Tainted Entropies

RECKLESSNESS.1

[Saturday. April 2. 16:28]

The ticking of the clock reverberated throughout the room, piercing through the stagnant silence that wrapped around Kael and Arthur.

Kael’s hand held a wooden brush that he pressed so gently against the white canvas, which sat above a wooden easel. He glanced at the half-naked Arthur who lay down on his bed, his comforters and pillows in a complete disarray. Pieces of crumpled papers were scattered across the room, along with a few dirty clothes that were carelessly thrown around.

The place was a mess, yet he still painted the scenery from the corner most part of the room. He couldn’t let the opportunity—to paint the sunlight’s orange hue that was seeping through the windows—slide. It was an interesting concept.

Arthur’s lashes kissed his cheeks whenever he blinked, his expression sombre as he stared down on his phone. He seemed to be watching a video when his phone pinged from a message.

Kael puckered his lips before continuing to lay down the colours that he already mixed on his glass palette. He needed to finish the painting before the sun finally sinks behind the mountain ranges that surrounded them, because he might be never given another chance to capture such a phenomena.

The warm sunlight that seeped through the window panes touched the messy and cold-looking room, looking as if a ray of hope shone down on a dark and hopeless land.

It was what Kael liked about the scene.

It had been years after Kael discovered his father’s unreasonable hatred towards art. Every time he saw Kael holding a brush, he’d make sure that the said brush would be reduced into a pile of ashes moments after he gets a hold of it.

Arthur found out about it right after the first time it had happened, and suggested that Kael should paint in his room instead of his own house to avoid it from happening again.

That was the first time Inka felt closer to the then enigma that was Arthur Nyland.

Arthur spoke as he took a bite from the peanut butter flavoured biscuit that he seemed to be fond of eating. “Mika,” he called, “can you still not remember what happened last Sunday?” He chewed on his biscuit as he fiddled with his phone while waiting for a reply.

Kael shook his head. “I don’t. We chugged a whole bottle of vodka like it’s water, dude. What do you expect?” He chuckled. “It’s not as if something world-changing happened.”

Remembering that day, Kael cringed behind the easel and canvas that blocked him from Arthur’s view.

He prayed that nothing really happened between them. If something did, it would surely affect their current relationship, and Kael didn’t want anything to change between them. After all, standing beside Arthur was already such a huge privilege—how could he want for more?

Kael, when he was younger, once wished that they could be more. However, after years of wandering and diving deep into society and its norms, he realised that such a thought was dangerous. So dangerous that it could possibly ruin the lives of those who dared dip their toes in it.

And so he tried everything that he thought could cure his ‘abnormality’ and suppress his urges. He even tried directing such urges to women.

This is how it should be, he thought to himself once.

Yet, in the end, he still couldn’t force himself to like a woman. In the end, he still looked at Arthur with a looked that even to him felt wrong—disgusting, even.

Was homosexuality really a sin?

How could love be a sin?

However, no matter how many times he asked himself such questions, he could only arrive to one conclusion: As long as society sees it as a sin, then it is, no doubt, a sin.

Kael smiled bitterly, and shook his head to rid himself of his thoughts. He started cleaning up the brushes that he used. After he was finished, he glanced at the painting one last time.

“Art,” he called, “let’s go get food? I’m hungry.”

Arthur furrowed his brows, eyes lingering on his phone’s screen with a look of what seemed like disbelief, before shifting his gaze to Kael. The knit on his brows unravelled as he relaxed his facial expression. “Where to?” he asked as he stood up to take his keys from his desk across the room.

“Solomon?” he suggested.

Arthur was in almost finished wearing his shirt when he tossed his keys to Kael and started fiddling with his phone yet again. “You drive, then.”

“Alright,” he agreed before jogging his way out of the house to catch up to Arthur, who briskly walked out as though he was itching to leave the place.

Just as Kael managed to start the car’s engine, Arthur suddenly spoke with his eyes still glued on his phone. “Let’s fetch Joaq. He just took his exams at the uni.”

“Right. He’s a freshman now, isn’t he?”

Remembering that school’s about to start again in a few months, he sighed. There will only be more things to do since he was already a sophomore, and an accountancy student, at that. He could already feel his brain bleeding from all the stress that’s about to come.

“Maybe I should hibernate this summer vacation,” he jokingly said to himself as he stepped on the gas so that they ascended the mountain much faster. “I could already feel the fatigue for next year. Serving the church would be a double whammy.” He rolled his eyes.

“Why aren’t you telling your dad that you want to quit, again?” Arthur asked, yet his eyes were still glued to his phone screen.

Kael sucked on his tooth and grinned as he looked at the road ahead of them. “I’ll just end up being scolded.”

Finally, Arthur turned off his phone to glance at Kael before looking at the road straight ahead. They were already descending the mountain. A few minutes more, and they would have a noisy child with them, sitting at the back seat.

After a long stretch of silence, the car stopped in front of their university’s gates. A boy that was sitting down on his board beside the guardhouse immediately stood up and pranced his way to them. The moment he went inside, he immediately bombarded the two with a couple of gossips he heard back at the registration office.

Suddenly, Joaquin asked, “Didn’t you say you sent your car to the shop, Art?” He looked around as if looking for signs of damage on the interior of the vehicle. “Did you crash on something?”

Arthur nodded. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

Kael stole a sideway glance before making a doubtful face. “Were you alone when you got into the accident?” he prodded, backing up Joaquin. He was also kind of curious as to why Arthur was so tight-lipped about what happened. Was it something so unspeakable that he couldn’t even tell his friends?

Arthur sighed after a long stretch of anticipating silence wrapped around the three of them. “It’s nothing, really. I was alone when it happened.”

“Why were you even alone?” Joaquin questioned before turning his head towards Kael. “Where were you? Weren’t the two of you practically joined at the hip?”

Kael rolled his eyes before steering the wheel so that their vehicle was lined behind the bumper of the car before them. They were waiting for their turn to order on the drive-thru section of a fast-food chain.

He turned his attention at Joaquin, who was attentively scanning the menu on the side of the narrow road. “I don’t even know when it happened, dude.”

“Oh, let’s get a bucket of fried chicken,” Joaquin blurted out as he momentarily peeled his gaze away from the flickering light to look back at Kael.

“Saturday,” replied Arthur before also turning to the menu. “Alright. Let’s get fried chicken and fries, then.”

“I want a sundae—oh, it happened on a Saturday. Yeah, I think I attended a seminar at the church that time.” He nodded slowly, which abruptly came to a stop as he remembered something. “But weren’t you on a date with Inka that time?” He stepped on the gas as the line before them finally moved.

Nodding, Arthur glanced at him for a second before reaching out towards Kael’s door and pressing a button. The windows rolled down automatically, which allowed them to hear the greetings from the radio outside. “She left before it happened.”

“Good evening, ma’am, sir; how can I take your order?” A woman’s voice resounded from the small radio box outside.

“Hello. Uh, can we get a bucket of fried chicken, three large fries, one sundae . . .” Kael trailed off.

“And a peach mango pie!” Joaquin interjected.

“. . . one peach mango pie, and three large sodas.” He glanced at Joaquin before sighing.

The woman’s voice repeated their order for confirmation. “May I have your name, ma’am?”

Kael furrowed his brows but didn’t pay no mind. Maybe he sounded like a woman on the other end? “Mikaela—”

“Alright, miss Mikaela, please head towards window number two to claim your order. Thank you!” And then the radio went static, leaving Kael no time to correct her.

A burst of high-pitched laughter came from the back seat the moment the wheels of their vehicle started rolling. Joaquin seemed to be having the best time of his life at the back.

“What the f**k . . .” Kael was at a loss. “What did she just call me?” He faced Arthur, asking for confirmation.

Joaquin was still wheezing at the backseat when he tried to speak. “M-Miss . . . Mika—” he gasped for air “—ela!” And then he continued clapping his hands like a seal. “Oh, God, I can’t breathe anymore!” He wiped off a pearl of tear on the corner of his eye as he sniffled, trying to calm himself down.

However, before he could do so, they reached the window where the voices of a bustling kitchen seemed to waft outside the window along with the familiar mouth-watering smell of their signature fried chicken.

“Thank you for your patronage, ma’am—” the woman’s smile fell when she finally turned around “—sir. I’m so sorry!”

At the back, Joaquin exploded from another fit of laughter. “Oh, God, my tummy hurts! No more, no more! HAHAHA!”

Kael could only smile and nod while taking the paper bags that she was holing out the window. “It’s fine. Thanks.” He was about to hand over the paper bags to Arthur when he felt the other shift from his seat.

Ah, he thought that the food was the most mouth-watering smell that he had inhaled in the last thirty seconds. He was clearly wrong.

The scent was purely of Arthur as his arm appeared in front of him, reaching outside the window to hand over his credit card. It didn’t smell like anything that Kael could explain—it just smelled like Arthur, and Arthur alone.

“I’ll pay.”

Kael could only draw a sharp breath when the distance between them was reduced without any warning whatsoever. His grip on the paper bags tightened as Arthur stayed in that position while typing his pin code on the machine.

A few seconds passed when Kael was finally able to breathe again. God will never give me challenges I cannot surpass, he told himself repeatedly as he looked for an empty parking spot near the restaurant.

He still hadn’t calmed himself down when Joaquin started worshipping Arthur’s ‘benevolent’ actions.

“All hail, king Arthur!” Joaquin prostrated on the cement ground of the parking lot when they finally stepped out of the car. “Thank you for the feast!”

Kael rolled his eyes at him before stuffing a handful of fries inside his mouth and sitting down beside Arthur on a parking curb. “You look stupid.”

Joaquin sat up and patted away the sand that managed to stick to his knees. “Humph! At least I’ve never been called ‘miss’!”

Kael was rendered speechless for a few seconds. “I feel like you’re never going to get tired of using that against me,” he said. “And why did she even think that I was a girl?” He rolled his eyes and watched Joaquin sit on his board.

“Maybe because you sound so whiny!”

“Not all girls sound whiny! And what the heck do you even mean by that?” Kael glared at Joaquin. “I don’t even sound whiny—”

“You do,” Arthur cut off. He handed Kael a piece of chicken skin from the one he was currently holding, before ripping off a portion of the meat to take a bite.

Kael took the chicken skin and nibbled at it while staring at Arthur. “I do?”

“Yeah, dude. It’s so needy and whiny,” Joaquin answered for Arthur. “Like some horny little slut begging to get f****d from behind—”

Kael’s eyes widened from shock. “Wha—Joaquin! You’re eighteen! Watch your mouth!” he warned before stealing a glance from Arthur. “You’re really . . .” He felt the heat rush up the tips of his ears.

Even if they were sexually active, it still comes as a surprise when Joaquin’s the one who talks about it. And the words that escape his mouth are so unpredictable that it actually scared Kael at some times. This was one of those times.

Kael was burning hot from the embarrassing words that came out of Joaquin’s mouth as he tried to think of a good comeback. “Well . . . well, at least I don’t thound like a thnake!”

Joaquin glared at him before harrumphing. “Hey! That’s foul! Mom said it was cute!”

“You both sound stupid.” With shoulders shaking slightly, Arthur dipped his French fry on Kael’s sundae. He was obviously chuckling on his own while watching the two of them engage in a stupid argument.

Kael watched him as he did so. It was already rare to see Arthur smile. Yet right now, he was at the verge of laughing.

Minutes passed and they had already calmed down to peacefully enjoy their snacks when Arthur’s phone pinged from a message. The amusement that lingered on his face instantly evaporated as he furrowed his brows in annoyance while looking at the screen.

“Do I look like your f*****g driver,” he mumbled to himself before rolling his eyes.

Kael looked away and took a spoonful of his sundae. He watched Joaquin play tricks with his board to avoid looking at Arthur. It was obviously Inka. No one could really coax out the lines between Arthur’s eyebrows and deepen his frown other than her.

While he was nibbling on another piece of chicken skin that he got from Arthur, the phone inside his pocket buzzed. Thinking that it might be his father who messaged him, panic took over his system, causing him to quickly fish it out of his pocket despite his fingers being drenched with grease.

Kael sighed in relief when he saw Aliana’s name at the top of the message. “Thought I was going to die for a moment there,” he mumbled before finally reading the contents of the message.

‘Aren’t you gonna attend the music fest?’

With brows knitted in confusion. “What music fest?” he blurted out before looking at both Joaquin and Arthur, asking for an explanation. “How did I not know about this?”

Joaquin smirked before doing a simple Ollie on his board and stopping in front of them. “Maybe because your other friends doesn’t really like you.”

Kael grimaced and flipped his middle finger at him. “Seriously, what music fest?” He scratched his head with the ball of his thumb and turned to Arthur to look for an answer.

“At San Pablo. There’s a rave. I just found out about it from Inka.” He shook his head in annoyance before kicking an innocent rock off the ground.

“Oh, that! I actually heard about it this morning, but I didn’t know that it’ll be held tonight.” He shrugged. “I was gonna tell you about it earlier, but you bullied me.”

Kael’s nose flared as he rolled his eyes and looked back down at his phone. Another message came from Ali, which contained the exact address where the rave was being held if ever Kael wanted to catch up to them.

“Are we going or not?” He stood up and patted down his button-down shirt. Good thing it was plain black, and the grease from the food wasn’t really obvious. After all, he’ll still end up taking off his shirt if it gets too hot at the music fest. He started picking up their trash to throw it to the nearest bin.

Joaquin bounced in excitement as he ran towards the car. “Well?! I say let’s go find us some girls—oh, s**t. Aren’t the both of you taken?” He shook his head mockingly as a smirk slowly appeared on his face. “Damn. That’s kinda sad.”

Arthur only shook his head before taking over the driver’s seat. “Agreed.”