CHAPTER 3 — BOOK IV
Watching
(The Same Week)
At seventeen, Fayrani thought she understood adults.
They were loud about rules and quiet about fear. They repeated advice like it gained weight through echo. They told you who you were becoming as if the future were a corridor with only one door.
What unsettled her was adults who didn’t perform adulthood at all.
She noticed Geoffrey and Embong again that week, not at a ceremony this time, but in the unguarded space after it—coffee cups in hand, jackets half-on, conversation unhurried.
They were sitting outside a café, angled toward each other, knees almost touching.
Almost.
Geoffrey was talking. Embong was listening in the way people rarely did anymore—eyes steady, attention complete. When Geoffrey paused, Embong didn’t rush to fill the space. He waited.
Fayrani hovered a little distance away, pretending to scroll on her phone.
She watched Geoffrey gesture with his free hand, animated, then stop mid-sentence when Embong reached over and brushed something off his sleeve.
Lint. Dust. Something invisible.
The moment passed without comment.
Geoffrey resumed speaking as if nothing had happened.
That was the strange part.
No acknowledgement. No gratitude. No awareness that anything intimate had occurred.
Fayrani frowned slightly.
She knew couples who announced every touch. Friends who turned closeness into proof. Boys at school who performed affection like a dare.
This wasn’t that.
It wasn’t flirtation.
It also wasn’t distance.
It was… settled.
Geoffrey laughed at something Embong said—softly, not for effect—and leaned back in his chair, eyes closed for a second, like someone allowing themselves rest.
Embong watched him with a small, unreadable expression Fayrani couldn’t yet name.
Not adoration.
Not ownership.
Recognition.
She felt it then: half amusement, half awe.
Amusement,
because Geoffrey was ridiculous in the way people were when they felt safe.
Awe, because Embong seemed to know exactly when to let him be.
Fayrani realised, with a flicker of discomfort, that she was watching a language she hadn’t learned yet.
When her mother called her name, she jumped.
“Coming,” Fayrani said quickly, slipping her phone into her pocket.
As she walked away, she glanced back once more.
Geoffrey was still talking.
Embong was still listening.
And neither of them noticed her watching.
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