After thirty years piecing together the fractured dreams his mother had lost to time, he could now face the silence of night (slapping away mosquitoes) recalling everything that had transpired: the glory days of LANGA that slowly faded, carried away by time’s relentless current. Yet, he still longed to forget (though it was impossible) the bruises of betrayal from the one he’d trusted most, as deeply as one trusts the air. Even air, he’d learnt, could be cruel, especially in a cell crammed with dozens of inmates, where anyone might, without warning, unleash gas from their gut.

It felt like just yesterday that he’d celebrated his twenty-first birthday, surrounded by loved ones (and childhood enemies, too) and received a key to adulthood. A door that turned his world inside out. Pain and joy entangled, sometimes arriving at once, moulding him into a man both ferocious and cynical, yet still romantic—especially when it came to the opposite sex on the LANGA stage. A stage now stained with blood, fallen leaves, and the weight of memories. A stage that taught him one truth: no secret stays hidden in the theatre of life.

• Tags: fiction, Issue 42, Malaysia, Pauline Fan, Ruhaini Matdarin