conceived from a prompt

It was 2:13 am when I walked into the convenience store. Not that it mattered, time has lost its weight sometime around the third glass of gin. 

The building felt like it was rotating gently, like a slow carousel with humming fluorescent lights. A kind of planetary tilt. Things were shifting. I couldn't tell if I was dreaming.

I tripped somewhere between the chips and chocolates aisle. The air smelled faintly of sugar and dust. I picked myself up before anyone noticed, or if they did, they looked away. No one wants to interrupt someone else's quiet disaster.

Then as if gravity pulled me closer, I saw him. He was sitting in the back, near the microwave and the cigarette display, a Jin Ramen in his hands, steam rising in slow spirals like smoke signals to a god that doesn't exist. He looked completely at ease, maybe too at ease for someone awake at this hour.

I felt the sudden need to orbit around him. Not because I was in love. Not exactly. But because something about him felt important, like he carried a piece of my past I'd accidentally dropped years ago.

So I walked over and sat down across from him. There was no ceremony to it. No greeting. Just my voice cutting through the stillness. 

"Hey, kilala mo ba ako?"

He didn't flinch, didn't blink, didn't lift his head. For a second, I wondered if I'd spoken at all. Maybe the words only existed in my head. But I felt them, shaky and sharp, leave my mouth. So I asked again, slower this time.

"Ang sabi ko, kilala mo ba ako?"

Finally, he looked up. His eyes were dull, not unkind, just tired, like someone who's read the last chapter of a book and still isn't sure what happened. He studied me the way one might study a half-remembered dream.

"Oo, Camille. Kilala kita. Wala lang akong pake." He answered, speaking in the flattest voice possible.

When it sank in, I knew he meant it. In the same way the wind doesn't care if it knocks over your umbrella, it just moves.

He took one last sip of his noodles, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, stood up, tossed the container in the trash, and walked out the door. Just like that. No sound. No echo. Like a character written out of the story in mid-scene.

I sat there a while, staring at the empty chair across from me. I felt neither hurt nor angry, just felt like someone had tuned the world slightly off-frequency.

The refrigerators buzzed. Somewhere, a soft jazz song played through the speakers. Maybe it was Ella Fitzgerald. Perhaps, just another loop of white noise pretending to be jazz.

I thought about following him, but something told me he didn't live anywhere anymore. People like that just drift, from bowl to bowl, from night to night. They carry old lives in their pockets like used batteries. 

I sat in the chair until the sky lightened, until I could feel the weight of morning pressing against the glass. By then, he was probably somewhere else. Sleeping, eating again, forgetting. I envied him.