CHAPTER 3 — BOOK II
Golden Century
(October 2001, Sydney)
They went on a weeknight.
Not because it was a tradition yet, but because neither of them knew what else to do with the evening. The days had become too long and too full of noise that didn’t resolve. Dinner at home was steady and kind, but kindness did not always know where to put grief.
Chinatown did.
It held grief the way it held everything—by continuing.
The street was loud in the ordinary way. Neon flickered with confidence. Steam lifted from metal lids and vanished. People moved in groups, shoulders brushing, laughing too brightly, speaking too quickly. The world looked intact here. It looked like itself.
Golden Century sat where it always had, refusing glamour and refusing apology.
The windows were fogged from inside. The door opened and closed with a bell that sounded tired but reliable. A tank of live seafood bubbled near the entrance, the water lit from below, the fish moving as if nothing had happened.
Embong paused at the threshold, school blazer unbuttoned, hands in his pockets. Geoffrey reached past him and held the door.
“Come on,” he said.
Embong stepped in.
The air hit them immediately—ginger, oil, garlic, the sweet bite of soy, something briny and alive. It smelled like work and hunger and people who had decided the day was not allowed to win.
They were shown to a table near the back, not secluded but not in the centre. The chairs were functional. The tablecloth was white in the way all restaurant tablecloths pretended to be white.
A waitress slid two menus toward them without ceremony and placed tea down before either of them asked.
The tea was hot enough to be a warning.
Geoffrey stared at the menu without reading it.
Embong read his as if he meant to.
“Do you want—” Geoffrey started.
Embong didn’t look up. “Whatever you want. But no mushrooms.”
Geoffrey blinked. “Why not mushrooms?”
Embong finally raised his eyes. “Because they taste like damp secrets.”
Geoffrey laughed once, surprised by the sound. He covered it immediately with a cough, as if it had been accidental.
Embong watched him with a small, unreadable expression that could have been satisfaction or simply relief that something in Geoffrey still moved.
They ordered without debate—stir-fried greens, steamed fish, rice, something fried because fried things made the world less sharp. The waitress wrote nothing down.
Embong watched her walk away.
“She remembers,” he said.
Geoffrey nodded. “Everyone here remembers.”
It was not said bitterly.
It was said the way you said weather.
A family at the table beside them argued quietly about a wedding. A group of men in business shirts laughed too loudly over beer. A toddler banged a spoon against a bowl and was ignored with the tenderness of people too tired to care.
No one looked at Geoffrey like he was a tragedy.
No one looked at Embong like he was a question.
They ate in the way you ate when you were trying to prove you still belonged in the world of ordinary appetites. Geoffrey’s hands moved with practiced politeness. Embong ate with focus, as if the act itself mattered.
Halfway through the meal, Geoffrey realised something.
He had not thought about the television in hours.
He had not listened for sirens.
He had not expected the phone to ring with a voice that wasn’t there.
The room was loud, and that noise was not demanding anything from him.
When they finished, the waitress cleared the plates with efficient indifference and returned with a small dish of fortune cookies, setting it down in the centre of the table as if it was simply part of the architecture.
Embong stared at them.
Geoffrey stared too.
They looked harmless.
They always had.
Geoffrey picked one up, turning it once between his fingers.
“Do you believe in these?” he asked.
Embong shrugged. “Do you?”
Geoffrey cracked his open.
The paper slid out, neatly folded, the words printed in generic confidence.
He read it once.
Then again.
Embong watched his face before he looked at the slip.
“What?” Embong asked.
Geoffrey held it out.
Embong took it and read.
You will soon stand between two worlds.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Then Geoffrey exhaled, sharp and disbelieving.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said, too quickly.
Embong folded the slip once, then again, as if careful handling could make the sentence less accurate.
“It’s just paper,” Geoffrey added.
“Mm,” Embong said.
He picked up his own cookie and cracked it.
The sound was small, but in that moment it felt too loud.
He pulled the slip out and read it without expression.
Geoffrey waited.
Embong did not immediately hand it over.
Geoffrey reached anyway, and Embong let him take it.
You must decide what you will carry.
Geoffrey stared at the words until they stopped being letters and became weight.
Then, because it was unbearable to sit there quietly with meaning, he laughed.
It wasn’t a joyful laugh.
It was the laugh of someone refusing to give a sentence power.
Embong’s mouth twitched.
“You’re laughing at mine,” Embong said.
“I’m laughing at the universe,” Geoffrey replied. “It’s got a terrible sense of humour.”
Embong looked at him for a long moment, then said, “Maybe it’s not humour. Maybe it’s just… accurate.”
Geoffrey swallowed.
The waitress returned with the bill and placed it down, interrupting whatever was about to become too real.
Geoffrey reached for his wallet.
Embong’s hand landed on his wrist.
“No,” Embong said.
Geoffrey looked up. “What?”
Embong’s gaze held. Steady. Not dramatic.
“My family brought you here,” Embong said. “That means you don’t pay.”
Geoffrey’s throat tightened in a way he hated.
“It’s just dinner,” he said, as if saying it casually could make it true.
Embong’s hand stayed where it was.
“Yes,” he replied. “That’s why.”
Geoffrey let go of the wallet.
He didn’t argue.
They walked out into the street with the fortune slips folded into their pockets like contraband.
Outside, Chinatown kept moving.
The neon still flickered. Cars still crawled. People still crossed the street without looking properly. The world did not pause to acknowledge anyone’s private apocalypse.
They walked in silence until they reached the edge of the main strip, where the noise thinned into quieter streets.
“Do you want to throw them away?” Geoffrey asked suddenly.
Embong didn’t answer right away.
“No,” he said finally. “Not yet.”
Geoffrey nodded.
He could feel the slips in his pocket like small weights.
Between two worlds.
What you will carry.
He understood, in a way he did not want to admit, that the words weren’t telling them anything new.
They were only naming what had already begun.
At the next corner, Embong reached out and bumped Geoffrey’s shoulder with his own—light, deliberate, a gesture that pretended to be casual.
“Come on,” Embong said. “Before Hijau decides we’ve been kidnapped.”
Geoffrey snorted.
They kept walking.
The night did not become easier.
But it became possible.
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