Lost Child.

The noise sometimes stops, but nothing is certain. Sometimes they don't.
Echoes in my head.

I typed slowly, my fingers following the rhythm of the thumping bass. More often than not, it rings in my head, right after I woke up from my seldom peaceful slumber, before I wash my face or brush my teeth. When I like a song, I like it, probably a little too much. When I hate something as well, it's not very different either.

And right now I hate myself. For putting myself in this situation.

Things can be worse, of course. Thankfully they're not. But it can be better, and I regret how I didn't even try to work on that.

I barely floss. Maybe that's why the dentist took two of my molar, and working his way towards convincing me on the third. Anaesthetic and medical bill aside, I just don't like the idea of this person prodding inside my mouth yet again. Nothing personal.

I clenched my left fist, eyes closed. This was the best part.

In an interstellar buuuuurrrsssttt

My molar-deprived gums felt a gust of air brushing inside.

I'm back to save the uuuuuuniiiiveeeerseeee

I do wish I have the capability. I wish I could stop saying that. I'm part of the universe, anyway, why fret?

"How long have you been standing there?" I removed my earphone as the music finished.

"Two hours." The figure by the doorframe answered.

"I've only been here for ten minutes."

"Okay, two minutes then."

"My voice is that good?"

"I'd pay for the lipsync, but don't push your luck."

"Thank you. Now, what do you want?"

"A good night's sleep and acne-free face."

"But that's me."

"Then we both want the same thing."

"Where is this conversation going, anyway?"

"I dunno, ask the audience, maybe?"

"Fifty-fifty?"

"Okay, let's stop here."

"You started it."

"Fair enough."

"Now will you excuse me I'm quite busy at the moment."

"Lip-syncing?"

"The album hasn't ended yet."

"I figure so." She walked closer and put an envelope on my desk.

"Tomorrow?" I asked.

"Yeah. Good luck." She headed out.

Alone once again. Playback resume. One click, two clicks. A few typing here and there. I took another sip from my mug, set it down, and open the envelope. You never know how hopes and fears can come from a sheet of paper.

Three Unsolved Mysteries of The Universe

...more like Tayverse, because they're mostly mysteries from my time and age, and I don't intend to pass on this stupid legacy to next generation or anything. lol.

Sometimes you just look at the sky and at one point you would ask, "why is it blue?" and find out it has something to do with wave frequency of the sunlight refracted by our atmosphere. Maybe you do it at night, and instead wondering, if the stars aren't visible that much, how do the scientists know there are millions of billions out there? Maybe when you were a kid you asked your parents where babies came from. And then you don't ask ever since.

Alright, I digress. Those are all good questions, and I've been told that in science there's no stupid question. Almost all good stuff begin with 'why?' or 'how?', and might hold the key to the future but these three unsolved mysteries of the tayverse only need one keyword: "what?" and past-driven instead.

Yeah, that's kinda what I've been asking myself, what the hell man? You could try to shift that curiosity into something far more useful, and instead all you can manage is these dumb-ass questions??

Sometimes I ask myself, "what the hell is wrong with you?" but we're not going there today. These so-called mysteries are less of mysteries than reminiscent tale of stuffs that shape me into who I am today. Okay, maybe 'shape' is a bit too much. They're more like chapters of my life. Chambers, if you will. They're like... bits of memories that shaped like jigsaw puzzles, where I'm missing one of those parts. And the search for the answers would resemble me looking underneath my board game drawer or shaking the jigsaw box to make sure nothing left inside.

1) That "Miharu" comic

This was a reminiscent chapter during my elementary school era. I have read A LOT of comics throughout my life, but this one particularly glues its way into my head: because I literally FORGET its name and now I feel like I can't die peacefully until I know what the title is.

It's been a while, obviously, and it's actually more like a shojo manga in chibi-like artstyle where the main character is a small school girl who has a crush on a boy, who's also liked by this rival girl character. Your typical shojo. The distinction is that our girl has magical split-personality kind of thing where she can change her personality (and I use this term loosely) based on how she ties her hair. 

So she has three different split personalities: the smart one, the fierce athletic body, and the kind, well-mannered one. Just your average life, really. I recall she named them accordingly: "Mi-chan", "Ha-chan", and "Ru-chan", and thus their names combined made up her actual name: Miharu. THAT'S the first clue I used to search the name of the manga, but so far I found none resembling that. There are a lot of shojo manga distributed in Indonesia that aren't freely scanlated on the internet, so I guess it might be one of those.

There were a few stories about her, but what I can remember is when she and the rival compete to win that boy's heart: through sport events and brain games. I just realized that due to those magic people inside her hairstyle (not literally), the Mi-chan 'supercomputer robot' who knows everything, and the 'possibly retired from the olympics and decided to possess this little girl' Ha-chan, she basically cheated her way through the whole thing. Dammit, Miharu. Have some respect. (but moral quiz tho: is it really cheating if it's a part of her?)

If you guys ever remember reading something like that, please help a girl out. I'm frustrated because this isn't rocket science but so hard to discover. Thanks inb4.

2) Colin's shirt From The Basement 2008

I'm a relatively recent fan to Thom Yorke and the Radioheads, which is a pity because I've been liking their 'The Best Of" album since high school. Given that statement, being a fan implicitly means following their news, watching their live shows, and of course... memorizing their names.

Colin Greenwood is just your average bassist (usually forgotten, lol jk ily colin) and From The Basement is just your average (it's not) live music show where it's sound produced by surprise, surprise, Radiohead's own producer Nigel Godrich. So in 2008 they performed most of songs from their then-recent album In Rainbows, and Colin was donning this totally average tree-themed black tee. Totally average, right? But nobody knows where they can get it. At least as far as I know from online group discussions, nobody has managed to find out where to buy it. This doesn't mean that I want to buy it, per se, but I was just curious (I still am, actually).

FYI, the Radiohead fanbase is really extensive, and they're usually really quick to catch if something's up. Last week some fans took a picture of Thom (the lead vocal if you don't know, you cretin) when he was signing stuffs during their South America tour and not long, someone posted info about how his totally average-looking shirt costs $300. Pretty normal, huh. I'm not judging his fashion choice, but it's just weird that so far nobody manages to give me info on where I can get Colin's shirt.

3) That shady Jakarta motel on July 2008

This is a real story about a real place, somewhere in Jakarta, but probably isn't like one you quite imagine. Long story short, I joined a group tour abroad for a few days, and was supposed to fly home immediately after a short transit in Jakarta. But for some reason, the flight home was delayed until the next day at dawn, probably around 4-5 am, so the group had to stay for a few hours in Jakarta after landing at around 10-11pm. The organizer didn't book a hotel for us (because this wasn't in the original plan), and this was a time when browsing and booking hotel online through your smartphone wasn't yet a thing. So I guess in a last minute attempt to avoid these preteen junior high schoolers from reporting to their parents that they had to sleep on the bus, we were booked a motel.

Shady-ass motel. 

I figure it was the cheapest thing they could manage, but really? Even I knew it was a building specifically engineered for, uh... one night stands. Imagine bringing a group of preteen students to stay in the same motel as the other, uh... customers. But just recently that I realized how messed up that prospect is. It was more of me wondering what factors were put into consideration that they decided it was okay for us to be there in the first place. The location, maybe it's close to the airport? The room rate, maybe it was almost 1/4 the price of normal hotel? Who knows, right??

I've been talking to my old friends who were joining the tour, but they don't seem to remember where it was, either. There are no picture, online documentation, social media status whatsoever that give some clue of its whereabouts.

Or that it ever happened. Maybe it didn't happen at all. Maybe I'm going crazy. Old friends, please reach my contact should you ever remember where it could be. Cheers.