When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
Helen Keller

He stared at the credit card, numbers blurring in front of his eyes, wondering if he should have stayed home to ignore the world outside his windows and doors. Wu Fan did not see himself ever becoming a hermit. But sometimes, he just felt like it was time to close his eyes and sink into oblivion, drawing the blinds to keep reality out. Even for one day. God, why were his eyes stinging? He did not have time to be worrying about his apparent eye problems.

“Sir?” The barmaid prompted, her hand already hovering near to accept his credit card. Her low voice jerked him back to reality and he quickly tried to recover from staring stupidly into space.

“Sorry, got something in my eye,” He gave her his most convincing smile, swiping the corners of his eyes with his thumb to clear the leaking as he stuffed the credit card back into his pocket, avoiding to look her in the eyes. “I’ve some change… somewhere.” He made a show of checking his clothes for forgotten bills, turning his pockets inside out. The contents of his pockets immediately fell; unused tissue paper, the small celebration card, some coffee candies and loose crumpled bills. He bit back a curse and leaned down on the next barstool to grab his fallen possessions. Before he could count the bills on the bar counter, a pale thin hand slipped a five thousand won bill over to the barmaid.

“Here. It’s on me. Can you get me your Yuja hwachae, please?” Someone interrupted. Clear tenor. Unfamiliar voice. Politeness oozing out of every word. And really, a fruit punch instead of alcohol?

“Thank you. Just a moment, please.” The barmaid flashed a perfect costumer service smile before moving to the cooler on her right to grab the fruity ingredients.
 

Wu Fan turned to look at the Samaritan paying for his drink with narrowed eyes that he almost forgot about his manners. Mumbling a short thank you, Wu Fan dipped his head for a half-bow. At first Wu Fan did not recognize the man underneath the sleek hair fringe combed to the right, until said man gave him a small smile. Dimples indented both sides of those cheeks. Wu Fan tried his best not to jerk back in his seat when he could finally put a name to that face. Zhang Yixing. One of the chosen groomsmen for Henry’s soon-to-be wedding. Apparently, he was also some kind of distant relative on Henry’s side of the family.

“Hi, you were also at Amber and Henry’s engagement party, right? I saw you talking in the backroom before the official announcement. My name is Lay. As in, the chips variety. Apparently the girls thought my face looked edible.”

Right. Nickname. For whatever reason, the bridesmaids had subtly revealed some of their upcoming plans for the groomsmen by giving them some random nicknames.

“Kris,” Wu Fan nodded again. Cannibalism references aside, Wu Fan received ‘Kris’ instead, courtesy of Amber wanting to play along. She thought it sounded cooler, being closely related to ‘Chris’ and ‘dangerous as a dagger’. That last part was a mystery to him.

“You didn’t come to the meeting.” Yixing ‘Lay’ said conversationally. “Henry was worried.”

“Was thirsty.” Wu Fan said and raised his glass of lager beer to explain everything.

“So you’re here instead of raiding Henry’s fridge instead?

Wu Fan shrugged. ”Henry doesn’t drink.“

Yixing gave him a look that spoke of disbelief. Wu Fan was not too sure though. Yixing always seemed to have the same pleasant, calm expression going on despite the side eyeing he was showing.

“Right."


Wu Fan drank his bear just to avoid explaining his actual reason for being there.   


"Want me to fill you in on the wedding schedule?”

“Go ahead.” Despite giving Yixing the heads up to continue, Wu Fan tuned out Yixing’s voice as soon as the other opened his mouth to explain the details. Wu Fan preferred spending this night with only the beer as his companion and the bar as his new sanctuary. Sitting next to a stranger talking about someone else’s wedding was not the best conversation; especially when said wedding involved the love of his life and the friend he wanted to disown.

As Wu Fan sipped his beer, his eyes followed the barmaid’s movements, studying her uniform, the white name card reading ‘Jessica’, her body, her smooth long legs, before finally lingering to the way her hands were mixing various liquids and fruits. She had lovely hands, slender and smooth.
 

Amber had lovely hands too; small delicate-looking hands with long, slender fingers, faint calluses decorating the pads of her fingertips and a faint scar across the back of her right hand—an accident with a penknife. Henry also had lovely hands; strong, rough but well-cared, calluses were visible across his fingers, the heels of his palms, due to him being a popular mainstream violinist in town. Idly, Wu Fan dropped his eyes to study his own hands resting on the counter, the bony knobs of fingers, the creases of skin around his knuckles and the lines deeply etched in the inside of his palms. Ugly big, he thought self-depreciatingly, like a gorilla. Of course with big hands like his, Amber’s own would fit right in and disappear into his. But then again, her hands also fit into Henry’s own in a more princely fashion—like a glove.

Jessica checked her wristwatch and leaned over the small cooler to turn on the small radio sitting on the lowest shelf, next to a Rémy Martin bottle. The sultry whisk of a saxophone sneaked out of the speaker boxes into the silent bar, followed closely by the one-note riffs of a guitar answering in slow descent as the piano joined in the background with a playful dilly-dallying rhythm. The music suddenly changed the silent, business mood of the bar into a nostalgic romance with jazz blues. A husky woman’s voice belted out a song in a language Wu Fan’s mind identified as ‘maybe Japanese’.

He nearly forgot about Zhang Yixing sitting next to him until Jessica stepped closer to pass a colorful glass with an equally colorful mix of content to Yixing. Wu Fan’s eyes followed her hands during the exchange and absently trailed to study Yixing’s hands. Slender wrist, small hands. Faint ink smudges on the heel of his hand, covering the pinky and the index finger and the thumb. Someone who used a pen a lot. A writer? An old-school accountant? Student?

Yixing’s left hand followed the rhythm of the overall music with one second pause, slowly drumming on the bar counter as if he was playing an instrument. Amber loved to do that as well, treating any flat surface as her own personal drum set while she hummed any tune that was stuck in her mind at that moment. Henry picked up the habit along the way, with the excuse of learning to play his piano in Cantabile—whatever that meant.

It suddenly felt difficult to breathe properly, a lump managed to lodge itself in his throat, his heart throbbed irregularly against his chest—Wu Fan grimaced as he rubbed his chest, hoping that the simulated massage would ease the passageway to his lungs and calm his heartbeat. Not a heart attack, he thought. He found himself staring at the brandy on the shelves of the bar. Orange, brown, red, some mixed color between red and brown decided to do some fusion dance. He was hyperventilating, how pathetic. He shut his eyes and willed himself to calm down listening to the jazz in the background.



Colors swooped and swirled behind his closed eyelids as the music soared, taking him back to the day Amber and Henry had told him about them being together.

“Officially together,” Henry said shyly, “We’re dating for three weeks by now, you know?”  

“Yeah, just fooling around,” Amber’s cheeks looked strangely flushed, “And then, this idiot thought it was better to make it real. So I accepted.”

“And now we’re serious,” Henry said with a wide grin.

Amber had looke