Where Do We Go from Here?

xvii.

"Go on, get me my favorite fleece blanket," O bachan orders with her upper torso perfectly flat on her bed's headboard.

"You have a duvet here, Baba. Do you really need that blanket?" Rocky whines on the room's doorway.

"You get As on exams and you can't get a hint, boy?" A sharp stare and a scornful purse of lips by her grandmother forces Rocky to do as he is told.

I didn't need any of those when O bachan told me to seat beside her on her bed. I immediately obeyed.

"Finally," O bachan says pulling what seems to be a hardbound cocoa brown- colored book under the sheets and resting it on her lap. She opens it and we are greeted by four faded photos in each opened page which upon further examination always have a young boy in it. "Charming, isn't he?"

The kid's hair is more coiled, his eyes more brown than hazel and more easily read and his face obviously careless and unpretentious. His lips is a whole other story. It's what gives him away. The corners are turned up, one side faintly, the other broad.

"Sometimes you wish they don't grow up," I say.

O bachan chuckles as she turns a page. "Oh, here, this was the day he lost one of his baby teeth and he thought he was going to die. He kept wailing until we bought him ice cream. Chocolate, his favorite," she shares. Her eyes are plastered in a photo where Rocky was holding a cone with three scoops of chocolate ice cream.

Basic bitch.

O bachan scans through a few more pages and spills some more baby stories about Rocky until she finally arrives in the section where Rocky seems to be at his teen years and all of his photos are either in a basketball gym or him standing with a trophy.

O bachan takes a huge sigh staring at Rocky's pretty smiles. "He has always been on top of his game. At thirteen, everyone was saying he was going to play for the biggest university and then straight to the national league." She takes another sigh forcing me to take a second look on the photos.

The photos taken while he was playing seem so alive. His limbs caught mid-movement, his muscles flexed, his hair wind-tossed and his eyes burning. I have seen him play on the court but this is a different Rocky.

I trail my eyes on some of his photos with a trophy and his eyes are nothing but content and pride.

All the promise, potential, and proofs of a prodigy are plastered beyond the pages and I start to wonder why Rocky's here on Granite; a town that tells you to be hopeful but not ambitious.

"You're not going to pry?" O bachan asks. I raise my eyes to meet hers.

"Sorry?"

"Well, here's Roki, a basketball prodigy. Don't you wonder why he's not in a big university?"

I smile despite the confusion. "I don't think it's my place to ask."

"Really?" O bachan tilts her head. "'Cause I thought you're his girlfriend."

"Oh, no, no, no."

"Three nos? You're not lying then." O bachan laughs until she lets it fade to her satisfaction. "Well, I just thought you were because Asahi said you kissed."

My jaw drops with my pulse. I don't know why but the thought of a drink seems convenient in this time. It just feels right to choke while drinking and hearing this.

O bachan shows a raised brow and a petted lip. "No nos? I guess it's true. Don't worry, you're young, what else is there to do."

I let out a laugh but a nervous shriek echoes instead.