That was the agreement. Euu Ki had granted Hashwini three waves of the magic eyeliner brush. Each wave removed Euu Ki’s right to decline a request coming from her. And Hashwini had won the privilege of the three waves when she stepped in to save his ass during his life-changing crisis of 2011.

Hashwini was familiar with Euu Ki’s story. Growing up, Euu Ki had had to struggle with a perpetual disconnect between how he looked on the exterior and how he felt on the inside. At the age of 16, he looked into the mirror and told himself in no certain terms that the gangly teenager with a bad case of acne was not the real him. There was an incredibly beautiful and talented phoenix trapped within. He decided he would make it his one true challenge in life to set the imprisoned creature free. So he took a deep breath and came out to his parents over dinner. In response to his courageous confession, his mother swept the bowl of egg drop soup into his lap and his father threw him out of the house.

That was Euu Ki’s life-changing crisis of 2004.

Those crises continued to roll in like waves against the breakwater. When Euu Ki served his national service as an infantry medic, he fell head over heels with the strapping platoon sergeant. He made the mistake of texting the latter a confession of love, which led to the decision by the platoon sergeant and his gang to roughhouse him. They blindfolded him and forced a dildo down his throat. A video clip of the caper was maliciously circulated online. Euu Ki came close to slitting his own wrists.

That was his life-changing crisis of 2008.

Two years later, Euu Ki thought he had found true love when a businessman he had hooked up with through Grindr started to pamper him with gifts and lavish dinners. It was not till a friend tracked down the man’s undisclosed Facebook account that Euu Ki found out he was married and had two young children. Euu Ki was heartbroken.

His life-changing crisis of 2010 hardened him. He decided he had been wrong to seek external affirmation. The phoenix within was already imbued with myriad hues of the rainbow. He needed only to tap into his inner strength to take to the sky.

When Hashwini first met Euu Ki in 2011, they were both in training to become casino croupiers with Resorts World Sentosa. She was slightly put off by his campiness and thought him arrogant and affected. She kept her distance and never sought him out as a practice buddy when they trained for the range of table games. Yet one Friday night, out of the blue, he called her on her mobile phone.

“Do you have any plans tomorrow night?”

“No.” It was a drawl tinged with uncertainty. She could not for the life of her imagine what he wanted.