was probably rush hour right now, but neither of us had been keeping an eye on the time.

“Mhm,” I answered.

“Last summer I and a handful of others from my church bought a bunch of $5 Tim Hortons gift cards and just ran around these streets looking for people to give them to.” He shared; his eyes were locked on the street he was pointing at. When I gave it another glance, I noticed a man with a long, gray beard seated across the street from us with his hat laid on the floor. His head was down, and I wondered if he had been one of the people Tao and his church had helped last summer. He never mentioned it.

“That’s really amazing.” I commended. It was exactly something that I always wanted to do, and yet something I knew I never would’ve thought of on my own.

“We always worry that if we give them money they’d spend it on something bad, like drugs or alcohol or smokes instead of what they really need like food and water. Obviously what we did wasn’t a permanent fix, but at least it made sure that they couldn’t use our kindness for evil, right?” He turned his gaze towards me just then and smiled.

I had always known that Tao had a compassionate heart, but this was the first time I realized how humanitarian he was. There was a sort of flame in his eyes that I felt nothing could ever stop from burning. That determination had such an attractive force that I felt myself being convicted to do more, give more, and be more. Very few people could have that effect on me with just one look in the eyes.

“You’re right. I do worry about that a lot…” I shared about a time, in the summer of grade 8 when a group of my friends and leaders from church went on a short mission trip to the province next door to ours to rebuild a church. We visited the downtown area just to get a better feel of the city, and I was one of the kids who kept lagging behind in the group. A homeless man approached me and began asking me for money, and each time I said no he asked again with more aggression. One of my friends noticed and told a senior leader of our group to help, and he came to speak to the homeless man while I observed. My leader asked the man what he wanted to do with the money if we gave it to him. He said that he was going to use it to buy a hamburger because he was hungry, and then pointed to a McDonalds just across the street. My leader offered to take him to McDonalds and buy him a full burger meal instead. The homeless man opposed, and beckoned again to have the money instead. It was his last futile attempt, and the homeless man ended up leaving us empty handed, cursing under his breath. My leader told all of us that if that man had been honest about wanting to buy food, he would not have passed out on the offer. And we kept walking.

“What time did you have to leave again?” He asked all of a sudden. It was finally then that I looked at the time on my phone.

“At around 6.”

“I’ll occupy you for two more hours then.” The way he said it felt a little possessive, as if he wanted as much of my time as he could get.

☁☼☁

When it was around time for me to head back to the train station and go to church, he offered to come and wait with me. We took the same train going in the same direction back only his stop was before mine. Once the train came, we got on and sat next to each other.

“Oh shoot! I promised my sister that I would go with her somewhere this evening!” He almost jumped when he realized. I imagined her pouting angrily the moment she saw Tao again.

“What time was that?”

“It was actually an hour ago… It’s too late now haha.”

“I’m really sorry!” I felt compelled to apologize, although it was really his fault for forgetting a promise he made to his sister.

“No no, it’s not your fault. She’ll get over it. I’d rather spend this time with you anyway.” He assured. His last sentence caught me off guard, but he said it in such a nonchalant way that I felt the need to brush it off as easily as he had vocalized it.

We came to his stop first, and we were both standing by now. Before he got off, he gave me a hug goodbye and wished me luck for our senior year in high school, as well as entrance applications into university. I wished him the same, and waved as he walked away. I didn’t think much of the hug. It was just a kind gesture between two long lost friends. It was nice.

☁☼☁

At fellowship, Amber was excitedly waiting for me at the front door, as if nothing noteworthy had happened in her day and she desperately sought juicy news from mine.

“Keep your hopes down. Nothing happened.” I warned, just as I opened the door. She shook her head.

“I’ll be the judge of that.” I shrugged and we proceeded downstairs where everyone always gathered. The chairs had already been set up in a half circle and the projector was sitting in the middle, but no one was in the basement for some reason.

“So so so, tell me everything!” Amber was beaming. She sat me down on a chair inside the half circle and kept her eyes focused on mine.

“Amber… I went in seeking closure all day. I’ve been having Tao haunt the corners of my mind since I was little, always leaning on that one, minuscule possibility that something could ever become of our childhood affection.” I was trying to calm Amber down and get her to really listen to what was on my heart.

“Didn’t you feel anything at all this whole day? I’ve been dying to text you but I figured you wouldn’t even check your phone because you’d be so wrapped up.” She didn’t seem to get the cue. When it came to romantic relationships Amber was always on her toes about everything.

“Feel… I felt… Happy.”

“Anything else? Did you start liking him again?!”

“Once you’ve liked someone once, even if you’ve moved on they always kind of hold this special place in your heart. They’re always going to be a little more than just the average guy.” I thought about the words I had just said, and decided that I truly did believe them. In Tao’s case, I’d probably liked him again and again in three different occasions already. He had more than just a small little space in my heart, but all this distance seemed insurmountable. My only hope was closure, and I wasn’t even sure if I got that today.

“When’s the next date?!”

“It wasn’t a date.”

“Well when are you gonna see him again?”

“I don’t know. Maybe never.” It came out harsher than I intended. It was just the easy, definite answer; anything more ambiguous than that would feed into Amber’s suspicions. She seemed bummed out by my reply.

“Whether I felt that I got closure or not, this is it. This was supposed to be it. I have to move on now.”

A/N: Hello ^^ It wasn't that long of a wait, right?!?!?! I'm still trying to figure out a new ending for this... But to be honest it's hard because this story is real. And I don't want to just make up an ending. Where my life is going right now there really isn't a clear end... and if I had finished this fanfic anytime before this summer, this chapter would have been the real ending. But nope. More things just had to happen LOL Anywayyyy hope you enjoy (: Once I kind of catch up to where things left off (AKA this summer) my updates will become a lot slower because... I need to wait for things to happen in order to write it ahahaha.