Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 2020 | Page 90

Fiction – Group 4
***
The council sat around a huge wooden table, its edges serrated from its many years
of service. The lines on the wood swirled and swivelled, dancing, to create many unique
patterns filled with different shades of brown. I sat on my seat, the fabric torn and worn
out. The cushioning had sunk so low that my eye-level was below everyone else’s. I had
chosen that seat with the intention of being less noticed, but then I saw the eyes fall on me
as I uncomfortably shuffled, trying to find a position that wouldn’t leave my back in pain
afterwards. My briefcase stood on its side beside the leg of my chair. The briefcases of most
others in the hall were clean, and plain, but mine was scratched and dented, burdened
with tags from many trains and aeroplanes I had taken. Travelling was my way of finding
out how we were different from others. It was interesting, I thought, how all humans are
fundamentally the same species, yet we are all so different in the way we look, we think or
we speak. What we find interesting could be a bore to a group of people in another part of
the world. One underestimated how much you can learn from just meeting someone else. I
pondered over this as the leader began to speak.
After a long half of an hour of words going through one ear and coming out of the other,
it was finally my turn to speak. My knees were shaking, my heart was beating so hard I
though it may break my ribs. Pearls of sweat started to form on my forehead, in contrast with
the cold feeling I had in my stomach. I was about to do what many considered impossible…
contradict the leaders.
***
Imagine telling someone to make soup, but now telling them how to. You elaborate on
the effects of that soup and how it could cure many diseases like cold, cough and so on. But
how will the person make it? It is often said, ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day;
teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’. But on a more negative note, if you don’t
teach a man to fish, you leave him in a situation where he doesn’t know what to do, and is
left in the cruel hands of doubt and hopelessness. The plan envisioned hundreds of policy
directions and goals, but didn’t specify exactly how they would execute them. The plan may
have been there to provide ways to strengthen the existing systems and find weaknesses that
need to be fixed, but with a lack of guidance, is there really anyway this will be possible?
‘Actions speak louder than words’... simply stating something and expecting it to happen is
useless and redundant. There must be action, or else, we will all fail.
***
“Speak louder.”
I addressed the council softer than I should have, receiving looks of confusion on the
members’ faces. I cleared my throat and began again. I had a strange habit of rapidly moving
my fingers when I was nervous, as if I was playing a piano.
It started when I was young… the piano was my most favourite thing in the world. I
would spend every moment of my free time making music on its black and white keys. There
would be days when I wouldn’t leave the comfort of the magnificent instrument, until my
mother would call me out and threaten to sell the piano to the local music center. Whenever I
was nervous, my first instinct would be to engage with the piano. I would be captured in the
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