When Chloe was in New York, she basked herself in the sun as long as there were no rain. Between katzenjammer from the traffic at the suburbs, telephone lines cutting in and jutting out, in the aroma of a cup of newly made Americano, nothing was even more immaculate except for occasional drizzles gently touching the skin.

1

Jae was a newcomer there. For as much as Chloe knew, Jae carried a guitar. He played it in the lobby, in the unit next door, at the sundeck joined by banisters lining the edges, sometimes he'd even sing. Jae was another warm country to stay. Jae was another river rolling deep.

They talked, when Chloe sat next to her coffee table one night, thinking about life. Long forgotten tabloids scattered on reflective surface, petals fallen from roses rekindling collections of the past. Jae was singing, without his guitar. Strange.

At one stage he leaned on the railing, breathing in dusk and exhaling agony. "I thought I could sing about New York city as well." Vestiges of classical music and arguments through thin walls were mixed in a pot to distract his consciousness.

Chloe spared him a glance, unsure of what to say.

"Mademoiselle?"

"Sir, I believe you've just moved here and we don't know each other." Which she regretted right after.

Jae talked about how Chloe can say that later, on a humid and rainy Sunday morning, because in fact, they're strangers. Yet his eyes flickered and his syllables fickled. "Hey, I want to talk to you."

She stilled.

"Through songs." Then he sang.

Sunday morning rain is falling,
Steal some covers share some skin.
Clouds are shrouding us in moments unforgettable,
You twist to fit the mold that I am in.
But things just get so crazy,
Living life gets hard to do...

It was the first time she willed to stick her palm out and catch the droplets she once told herself to loathe.

2

At one stage, it came up that Chloe never knew Jae's real name. Jae was just Jae, all glossy under the blinding sun of New York city.

It's sunny on Friday, tgif, she thought. Jae was outside playing his guitar as usual, humming. The notes were bits from a song called Strangers, performed by a band with the abbreviation B.Y.E. (Before You Exit). Now, Jae's sense of music was not anything ambiguous like the beginning of a book.

Fastening the lock, she glimpsed at the bag of fairylights and polaroid holders with strings in her hand. It's a great time for a new cover, a new profile for the projecting platform joined with the one next door. At one point, it looked much duller in the presence of Jae. So Jae was art as well as it counted.

Little did any of the congested clouds, the doves resting on terraces, the million dollar city skyscrapers know, Jae had stars in his eyes. Those stars, you can't see the edges, they weren't redundant but it seemed like they belonged to somewhere else too.

Jae was sad, Chloe told herself. He tried to hide it, by any means Jae on the brighter side was no one more than a happy-go-lucky Santa's child. He stared at the rising sun and dusk, he wore a smile on to coat the ashes and smoke coming from the metropolis, it's almost as if he played his guitar because he wanted to shut noises out. The outside of Jae wasn't Jae, maybe the inside of Jae was yet to be found, but perhaps, the inner Jae had warm fuzzies topped with iridescent flakes every one loved.

While she pushed the slide door open, Jae stopped singing. He's probably in his reminiscence, searching for a place only to slam into another unfittable puzzle piece of the picture. The clusters of dusts were obnoxious and summer was a little appealing, albeit nothing impresses them much.

Later that evening, when the car alarms were wailing and tabloids flying across the streets, Chloe had somehow an idea about Jae's behavior. He's writing lyrics in his head, letting it reflect into some sort of certified bull she would call feelings, for it carried something. But taking closer measure of Jae's poker face, she gave the assumption up.

If anything, Jae looked like the person who plays instruments in a rock band. From versatile fingers to top-notch song scores, pitches of par excellence and soft eyes. He had his radio on, figure slightly swaying alongside what played.

The scent of Americano (Jae's favorite) now loitered in the air, half hanging and as though chasing the concocted touch of red and orange, unsure if it's dawn or dusk, though it's six in the evening. His guitar was now resting under glassy skin, fingers plucking the strings and ornamenting the lonesome town beneath. It felt like a tropical summer night at the equator, with the backdrop of the nightscape just flitted everywhere except his eyes.

They didn't talk, but Jae was still Jae. And he started joking out of nowhere, like how a riot his manager was while he worked as an instrument tuner years ago, exaggerated moments and quelled laughters, darkness creeping in and fluorescent lamps diffusing out. All Chloe did was offer her wistful grin to turn in, either surreptitiously or widely. It doesn't make a difference. Like how it never made much of a difference whether Jae sang or not, he still felt distant, and occupied with inveritable chores, a curfew or two.

In the end, Chloe fell asleep in her only velvet settee out in the open. Only to wake up a few hours later with the suburb's traffic slightly loosened, and a note stuck at the plastic clip of a polaroid picture around a glomerulus of fairylights, saying. "Dozing off in the open is a pretty venturesome practice, especially with company." To which she frowned hard at, and shifting her gaze to the right, where Jae's property was.

It turned out that he's still up, a tuning fork in hand, fingers fiddling with the pegs of an electric guitar, still the same demeanour but in such sense of tranquility. It's two in the morning, there was a downpour. She shivered and stood, while he looked up.

"I expected the city to go off." He said quietly. Along the marble flooring at the outer side, now magnified by puddles of rain water, gusts of draught creeping in. The temperature was calamitous, if not under Jae's burning gaze.

"Nothing artificial really does."

Midnight continued with gentle of strings and chords moving through dented sound boxes, some occasionally applause of pitter-patter and