Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 2020 | Page 45

Hong Kong Young Writers Awards 2020
Hong Kong, recalled Aredhel from her brother. This was Hong Kong. She liked this city,
it was lively and diversified, that all colours merged together. There were traditional Chinese
buildings of all sorts that were similar to those in her village, but she gave her liking rather to
the tall European-styled architecture. It was the veranda which she liked most. The ferry pier
and terminal came in next, for she loved the weathering breeze which swept over her face.
Macau, she mouthed after her brother, there was a ferry to Macau in the terminal. Unleashing
her imagination, Aredhel started to dream. Her brother said it was a city of casinos and, well,
swag. It was as well a city of peace and green scenery, and of a sense of European classics,
as it was once a Portuguese colony. But more did she look forward to the express rail links
forth and back the Greater Bay Area. The most comfortable and the quickest trains, probably.
What’s more, it was the skyscrapers which had filled her heart with passion, of all the
technology Aredhel had never known, of all the new sights she had never seen, of all the new
words she had ever heard.
One day, Aredhel thought, I am going to work here.
***
But it had been too long a time, that Aredhel began to feel the quick pace of life, and she
was too tired. She doubted if she could labour in the Greater Bay Area any longer, but she was
not content on leaving.
Her brother, now she knew, had came here for work, and to earn a stable income to
support their family. He could not possibly leave. She had to go alone.
So Aredhel packed her belongings, and waited in her bedroom.
She waited.
And waited.
And waited.
She did not know what to do.
At last, she decided to take a stroll in town before she would leave.
***
Aredhel headed to the streets. It was the same, so prosperous, so loud, so hurrying. She
stood silently, and none heeded her. But she then saw, a shadow, there around the corner there
was a man with a violin in hand. A violin, she had seen one long ago, and it was not new, but
a mysterious power pushed her over, and she went to him.
He played his violin softly, his music that could make an angel cry. There were a few
spectators around him, gossiping apparently, or so she guessed, for they hurried away swiftly
after the music stopped. Aredhel took out a coin, all that she had, and put it into his hat in
the front.
The violinist smiled and took out a piece of cardboard paper.
Thank you, he wrote, I am mute. I cannot talk.
Something stirred in Aredhel’s belly. A sense of belonging in this ever-running society.
So am I, she signaled with her hands, you play brilliantly.
He laughed silently.
Few has ever complimented my music, he wrote. They are too quick to leave.
Yes, Aredhel thought, society runs too fast.
But why are you still performing, she signaled, even, if you hardly have an audience?
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