016

Accepting things the way it already happened should be the way to go, she thought inside her head. It has always been that way.

Nisa looked on, not sure what she was feeling anymore. Arguments often happened between her and Joey, she had been used to it, to the point that it did not matter much to her anymore. As long as everything else was fine, it did not matter much, because at the end of the day, she knew there would be a better thing to happen later on. Everything had a reason for it.

There was a reason for it this time that she thought would be silly and good at the same time. Stupidity. She was looking for a reason to get over everything, at the same time it was covering up for every other problem, ruining it all. It was good to get over things that way, but at the same time it was stupid, damn silly. It really did not explain much of the actual truth; it seemed fake.

She pondered, feeling lost; then she stared at the box of tissue in front of her on the dining table and suddenly remembered something. I forgot I cried.

Nisa held the curtain near her open, as she sat down alone on her own at a table by the window, taking a sip of the coffee she just ordered five minutes ago at that small cafe in town.

“Then I wonder what you remember anymore.” The other Nisa stared back at her with a curious look on her face, sitting opposite to her. “Don’t mourn over this.”

“I’m not mourning, baka,” Nisa muttered as if talking to the other Nisa, in reality talking to herself. She looked down to her coffee, feeling blank. She did not know what to do anymore. There was a solemn feeling inside, at the same time it felt like erupting like a volcano. Often she hated that kind of mixed, tensed feeling that had always made her feel choked up inside, like another death penalty.

The other Nisa lay back to the chair unsatisfied with what seemed like Nisa’s weakness to admit the obvious. “You’re lame.”

I guess so. Whatever.

“Whatevers – are annoying, do you know that?” Imaginary Nisa asked, as if infuriated by now, crossing her arms over her chest.

I might realise that, but sometimes I can’t care enough about it.

"FUCK YA DAMN MORONS!"

She turned her attention to the noise coming from the cashier's counter; obviously, everybody else there was also looking. A man just grew upset at the lady over at the counter, as what she could presume from what she was seeing.

Duh. Where are good manners anymore? Even here I can't settle at peace drinking coffee, here there's someone growing upset and throwing unnecessary bad wordings to the cashier!

Imaginary Nisa looked on at the counter, raising her eyebrows. "I know that fella, if you ask me."

Nisa did not seem to realise it when she first looked upon the person yelling at the counter, not until the other Nisa reminded her of it. Nisa turned around to have a second look.

Pen?

"I'm sorry, sir, but we are unable to help you for what you requested," the lady at the counter commented as she was beginning to go frantic at his behaviour towards her. A man came up to the two of them; as it turned out he was the manager of the place itself, wanting to help out with the situation.

"Everything okay here?"

Pen pounded his fists on the counter table, somehow, he was losing his grip on everything. "THE HELL NOT!"

The manager was starting to feel threatened. "Sir, please calm down. I'm sure we are able to settle this in a more proper manner," the manager spoke out as nicely as he could, not wanting to worsen the situation.

The lady at the counter snorted. "Harold, he's asking for pretzels here!" she whispered to her manager, facing away from Pen. "I think he's been drinking.."

"IT'S ABSURD YOU DON'T HAVE SUCH A SIMPLE THING! WHAT IS UP WITH YOU PEOPLE??" Pen was bending his body over towards the two, as if getting more upset and was ready to start a fight.

Another man showed up behind Pen. "What is this commotion?" He exchanged glances with the manager.

The manager whispered to the lady of the counter, "if this gets worse, I want you to call the police." He took a deep breath, still wanting to end the situation in the most appropriate manner. "Sir, if you would like, please take a look at our menu and ask for what we have available. I apologise, but we don't have what you earlier requested here," the manager said to Pen.

Pen moaned loudly. "I WANT WHAT I WANT!"

"Sir, if you continue this, we would have to call the cops," the manager finally said to him.

Pen's eyes were blinking. "Oh, YEAH? GO AHEAD, HECK LIKE I CARE!" He went over and pulled the manager's collars, his adrenaline rush was flowing faster than ever; he could not care no more.

"Sir, stop-" the manager muttered. The counter lady went off to the back of the kitchen to call for help while the other man was trying to lay things off. Throughout the entire place, the situation was getting more attention from every other customer there, and more men were beginning to get up and help out. A bit farther away, Nisa was getting more surprised to what was happening; she sat there, just watching, wondering what she could do, since she knew Pen. Not wanting to stay silent watching her friend getting in trouble, she stood up to get to him.

"Hey, let it go, lad," commanded a man in his fifties as he tried to pull Pen away from the manager, just as the other man earlier on was trying to pull Pen's arms away.

Sick of getting more and more people bugging into the business, Pen let off his grab from the manager and struggled with the men to let go of him. "LET ME GO!" He groaned yet again, as the men got off him when he let go of the manager. "Fine, whatever, leave me alone!" Pen took off from that cafe in a split second, leaving the men at the counter area in curiosity.

"What's the matter with that young man?" the man in the fifties inquired, as the manager shook his head.

Hey, wait a minute Pencil!

Nisa followed him from behind, at the same time, not wanting him to realise her presence.

014

"What I know of is that there's Brighton Police Station, Hove, all at maximum 2 miles away from where you were eating instead of going to the Sussex Police, which is what, 10 miles away?" Pen explained to them while he was lying on his couch in his apartment, his eyes set on the television in front of him.

"Shut up already, I know it now, all right?" Brian moaned as he was blowing smoke out of his mouth, holding a cigarette with his right hand, still in his bad mood. He was seated on the armchair, close to where Pen was. "It's not like I didn't know some of those you said, I've told her, but she wasn't listening to me."

Pen glared at him. "If she was really that unprepared to go to the police, then you should've been the one driving the car, instead of her, moron."

Not in the mood to be arguing, Brian sat up straight and stared at Pen, discontented, while his head was directed upward. He figured that Pen was probably making sense.

"My intention is to help her face her fear, or so, that's all."

Brian remembered the time after the three of them were done eating at the restaurant and they were going to go to a police station straight after that, much to Sarah's hesitation.

"No can do, then?" Brian asked to Sarah who was just done making a phone call, as he was returning Nisa's cellphone back to her after getting Joey's phone number in his hometown in Terengganu, Malaysia for his own information to keep. Out of the three of them, Sarah was the one who made the call to his home back in Malaysia, speaking in the normal Malay language, asking to speak to Joey, but he was not there and had not been home since the past 7 months.

"His brother was the one talking, telling me about Joey's furthering his studies here in Britain so he hadn't been home for a long time already now," Sarah told them.

"No suspicion that his bro is missing in action, cool," Brian stated, lying against Sarah's right side of the car as they were standing in front of the restaurant.

"Cakap melayu, bunyi tak macam international call la," Nisa spontaneously blurted out to add up to what Brian just said, not realising she was speaking her native Malay language in front of Brian. At that, Brian was stunned for the second to hear Nisa speak in her national language - he never heard any of them speak it before.

"You said international call what?" Brian looked at her anxiously, exchanging a few glances with Sarah who was then smiling at both of them. "Man, you hardly speak your local language. Let me hear it again?"

Then Nisa realised it, surprising herself, probably being caught up in her mind with something else at that time. "Ah, sorry, I mean, err, speaking Malay would, of course, not cause suspicion at Joey's own home.. since they all speak Malay at home, like we all do back in Malaysia."

"Then I hardly hear you converse in Malay with Sarah... or in fact, Sarah," Brian turned his attention to Sarah, "you hardly do, converse in any other language with anyone else as long as I've known you. Was it, I never heard you do that not even once?"

With a smile, Sarah said, "Then, you wouldn't understand me. And anyway, Nisa and I both enjoyed it, kinda used to it, I guess, but we never forget where we came from."

Nisa nodded. "We still speak Malay, just that you don't hear us often."

"Well, cool, maybe I can learn it." He grinned, feeling quite interested in doing so. He felt like he could get to know Sarah better that way, of which Sarah had told him about quite a few times.

"Then, no luck of Joey." Nisa returned them to what they were all trying to do in the first place, to find Joey. Brian snorted, feeling quite bad that he knew where this would lead Sarah to.

"Gotta go to the police." Brian stood up straight in front of Sarah, looking at her right in the eye. "We gotta face this. You, drive and I'll be looking out from right beside you." He turned to ask Nisa, "okay with you?" Nisa nodded again in agreement, as Sarah just looked at them both with a worried look on her face.

After that, Sarah turned to become more anxious than she was before.

"Whoa, wait there a minute, are you sure this is the right way?" Brian asked her, having a strange feeling about the route they were taking as Sarah was driving silently. "Sarah?" He knew something was off just by looking at her face.

"Sarah, where are you going?" Nisa asked from the passenger's seat. "I thought we're headed for Brighton, you gotta take Southover Street, this is the wrong way."

"It's barely a mile away, Sarah..." Brian was looking at her. "Take it easy, okay?"

"I'm doing fine here, okay?" She was distracted, and seemingly dissatisfied, at the same time having a worried look on her face. "Just fine..."

"But Sarah, you gotta stop. This is the opposite way of Brighton Station," Brian reminded her.

Sarah seemed to gulp. "No, I'm not driving there. I'm going to Sussex Station."

Brian was surprised, knowing that would be sort of ten more miles away. He and Nisa exchanged glances.

"You... know the route?" Nisa asked, concerned. "Coz that's quite far-"

"Of course I do!"

"Okay, then," Nisa said, signaling to Brian to deal with it nicely and patiently.

He moaned. "Fine, it's your car, and you're driving," Brian muttered, thinking this would be wasting more time and energy for all of them.

After passing by the University of Sussex along the way and going through long roads and a few roundabouts, they seemed not to be getting anywhere fifty minutes later.

"You definitely took the wrong turn somewhere," Brian told Sarah, fuming, as they were going down Ashcombe Hollow. "This doesn't seem right."

"Damn," Sarah was panicking in silence as she kept on driving.

Nisa was getting worried. "Sarah, this is getting out of hand. I think we're all tired. Are you sure about this?"

"What are you talking about? We've gone this far!" Sarah said, almost yelling. Nisa would not dare to say anything to make any of them both mad any worse than they were, although the night was already getting quite late.

"Still..." Nisa was in doubts, muttering to herself.

"Sarah, turn around. No sign board, this is getting quite local." Brian turned to face her. "Gotta trust me."

At turning around, they took another turn, and ended up driving to a place where there were hardly anyone around, quite a deserted place filled with empty lots of small shops. They were then clueless of where they were, and were tired, and very discontented with each other, especially between Brian and Sarah. They had both been arguing the entire time for the cause of them getting lost until the morning, mainly caused by each other's ego, also because Nisa was too afraid to enter in between them to have anything to say. Brian ended up falling asleep in the car, as Sarah kept driving to find a way back to where they came from instead of going to the police station like they first intended to. It seemed foolish, indeed.

"We found you there, while looking for our way back home," explaining what happened to Pen, Brian was feeling guilty about what happened between him and Sarah. "Idiot, what happened to you?"

Pen laughed at himself. "Nothing, really. I was dumped again, had a drink, had an accident, got robbed and even got threatened by a thug by a knife - might get killed there, all in a day... that's all."

Brian was dumbfounded by his act of "nothingness". "Nothing, you said?"

Pen was smiling at him now. "You know what buddy...?"

To have Pen call him a buddy, made Brian feel weirder since it was kind of unlikely.

"Let me be on my own right now. And... you, talk to Sarah, huh?" Pen got up and went to his room, shutting the door behind him, without looking back, leaving Brian astounded.

Pen? On his own? That's so not like him.

Although he knew, everyone needed a moment on their own.

Wait a minute, he was dumped again? Which means?

012

He stared down, speechless, although he had too many things to say in his head only waiting to come out in words. Sitting like a statue on the chair next to the hospital bed where Jennifer was silently lying in, Pen was dying inside. So was Jennifer.

"Glad you're back, Jen," he finally said to Jennifer who had already awakened from sleep. All left in the ward were the two of them.

Still in groggy condition and with her cracky voice, she turned her head slowly to face him. "Me too."

Pen looked at her with the most sincere smile he had ever had in the longest time. "It's been a long time. We all miss you... I miss you."

It was unlikely for her to see him that way. Pennsylvania McCain never seemed like the kind of guy who would ever cry or even put up a face like he did at that moment. He was a guy with foul mouth, strange facial expressions and messed up hairstyles, making him not look like he came from a wealthy family at all.

"Van..." she muttered out slowly. Pen then moved closer to her to hear to what she had to say.

"...you have to let me go."

Like all the stupid cartoons he had watched on television before, he envisioned a lightning bolt striking right through his heart, shattering it into trillions of pieces, impossible to be put back into one. But it was not like he had not expected such things from happening to him, from her, as he knew he had been expecting too much. He only hoped all the while for her to get back to life again and show her pretty smile. He just wished that she had not really said it directly to him.

Smiling, Pen said, "I know. I'm just glad you're okay now."

__________________________________________________________________________________


Where is he?

Her mind was going to be torn apart, just thinking about it. It had been several days already, and nobody knew where Joey had been to, no news about him at all, nothing. Every single minute that passed by was driving her crazy.

"Sarah, let's report this to the police or something."

With the food she just took into her mouth, being chewed, Sarah almost choked at hearing the word police somehow. Brian, Nisa and her were all having their meal at a halal restaurant off over Eastern Road of Brighton, East Sussex.

"Police?" Sarah asked, surprised.

Nisa looked at Brian for a response. He was silent for a moment.

"Might be good..." Brian said after giving a bit of thought. "Still... I haven't tried calling back his home or anything like that... I don't know the numbers..."

"I might know. Can you help me?" Nisa asked assuringly.

Taking a glance at the confused Sarah, Brian was sure of it. "Sarah and I would both help, I'm sure, we're all friends!"

At those positive words, Nisa confidently smiled. "Thank you! Although, you barely know me."

Continuing eating his spaghetti (obviously he was hungry), Brian just nodded. "Neoo whorries," he muttered to her before he finished eating.

"Um, hey!" Sarah raised her hand before continuing to eat her steak. "Do we really need to deal with the police?"

Knowing the kind of person Sarah was, Brian knew, no matter how responsible she was, however good, however kind, however independent, she had a hard time dealing with certain things in her life. Sarah's father was a troubled alcoholic and her mother lived to become quite troubled herself, although not quite as bad as he was. During those troubled days, there would always be the need to deal with the people that she learned not be fond of - the police. This was not exactly something that Nisa was aware of, only Brian was.

"Chill, Sarah. It will be fine. We're doing this for Joe," Brian tried to talk her over calmly, this time without food in his mouth.

Sarah stared at him, blunt.

Chill, sure.

It made her go back thinking about the days when her mother used to be depressed because of her father's sudden appearance and death. To treat the depression, she used to be on Paxil, or Seroxat, or chemically known as paroxetine, whatever name you wish to call it. It made her so suicidal that she needed to be hospitalised to make sure she would be safe, even then she was quite violent toward herself. It caused her to lose her appetite and she lost her weight a lot in just 2 weeks, causing her had to be kept warded at the hospital. It changed the happy mother whom she used to know before her alcoholic father ever appeared into a solemn woman who barely spoke or smiled anymore. It hurt her to see her mother that way, and she could do nothing about it.

Although that was back a few years ago, she could not help but felt bad about it. Life changed for her whole family when her father came back that one day, and it made her wish that he never came back at all, for her mother could have been happier today. In spite of that, her mother was getting better by the day, compared to the days when she was still in the hospital. She had stopped being on Paxil, much to the family's enlightenment.

"Are you gonna eat that or what?"

"Ah, this actually tastes good," Nisa ate a part of Sarah's steak, just to taste it, she thought - smiling, as she had already finished her spaghetti which was the same order as Brian's.

"Hey, it does," Brian, too, ate the steak and laughed, somehow having fun doing so.

"HEY, why are you both eating MY dinner? I didn't eat yours!" Sarah exclaimed, unsatisfied. Brian, enjoying himself, grinned at her.

"We finished first, that's why. You were dreaming. And this dinner is your treat!" Brian kept grinning. He placed both of his elbows on the table, with his palms holding his head up. He watched her eat. "Hurry up then."

Nisa only chuckled. "You two are funny people."

"Don't watch me eat!" Sarah's cheeks were turning red.

__________________________________________________________________________________


Ah. Jen, I see stars, I'm seeing stars!

It was like a line from Starry Eyed Surprise from Crazy Town. Coming out from a bar across Southover Street in Brighton, East Sussex, Pen headed for his car parked right next to the dustbin just as he remembered it just now.

Jen, just as I wished for... I'm so glad...

"Thank you, Van." He could see Jennifer smile right ahead of him while he was seated at the driver's seat, ready to go. There she was, walking away from him... and suddenly gone.

Hey, wait a second.

"I.. I have something to give you first before you go. Wait up!"

The keys were in. He turned the engines on, and sped away.

008

The lady stared at him, blank, without responding a word. It left Pen feeling bad if he just did something wrong - particularly, if he got her name wrong. "Err, no way your name's Rulisa, I don't know anyone by that name. Melissa?"

Again, no reponse.

My, what am I supposed to do about this?

Pen faked a smile on his exhausted face. "I do know many Melissa's, you know?"

Other than several blinks on her eyes, the lady still did not say anything. This made Pen feel a bit pressured - he cared about his friends even at the most despair times of his life, and would not want to make any of them get mad at him, not even for the simplest mistakes he did.

He sighed, feeling bad. "Give me a clue! Am I talking to a statue??"

The lady blinked again a few times before smiling at him. "Pencil."

Eh?

Feeling a bit relieved to see her smile, he laughed a bit. "Don't do that, miss... Melissa? I mean, don't get angry, for I might not remember your name... you can call me Pencil if you wish so, anyway, Brian always does."

"B." She smiled again.

Ehhhh?

He was starting to feel a bit weird about the so-called conversation they were having - if that was even a conversation, counting the few words she had spoken back. "Miss, are you okay?"

Looking straight at his face, still smiling, she replied, "Fine."

It made him remember that those who actually said that they were fine, were always - always - apparently, not fine. Plus, being in the hospital area, he became more convinced that the lady he was talking to was indeed, not fine.

"Miss, why are you here? You alone?"

Blank-faced again, she simply muttered out short, "Sarah. Who knows."

Ahh, definitely not the wrong person. Sarah's friend... of whose name I've forgotten... still I don't understand what she's saying!

"Miss, WHY are YOU here?" He stressed out the important words, really eager to get the answer from her. "Where's Sarah?"

From a blank face, her face suddenly showed an expression - she frowned, as if worrying about something, and began to go frantic again just like the way she was when Pen accidentally bumped into her before. "Why.. why, why! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, excuse me-" She turned around and ran away, into the hospital, fast - all in a split second - before Pen could really comprehend what was going on.

"... looking for Joey!!!" He heard her yelling out loud as if telling it out to him, as she did glance back to look at him. He was surprised at the sudden change of her behaviour, and that behaviour was not going to be good at all in a hospital, where it was supposed to be a place of quietness for sick people - the way he looked at it, and the lady seemed to go about to uncontrollably break the good silence.

"Hey, hey, wait a second!" Pen went back chasing after her. Not understanding much, he wondered why he had to go after her, as he barely knew her. However he had to do something. "Hey missy!"

Stopping clumsily at the information counter, the lady abruptly asked the counter woman in her forties, who was talking on the phone, to tell her if there was a guy who had been taken into the hospital after a suicide attempt, own-made injury or anything like it. "Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me-" She was not yelling anymore, but she looked rather hysterical, as if desperately looking for something, having lost her calmness.

The counter woman put her hand over the phone receiver for a moment to get over to her, being panicky as she was. Before she could say more, the lady almost seemed to lose her control - like a dead volcano suddenly erupting, it was a great surprise, since she looked like a good, calm person.

"Don't give me that face and tell me he's not here... he's somewhere, he's here, he's around, HE'S HURT!!!" As Pen approached her from the side of the counter, he could tell she was starting to cry. "Where's JOey!! WHERE IS HE!!"

Pen pulled her arm to get her away from the counter, as he could tell the woman at the counter was starting to get scared. "Sorry, miss, she's my friend."

"Sir, no patient was taken in by suicidal causes... does she need help?"

Shaking his head, he stuggled as he tried to pull her over a bit farther away to try to hold her and talk her down. "Lookie here, quieten up NOW!"

There was a moment of silence, where the lady and Pen were both looking at each other. He could see fear in her watery eyes. That silence was soon broken. She began screaming out of control, attracting looks by the public and attention by the hospital staff who quickly came over to help calm her down.

"D-d-do-do-don-don't touch - don't touch me - GET AWAY FROM ME!"

For a while, Pen was taken aback. He never expected for her to become as wild and uncontrollable, and felt terrible that he might have helped to worsen it. About two or three nurses nearby came to help. She was struggling to get away, at the same time she was crying like crazy. Pen took a moment to let her go and let the nurses handle her, as he just decided to make a quick phone call to ask for help.

Dialing the numbers quick, he waited impatiently for an answer while looking at the lady and the nurses trying to take her away from public view. Once the phone was picked up on the other side of the line, he immediately called for the name of the person he called.

"Sarah?" He sighed hard, as he followed the nurses. "It's Melissa - um, I mean, got a massive problem here. Come over to Royal Sussex County, NOW."

006

"Sorry, please try again later."

Dang. For the two millionth time!

She pushed the reject button, hard, letting out a huge sigh. Nisa meddled with her cell phone, running back through her messages in the inbox, as if that was the only way for her to let go of her anger. She felt like everything was going wrong lately, and life had never been more different. "No answer. He turned off the phone," she muttered to herself, hoping Sarah would hear her. Somehow, that was the only way she knew on how to start a conversation that she hoped would lead to the talk where she could confide her feelings into other people. It did not seem like Sarah heard her, as she got no response.

There they both were, eating at the usual cafe they had always gone to for lunch and dinner, where the food is halal and also delicious, with prices that were not too costly but not exactly cheap.

"Sarah," she spoke softly. With that, she hoped to start telling her everything that was bottled up deep within her, only waiting to come out. It felt hard to start, but she knew she had to begin somehow, as she had been feeling so miserable lately.

"Hm..." Snorting, Sarah pulled a long face. "I'm starving here, hope the food comes soon." Looking quite tired, she looked at Nisa sitting opposite to her.

Dang. Can't pull the words out. Nisa looked back at her, smiling faintly, suddenly blurred of where to start. "Huh... you know, Sarah?"

Then Sarah focused at her. "Yeah? You were gonna say something, I'm waiting?"

Um... Her hands felt cold and they were starting to shiver. As simple as it might look like, just to blurt out the words "I have a problem", she just could not do it. Or she just was not letting herself to do it.

"SAY IT ALREADY!" Her imaginary-self appeared again, right next to her, pretty much yelling into her ears. Apparently, Imaginary Nisa did not look too happy, a whole lot more serious than before.

"Shut up already, moron," she muttered to her envisioned-self, who seemed to walk around the table she and Sarah were seated at, blabbing about her foolishness of keeping what she wanted to say bottled up inside. "You the moron! Don't bottle it up, it gets worse!"

It was only her imagination, but she found it to be just as stressful as it could have been if that was a real person yelling at her about the one thing she hated - the secretive, sensitive, quiet and scared part of her. Being quite, no, very introverted ever since a kid with such little changes till now, being in early adulthood, she hated herself for being a coward. All the simplicity of talking to other people and opening up, to let other people enter her life.

Closing her eyes, she rubbed both of her palms onto her face. That was only nobody but Sarah, her own close friend, yet she still could not do it. She was sure she would not be heard, not be understood, be laughed at, to be ignored. All that and more, she had always taken them as signs of rejection, that she was no one; a person with little things she was proud of and had nothing to be liked about.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Sarah's sweet, concerned voice flew over the table right into her ears.

"Now, Nisa, she is kind and she won't laugh or reject you," Imaginary Nisa spoke again, this time (with a calm look on her face, like any friend would do when their other friend is in need.

Nisa could feel tears in her eyes. "I've been trying to ignore him. I'm trying to forget him by doing so. And I don't like doing it at all," she finally spoke, somehow, managed to smile while doing so, holding back her tears - she was sure they would not flow out. "He may think it's 'coz of our last conversation with each other on the web messenger, where he made me very concerned about him, of which I got annoyed at. But really... there's a whole bigger picture to it..."

"Huh? That baka is it you're talking about?" Sarah started to sound rather stern.

Laughing to hear the word baka, Nisa felt better already. "Honestly, yeah. I asked him about some Biochemistry work that other day through YM, which eventually led to something else. He told me he can't help with anything, simply 'coz he hadn't even started with it as he had no mood to do it. His mood was off again, of which I didn't wanna make worse of it, to at least make him feel better I tried telling him few bad jokes that weren't even funny-"

Sarah's hands were raised up in air. "Whoa, slow down, the food's not even here yet, okay?"

Taking a deep breath, Nisa adjusted herself. "Yeah.. I was trying so hard... for weird stuff. Yet now I know he's no longer mine." She smiled - her usual smile, take one look at it and most would not know she was feeling bad inside. "Mushy stuff to say, huh?"

Sarah snorted. "Haha... glad you know that, that's so rare of you."

Looking on the empty table, Nisa continued. "Joey eventually told me he had stuff to do, to end the conversation. Before it ended, he told me he hated living... and everything... all sounded bad... dangerous... harmful... he got me damn worried till he told me he made it all up. That was a serious matter, so I got mad!"

At that, Sarah almost smiled. "I see. But, I don't think he'd do that anyway... isn't he a good guy... he won't do....."

As the waiter approached and began serving them the food they ordered for, Nisa felt a weird, sudden urge to look outside the window of the restaurant, with Sarah's voice slowly going unheard by her, fleeting somewhere else. She saw a familiar figure across the street, the same hair, the same height, same style of walking. He seemed to be headed somewhere, wearing a tiresome look on his face and carrying a black backpack.

Joey?

Ahmad Jo: i wanna find another life
Ahmad Jo: get away from dis current one
Ahmad Jo: huhuhu
Nurul Nisa: huh?
Nurul Nisa: what does dat mean?
Ahmad Jo: wel if i tel ya i'll hav to kil ya
Nurul Nisa: ....
Nurul Nisa: nothin stupid rite?
Ahmad Jo: hmmmmmmm
Ahmad Jo: lets just say it's not something decent

What is he doing?

She felt lots of things running through her mind at that moment. She could no longer hear Sarah talking, she no longer cared about her food.

"Nisa, you said you wanna ignore him! Why are you so tight up all of a sudden?" her imaginary-self spoke again, seemingly standing next to her, looking at the same guy who was going to disappear out of their sight.

"I've been trying to call him but to no avail! I ignored him before that because of my own selfishness! Whatever happens, I can't let him hurt himself! Even if he made it all up I still worry about him!" she said to herself, still looking outside. This was heard well by Sarah which surprised her.

"Wait," Nisa stood up quickly from her seat, planning to get to Joey, which added up to Sarah's surprise. The waiter who was serving food startled a bit by her rather clumsy reactions. However, Nisa could not care about all that anymore. Leaving her purse on the table, she ran outside to chase him, feeling sure he would soon do something stupid.

"HEY!" Sarah panicked. "Where are you going??" She got up to try and stop her. "Nisa, what's happening? Don't just leave!"

Maybe he hasn't been lying. Maybe he'd hurt himself. Although he had no idea what he made me feel, worried to death, when he joked he'd do those stupid things!

"You! Shouldn't be running in a crowd like this!" Imaginary Nisa yelled, running next to her. "I think you should stop!!"

"NO! Get away from me!"

Joey vanished into the middle of the block of shops across the street of Blatchington Road in Hove of East Sussex, leaving Nisa trembling for a split second of where he went to. He went into that alley, but where would that lead to?

"Joey!!"

It was a big crowd around, at such a peak hour where everyone was going out to eat, of which she found her way running in the middle of the people to catch up with Joey. Sarah tried chasing her from behind, at the same time calling for her to stop, or basically, anyone to stop her. "You'd better stop! THIEF!!!"

She made that up, spontaneously. The people around might have heard her say that, and tried to react to it by looking at the girl she was chasing after and try to stop her. Still, Nisa was a small girl among the crowd so she was able to disappear quite fast before anyone could get to her.

Sarah stopped running, finding it hard to go around as she was stopped by the red traffic light for pedestrians. She was devastated and tired.

"Miss, were you trying to catch that other girl just now?" a so-called friendly voice spoke to her, who was a little boy walking with her mummy.

"Are you okay?" the mother asked her. "We heard you but it's too hectic here. She stole your purse?"

"NO!!" Sarah yelled back. She refused to care anymore. At that time, she had lost her best friend and she did not know what happened for sure, troubled to think about her friend's last reaction. "She's my friend.. please help me.."

The boy looked at her, feeling bad for her. "Mum, we have to help her."

Panting, Sarah felt like she wanted to cry. "Where did you go?"