Always Tomorrow - 1. Chapter 1: Figure-Ground

Arun discovered three things about university within his first forty-eight hours. The first was that nobody cared if he skipped breakfast. The second was that lecturers could say, with complete sincerity, “this will be on the exam” about almost anything, though Professor Foster seemed to do it as a joke. The third was that his roommate, Brad, had a unique relationship with noise. It was strange. He wasn’t deaf and he wasn’t an arse. He was just… painfully loud.

Brad did not create noise maliciously. Arun had considered that possibility and dismissed it. His new roommate simply didn’t notice. He slammed drawers. He dropped shoes. He watched videos without headphones. He spoke to his mother on speakerphone while wandering around the room in circles. He laughed with his entire respiratory system. He ate cereal as though making an example of each individual cornflake.

The room was too small for either of them to pretend the other wasn’t there. Two single beds occupied opposite walls, each with a narrow desk and wardrobe beside it. Arun’s half was orderly. Everything had a place and lived best in its place. Brad’s looked like someone had picked up the same objects and dropped them from shoulder height. Nothing had grown mould yet, at least, so it could always be worse. He wasn’t disgusting. Just untidy.

On Arun's third night in student accommodation, Brad came home at eight-forty with three friends. On a Monday. He wasn’t surprised how easily his roommate connected with people exactly like him. Brad was handsome and sociable, with an easy smile and what Arun understood to be the typical male interests. Sports, cars, girls and the gym. Now there were four Brads. It was quickly obvious to Arun that he didn’t have much in common with them.

“Don't mind us, bro!” Brad beamed.

Arun immediately understood that he would be expected to mind them for… well, who knew how long? By eight fifty, Arun had learned the names of all three friends. By nine fifteen, he knew which one of them had recently broken up with his girlfriend. By nine thirty, he knew more about the relationship than he wanted to know about any relationship involving strangers. They scrolled and laughed at an endless number of Reels, and traded information on the best night spots like they’d been friends for years. Arun did his best to tune it out and focus, chewing his lip and tapping his bare toes on the carpet.

“What are you drawing?” James asked him, suddenly looking to include him in their activity.

“Just a commission,” Arun replied. When James approached as though he wanted to look at it, Arun minimised the window. “It’s not something I think you’d be interested in.”

James made a face. “What? Gay porn or something?”

“Not porn.” Arun answered matter-of-factly, drawing laughs he didn’t expect.

He was surprised when the four Brads didn’t tear him to shreds, like the Brad-adjacents at home used to at any opportunity.

“Fair enough!” James laughed and returned to the others.

At least the reasonably nice Brad found other reasonably nice Brads to Brad with. At nine fifty, Arun put his drawing tablet away. It was too hard to focus. At ten o’clock, he closed his laptop. He wasn’t going to get any work done tonight.

“Hey,” Brad said, noticing him for the first time in a long time. “Are we being too loud?”

Arun looked at him and offered a smile. “Yeah, if you don’t mind.”

To their credit, Brad and his friends did apologise, and they did reel themselves back in. Still, five minutes later, they were louder and Arun decided he needed to be anywhere else.

He swapped his pyjama shorts with some baggy jeans, pulled on a coat and slipped into his flip-flops. He passed by the mirror and clicked his tongue when he noticed his black roots showing again. Getting his hair redone would cost at least another commission, and classes made fitting extra work into his turnaround times difficult. He kept no more than three commissions open at once. Taking requests from horny people seemed to make them especially pushy compared with people who paid him for ordinary fan art - but it was much more lucrative.

It was raining outside, and he disliked rain when he had nowhere particular to go. But his room was too loud to work and much too loud to sleep - worse than sharing a room with his twin sister. Of the discomforts available, rain seemed the least offensive. It was unusually warm tonight, despite the wind and the rain, but he took a coat anyway.

The university library was open until midnight, which Arun had considered excessive during orientation. He reconsidered that judgment now. The library stood near the centre of campus, six floors of concrete and glass, with the upper levels glowing even through the rain. Arun walked there beneath an umbrella that had already started bending backwards in the wind and arrived with unpleasantly wet feet and a mild headache. But it was absolutely worth the trip and he felt much better.

There were keyboards clicking, some reserved footsteps, and a low-volume conversation. Cool. He didn’t need silence, but the sounds needed to belong where they were, and this was perfect.

Arun walked upstairs. The ground floor was for group work and therefore useless. The second floor had computers, printers and too many fluorescent lights. The third was quieter. The fourth was quieter again. The fifth floor only had one other person, but the sixth floor had two, so Arun slipped back down and settled at a desk beside a window overlooking the dark campus.

The other young man noticed him and offered a smile. His skin was brown, and he had curly black hair left longer on top and buzzed at the sides. Despite the summer night, he wore ripped black jeans, combat boots and a dark jacket with silver chains clipped across one side. Was he a biker? Did he play in a band? He was cute, and his smile was so nice that Arun was briefly disarmed and returned it in earnest. Best of all, he was quiet.

Arun slipped his shoes off, hoping they would dry before he went home, and crossed his ankles under the desk with his back to the wall. He then opened his laptop, connected his drawing tablet and let himself become immersed in the anime shibari commission he was working on. For forty-seven minutes, neither of them spoke. It was the best conversation Arun had experienced since arriving at university.

At eleven or so, the stranger stood up and stretched, then sat down in a different seat at the same table, now directly opposite. He rearranged his textbooks to suit his new place, then their eyes met briefly. While the stranger gave a half-smile of acknowledgement, Arun just returned to his drawing. He wondered what course required so many books, and what the advantage of moving seats was. Now, they were facing each other. Perhaps the rain streaking down the window had been distracting. Or maybe the overhead lights reflected badly off the glass from that angle.

Midnight drew close eventually, and the stranger began to pack his books up. Arun noticed, but kept his brow furrowed and eyes focused as he tried to perfect the details requested by his client. When the stranger slung his backpack full of books over his shoulder and approached, Arun finally looked up from his desk.

“Hi.”

“Hey,” the stranger said, surprising Arun with a soft voice and an American accent. “Just letting you know that it’s better to leave before midnight than at midnight. Security will make it a whole thing.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Found that out myself last night.”

“Thanks for the heads up.” Arun twirled his stylus between his fingers. “I better get back to the dorm before I turn back into a pumpkin, then.”

The stranger laughed. “I get that. I’d stay all night if they let me. Guess there’s always tomorrow.”

That was an odd thing to say. Arun smiled and waved, and the stranger left. Without the turning of pages, the clinking of chains and the faint smell of highlighter ink, the room felt a little empty. Not bad by any means, but it wasn’t made any better by the other guy's absence. Why couldn’t the stranger have been his roommate instead of Brad? It’d be nice to see him again.

Arun looked at the clock and saw midnight approaching. With a sigh, he closed his laptop, packed away his equipment and stepped into his flip-flops. He didn’t need the inconvenience of antagonising the security team, so he decided to play it safe and leave before the doors were supposed to lock. Good advice from the quiet man.

“Hey dude, are you good?” Brad asked the moment Arun entered the dorm room.

“I’m good. Thank you,” he responded politely.

“Where did you go? It’s pouring out.” Brad pointed to the window, as if it wasn’t the most obvious fact in the world.

“Just to the library. I’m not a gremlin. I can get wet,” Arun reassured him, slipping his shoes off and nudging them with his toes so they were exactly aligned on his side of the doorway. “Did you have a good night?”

“Yeah, but we didn’t mean to make you leave. I’m really sorry. So are the other guys.”

The hangdog expression and the sincerity of his apology made it impossible for Arun to be mad. “You’re honestly fine. Don’t stress about it. I got a lot done at the library. So I’ve got somewhere to go if you ever bring anyone over.”

“You don’t have to leave, though. You can hang out if you like,” Brad offered. “Unless it’s a girl,” he quickly added, the goofy grin pulling his lips apart.

The idea of being present when Brad brought his friends into the dorm was horrifying. The idea of being present when his roommate brought a girl home was worse still. But Brad, though he was a sensory nightmare, was definitely not the roommate Arun feared he was.

On reflection, Brad was only the second-worst roommate Arun had ever had. May remained undefeated. She had apparently been inconsiderate even before they were born - when her placenta started separating seven weeks early, she'd dragged Arun into the world with her, and he’d never let her forget it. Though Arun loved May and missed her dearly, he never wanted to spend a night in the same room as her again.

At least Brad apologised for being disruptive. Arun appreciated it a great deal. Maybe he wasn't so bad.

“Thank you,” Arun said simply.

“Nah, thank you, Arun.”

“My friends call me Win, by the way,” Arun corrected him.

“Cheers, Win,” Brad beamed back.

Brad continued to watch highlights of whatever sport he'd been interested in without headphones, but at least he kept the volume down and Arun settled into a deep sleep.