Those were the exact same words that Yusuf bin Hassim was to mutter to himself some years later, right after he had discovered the boy. The boy was, in fact, the very type of “other thing” that Yusuf had been waiting for since his return to Singapore. He hadn’t been certain that an “other thing” was going to show up, not by a long shot. In fact, he would have been almost as content if he had left this earth without encountering one of the “other things” he’d had a hunch would one day cross his life’s path. But it turned out that his hunch had been right, and now he was fully content. Very odd the boy was, and therefore, just right. Yet to Yusuf’s profound embarrassment, he hadn’t noticed what the boy truly was right away. In fact, the boy’s oddness, or rather, his oddfittingness, was only the third peculiarity Yusuf had noticed when the boy had wandered wide-eyed into the Tutti-Frutti Ice Cream Shop. The very first peculiar thing Yusuf had noticed about the boy was, frankly speaking, the fact that he was as blonde-haired and blue-eyed as the weather in Singapore was hot and muggy.
