I stopped by a convenience store not too far from the school. It's a habit that I had picked up since my first year, and I had been doing it on an almost regular basis. I'd just grab a drink and some snacks, sit at the table they provided on the porch, and do anything I felt like until the sun was set. Sometimes it's reading a book, sometimes it's watching some random online videos, but more often I'd just sit around and observe as people were coming in and out, and the cars and bikes were flashing along the highway. There's nothing special about the view, but I found all this to be fascinating in its own way. The porch was pretty comfortable, though, and perhaps that's why I'd always pick this particular store over all the other options I had on my way home.
Another thing that I enjoyed about it was the process of making the choices; the time that I had to take to decide which snacks and drinks to pick up. I had grown an inexplicable fondness for simply combing through the entire snack section and standing before the packed refrigerators. Not that I had a problem in making up my mind. I just loved the idea of imagining how good it'd be to pair up these chips with that soda, or this juice with those biscuits. That day, I settled on a café latte—the one in a can—and two raisin almond soy bars. It was the fourth time in a row for the week. As usual, I went on to do one final round of circling the two sections, and after making sure there's nothing else I wanted, headed to the checkout, at which moment I realized Raka had been following my movements with his eyes. His smile couldn't have stretched any wider.
"Is that how you look at everyone coming in?" I said.
"Four days into the week and still haven't missed any day. That's quite a streak you're having, Pram."
I laid my stuff on the counter and slipped out my wallet from the back pocket of my trouser. "It's only going to be longer, Ka. At least until the end of the month."
"What's wrong? Is the police after you? What crime a nerd like you could possibly commit?" he said, giggling.
"I wish. There's no specific reason. It's just… I just feel like it."
We grew up in the same neighbourhood. Being three years older than me, he should've been a college sophomore right now, if it wasn't for the fact that he got expelled from school in eleventh grade and never looked back ever since. His lower-income family was already giving away everything they had to get him and his younger brother through to college, and having this guy screwed everything up by taking part in a brawl with a neighbouring school, hardly two years away from graduating, was more than enough of a reason for them to give up on him. A big, vertical scar on his temple was only one of many artefacts from his brawling days. We hadn't really seen each other for years until I paid my first visit here, and it still amazes me how much he had changed in the meantime.
"Anyhow," he said. "Lucky you. We've got a discount for that coffee."
I observed the uniform he was in. That bright red polo shirt was certainly less red than it was a year ago. So were the yellow and white linings on the collar. It was as if the slider in the Photoshop colour picker had been moved slightly to the left, resulting in a more washed-out tint.
"I'll pay by card today, Ka," I said as I was pulling out my debit card.
He stopped playing with the register and looked straight into my eyes, his face bearing a disappointed look. "Too bad, Pram. The machine isn't working right now."