"Seems like a lot of people start to eat around this time. Do you usually eat at this hour too?" Alex asks, looking at the food stalls along the street.
"Mmm... maybe later," I refuse. Watching the places around me getting crowded makes me so nervous. Even when it's empty, I don't have the guts to buy anything, let alone like this, I think to myself.
"Oh, come on. I can order for you," Alex offers. I think he knows I'm scared of something. "Which one do you like?" he asks, pointing to the stalls around that may interest me.
"Don't worry about me, let's just keep walking," I refuse for the second time while picking up my pace. I just think the procedures are too complicated for me.
"So this is the one you like," Alex says, looking toward a petulo stall across the street—the one I slightly glanced at just a second ago.
"What? How do you even know?" I'm surprised.
"I told you, I can see your feelings clearly," Alex explains. I start to understand that maybe this is what he will do when I see Clara later.
"I'm going to buy one," Alex adds, starting to step away.
"Wait, I'm not really that hungry," I refuse for the last time. If he still doesn't listen, then I don't have any more energy to refuse again.
"Well, if you don't want any, I'll just buy some for myself, then," Alex tries to lure me, already crossing the street and leaving me behind.
"Hey, wait, don't leave me here...!" I call him out, trying to catch up with him.
Petulo is a traditional dessert that consists of a piece of serabi—a thin pancake that's white on top but charred brown on the bottom—two petulo cakes that look like springy noodles shaped into blocks of pink and green, and finally, a block of ketan, the sticky rice, usually colored green or just plain white. All of them are then drenched in a bowl of warm coconut milk with a hint of sliced jackfruit. My favorite part is the petulo cakes themselves; I mostly love the pink and green color combination in any desserts. Even though they all taste the same, picking both cakes with the same color, like all pink or all green, just feels wrong to me.
"Two servings, please," Alex orders.
"Oh, one without sticky rice, Sir!" I cut in quickly.
"Right, one without sticky rice, Sir," Alex repeats, giving me a teasing smile.
"Here you go," the vendor says.
"Thank you. Here is the money, Sir," I say, paying quickly and awkwardly before Alex can. This is one of the complex procedures I've been worried about: being proactive, the combination of initiative, thoughtfulness, and good timing all at once, which is totally not my natural feature.
"Here's the change. Thank you very much," the vendor replies with a smile.
I then lead Alex to find a quiet city bench to eat.
"My money is real too, you know," Alex teases me as we walk. "Well, I think."
"It's fine, it's my turn now. Besides, how can you order with your weird, cold, soft hands like that?" I tease him back.
"I have my way. I've done this all the time. I'm the on who bought you wax duck toy, after all," Alex tries to convince me.
"...and I hope you really can eat. 'Cause I don't think I can finish these two portions alone," I grow suspicious again. Last time I checked in my holy book, angels don't eat.
"Let's see," he answers casually. We finally find an empty bench that is quiet enough for a conversation.
"It's actually quite good," Alex says after tasting it.
"Better than the food in heaven?" I ask him back.
"Well... for Earth food," Alex answers. "Do you eat this every day?"
"No, it's just a snack. But the coconut milk alone can make you full," I reply.
"Good strategy," Alex replies casually.
The atmosphere turns quiet.
"Are you happy I'm here, Billy?" Alex asks suddenly.
"Yeah... but also no," I answer honestly. "Because I know you're only here for today. Tomorrow, I'll be alone again."
"Sorry about that. Actually, I enjoy my time accompanying you like this," Alex confesses.
"Really? You don't get bored hearing me complain all the time?" I tease, not believing him.
"A little bit, but I'm not annoyed. We're good," he replies with a smile.
I still don't believe anything he says. I know he is just trying to make me feel good about myself, but watching him smile kind of makes me mesmerized.
But a second later, he just blows everything up with a single question: "Hey, Billy... When did you have your first wet dream?"
I feel like I'm going to choke. "You're not serious, are you?"
"I am. I'm trying to investigate the root of your issues. Isn't that what you wanted?" Alex claims, clearly enjoying seeing me flip out. "Did it happen after you met Zac or Finn?"
I go silent, trying to remember when it actually happens. "I don't know, it's hard to explain. It's kind of embarrassing, you know, talking about this," I say before starting my story.
"Just put it into words, we'll see," Alex suggests.
As far as I remember, ever since that incident in kindergarten, whenever I saw a man transform into a monster—on TV, in comics, or just in my imagination—I guess that strange feeling kept coming back to me. During my early elementary school, I noticed that my body also started to react whenever I felt this. But I never took it seriously because I thought it was just a random mind.
But now that I start to remember everything, I guess it's not only men turning into monsters that triggers that feeling. I feel it too whenever I see them turn into muscley superheroes or villains. I feel it whenever I see real grown men wearing only an undershirt. I feel it whenever I imagine a young man gradually change into a grown man with facial hair and big muscles. I guess it's always been about the picture of masculinity.
Around my fifth or sixth grade, I think this is when I got my first wet dream but probably mistakenly thought of it as a regular bedwetting. I don't recall ever dreaming about women, not even Zac or Finn, as they have no men's features yet. I'm pretty sure it was a figure of a man that caused it, because that is what usually happens.
In middle school, I started to draw all of those men in my mind onto paper, but then immediately trashed them. I remember in eighth grade, I got reproduction lessons in biology class, but I still had no clue the real concept of it. In ninth grade, I finally realized myself that, as it turns out, all this time I had never been doing regular bedwetting at all. But I still didn't connect this to the reproduction process yet because I always thought about men, never women.
It wasn't until the early years of high school that my curiosity about mature sites grew. Back in the internet cafes with Finn, I saw some pop-up ads with big enter buttons, but they only showed some sexy women. So I would just quickly close them because I was never interested at all.
But one day, I just surfed the internet through my dad's phone and saw a man instead, with a big enter button. I was curious now, so I clicked it. Suddenly, my world flipped 180 degrees. Now, 'that' biology lessons I had learned before finally became clear, and I also found the culprit of my case. As it turns out, the monster men that were always in my head were just a metaphor for the actual men in reality themselves.
Updated 06/11/2026
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