Chapter 3

“There they are again!” Eli exclaimed as he and Yuan sat down on their usual spot in the park. “They were also here yesterday.”

“Who?” Yuan asked, scanning the park.

“Those people.”

Yuan became more confused, furrowing his eyebrows as he was constantly moving his head left and right. “Like who?”

“The family, the performer, and the couple.”

“So, what’s up with them?” he followed Eli’s eyes as they moved around. There he finally found what he had been pointing at. “Aren’t people always here doing things? Besides, if someone else is observing us, they’d probably say the same thing everyday.”

“Well, you weren’t here yesterday.”

“What?”

“Just kidding,” he said, followed by a small chuckle.

“But seriously, what's up?”

Eli paused for a moment, thinking of an answer to his question. He couldn't figure out what made them grab his attention. It's not that he had not seen them before until yesterday, had he? Now that he thought about it, he couldn't assume either. “I saw them yesterday, but I’m not sure if I had seen them before that. Well, except for the magician. He’s quite on and off.”

“Maybe they’ve always been there. We just didn’t notice, right?”

“How do you say so?”

“You cannot notice everything all at once, can you?”

“Good point,” Eli felt a bit dumb, yet he still couldn’t stop thinking why he was so on to them. Even after listing all the possible reasons in his mind, nothing still made sense.

“Most people kinda repeat themselves,” Yuan said. “Here, I’ll show you.” He rotated his head from side to side along with his eyes before spotting the two old people sitting on a bench located near the corner of the aisle opposite of where they were sitting, feeding a small flock of pigeons. “See those two old people over there?” he pointed at them through pouting his lips toward their direction.

“Yeah, and what about them?”

“Have you always noticed them?”

Eli thought for a moment, recalling if he had seen them before. “I guess, they're kinda familiar, so I’ll say yes.”

“Now, how about those teenagers on their bikes?”

Eli followed where his pouted lips were pointing at. There he spotted a group of 5 teenagers, probably around the same age of Naomi, who were lounging on their bikes while parked by the bushes, looking like they just stopped by to rest for a short while after a long ride. They were laughing, with one another, probably conversing humorously. 

“Yup, were they always there too?” He already knew where the conversation would go, so he continued. “I don’t seem to recognize them.”

“Yes, but sometimes, instead of on their bikes, they sit by the gutter.”

Eli was surprised by what he had just said.

“Now, you see that little girl by the pond with the water lily?”

Eli followed Yuan’s gaze until he saw her.

A little girl was squatting at the edge of the pond. At its center floated a single water lily, still closed, its pale bud barely breaking the surface. The girl’s back faced them, her head tilted toward the flower at a strange angle, as if she were deliberately and intensively  studying it.

“Now that girl, I’m not entirely familiar with her presence,” Yuan uttered. “But there is still a possibility that she always goes there just without me noticing.”

“Yeah, right. I don’t seem to recognize her either,” he said in a slightly softer volume. He squinted his eyes and remained focused on both the little girl and the pond. 

Eli felt ominous about her just squatting there and seemed to be staring blankly at the closed lily. 

She didn’t move.

Not a shift of weight, not the subtle sway of a body trying to keep balance. The breeze stirred the pond, wrinkling the water into tiny, uneven ripples, but she remained rigid—too rigid, like a statue that was arranged rather than alive.

The sounds of the park dulled. The chatter, the distant laughter, the rustle of leaves thinned until they felt distant, muted, as though Eli was hearing them through water. His breathing slowed without him noticing. Each heartbeat landed heavy and precise in his chest.

The longer he watched, the more the stillness pressed in. The girl’s posture was exact, her attention absolute. It felt less like she was looking at the lily and more like she was waiting for it.

Eli’s chest tightened. Something about the scene was eerily unexplainable, not because it was overtly strange, but because it was far from behaving like something ordinary.

“You get what I mean?” Yuan broke in.

The pressing silence stopped. Everything went back to normal.

“Uhh…yes,” he stuttered.

“You alright?”

“Y-yeah,” he said hesitantly. 

“You suddenly looked like you saw a ghost back there.”

A ghost…could it be? the thought echoed in his once-eerily-silent mind. But it’s impossible, Yuan saw her too, right?

He quickly and harshly shook his head left and right, as if one could really get something inside thrown out of their heads that way. 

Eli closed his eyes, feeling the air flow as he slowly breathed in and out. The shift of his focus distracted his mind off the unwary ambience. The sensation helped quiet his head. The silence no longer felt ominous, although still not calming, at least just enough to hush what had been a noise.

He continued breathing deeply for a few more seconds until he heard a crowd cheering. Curious, he searched where the loud voices were coming from. It wasn’t from his head, was it?

It was the magician. People seemed to be cheering and clapping on one of his performances at that moment. He wasn’t able to identify what he could be doing, but one thing for sure, it was amazing for people to cheer like that.

“He sure does get a lot more attention lately,” he commented and then sighed shortly after. At last, something real.

Suddenly, he felt something pinch his left arm. It wasn’t a gentle pinch, but not painful or discomforting either. It was like signaling some kind of urgency.

“Hey, can we go now?” Yuan’s voice sounded, his voice was a bit trembling.

“Already?” Eli asked, not believing what he had just heard.

When he turned, Yuan wasn’t looking at him. His face was pale, expression pulled thin, the kind of stillness people had when they were bracing for something they didn’t want to face. His hands were pressed against the bench, fingers rigid, as though standing up too quickly might draw attention.

Eli’s stomach tightened. Did he experience it too?

Just as Eli was about to trace his gaze, Yuan suddenly looked straight in front of him. Still, he tried to guess what could have possibly disturbed his friends’, usually at ease, demeanor. But he found nothing. He could see the couple right there, but they looked normal and alright. Same for the other people passing by and filling the background,  they were quite indistinguishable from the couple.

“I’ll explain later. Can we just leave for now?” Yuan pleaded, his gaze remained fixed. He stood up and started walking away from the bench.

“A-alright,” Eli followed, still confused.

As he stood, his eyes drifted back to the pond—more out of habit than intention.

 The girl was gone.

The spot where she had been squatting lay desolate, as if no one had been there at all. Meanwhile, at the center of the pond, the water lily had opened fully, its pale petals spread wide.

Eli stared, a faint chill settling along his spine. There was neither a ripple in the water nor a disturbance in the grass to suggest she had just left. Only the flower, perfectly still, floating where the unopened bud had once laid.

“So what’s with the hurry?” Eli broke the silence as they were walking along the quiet streets toward their houses.

They hadn’t passed down even a single word since they left the park. The usual sounds of the neighborhood—the distant low hum of the cars, the faint barking of a dog, the occasional creak of a gate—felt unusually sharp. Eli could still feel the weight of the earlier unease clinging to him, a small touch of lingering eerie tension that made the shadows on the ground seem to look longer than they should be.

As much as he had wanted to know what was going on, Eli had decided not to ask and just let Yuan breathe for a while. Besides, he was sure that his friend would still tell it to him once he’s ready, but he seemed to have gotten back to normal after a short while, so Eli thought it would then be the perfect time to ask.

“I’m sorry I have to drag us out from there like that. It’s just that I noticed something that isn’t right,” Yuan answered, his voice no longer trembling.

Did he see it too? No… it couldn’t be. What I saw was nothing unusual. Just me, imagining things, right?

 Eli cleared his throat. “Did something happen?”

“I guess you didn’t see it, did you?”

“I didn’t find anything weird or out of place back there,” he lied.

“The couple…”

Yuan’s reply caught Eli off-guard. He recalled what the couple had been up to just before they left— the couple walking slowly along the path, exchanging quiet words, smiling faintly at each other, nothing out of the ordinary. And yet, a seed of doubt had already been planted. Something about Yuan’s tone, the way his gaze had fixed and refused to waver, made him question whether he had truly witnessed reality. Had something slipped past him?

“What’s up with them?” Eli asked.

Yuan’s pace slowed down. He swept his gaze over the empty street, slow and deliberate, lingering on the empty pathway behind them as if expecting something to suddenly show up. Each glance was pure caution and devoid of carelessness.

Eli felt a quiet unease. It wasn’t fear of what could possibly happen, but the concern of seeing someone he knew would never lie to him so unsettled over something unknown.

There was silence once again, only the sound of their footwear gently thumping the cemented sidewalk, as well as the distant background noise could be heard. But unlike before, this one stood more as unsettling rather than a gentle discomfort.

Yuan took a deep breath before finally breaking the silence. “They were staring right at us. Or precisely, right at you.”