Short Story - “Tea with Milk”
It’s Autumn. Time has passed. It always seems to. Right as you just start to get the hang of the concept of time and your place in it, the rug’s pulled from under your feet and you have to start from scratch figuring out where you find yourself in the big, temporal scheme of things. I guess I have to start figuring that stuff out. Or not. There’s no real obligation to place yourself on a tangible point in the time-space continuum, I suppose. I’d rather be a dot, floating ambiguously somewhere along a continuation that more or less corresponds to the current century I’m in. Preferably one with a decent sanitation system and access to my music library. And some books. All I do know is it feels like a Thursday. Though more often than not, it isn’t.
That one neighbour of mine moved out. I didn’t see it coming. Honestly, I thought he’d be there for much longer. That couple was there for many years before I showed up, and didn’t give any signs or leave clues that they were moving out. We weren’t all that close, but he was one of the neighbours I’d actually stay and chat to when we met in the hallway or somewhere in the area. I did end up hanging out with him a couple of times, talking cinema and watching clips of classic movies in my apartment or his. We only ended up watching two films though. A classic Soviet film and a classic Japanese film, both from the 20th century. He taught me a bit about bikes when I said I was interested.
We always made promises to catch up soon and organise a movie night, or head to the cinema on that pass that he bought earlier this year that gave him a plus one, but something always got in the way. He’d be sick, I’d be sick, he’d be busy, I’d be busy, he’d forget, I’d forget. And in the way that many busy adults with their own lives to lead do, we ended up just missing each other, and then life changed and we aren’t passing each other by anymore in the hallway to set up evenings that we end up not doing.
One day I heard a commotion as I was sleeping a few extra hours again for the umpteenth time that month, my excuse being the requirement to fix my sleeping schedule post-extended vacation. Usually these commotions pass quickly, but this one kept on going, with people coming and going past my apartment door and an assortment of ‘things’ getting dragged out of the building. I ate breakfast and got ready to head out, and met my neighbour’s girlfriend. She just said hi, and asked if she could use up some of my slot for the washing machine that day. I told her no problem, go ahead, I don’t have anything to wash anyways. She thanked me and went on her way. I didn’t see my neighbour that day.
Then, that evening, my neighbour sent a message to the building’s group chat saying that they’d moved out, thanking us for being their neighbours, and saying goodbye. I sent a message wishing him luck on his journey forward in the groupchat. Then I sent a personal message, saying it was fun to hang out, it’s been ages, and we should do it again. He replied quickly, saying that he hadn’t moved all that far away, and that he’d be happy to organise a movie night sometime, and would message me if there was anything interesting airing at the cinema. I told him that that sounded great, and I look forward to seeing him again.
I haven’t told him yet that I’m going to move as well soon. I hope that we can meet before I do.
It’s been a peculiar year. Not necessarily in a bad way. Simply peculiar. In the way that makes you stop and think for a second and how something about it doesn’t quite fit along the axis of ‘normal’’, but doesn’t exceed the imagination of common sense by too far a fetch either. It feels as though too many things have happened this year, and the year paradoxically also feels lacking in ‘things’ and ‘happenings’. There’s been strange weather with seasons not quite feeling like themselves, their definitions blurring into just one continuation of shifting temperatures and wetness. Miscellaneous mini seasons popping up in the middle of others they have no business showing up in. The sudden month-long sweater weather in July and August. The ongoingly and unprecedentedly hot autumn. Though I must admit, I have been grateful for both of these periods. I can’t take all that much excessive summer heat, and it is nice to be able to wear lighter layers on these bright autumn days.
Maybe that’s why my grasp on time has been slipping so steadily. What used to be so clearly defined has become hazy and its outlines have faded. Blended into other things. Mixed. Intertwined. Muddled up. Gurgled into an amalgam of ‘stuff’ that you have to untwine knot by knot in order to truly conceptualise where you find yourself in relation to it all. The life I have spent growing up here and moving to this apartment and accepting that I’ll live here for the rest of my days, then suddenly changing everything up and finishing my high school degree and working hard and studying to go to university in Japan and exercising and now I’m going to be moving and everything is changing but I still continue to exist and be myself. It’s a peculiar sensation, with a peculiar year as its backdrop.
The refrigerator is humming loudly. I slowly pour milk into my tea and watch it expand and dissolve in the mug in waving, cloud-like patterns. The towel we use to dry the dishes is pretty wet, and I take the book I was reading off of it. Didn’t mean to put it there. It dries off with a quick wipe from a paper towel. It had the cover on, so no damage has been done. It’s my last Autumn in Switzerland. It feels like a Thursday, even though it isn’t.
