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The couple came when the sun was at its highest. It drew the attention of most of their neighbours. People usually try to avoid the sun at that hour, much less move into a new home.
They were loud. Not in terms of speaking volume, no. There were only two of them, after all. But they existed very loudly. Way too obnoxious and colourful for the quiet neighbourhood where nothing ever happened.
Their furniture were too many and too large for a pair of men, who didn’t look like they could occupy much space. The movers and trucks left the doorway by 5pm, and by 8pm, people who walked past the large house told their friends that they could hear soft music and bad singing from the windows like a lull of some evil spirit.
By the morning coffee after their arrival, the small neighbourhood had already heard about their taste in music. During lunch, the men at the chess club grunted about the new young couple by the lake, some murmuring approval for the rumours about the chess set which sat on their porch.
During the afternoon tea of their first full day in the neighbourhood, one of them made himself known to the lady across the road.
“He’s a sweet thing,” she would recall to her friends in Bingo that very evening. “Dark hair, wide eyes, full lips, and a strong set of legs. Such a nice young man.”
He made her soup, she would go on to tell that part to everyone she met that day.
Debora was elderly. She walked with a slight limp, and her daily sneezes during lunchtime had somehow made its way to the couple’s home.
“He told me that it was part of his custom,” she dabbed her eyes. “That it was considered generous to give to the people who live around him.”
Her friends poked and prodded her for the rest of the night, asking what the soup tasted like, and what type of china the dish came with.
It didn’t take long for the conversation to spill from the tables in the bingo hall to the coffee shops the next day. And by lunchtime of the couple’s second day at the neighbourhood, there was already a myth around their all-curing soup, made with a touch of love that cured Debora’s allergies.
(She was still heard coughing when the rumour was passed from the mailman to the milkmaid.)
The couple who lived to their left was next to be visited.
“They came together!” The wife, a blonde woman in her late 40s, told her fellow housewives. “The one Debora mentioned, yes, yes.” She nodded to her closest friend. “His name is Hikaru! And his husband…”
A startled gasp sounded out from the table, and the women quickly shushed one another. None of them had spotted any wedding ring before that moment. They didn’t even know that people in that generation would get married so young.
“Yes, his husband.” The blonde, Mary, continued her story after shushing the table. She pointed to her ring finger for emphasis, flashing her own diamond ring. “Magnus is his name. His hair is actually closer to brown up close—”
“I still think that it’s dirty blonde!” a few of them interrupted.
She shushed them again, “Just listen! They bought this fish dish that the tall—yes, he’s taller than the brunette, Tiffany—anyway, the tall one kept on talking about how it’s a super healthy dish that we would love.”
She made a face, as if disgusted by the thought of the food.
Mary could recall it so vividly. The dish arrived steaming, as if it was just taken off the stove. The smell was incredible. It felt as if Cornelius and her should be plating it in one of their better china.
But, when the couple was long gone and the dish entered their mouth, the taste couldn’t be further away from the appearance.
“It tasted…very fishy,” she grimaced to her friends. A few of them scrunched up their noses, as if also imagining the foul, sea taste. “I think they didn’t use enough lemons.”
“Did they say which one of them made it?” One asked.
“Yeah, because Debora said the short one made great soup.” Another added.
“Well, Debora’s taste buds aren't exactly accurate, love.”
Murmurs of agreements around the table. There were a few whispers asking about the name of the dish, but they weren’t answered.
“They were nice, though.” She added at last. “Both spoke very well. Though the taller one spoke like he had something in his mouth the entire time.”
“He’s probably from Europe,” said one of the younger waitresses at the table, slacking off just to hear the gossip in the rather small town. “Tall and dreamy, and can’t speak English.”
“They do speak English in Europe, Lea.”
They had wild parties, at least by the neighbourhood’s standard.
It was decadent and reckless, like something out of the 1920s novels, when everyone was too busy drinking and partying to realise that they were crashing down from the height of life like a falling bomb.
Music and the smell of liquor would perfume the air like an intoxicating embrace. Mary, many times during the couple’s stay at the house, would always have to stop her husband from going over to the house.
“It was still tasteful at the end of the day,” Debora always said to the town people.
The couple’s guests were loud, but they were always polite to her. By the third month (or the 5th party by the lake), most of them had already learnt her name and how she liked to be talked to in the morning.
The crowd would stumble out, half-asleep and barely alive in the early morning, but still had time to wave and talk to her. It was the most sociable she had been since her husband passed. Debora couldn’t ask for more.
Most of them were Magnus’ friends. Or that’s what the neighbours generally believed. The dark blonde, whom they’ve then learnt was the younger one, matched the loud energy of the roaring crowd.
Sometimes, when Mary walked close enough to their shared fence, she would catch a glimpse of Hikaru sitting around at the quieter side of the elaborate party.
He’s close enough to listen to his husband’s words, in fact, he’s almost always sitting right next to Magnus. Yet, there is always a sense of calm there while his husband talked away with the loud guests and liquor.
Sometimes, and she never admitted this to any of her friends, she would catch the two of them sitting quietly by themselves after their guest left or passed out.
She would watch, entranced and amazed, as words spilled out of Hikaru’s mouth like a waterfall. Only then, Magnus would quiet down. Gradually, the loud, obnoxious man who was yelling and hollering with his friends were tentatively listening to every words like Hikaru was preaching sweet words of the Lord to him.
In her restless nights, she would catch them kissing. Sitting on the bench in their backyard that looked over the lake, the couple would kiss and murmured meaningless words to one another until one of them yawned and stretched.
Perhaps out of the goodness of her heart, the normally gossipy housewife never spoke a word of it to her peers. She kept quiet.
The couple deserved some peace, she reasoned. A few stolen kisses and whispers in the dark shouldn’t be shared amongst even the most nosy of neighbours.
It was by the end of the second month there that Debora was visited by Magnus alone.
She recalled it vividly to her friends on the same day, “He’s so tall. He’s always taller than I remember.”
“Debora, didn’t he visit you with Hikaru just last week.”
“Yes, but he seems even taller now.”
Magnus did not grow taller. But he did go to her in hopes that he could grow something. The blonde had seen and heard from others of Debora’s green thumbs, and had gone to her in hopes of some wisdom.
“Just a few tips,” he gently urged her as he squatted in her lush garden. “I want to surprise Hikaru with a small garden of his own.”
He spoke to her like it was a secret, so the old woman kept it as one. They had a bigger front lawn than her. So she told him to hire at least one man to help mow and plough the area that he wanted to turn into greens.
Magnus asked about seedlings and the weather. And she would recall to herself in the quiet nights, when she missed her late husband, of how his eyes brightened when he mentioned how much Hikaru was going to love all of it.
“He’s always wanted a small place to take care of,” Magnus grinned mischievously at her. “Let’s see how he would do if I really make him take care of one.”
Later on, as she watched Magnus dig and plough though the front lawn from her own porch, she would smile the same smile that she did when her late husband begrudgingly took care of their foster dog.
Under the hot sun, in the quiet afternoon by the lake, Debora got to watch Hikaru buzzed around his lover, waving his hand with a fan in the other as Magnus walked around with sweat running down his back.
“He was stupidly telling Hikaru that he could do it all by himself,” one of the passersby would later recount. “Dude got sick and was coughing up a storm for a few days after, just because he was dead set on doing it all by himself.”
Sickness did indeed get to Magnus then. He had Hikaru by his side the entire time. The dark-haired man could be seen pacing around the backyard when Magnus fell in and out of sleep. And in the quieter hours, Mary could spot the poor man crying to himself as he tended to the still unfinished garden.
“Stupid dirt,” she could hear him murmured as he kicked the harmless ground. “Stupid mouth. Stupid Magnus. Why can’t you just let people do things…”
What a sensitive and odd thing, she remembered thinking as she watched him trudged back to his house. And when Magnus recovered two days after, they all pretended that it didn’t happen.
The plot that was unfinished was never continued. Half of the garden ground was left empty as Hikaru began to plant some flower seeds on the half that was closest to their fence, smiling every so widely when she caught a sight of him.
Charmed, she thought. The ring on his finger refracted the sunlight every time she turned to him, and by the third time of getting flashed, she turned around and decided to water her plants another time.
The couple had a thing for attending all their town meetings late. People whispered when they walked past, and many did a double take whenever Hikaru came in with a big dish of something in his arms.
It was a gift to lull the impatient hearts, almost as if they were both prepared to be late and had to prepare a gift just for that.
It was never the same dish twice. Hikaru always had a different cuisine in his arms, and sometimes, Magnus would also be carrying a dish, as if they anticipated more attendance than normal.
The two never petition or ask for anything. They were there to listen and laugh. Sometimes, Magnus would lean back just a little too hard and have a little too much to drink, and they would get to see the scenes that Mary had already grown accustomed to: Hikaru pulling his husband back and nudging for him to stop.
Many times, they would catch Hikaru in a foul mood, foul enough for him to be snarky and spiteful to everything that was proposed. In those times, Magnus would smile extra charmingly at people, as if to apologise for the mood.
In many of those occasions, he would hold on to his lover’s hand, lightly kissing Hikaru’s knuckle whenever he’s allowed just to sooth his mood.
It never worked, or at least, that’s what they thought.
There’s a place at the edge of town which sold a dessert that Hikaru learnt to love. The town learnt about it when the seller rambled after one of the town meetings.
He told them of how Magnus would oftentimes arrive late at night, long after work hours, just to buy some for his husband even though he never ate it. His car would crawl through the empty street when it’s late and cold, lights blinking in the dark as he asked for a bowl of his husband’s favourite.
The blonde had told him that it was worth it, like it was the most natural thing in the world. As if the dessert place wasn’t on the other side of town, a complete opposite of where their home was.
As if it was easy to drive home so late, yet still make a detour just to make sure that his husband’s needs were fulfilled.
They praised him behind his back and shamed him all the same. Too much, some would scoff to their partners. Must be hiding something, a few would snicker to each other as they ate their dinner.
None of them knew of how Hikaru would sit on the front porch and wait for his husband during those times. No one saw how Hikaru would repay by doing things that he knew Magnus love with him, even though he hated it, like making things from clay.
“I love you,” they would whisper in the dark, in their bedroom where none of the nosy neighbours could hear.
“Love you most,” the other would answer.
And the only thing that the passersby saw would be the silhouettes of the two dancing behind their curtains, arms around one another like they couldn’t bare the thought of being apart even for a minute.
Hikaru came to visit the month before Christmas. He almost gave Mary a shock when he knocked on the door.
“I heard that you’re good with fishes,” he said, dangling a bag of what she later learnt were fishes in front of her face, with water dripping all over her welcome mat. “Please help me.”
She looked at him. The big eyes and pretty smile. Then she stared at the wet bag. Dripping and smelling distinctly of fishes.
“Come in.”
It was then that she learnt that he was the one who cooked the dish, which still made her gag when she recalled it.
“It’s Magnus’ favourite dish,” he confessed shamefully. “But I never really got the hang of it…it’s…he always tells me that he loves it, but Mary, gosh. I know he hates it. God knows I hate it.”
“…Darling,” she stared at the helpless man.
“Please…for his birthday. I really want to master cooking a fish properly.”
She remembered wondering how Magnus could ever say no to that man. Then later rationalised why Magnus would travel all the way to the edge of town for a small bowl of dessert. There’s no way that anyone could look at those pouting lips and deny what Hikaru wanted.
He improved tremendously by the fourth time they tried cooking together. By then, they were a week away from Magnus’ big day.
She choked up when Hikaru gave her a hug, sniffling as he held her in his hands and told her that she was going to make the two of them a very happy couple.
“He’s finally going to have something that tastes closer to home than what I’ve been making,” he said, nose red and puffy from his tears.
He thanked her profusely. Then, a day after the big birthday dinner, Mary was given the same soup that Debora had been raving about.
She went to him a day after to ask for the recipe.
About a little over a year, and more than two dozen parties later, the house became quiet.
One of the cars stopped leaving the garage. It had a broken lamp and a lot of scratch marks which looked like it had been in a nasty fight with something that it never recovered from.
The partying stopped. And by the second week, people started to talk.
The dark car that never fail to crawl around the edge of town at least once a week stopped showing up. The dessert shop no longer had someone to sell to in the middle of the night, and Mary never again got to see Hikaru running out to the porch to hug his husband to welcome him home.
They didn’t let the brunette know that they were looking.
But they could see him. He left home far too little for them to not catch a glimpse of him roaming around, anyway.
The kids would see him tending to his half garden when they walk back from school. They never fail to notice the unfinished part of the lawn, but they never asked. They were there when Magnus got sick from ploughing it. Their parents were there when Hikaru went to them to ask for medicines for his husband’s dehydration.
Sometimes, he would offer them flowers, the pretty red and white ones which Magnus once told them were their colours.
“Like red velvet cake,” the blonde used to geek to the kids, giving each of them a stem when Hikaru was distracted. “Red for love. And white for purity. Like how all love should be.”
Hikaru used to jokingly hit him in front of them, slapping his bicep before planting a kiss on his cheek, as if to apologise for hitting his husband too hard.
There’s less laughter now. The flowers, once frequently picked and arranged into vases, fell to the ground every so often, only to be defiled by the dirt that Magnus once promise to clean up after he finishes with the other half of the lawn.
People would offer to help. And this time, it was Hikaru who declined the offer.
“There’s less light in his eyes,” they whispered to each other during afternoon tea.
His eyes, once bright and fierce, slowly sunk. His cheekbones showed, and his ring no longer hang snuggly on his ring finger. It now sat around his thumb, a desperate measure to hang onto something that had already left him behind.
In the quiet nights, when the rain drizzled and the owls cried, Mary would catch him sitting by himself on the backyard’s bench.
There were always, always, two glasses of wine. One in his hand, and another on the seat where a taller shadow used to sit. He still talked. Still yapped about the same way that he used to do when his lover was there to edge him on, quietly laughing to himself and the wine glass like he could still feel his lover there.
Many times, she would catch him slipping. After too many sips, he would lean in, trying to find the familiar frame that used to be his pillar in the night when the dark stretched for too long.
She would walk away from her window then, too scared to see the entire thing play out after seeing it for the first time many moons ago.
Hikaru never caught himself half-way, he never did. He would lean and lean until his head found nothing, then he would lay flat on the bench, as if he was still trying to find the warmth that his husband used to offer.
When that happen, Mary would send him a pie in the morning, wanting to talk. But every morning after, he would say no and tell her that nothing was wrong.
He stopped showing up to the town hall meetings. The long walks around the block that the two used to do after every gathering ceased.
In the late afternoon, he sat alone, watching the quiet lake and listening to the birds as they called each other back to their nest.
The dent in the wood of his seat at the bench continued to deepen. And slowly, but surely, the dents that were once equal on the hard wood were no longer on the same level. The weeds in the unfinished garden grew and grew until the lone owner got too tired and weak to take care of it and himself.
The flowers, red and white as the first time Hikaru planted them, bloomed, oblivious to loss and love.
And in one beautiful afternoon, when the sun was at its highest, the couple found each other again.