Les Laches

Hot and Cold

Tian wriggled softly behind his blanket. With his eyes half open, he peeked at the clock on his phone. Nine o'clock in the morning. Exactly an hour had passed since he arrived in Havana.

He felt quite refreshed after resting his previously stiff back from almost 12 hours of sitting on the train. After making his bed, he rushed into the bathroom.

It was still raining heavily as Tian walked towards the hotel restaurant. He swallowed the last slice of his beef steak before downing his cold tea. His feet then stepped onto the terrace of the hotel, trying to estimate how much longer the rain would rain on the city.

In fact, he was reluctant to walk alone in the strange city. For some reason, his plan to visit several places in Havana as if never crossed his head on his return from Cienfuegos. However, staying in his room without doing anything was also not an option. Safira and Afgar who could return to the hotel room at any time after finishing her gym session obviously would not leave her alone.

In fact, there was one other option that came to Tian's head. He could ask Meda to accompany him as usual. However, before they parted, the young man did not bring up Tian's itinerary as he had already. The young man instead seemed a little strange with his silence during the trip from the station to the hotel.

Initially, Tian thought Meda was just tired. However, after several checks on his memory, Tian was convinced that there was more than just a tired word behind the Meda residence. Thinking that he might not spend time with the young man again until the day of their return to Indonesia made Tian feel a gaping hole was created in his heart. However, Tian did not want to force himself to try to approach Meda if the young man himself did not attempt to meet her again.

"Miss, you could grow an umbrella from our receptionist if you want to go out." A staff manning the hotel entrance approached him while Tian was still daydreaming.

"Thank you." Tian threw a small smile before stepping towards the receptionist and borrowing the umbrella as suggested by the staff.

For nearly half an hour, Tian stepped on the streets of Havana without the slightest intention of entering any buildings. The shops crammed into the main street did not look attractive in his eyes. It was only the performances of street musicians mobbed by some street users that made him stop several times to watch.

The crowd around him, made Tian forget about his solitude for a moment. However, once the low boisterous surrounding dimmed, Tian recalled his four best friends again. He missed his friendship with Meda. Several times he tried to get the figure out of his head because imagining that the young man was not thinking about it was a little painful.

Tian still remembers the moment at the top of Palacio del Valle. However, his brain was reluctant to translate further the meaning of Meda's twilight gaze. Tian was not a person who was happy to soar his own expectations with excessive speculations. So, if Meda herself did not intend to bring up the brief moment in Cienfuegos, Tian was also reluctant to care.

The rain had subsided and the dark clouds that had previously loomed over the city of Havana had disappeared. Tian folded his umbrella and carried it with his left hand. The girl's eyes fell onto a stand selling small knick-knacks on key chains, as she resumed her steps. Tian moved closer and greeted the young man standing behind the table with a friendly smile. The cheerful-faced young man returned his smile and stood right in front of the pile of kitten-shaped keychains that Tian was observing.

"How much?" Tian opened the google translate app before repeating his question again "Cuanto cuesta?"

"You can get three items for 25 pesos."

From Tian's oriental face alone, the young man had already caught that the girl was not a local. Moreover, hearing his funny accent when saying questions in Spanish. Therefore, he tried to adjust to keep his customers comfortable continuing the transaction.

"Then, I'll take six. Could you help me to pick the best ones for the rest five?"

From the beginning, Tian had trouble dropping options among the many keychain models scattered on the table surface. As usual, he was only able to find one object that caught his attention and lost interest in comparing it to similar objects. Even when it was offered to him at a cheaper price.

"Depends on what's the standard of 'best' you looking for." The young man laughed a little.

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to..." Tian was intent on apologizing for thinking he offended the young man.

However, the young man cut quickly.

"It's nothing, Miss. I just wanna know about your preferences, so I can help you to find the right ones." The young man explained without even losing his cheerful smile.

"Well, I came here with two women and three men. Maybe the preferences are two more girly things and three things that could scream out its masculinity."

"Airright!" The young man quickly wrapped all the objects he found into the small plastic.

Tian himself took a look at the other items sold at the stand. There are various models of pendants, necklace chains, wristbands, rings, earrings, and ....

"Maps? You sold it?" Tian pointed to a basket near the foot of the table where the map was located.

"Yes. You also wanna take this one?" hail the young man.

Tian did not think at all while nodding his head. Only when he walked back to the hotel was he busy thinking about what he could do with it. Borrowing Meda's excuses doesn't feel right. Tian has absolutely no plans to visit places that could make him lose his modem signal or even go somewhere in a rented car that forbids his driver from activating GPS.

In the end, he concluded that his impulsivity was triggered by the friendliness of the young man while offering the items he sold. About a few meters before reaching the hotel, Tian saw the figure of Meda squatting on the side of the road while feeding a cat. Tian took a breath from where he was standing before approaching the young man who seemed to see nothing but the cat before him.

"Meda," Tian said as he was at a hearing distance.

Meda shook her head, making Tian think that the young man did not hear her voice. However, as Tian prepared to call out his name a second time, the young man pulled the cat into his arms and got up to look at Tian. Tian sensed an invisible wall as he stared at the young man's expression. The returning wall created a distance between the two, just like at the beginning of their meeting.

Tian could not guess what the underlying reason for the young man's mood swings was. However, Tian understood that trying to hear everything from Meda's own lips was not the best thing he could do right now. Finally, he decided to act as if everything was normal until the young man expressed his own feelings.

"Where are you taking the cat?" tian asked to break the silence.

"To the pet feed store," Meda answered briefly while confirming the position of the gray-haired cat that looks comfortable in her carrier.

"You want to take care of him?" ask Tian again.

"I just want to feed him."

"That's his name."

"It's up to you to call it what. The important thing is that I don't need anyone's consent to feed this cat" Meda said.

For some reason, that remark made Tian's chest feel tight. Just as he had expected, something had happened without him noticing and made the young man return as he had at the beginning of their meeting. Cold and unachievable.

Tian gulped, trying to ignore the foreign lump that felt pressing down on his throat and preventing him from speaking. However, he forced his tongue to move, even though the sound he produced trembled slightly.

"If you treat a stray cat like this, they won't get used to feeding themselves. They will encourage other humans to feed them. In fact, not all humans care if they want to eat or not. It's still good that this cat is just chased out, if it gets hurt? It's even more pity, right?" He tried to persuade the young man well.

"So, you mean they'd rather starve to death than they'd be beaten to death by humans. That second scenario isn't even going to happen and you've banned me from feeding this cat?" Meda's tone of voice grew colder.

Tian brushed away the hair that had fallen on his face from the wind before staring intently at Meda.

"What I'm forbidding is that you go further than you should. If you can't really take care of the cat, don't spoil him like that. He's not a human being who can tell which reason is luck."

"So, according to people like you? It's natural that this cat starved to death and my actions will make him forget the same nature as a wild cat that is NATURALLY live like that?"

Tian stopped his steps. "What kind of person am I in your eyes, Meda?"

Meda turned. "The rich who only care about themselves because they are born with all the completeness of life. One who may think that people of lower caste should not accept excessive 'luck."

Tian's eyes narrowed. "You're sure we're talking about the same thing here."

"Am I wrong?"

"Wrong! Because you obviously didn't capture the gist of my words and instead turned them around to a completely unrelated topic. I'm talking about you who have to find a pet store to find a cat that you can't possibly take care of. I'm talking about you who's probably almost an irresponsible person doing something halfway before you go on with your own life." Tian laughed sinisterly.

"OKAY. Maybe you didn't think of it until there, but strangely the contents of your head even more moving in the wrong direction. Why are you suddenly bringing caste and social status to this conversation? Are all rich people really sinners in your eyes? You're the type of person who can only think that something isn't white, meaning that it's black?" tian asked with teary eyes.

Meda laughed bitterly. "Not all rich people are ugly in my eyes, but I don't think you're one of those people."

A drop of wet granules slid down from the tip of Tian's eyes.

"Bye, Meda," he whispered before turning around.

Meda was stuck where she stood after the girl disappeared from her sight. The cat in his arms meowed weakly as if trying to ask what the young man was thinking.

"I always end up saying things that hurt her whenever I try to cover up my own feelings" Meda whispered before putting the cat back on the ground. "Go away. Sorry to get you into this fight."

As if understanding what Meda was saying, the ash-haired cat darted away and disappeared in the gap between the two nearby shop buildings.

In his hotel room, Tian threw his body into the bed. Pull the blanket over and cover his head. His eyes continued to get wet as tears never stopped flowing and his head could not stop turning the last words that Meda said.

Spending the past 2 days with the young man made Tian think that at least the two of them could make a good friendship. Now he felt completely ridiculous for even thinking about the possibility of romantic feelings between himself and the young man. Yeah, apparently a little bit of Safira's words on the night of their departure affected his line of thought.

Tian lay down like that motionlessly for nearly half an hour before getting up and changing his clothes. While taking the bag he had thrown carelessly to the floor, a plastic package fell at his feet. The package contained keychains and printed maps he had bought in the center of the previous city.

His memory again presents the figure of Meda, one of the people who should have received the object in the package. Tian sighed as he took out a wooden clock-shaped keychain from inside the pouch in his hand. He wondered what he should do with the thing he had given to Meda, for there would be no more opportunity for him to talk to the young man in the future.

Tian sighed, somehow for how many times. He should have adhered to his own principles and not been involved with a complicated person like Meda, he thought. Because, such things will only waste their time and make themselves trapped in a drama situation that is exhausting physically and mentally.

Determined to forget all the memories - both good and bad - with Meda, Tian threw his body back under the covers and prepared to sleep. However, just as he was about to fall asleep, the ringing of the phone that he forgot to set into vibrating mode made Tian jump from his lying position.

While grumbling inwardly, the girl grabbed her phone. Previously, he only intended to read the contents of the message that had made him almost have a heart attack in a while. However, as his eyes traced every word in the message, he no longer wanted to remain in his bed. He no longer wants to be in Cuba.