Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 2020 | Page 67

Hong Kong Young Writers Awards 2020
My head jerked up.
Her name resounded sweetly through the musk-smelling, drunken air, a note of clarity
amid the chaos that whirled through my chest and roared into my thorax. My lips moved,
mouthing that name over and over, while no sound escaped my lips. Her body shone with the
aura of self-assuredness and purpose.
She rummaged in her purse, trying to find her wallet, I assumed — her features twisted
into helplessness. My heart lurched with pity, and without knowing what I was doing, I was
out of my chair and making my way towards her.
“I’ll pay,” I said to the bartender.
“No, sir,” she said, her voice like fingers running upon the silken strings of a harp that
was my every gesture and word. “I can go
home and retrieve the money.”
I ignored her and pushed the bills across the counter. “No change,” I said.
I felt her eyes linger on me, on the gold watch on my wrist, my crisp white shirt, the
jacket thrown over my arm. Her hair was in an ebony braid thrown carelessly over her
shoulder, shining in the golden lamplight of the empty streets.
“Thank you, mister,” she said.
“We all need a drink once in a while,” I said languidly, though my heart beat in a frenzy
of delight. “Just to indulge a little.”
She laughed. “True, sir.”
“Call me Li Jian.”
The core of my soul trembled; my name escaped from my lips so freely, so carelessly, the
name that no one knew or cared for, not even my father. It was the name of a phantom of
empty streets.
“Well then, Jian,” she said, and the way she pronounced my name sent a thrill through
me — “Thanks for the drink. It took too long planning my entry for —”
“The Qianhai-Guangdong-Hong Kong- Macau Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Competition, yes?”
She looked surprised.
“I heard your name on the radio,” I said.
“I see.” Her smile was beatific. “Are you a competitor then, Jian?”
“No.”
“why not?”
“I don’t join competitions. My brother is the one who does things like that.”
“And why only your brother?”
“My father believes he has the potential. And I, unlike Li Wen…” I shrug. “I don’t.”
She stepped forward, turning her face to the moonlight, until her face was bathed in
quicksilver and the moon was reflected in her eyes like a silver sickle. “I don’t believe you,
Jian. You do not cast your hat into a ring because you think you might win. You do it so that
you might leave a mark upon the world.”
A shudder ran through me. Who was I? I was Li Jian, insignificant compared to my
father’s accomplishments and my brother’s genius. I came into this world quietly, and I would
leave it just as soundlessly.
“Why did you join?” I asked.
Her face turned downward, staring at the golden pavement.
I called her name.
“Can I tell you a secret?” she whispered.
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