Trance

Chapter 22: Sukoon (Peace)

Chapter 22: Sukoon (peace)

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It's night. We've found a small hotel, booked a single room as the manager thought we were a married couple. We didn't bother to correct him, we were too tired to.

My eyes close shut again, begging for me to rest my aching arms. The entire day was spent driving, switching over during breaks, and finally finding a place to rest at the last moment possible. It was already 12 pm when we finally found a place to rest.

The moon glimmers through the thin curtains and I watch the glowing light carefully. I turn over, my body facing Matysa's. She soundly sleeps, her eyes shut carefully. However, I know if I even move an inch, she'll wake up. Every time the bed creaked, she would jolt up. The soft snores that escape her mouth are simply an illusion of hers, something to cover up the lightsleeper.

I turn over again, pulling the thin blanket to my side. Although it's freezing, I let go of the blanket, which Matsya tugs closer to herself. I get off the creaky bed and let my bare feet touch the ground. It doesn't even take Matsya a second to open her eyes.

"Hey," I say, leaning my body against the cabinet. She lets out a yawn, giving me a nod to acknowledge my existance.

"What were you thinking of?"

"What do you mean?" I ask, raising an eyebrow. I wasn't thinking of anything in particular, really. My mind is so occupied with Matysa that I barely have any time to think of anything else.

"During the car ride. You only started speaking after our first stop and you were back to your usual Nirvaan self," Matysa says. "What were you thinking during that ride? If you want to share anyways."

"Sukoon," I say, letting the word roll off my tongue effortlessly. "I was thinking of peace and the last time I felt it. I don't remember ever being happy with my parents. They were too uptight and wanted me to be perfect like all the other kids they compare me to. I never really had a childhood besides studying, talking to Tina and later on Diego, my brother, and eating jelabis. And I know that ever since adulthood, I've never experienced peace."

"I want some sort of . . . Tusali. There's something that gnaws at me, an incomplete story but I don't know what it is. I feel like I've lost my life purpose somehow. And the only time I ever feel sukoon is when I'm with you. I felt completed, I felt okay sitting in that car with nothing but quietness and your hand over mine during the red lights," I ramble.

Her eyes are widen, but in a good way. She seems curious to hear the rest of my rambles, thankfully. Her body is sitting upwards in the bed and she has one hand holding her face as she watches me.

The moon only illuminates half of her face, show in her brown curls and lips but not her dark eyes. She fiddles with the blankets with her fingers as I watch her.

"And I have this theory that we were meant to do this. That our encounter was meant to happen, that this friendship was meant to happen. We're two broken people with awful pasts and not so happy futures. But the only thing that matters is the moment inbetween really. No one cares about happy endings in books. They care about the journey, the beginning of everything.

I don't know. I hate this tense feeling between us, the knowing of that this will all come to an end," I say, trailing off when I see Matsya's eyes widen and her lips part to correct me. I wave my hand, silencing her unspoken words. "We both know that this running away will probably end some time soon, with one of us dead or both. The best case scenario is that we live both of our lives in hiding or that I finally get the guts to leave the only thing that bring me sukoon. We part ways, and never meet again. Both of us survive in that scenario."