Everyone was going to her funeral but me. I hadn’t made up my mind. Finally, a colleague who recently fried dumplings at home asked me face-to-face if I was going. After a brief silence, I said, “I won’t go.”
“That’s a bit disrespectful,” the colleague said.
Perhaps.
My job is to manage Facebook and Instagram for this publishing house, kind of a social media editor. But in this company, social media is under the IT department, so technically, I’m an IT.
As an IT my social media posts are as stiff as codes. So I am not surprised when a colleague suggested she should write instead. I agree that she was perfect for the job, even though she wasn’t a writer nor an editor but part of the admin team.
Her name was Pasithea.
Her face always reminded me of circles. Short brown hair hugging her head like a chestnut, and her eyes like pearls. A small, round nose. On her neatly trimmed bangs, there was always this red headband, which I think is out of fashion these days.
We hardly knew each other. The only thing I knew about her was that she was the ‘good girl’ of our publishing house. Always lively and kind to everyone. Once, I casually mentioned how the instant coffee in the pantry tasted like shit. A week later, a capsule machine appeared.
Pasithea especially loved sending little cards to colleagues. The cards are usually designed with picturesque photos or cute drawings of animals, and at the back, she’d write something encouraging, comforting, resonating – just like good social media posts.
She also loved books. One of her quirks was an unbreakable habit of reading from nine to midnight every night. Even at company dinners with cash prizes, she’d leave early to read. Several times I saw her reading on the commute home. Once, when our eyes met, she excitedly waved at me. I approached and asked what she was reading. She raised her book, with her face half-hiding behind it. The cover said Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Then, she defended immediately, “What, can’t I read Chicken Soup for the Soul?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“It’s written all over your face. Never mind, you’re not the first person. Everyone in the office laughs at me for reading this.”
“I’m not sure what those literatus think.”
“What are you reading, then?”
I showed her my phone screen – a newspaper’s Facebook page. A politician lied, a teenager’s bail denied, a head of state assassinated, and a country invaded.
“Facebook is just selling you negative emotions,” she shook her head.
That night, I shared with her an app designed to filter out Facebook posts where “Angry” reactions dominate. Though it can’t catch all negative posts as some people would give a ‘haha’ to overly infuriating news, it was good enough. Pasithea seemed happy and thanked me as if I had opened up for her a new world. I said it was a return favour for the capsule coffee.
That was pretty much all our interactions in half a year.
Until June, when she suddenly asked if I would be free after work. I had no idea why she asked, but saw no reason to say no. We had dinner, only small talk. I kept asking “What’s this all about?” She kept replying “You’ll know later.”
It was already 8:45 PM. “Still later? Aren’t you Cinderella at nine?”
She shrugged, “Then let’s go.” I thought she meant the date was over, but after leaving the restaurant, she led me straight to her place.
Her single-girl apartment was a palette of pink, with a unique fragrance of shampoo in the air, making me slightly dizzy. She pulled me onto her bed. I took the initiative, she didn’t resist, but in the end, I was still confused about how things turned out this way.
Naked, she lay on my chest with her eyes closed. I observed from close up her trembling eyelashes, like those of a frightened rabbit.
“It’s eleven,” I said.
“So?”
“Shouldn’t you be reading?”
“That was a lie,” she said lazily. “I just don’t want to see any human beings at night.”
“That hurts.”
She looked up.
“I thought I was a member of human beings.”
She laughed. “I want to tell you something. Something I think you can understand.”
“I’m all ears.”
“That app to filter out angry posts – “
“I promise I didn’t have any ulterior motives – “
“Just shut up and listen.”
She had never been this blunt, so I shut up.
“I thought my anger was because of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg’s fault, right? But after using your filter, I realised something: even though I didn’t see those posts, the anger was still there. Seeing a colleague dining out with her husband made me angry; seeing my former teacher posting photos with his son made me angry; seeing an old classmate recommending a Netflix show made me furious. I wanted to grab a knife from the kitchen and hack my phone like it was a piece of pork. You get me?”
“Yeah, kinda,” I said, seriously thinking about social media and well-cut pork chops. “I kind of get it.”
“See? I knew you would. You’re my kind of person. I knew it when you said the instant coffee tasted like shit.”
“Uh, that means I also—”
“Shut your mouth,” she snapped again. “So, I thought my anger was due to social media, but I was wrong. The anger came from within me. Bad news, good news, world-shattering news, trivial news – they all made me furiously mad. Recently a colleague fried some dumplings, probably proud of them, posted them on IG. All I could think was, ‘That oil in the pan must be sizzling, right? Should shove her face in it.’ What do you think?”
I pointed to my sealed lips, pretended to struggle opening them.
“Good boy,” she praised and continued, “But of course, that’s just talk. I have no reason to do anything to her. She just fried dumplings, and I’m not a dumpling. Besides, you guys may think Chicken Soup for the Soul is trash, but shouldn’t we, as humans, treat the world with kindness? Shouldn’t we send heart emojis to people who fry good dumplings instead of scorching their faces?”
I made a “mm-hmm” sound.
“You may speak.”
“I vote for heart emojis.”
“You got it!”
“But even so, you still feel like ripping off your left hand to throw at your colleague, and rip your right to kick it to her.”
“You can’t rip your right hand after ripping off your left.” She corrected me. “But anyway, spot on.”
“In this case, I drink – “
“Alcohol stinks.”
“- and smoke.”
“Hmm…” she was noncommittal. “It helps?”
“Help? Nothing’s going to help. There’s no fixing this.”
She giggled, a silvery voice, very much the usual office Pasithea.
“There is a way.” She said.
We did it again.
The next day, we both called in sick and didn’t get up until the sun was high. I wondered if she’d revert to the kind-hearted Pasithea after sunrise, but she didn’t. She fried some dumplings for breakfast (more like brunch). I expressed my fear of having my face pressed into the pan, and she laughed, saying she could, but she wouldn’t.
After the dumplings, I went home, returning to work as usual the next day. She, however, was absent, not just then but also the following day. Turned out she sent an email to the company about a family emergency, apologising for quitting without notice.
What the emergency was, no one knew. Her team and others were at a loss, pondering whether to contact her, but they also didn’t want to step into her privacy. They let it be.
They were all good people.
I texted her, called her, no reply. Went to her place, found she had moved out. I guessed she really wanted to cut ties with everything. Maybe she wanted to start a new life as a different Pasithea. I often thought about doing the same. If that was her wish, I wish her well.
Her death was announced by her family six weeks later. They said she died painlessly in a car crash near Big Wave Bay, swerving to avoid a cat.
In the end, I didn’t go to her funeral. Instead, I went to Big Wave Bay, sat there all night, drinking.
A week after, I received a package. Inside was that Chicken Soup for the Soul book. There was also a card with my name, her signature, and a message.
Sorry ><
I read the book once, then threw it away. But I kept the card. I taped it to my long-neglected plant on the windowsill, lit a mint cigarette, and stuck it in the soil.