“WHEN I WAS SEVENTEEN,” he said, “I skipped school on rainy mornings.”

“Rainy mornings? All the time?” she asked. The thought of him being rebellious in any way was at odds with the image she held of her colleague – a man of discipline and ambition.

“Mm-hmm,” he said, clearly amused by her reaction.

“That’s rather unexpected.”

He’d always struck her as someone whose path was meticulously charted: a philosophy major from a prestigious university and an accomplished debater who had once won an international competition. By thirty, he’d already risen to Head of Strategy in the Singapore office of the global management consultancy firm where they worked. He drove a silver Audi and owned a penthouse in the prime district of Orchard.

“Haven’t you ever done something like that when you were younger?” 

“Me?” she replied. “Skipped school? No.”

But then she hesitated. “Well, maybe once or twice. But only because of examinations, when I thought studying at home would be more productive.”

“And your parents were fine with that?”

“No, I forced my mother to lie when the teacher called. She wasn’t too pleased,” she chuckled.

“临时抱佛脚[*]，是吧?”

She blushed. “So … skipping school on rainy mornings, eh?”

“It became something of an accidental habit. I didn’t have a real reason for it.” 

“Why rainy mornings?”

She sensed a fleeting melancholy as he took a deliberate sip of his beer. Through the silence, the orchestral piece playing in the background swelled between them.

“Back then,” he said after a while, “rainy mornings dulled the sense of a meaningless existence.”

---

IT WAS A FRIDAY NIGHT, and

…