You had always told me to get a better life, to pursue my education, to stay away from the one thing I needed most; you. You were a fighter, an underground boxer who only fought to stay alive. I was a university student who couldn’t care less about the people who stared strangely at me when they saw me climbing onto the back of your motorcycle after classes. When you returned with bruised, scraped knuckles, I knew that you had won the fight. When you returned with skinned, flayed knees, I knew that you had taught someone an important lesson. Even when you returned with injuries and grimaces, clutching Tylenol and a bunch of other pain-killers in your bloodied hand, I knew that you had never taken anything lightly.

When I told you that I would stay, you chuckled darkly and pointed at the regular person on the street.

“I would never be anything like that. You would never get anything like that,” you would say.

To that, I would your hair, undoing the strands that had tangled of clumped together with sweat and dirt. I wouldn’t say anything I hadn’t already said, but for you, I said this every evening.

“This is enough.”

You shake your head, disagreeing. I would do up the white cloth on your knuckles, binding it around your hand so that it wouldn’t get scraped or split open. I worry every night for you, hoping that you would be alright, even when I knew that you were taking blows to your stomach as I took down notes during lectures.

The lecturer asked me today, “Tiffany, what do you want to be once you’ve graduated?”

Everyone was looking at me. I didn’t feel pressurised to give her an honest answer.

“Happy.”

I heard the silent question mark and the inaudible murmurs. I saw the confusion to my very simple answer.

“I’m sorry, Tiffany, I meant when it came to occupation,” the lecturer clarified.

“It doesn’t matter. I want to be happy,” I said again.

When you came home that night, I knew how to be happy. When you took me in your arms and tucked your chin on my shoulder (seeing that we were around the same height), I knew exactly what I wanted to be once I’ve graduated. I wanted to be with you.

You were unhappy that night, your opponent had cheated, but the judges saw it as a fair match and gave you the loss. You wouldn’t look at me directly that night and left so early in the morning to make up for your loss. While asleep, I saw you tending to your bruises, flattening the pain-relief patch on your stomach and arms. After you had lain down next to me, I snuggled into you, placing my hands directly over your bruises. I couldn’t have done much for you, but I could at least give you this.

Sometimes, when you look out the window, you would stare wistfully at the businessmen passing by and the women they held by their side, gleaming and shinning with happiness. I would watch with you, but not with longing or envy, but with satisfaction and thankfulness.

“This is enough,” I would repeat.

“It’s not,” you say.

“Why shouldn’t it be?” I question.

“I can’t give you much,” you would admit sadly, your battered fist clenching and unclenching.

“You’ve given me enough.”

“Enough is not enough.”

“I don’t need enough. I have enough.”

You took it bad that night, when I was in class. The match left you with a fractured neck and you didn’t come home that night. I waited till morning for you, only to hear that you were being treated at the hospital. You refused to look at me when I saw you. You probably thought that you looked pathetic. But when I sat down and took your hand, I already knew what you were going to say.

So, I said it again, “This is enough.”

You didn’t reply. I leaned down and kissed your cheek, marred with scars and scratches. It wasn’t smooth and it was flawed with many injuries over the years of boxing, but it felt as if my lips were making the perfect again, making them flawless as it once had been.

At last, when you’ve been knocked out of the year-end tournament at the last round, I found you crying in the corner. I sat next to you and wrap my arms around you.

“This is not enough, Tiffany, this is not enough,” you would say brokenly.

I would never get tired of saying the same thing over and over again, because I knew it was true. I unwrapped your bleeding knuckles of the white cloth, now stained with red, and kissed every knuckle, my thumb tracing circles on your aching arm.

“This is enough, Jessica.”