Soon sat staring at the television set. The events of that afternoon still upset him and he wondered whether they would meet again as a Group? Would they be together anymore. No more games? No more construction site? Soon felt miserable.

There was rioting on the screen and his mother thought he was absorbed by the on screen violence.

“Rioting, that's called rioting,” his mother said.

“Huh?” Soon glanced at his mother and back to the screen. The scene reminded Soon of the confrontation between the Gang and the Group at the construction site. He had to lie to his mother that he fell off a friend's bicycle that other day. It seemed so long ago.

“Those were the days when people had to struggle. They struggled for their livelihood, and their beliefs.” She paused to see if Soon was listening and continued: “But it's all over now. We don't throw stones or burn cars anymore.”

Soon was still staring at the screen expressionlessly, so his mother explained: “You see in those days there were communists. They believed in getting their way through violence. But things have changed now.”

Soon who was not really following her explanation, pricked up his ears at the last sentence. He did not understand the change his mother was speaking about, but he could identify with the sentiments behind that last statement.

“So you see things are much better now. It's all in the past,” his mother concluded.

Soon could not have understood. But wasn't it not only a few hours ago that he was telling Lam that things had changed? Lam had not understood then. The leader who rose to the occasion at every little crisis. The prince whom the others had looked up to at every turn. They had responded to Lam then. But now things had changed and Lam could not seem to change his own basic qualities. Just like a dinosaur. Lam was too great a personality to be a cockroach, too forceful a character to be able to adapt to the changes.

Those thoughts did not come to Soon with the clarity of the written word. He could not dissect the events of that afternoon and identify the problem. Rather he felt those thoughts incoherently, intuitively.

Why couldn't Lam feel it too!