The second doctor's appointment, they tell you things are worse.

I don't know why that surprised me. That's how cancer works. It doesn't pause and wait for you to emotionally process the first round of bad news before delivering the next. It just keeps going, quietly, doing its thing, completely unbothered by your feelings about it. In that way, it has a lot in common with the school system.

Dr Wilson's office smelled the same as last time. That particular brand of clinical lavender that's supposed to be calming and instead just smells like someone gave up. He had three new images on his monitor. Same pink-and-purple blooms, same microscopic horror, except now there were more of them, which was not what we were hoping for.

"Compared to the last visit," he said, "the granulocytes have multiplied at a much faster rate than expected."

I looked at the images.

They're kind of pretty, I thought again, for the second time, which probably said something about my mental state that I didn't want to examine too closely.

"The current medications aren't having much effect."

Momma's face went white. The particular kind of white that happens when all the blood decides it has somewhere more important to be.

Papa looked like he was going to cry, which was the most frightening thing I'd seen in a long time, because Papa didn't cry. He was the kind of man who teared up at graduation videos and immediately looked away and pretended he hadn't. Actual crying was not in his repertoire.

Dr Wilson was still talking. Something about oncologists. Something about a Dr Williams, top of his field, they wanted to refer me, I should start treatment as soon as possible. I was aware of all of this happening at a slight remove, the way you're aware of background music in a restaurant. Present. Just not entirely relevant to what I was doing.

What I was doing was working up the nerve.

"About that," I said.

Everyone looked at me.

"I wanted to ask. Is it possible to seek treatment in Singapore instead."

It wasn't a question, really. I'd phrased it like one out of politeness.

Dr Wilson went quiet for a moment. That particular doctor silence that means they're choosing their words because the first words that came to mind were not appropriate for a medical setting.

"We're quite concerned about the rate of the leukaemia cells multiplying," he said finally. "It's increasing rapidly. Travelling at this stage is a risk." He paused. "But I'll discuss it with the team. If it gets approved, you'll receive a letter."

We left.

The drive home this time was different from the last one. Last time it was numb. This time it had a particular texture, like the air inside a car that's been in the sun too long. Stuffy. Close. Like everyone was trying very hard not to breathe too loud.

Aunt Reneta called while we were home.

I was in the kitchen getting water when I heard Momma's voice change. Not what she said. Just the register of it. That careful, slightly formal tone she gets around people she loves but doesn't entirely know how to talk to. It's different from her work voice, different from her fight voice. It sounds like someone who learned a language as an adult and speaks it fluently but always with a faint awareness of the effort.

She took the phone to her room and closed the door.

I stood in the kitchen and listened to the muffled shape of a conversation I wasn't part of.

Here is what I knew about Aunt Reneta: she and Momma had been adopted by the same family, years apart, which made them sisters in the technical sense and something more complicated in every other sense. They had grown up in the same house and somehow become strangers by the time they left it. Not from cruelty. Just from the particular distance that forms between two people when neither of them knows quite how to close it, and enough years pass that it starts to feel like it was always there.

They talked a few times a year. Birthdays, mostly. The occasional holiday. The kind of relationship that gets described as close enough by people who've made peace with what close actually costs them.

I didn't know what Momma had told her. I didn't know if she'd called to offer the spare room or because Momma had asked, or both, or neither, or something else entirely that I wasn't going to understand until we were already on a plane.

Momma came out twenty minutes later with a specific expression I'd only ever seen on her face twice before. A kind of careful, held stillness. Like she was carrying something fragile and wasn't yet sure she had a firm enough grip.

She didn't explain. I didn't ask.

I had a chemistry project to avoid.

The letter came three weeks later.

It was brief. Approved, with conditions. I should consult with the referring team in Singapore upon arrival. I should not delay. I read it twice, put it down on my desk on top of the untouched chemistry project, and felt something very complicated move through me that I couldn't name.

Not relief. Not happiness. Not even hope, exactly.

More like: alright then. Let's go.

There are certain life events that feel, while you're in them, like they're happening to someone slightly to the left of you. Graduation was one of these.

The gown was itchy. That's the first thing. Everyone looks at graduation photos and thinks about the symbolism and the milestone and the whole beginning of your future thing, and no one mentions that the gown is made of a fabric that seems specifically designed to be uncomfortable in ways that are difficult to articulate. Slightly too warm, slightly too staticky, the kind of thing that makes you hyper-aware of your own skin.

I stood in the line waiting to go in, squinting in the June light, and thought: I am wearing a costume for a ceremony that assumes I have a future to march into.

And then I thought: stop it. You're at graduation. Be normal for five minutes.

The hall was loud in that specific way of a large room full of families trying to be quiet and failing at it. I could spot my parents in the fourth row before they spotted me. Papa had the camera out already, that old digital one he refuses to replace because it has character, whatever that means. Momma was sitting very straight, the way she does when she's trying not to cry in public.

I looked at them for a moment longer than I probably should have.

Then Lyla grabbed my arm.

"Babe. Babe. Come take a photo. Come on, come on, right now, the light is literally perfect—"

"Lyla, we're about to go in—"

"It'll take thirty seconds, oh my god, Liv, please—"

And that was how I ended up crammed between Lyla, Enzo, Scarlett, and Rocco in the courtyard with five minutes to spare, Lyla directing us with the kind of energy that really should have a permit attached to it.

"Okay everyone look natural."

"This is my natural face," Enzo said.

"That is not a natural face, Enzo, you look like you're filing taxes."

"I am filing taxes in my heart. I'm eighteen. I'm an adult. This is what adulthood feels like."

"Rocco, move left. No, your other left. Scarlett, tilt slightly— yes. Okay. Liv, you're blocking—"

"I'm standing still," I said.

"You're standing still incorrectly."

I laughed. And Lyla, because she is actually a genius beneath all the chaos, took the photo right then, before I could stop.

We looked good in it. We looked like people who had no idea what was coming.

Which, for most of them, was true.

I had been putting off telling them for a month. The reasons kept shifting. At first it was I don't want to worry them during exams. Then it was there's never a good time. Then it was if I say it out loud one more time to one more person, I might actually disintegrate.

But standing there in the courtyard, in the itchy gown, with the photos taken and the ceremony about to start and the flight booked for tonight, I thought: you owe them this. They're your people. You owe them the truth before you disappear.

"Guys," I said.

Something in my voice made all four of them stop.

"I have to tell you something. And I'm sorry for — I'm sorry I'm doing it now, timing's terrible, but I've been trying to find the right moment and there isn't one, there's genuinely not a right moment for this."

Lyla's face had already shifted. She knew me too well.

"A month ago," I said. "I was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia."

Silence.

"The doctors think I have about a year. Maybe less." I kept my voice steady. I'd practiced. "I'm going to Singapore tonight. For treatment. There's a hospital there with better options. And also my aunt lives there, so."

More silence.

And then Lyla stepped forward and hugged me, and then everyone was hugging me, which is not something I'd prepared for, and I nearly lost the steady voice entirely.

"You should have told us," Lyla said into my shoulder. Not angry. Just sad. "Babe, you should have told us."

"I know."

"We could have—"

"I know."

Enzo, who communicated primarily through sarcasm and was therefore completely unprepared for genuine emotion, said nothing for a long moment. Then: "Okay but you better video call. Every day. I'm not kidding, Olivia, I will haunt you from London."

"You can't haunt someone from London," Scarlett said.

"Watch me."

Scarlett hooked her pinky finger out toward me. "Every day," she said. "Promise."

I hooked my pinky around hers. "Promise."

The emcee called us in. We went. I walked across the stage and got handed a rolled certificate tied with blue ribbon and shook the principal's hand and smiled for the camera and thought: Photo-Olivia, you absolute idiot, you had no idea.

We threw our hats at the end. I watched mine go up and up, and for just a second it hung there at the top of its arc, suspended, not falling yet.

Then it fell.

We took more photos in the garden. Momma cried once and pretended she hadn't. Papa got the angle wrong on three separate attempts and Lyla eventually took the camera from him with the patience of a saint. We ate the sad little canapés from the reception table and talked about nothing and everything and I tried to memorise the specific sound of all of them talking at the same time.

Then we went home.

Then we went to the airport.

The airport has a specific quality of unreality to it at any hour, but especially at night. Everyone's slightly off their axis. People moving in slow motion through too-bright light, dragging wheeled things, staring at departure boards with the blank expression of people who have surrendered control to a series of numbers and gates.

I stood in the middle of the departures hall for a moment and just stood there.

Momma was already at the check-in queue. Papa was beside me.

"Okay?" he said.

"No," I said.

"Yeah," he said.

He pulled me into a hug. The kind that doesn't say anything because there's nothing useful to say. His jacket smelled like the cologne he'd worn since I was small, something warm and familiar, and I pressed my face into it for a second longer than was dignified.

"Don't," he started.

"I know."

"Call us when—"

"I know, Papa."

He let go. He looked at me. Something crossed his face that I stored away very carefully to look at later when I was alone.

"Go on," he said.

I went.

The thunderstorm hit somewhere over the Arabian Sea.

The first sign was the turbulence, which started gently and then became the kind that makes everyone on the plane go very quiet and stare at the seat in front of them as though if they focus hard enough, the physics will reverse. The second sign was the pilot's voice, calm in the specific way that pilots are trained to be calm, which is to say calm in a way that makes you aware they've been specifically trained.

"Good afternoon, passengers. This is your captain speaking."

I already didn't like where this was going.

"We're currently cruising at 33,000 feet. The time is 3pm. There is a slight delay."

Slight.

"A thunderstorm is heading our way. The flight will be rerouting to Dubai, United Arab Emirates for the time being. We expect to land in approximately fifteen minutes."

Momma put her hand over mine.

I looked out the window. The clouds below had gone the colour of old bruises.

Of course, I thought. Obviously. Why would anything just go normally.

But I breathed in and breathed out, the way I'd been practicing, the way that actually works if you commit to it, and watched the clouds, and decided that Dubai was not the worst thing that could have happened. Dubai was, in fact, probably fine. Dubai was full of things to look at and eat and exist next to while you waited for the universe to stop inconveniencing you.

Silver lining, I thought.

Then I thought: I'm really starting to overuse that phrase.

The airline put us up in a lounge that was significantly nicer than any place I'd slept in my actual life. I ate dinner, slept for eleven hours, and woke up feeling like a different person, which I don't mean philosophically. I genuinely just felt physically better than I had in weeks, which was either a good sign or my body getting one last victory lap in before things got complicated. I chose not to speculate.

Momma and I explored. The airport shopping was its own ecosystem. Souvenir shops, a jewellery store called Aaliyah's Hidden Treasures where the woman who greeted us was so warm and genuinely kind that Momma and I both immediately felt guilty for not buying anything. A textile shop where Momma found a shawl in a green that was almost exactly the colour of the dupatta her mother used to wear, and I watched her hold it up to the light for a long moment before I told her to just get it.

"It's too expensive," she said.

"Momma."

"It's really quite—"

"Momma. Buy the shawl."

She bought the shawl.

In the handicraft section I found a tote bag. Brightly coloured, hand-blocked print, little elephants marching around the border. The kind of bag Liam would have used for everything. His books, his snacks, the random collection of objects he accumulated and called essential supplies. He would have carried it ironically and then unironically and then just normally, the way he did with everything.

I put it back on the shelf.

I went to find Momma.

We found a wall piece for Aunt Reneta in the souq later that afternoon, after the taxi driver (who was very talkative and also very correct about every single recommendation he gave us) took us through the city and pointed out things I hadn't known to look for. The Burj Khalifa was enormous in a way that photographs do not prepare you for. Not just tall. Tall in a way that felt like a statement. Like it was trying to say something about human ambition and had succeeded.

I made Momma take approximately forty photos.

She complained about all forty and kept every single one.

The flight to Singapore was different from the first.

I'd been moved. A seat reshuffle, something about a child being separated from their parents, could I possibly give up my seat. I said yes, because the alternative was being the person who said no to a child, and I had enough going on without also being that person.

The new seat was a middle seat, which was exactly what I deserved for saying yes to anything.

I was making my way down the aisle, slightly resigned to my own generosity, when I noticed him.

Raven-coloured hair, clean-shaven, blue button-up shirt that was doing its best against the dimensions of the seat. He was frowning at his phone like it had personally wronged him. His shoulders were broad in a way that seemed to be inconveniencing everyone around him, including himself.

I stopped at the row.

"Excuse me. I need to get to my seat."

He looked up.

Dark brown eyes. A second that lasted slightly too long before my words landed.

"Oh, sorry!" He scrambled up, stepped into the aisle, gesturing me through with a slightly sheepish expression, like he'd been caught doing something embarrassing even though he'd just been sitting there.

I squeezed past into the middle seat and immediately understood that this was going to be a long flight.

He sat back down. Looked over at me.

"Hey," he said. "I'm Kai."

I considered not answering. I was tired and sad and going to Singapore to try not to die and I did not necessarily have the bandwidth for new people.

"Olivia," I said.

He smiled. Not a big smile. Just enough.

I looked away and adjusted my seatbelt and prepared to stare at the seat pocket in front of me for seven hours.

"You from Singapore?" he asked.

"No. Visiting family." I kept it short. "You?"

"Going back. Was in Dubai for an internship."

"Oh."

Silence.

The plane began its pre-takeoff announcements. I pressed my fingers into my ears for the pressure as we climbed, which is something I've done since I was a kid and have never grown out of. When I took them out, Kai was looking at the window.

"How long are you staying?" he asked.

"Six months. Maybe more."

He nodded slowly, processing this. "First time in Singapore?"

"Yeah."

"You'll like it," he said. Not in a salesman way. Just like he actually believed it. "It's a good place to be when you don't know what you're doing yet."

I looked at him. That was a strange thing to say to someone you'd known for eleven minutes.

"I know what I'm doing," I said.

"Okay," he said easily. Not convinced. Just not pushing it.

A beat of silence.

"I can show you around, if you want," he said. "I know which parts are worth seeing and which parts are just for tourists who don't know better."

"We literally just met."

He shrugged. "Long flight. Might as well be useful."

He pulled out a deck of Uno cards from his bag with the energy of someone who had been waiting for an excuse to do this. Not a phone game. An actual physical Uno deck. Which he had just had, in his bag, ready.

"You carry Uno with you everywhere?" I asked.

"I get bored," he said simply.

I stared at him.

He waited.

"Fine," I said.

We played until we ran out of patience for Uno, then watched three Marvel movies back to back on his laptop, sharing one earbud each, bickering in low voices about which Avenger would realistically be the most insufferable to know in person. He said Iron Man was compelling but probably exhausting. I said that was the point. He said I wasn't wrong. I said I knew.

Somewhere over the Indian Ocean, I realised I hadn't thought about the cancer in four hours.

Not in a denial way. Not in a pretending way. Just. Hadn't. Because I'd been busy arguing about fictional characters with a stranger who carried Uno cards in his carry-on as a lifestyle choice.

It felt strange. Like catching yourself laughing at a funeral and then realising the person who died would have found it funny too.

We landed at Changi at six in the morning, the sky outside the windows doing that particular thing tropical skies do at dawn, going pink and gold in a way that feels almost aggressive in its beauty, like it's trying to sell you something.

Standing at the gate, our little bubble of seven hours dissolving into the crowd around us, Kai turned to me.

"Don't look so sad," he said.

"I'm not sad," I said.

"You look like you're about to give a speech at your own going-away party."

"I don't know what that means."

He took my phone out of my hand. Just reached over and took it, tapped something, handed it back.

"I've saved my number," he said. "I'll call you. We can do the sightseeing thing properly."

"You're going to forget about me in a week," I said. I didn't mean it in a self-pitying way. Just practically. People meet on planes and exchange numbers and mean it in the moment and then get home and the realness of their actual life absorbs them and the plane person becomes a story they tell sometimes at dinners.

"Could you forget me?" he said. Not flirty. Genuine. Like he was actually asking.

I looked at him.

Honestly. Genuinely. At six in the morning in Changi airport, slightly sleep-deprived and terrified and further from home than I'd ever been.

"No," I said.

"Good," he said. "Because I text a lot. Like, an embarrassing amount. Just warning you."

Momma was waiting for me at the corner of the gate, pretending she hadn't been watching. She had absolutely been watching.

"So," she said, falling into step beside me as we headed toward immigration. Her tone was very carefully neutral, which meant she'd clocked everything.

"He was just someone on the plane," I said.

"Of course," she said.

"We just talked."

"Naturally."

"Momma."

"I didn't say anything." She was smiling into her carry-on bag. "It's nice to see you smile. That's all."

I hadn't even noticed I was.

Outside the arrivals hall, the Singapore air hit us. Warm, thick, smelling of nothing quite identifiable, just outside, just different, just here. The taxi rank was orderly and moving. We loaded our bags. The driver pulled out into the early morning traffic of a city that was already awake and already going.

I watched it through the window.

Green everywhere. That was the first thing. I'd expected a city and gotten a garden. Trees along every road, bougainvillea spilling over walls, palm trees casual as lamp posts. And behind all of it, the buildings. Glass and steel catching the new light.

Okay, I thought.

The same word I'd thought in my room in London, in the dark, after crying until my body got bored of it.

But different now. Lighter. Like the word had been sitting in a stuffy room for weeks and someone had finally opened a window.

Okay. I'm here. Let's see what this place does to me.