At the mall a new ice cream place opened up. “Nuclear Ice Cream.” I didn’t care for the name, but it said they had 50 flavors, all free to taste. Their store was big, and it was so full that people were outside, standing around, eating. My clone, Emily, and I went inside to try. We had to line up, and people were taking their time, trying the flavors, picking which they liked. We must have been standing there for fifteen minutes.

On the wall there was a big graphic that showed all their flavors. You could mix them any way you’d like. And they had these gigantic cones you had to carry with two hands, along with the regular options. I decided I wanted the megacone. I was depressed, and ice cream was supposed to be a kind of balm for that. Especially for the kind of depression that wasn’t serious—that wasn’t the result of a death in the family, or actual hardship, or the loss of true love. It was more shallow, more stupid. Exactly the kind of depression ice cream was for.

I chose bubble gum and cotton candy. They were both very sweet, and my doctor told me not to eat so many sweet things (or much at all). I was going to have to make an exception. We left and found a place nearby with some trees and sat by them on benches.

We were at the Mall of Asia, which is the largest in the country and one of the largest in the world. It was a grand temple of consumerism. The country had very few parks, and all of them ill maintained, but the malls were where people gathered. It sickened me. But I can’t fix the world; I accepted that long ago. So, I sat there, with my giant ice cream cone, and did my best to heal.

“You’re quiet,” Emily said. She got raspberry with cookie dough. An atrocious combination.

My clone got Oreo cheesecake with queso. “He’s going through that empty void after you get over a break up,” he said. “Where you think you will never love again.”

“What did I tell you about speaking for me?” I said.

My clone shrugged.

No matter the time of day or time of week, the Mall of Asia was always full. It was a Saturday, and so it was especially packed. A massive crowd moved between the benches spaced around the outside corridor, where people could move among the many buildings of the shopping complex. They had set up fans that sprayed mist, because the heat was intense this time of year, but it barely did anything. We had to eat quickly because the ice cream was melting.

“Is it David?” Emily said.

Emily and David had met a few times during movie viewings at my house. I saw at the time that Emily was inquisitive regarding our relationship. She had not seen David before he suddenly entered my life, and once in a while she caught us holding hands or David would say something nice about how I looked. In private, Emily would ask: “Is he gay?” Which I took great offense at because I don’t think such questions are relevant anymore. I’ve never asked David about his sexuality. Why would I need to ask? I could observe.

I also thought that such questions were meant to limit me with regard to who I could love or who could love me. We were supposed to be way beyond that, as progressive people. Then again I’ve always suspected that Emily was not really a progressive person and only pretended to be because people around her were progressive. That if supposing she happened to be around Nazis, she would gladly take on those views as well. Arendt called this the banality of evil, and Emily was a banal person. Most of the time there was nothing wrong with that; that’s why I liked her. She was a respite of a person that way. But other times, like these, it caused problems.

Because of this I hesitated to tell her that it was David. And that the suspicion behind the question was right all along: David had always been too manly, too straight to like someone like me, who had a beard and was overweight and was losing his hair. To my ears, she was really asking: He can’t really be into you, can he? And it seemed time had revealed that the answer was no.

Emily didn’t revel in such things of course. During my breakups in the past she had always been there for me, and she made sure that I was alright. But knowing that she could derive some pleasure out of it, even the simple pleasure of being right, bothered me, and perhaps there was a time for her to learn the truth. But that time wasn’t now.

I had only finished around half of my ice cream when it had begun to drip all over my fingers. I used the tissue that had been wrapped around the cone, but it was no help. I had to eat faster, and instead of lapping up the ice cream I began to take chunks off of it. The other two had not gotten the megacone and so were already finished. We were all sitting there, doing nothing, tired.

For hours now we had gone around buying things for Emily’s new room. She had had her room renovated, and she was filling it up with all sorts of things. Growing up, she was obsessed with The Sims, and this was something like that, but in real life. When I discovered she was doing that, I thought that was a very adult thing to do. For one reason or another, our generation barely grew up, or never transitioned into doing things that adults used to do when we were children. The world had probably changed, as it always does.

I am 35. Still, I hadn’t found love—only fleeting glimpses at it. For much of my life I had been difficult to love, and now that I am receptive to it, and able to understand its responsibilities and burdens, and willing to suffer in the way that all love entails suffering, I have to wait. Despite a growing, aching impatience. Sometimes, I think about turning 40. About what that should mean. When I was 20, I thought about turning 30, and I remember having ridiculous visions of myself lying on a couch in my own apartment, reading a book after work. Ridiculous visions.

So, I don’t think about where I might be or what I might be doing at 40. It’s useless.

I had to take massive bites out of my ice cream because it was melting all over my hands. I had made a mess out of it, and at the end my mouth was numb from the cold. My hands were all sticky. I had to go to the men’s room, which was crowded and smelled. There were lines for the toilets, the urinals, the sinks. After washing my hands I went back out and Emily and my clone were sitting there with nothing to do.

I didn’t know what to do, either, but a post I saw on my feed reminded me of the Labubu dolls. People hated them, although I didn’t understand why. I understood if people didn’t think they were cute, didn’t think they were worth the money. But people hated them and loved to hate them, simply because other people liked them. And that’s why I liked them, too. People like to hate harmless things if these harmless things become popular enough because popular things are considered objects of the masses, and when something is for the masses it’s supposed to be bad. I despise that kind of cultural calculus.

We went back inside, and I found a hobby store that sold all sorts of collector’s items, including Labubu. Apparently, you buy a box, and you can’t tell which you’re going to get. I thought that was cute—a kind of loot box. Emily was incensed that I was getting one, which only made me want it more.

Then, we went home. My clone didn’t get one. In the car he annoyed me by saying that if I got one, then it was his, too. Although we had decided long ago that this isn’t how things are going to work. If we were different people, then we owned different things.

When we arrived home, my clone and I sat in my room to open my labubu. It was going to be a kind of birth; every labubu is supposedly different because of the design and the name. Obviously, this can’t always be true; there are only so many combinations of these things. Still, sometimes people look like other people, have the same names as others—these things are bound to happen without negating the quiddity inherent in every soul. I believed my labubu, at that moment still in gestation, had a soul and was an individual.

My clone was watching me read the box.

“Open the fucking thing already,” he said.

“Okay.”