Chapter 2 — Bonk?
And thus begins Chapter Two.
Now, children.
There I was.
Walking.
Nothing dramatic.
No quest marker.
No sudden revelation.
Just
forward.
The path felt vaguely familiar.
Not:
I know exactly where this goes.
More:
I have existed here before.
Somewhere.
At some point.
Children.
Kovalam belonged to that strange category of places where memory preserves the feeling
but deletes the map.
I had been here.
Family trips.
Years ago.
Close to a decade, perhaps.
I remembered Kovalam as a concept.
Sea.
Heat.
Tourism.
The general flavour of the place.
Navigation?
Blank slate.
The council opens internal Maps.
NO DATA.
Exactly.
So I walked.
Relic bracelet jingling.
Click.
Clack.
Click.
Clack.
Children.
By now the bracelet had become less of an accessory
and more of an announcement.
Nuo approaches.
You will hear him before you see him.
Sixteen tags,
roughly,
already hanging there.
Bone against bone.
Movement translated into noise.
Click clack.
Click clack.
And after this Wandering?
Seventeen.
The council looks at the increasingly crowded bracelet.
Quiet arrival?
No longer supported.
Correct.
I continued down the path.
And almost immediately
woman.
She approached me.
Direct.
Confident.
“Massage?”
Pause.
Then
wink.
“Five hundred.”
The council slowly looks at Nuo.
Massage?
Children.
Obvious prostitute is obvious.
Perhaps she technically offered massage.
Perhaps there was a legitimate spa curriculum available after the wink.
The Archive remains skeptical.
I politely declined.
No outrage.
No confusion.
No:
Madam, how dare you.
Just
no thank you.
Continue walking.
Children.
Kovalam had been active for approximately several metres.
Already side quest offered.
Declined.
Good.
Then
a few metres later.
Man.
Approaches.
“We have good pretty girls.”
The council sighs.
Ah.
Obvious pimp.
Again
subtlety had apparently been declared illegal in Kovalam.
No:
Would sir be interested in entertainment?
No coded language.
No elaborate sales pitch.
Just:
Girls.
Pretty.
Good.
Children.
I declined.
Politely.
Again.
Kept walking.
Click clack.
Click clack.
Another few metres.
Another man.
Pause.
The council narrows its eyes.
No.
Yes.
Same broad sales department.
Another offer.
Another:
girls.
Another attempt to route Nuo toward paid bonk.
Children.
At this point I began to wonder whether Kovalam had undergone significant economic restructuring since my childhood visits.
Had the entire place become a prostitution ring?
Or
more likely
had this always existed
and childhood Nuo had simply been excluded from the marketing demographic?
The council considers.
Plausible.
Exactly.
Children.
When you’re ten,
nobody sees you walking down a tourist road and thinks:
Potential customer.
When you’re adult,
sleep deprived,
alone,
and wandering aimlessly?
Apparently the algorithm updates.
Maybe I gave off a certain vibe.
The council leans in.
What vibe?
Desperate to bonk.
Perhaps.
Honestly?
Who knows.
Children.
I do not possess access to my own external aura.
Maybe I looked lonely.
Maybe I looked wealthy.
Which would have been an extraordinary misreading.
Maybe I simply looked like an adult male tourist walking alone,
and that was enough.
Commerce does not require deep character analysis.
Still
three offers in such a short distance?
Kovalam was committing to the bit.
The council laughs.
Now.
A small clarification about Nuo.
Because after enough Wanderings,
children,
you may have built an inaccurate sexual profile.
We have had kisses.
Relationships.
Bonk.
The classified statistics.
Various people appearing and disappearing through the Archive.
So perhaps you imagine Story Nuo wandering around like a heat seeking missile
searching for the next opportunity.
No.
Bonking?
Fun.
Absolutely.
The council records the official position.
BONK:
Positive review.
Would recommend under appropriate circumstances.
But children
for me,
it has always been novelty.
If opportunity arrives naturally?
Sure.
If two people want the same thing?
Excellent.
If life places me in absurd circumstances involving a woman with neon hair saying:
Bonk?
You already know the answer.
But chase it?
No.
Build travel around it?
No.
Spend my day hunting for it?
Absolutely not.
And pay for it?
Also no.
Not moral outrage.
Not judgement.
Simply
not for me.
Also,
children,
financially?
The council opens wallet.
Ha.
Exactly.
Even if philosophy changed,
economics would intervene.
So the Kovalam Bonk Sales Department continued to receive:
Declined.
Declined.
Declined.
The council stamps each form.
And I continued walking.
Click clack.
Click clack.
Beach somewhere ahead.
Civilization behind.
Path narrowing and opening depending on where I moved.
People.
Shops.
Tourist things.
The familiar unfamiliar Kovalam gradually assembling itself around me.
And then
voice.
“Excuse me.”
Woman’s voice.
I stopped.
Pause.
Children.
By this point,
conditioning had occurred.
Three offers.
Three declines.
So the fourth voice entered my ears and Story Nuo’s brain immediately loaded the prepared response.
No thank
I turned around.
Visibly annoyed.
Because politeness inventory had begun running low.
The council watches.
And then?
Women.
Two.
Pause.
Not one.
Two.
Blonde.
Clearly foreign.
The council closes the prostitution script.
Ah.
Yes.
Different department.
I looked at them.
Then perhaps at myself.
Children.
Important context.
What did Nuo look like?
Sleep deprived.
Hoodie.
Messy hair.
General expression of a man whose circadian rhythm had filed for divorce.
Bracelet jingling with enough relics to suggest either:
traveller,
cult member,
or man who escaped a very specific craft store.
Click clack.
Click clack.
And depending on the exact state of my clothes,
perhaps mildly homeless.
The council nods.
Charming.
Always.
So there I stood,
looking at two blonde foreign women
who had voluntarily approached me.
And my first thought was not:
Ah, new friends.
No.
It was:
Why?
Children.
This is important.
Because human beings generally select approach targets based on some combination of:
Looks approachable.
Looks helpful.
Looks trustworthy.
Looks like he knows where something is.
And I
at that moment
did not believe I visibly qualified for any of these.
I looked like a sleep deprived homeless man
who jingled when he walked.
The council adds:
Possibly annoyed.
Yes.
Very.
Because I had turned around prepared to reject Commercial Bonk Offer Number Four.
So my face probably communicated:
If you are about to offer me a woman for five hundred rupees,
I will walk directly into the sea.
Then I registered them.
Two foreigners.
Blonde.
No pimp.
No wink.
No sales pitch yet.
Just
“Excuse me.”
The council waits.
What did they want?
Exactly.
Children.
I had no clue.
Directions?
Possible.
Do I look like I know directions?
Historically,
no.
Perhaps they had seen the bracelet.
Maybe.
Perhaps they wanted something entirely ordinary.
Maybe they were lost.
Maybe they had a question.
Maybe
Archive law.
Stop.
Correct.
We do not invent.
At that exact moment,
all I knew was that two foreign women had approached me
and for some reason selected Nuo
out of every human being available in Kovalam.
The council studies the scene.
Was anyone else around?
Of course.
Tourist area.
People existed.
Which made the selection even more confusing.
Children.
If you have a choice between:
normal looking local person
and
sleep deprived man jingling like a cursed wind chime
why select the wind chime?
The council has no answer.
Neither did I.
So I turned fully toward them.
Prepared expression slowly shifting from:
Please stop trying to sell me bonk
to:
Oh.
Hello.
One of those tiny emotional gear changes the face must perform before the brain has caught up.
The council smiles.
And just like that,
the Wandering offered something new.
No plan.
Remember.
No itinerary.
No destination beyond beach.
No objective beyond:
walk and see what happens.
Well
something had happened.
Not much yet.
Only two words.
“Excuse me.”
But that is how these things begin sometimes.
A phone call.
A dog.
A wrong turn.
A shop without change.
A stranger asking:
Bro, you high too?
The council nods.
And now
two blonde women on a Kovalam path
approaching the jingling Unbegun.
Story Nuo did not know whether this mattered.
Present Nuo
one day later
knows the rest.
But Story Nuo?
Blank.
Fresh.
Exactly as a conscious Wandering should be.
Children.
This is perhaps the greatest difference between wandering now
and wandering then.
Old Nuo stumbled into stories without understanding they were stories.
Present Nuo knows a possibility exists.
But he still cannot demand it.
You cannot stand on a beach road and say:
Universe,
please deploy interesting stranger.
That would be obnoxious.
You walk.
If something happens
good.
If not
also good.
And so I had been walking.
Three people tried to sell me bonk.
Declined.
Then two women approached with no obvious commercial agenda.
The council looks toward them.
A significant improvement.
At minimum.
I stood there.
Bracelet still moving slightly from the turn.
Click.
Clack.
Then quiet.
Two foreigners.
One Nuo.
And one question occupying the entirety of my brain.
Why me?
The council closes the chapter before the answer arrives.
Correct.
We stop there.
No rushing.
No revealing motive before the women speak.
For now
only approach.
Thus concludes Chapter Two.
The Vaguely Familiar Path.
The Decade Old Memory Without Navigation.
The First Offer.
“Massage?”
The Wink.
Five Hundred Rupees.
The Obvious Prostitute.
The Polite Decline.
The First Pimp.
The Second Pimp.
The Growing Suspicion That Kovalam Had Either Changed Dramatically
Or Simply Waited Until Nuo Reached The Correct Marketing Demographic.
The Official Unbegun Position On Bonk.
Fun?
Yes.
Chasing It?
No.
Paying For It?
Also No.
The Sixteen Tag Relic Bracelet.
Click Clack.
Click Clack.
The Fourth Voice.
“Excuse me.”
The Annoyed Turn.
The Immediate Recalibration.
Two Women.
Blonde.
Foreign.
And
Nuo.
Children.
Perhaps they needed directions.
If so,
they had made an extraordinary tactical error.
Perhaps they wanted something else.
I didn’t know.
All I knew was that out of everyone on that road,
two foreigners had looked at the sleep deprived man
jingling with sixteen bone tags
and apparently decided:
Yes.
Ask that one.
The council looks toward them.
And Nuo,
still slightly annoyed from the previous three commercial bonk proposals,
waited to hear why.
