Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 2020complete | Page 554

She didn’t seem to be disinterested despite my responses. “You look somewhere between thirteen and
sixteen though. What grade were you in at school?”
“... I don’t know.”
“You seem to be rather forgetful, boy,” she put away her finished mug of juice, “Any parents?”
“No.”
“Friends, perhaps?”
“No.”
“Absolutely no family, at all?”
“No.”
She took a breath before continuing. “It must be rough, living with no family or friends.”
“... I don’t know.”
Angel shrugged. “Then I might just tickle you until you say something meaningful.”
Tickles? By a girl? A girl that I barely know? Different emotions -- shyness? Uncomfortableness? Ecstasy? I
couldn’t help but giggled as she tickled me.
“You aren’t that ugly,” she continued, “Didn’t someone used to look after you?”
“... I don’t know?”
Angel shoved her head next to me, causing me to immediate blush as a reaction. “A question, huh?”
“Don’t you think you look better after you changed?” she pointed at a distant mirror in front of both of us,
“You have an unusually large pair of eyes for a boy.”
“...” I decided not to comment as she suddenly started tying up my hair.
“Look, your face is all red.” she snicked as she glanced over my image on the mirror, only causing me to
blush more.
And then she kissed me out of the blue.
I turned my cheek away, face almost glowing hot, “Do you know what are you doing?”
Angel stood up, preparing to leave and lock the front door, “Yes. It’s my way of wishing a person best
luck.” She winkled at me before leaving; as she left, I felt my body finally lowering its guard.
That girl’s almost crazy, I thought, Perhaps “Demon” is a better name for her. I touched my face and it was
still steaming, heart pounding fast. Now my survival have been secured, I felt my inner self, not worrying
about would I perish in the streets, started to move on something big and complicated -- was it love?
I shook my head, trying to clear the images of her resident in my brain, but it was hard. My image showed a
very different person than a few hours ago at the fast food shop. The features stayed more or less the same,
but the dirt in my eyes disappeared; my hair, bangs and ahoge, still a mess, felt somewhat more orderly; the
skin tone also softened up somewhat; perhaps my hair isn’t used to being tied up at all, so I felt slightly
funny the whole time.
Perhaps I was just tired. I lied down on the sofa that once seated me and Angel, only to find a slight fragrant
smell of her perfume that continue to exist. My mind flocked to a new direction as I prepared to sleep --
what should I do, with this newfound security, tomorrow? Just like a sailor who traveled onboard for so
long that he had lost his sense of home. Would I...
---
It was called the Greater Bay Area.
Formed by amalgamating eleven existing cities it had become one of the largest and busiest megalopolises in
the world. Different cultures meet and the ambitious set themselves up there. I couldn’t stop but to think
about the kiss last night -- who’s culture was it?
“She’s a Hongkonger,” Miguel had said, tagging along as Angel opened her store for another day of
operation.
Let’s try not ho think about her that much, I said to myself, I have left Macau anyway.
Yet the events of this morning, images of Angel, stubbornly continued to flow, as if they were a persistent
part of my brain. “You can come back anytime,” she waved at the departing me, “Anytime!”
I blushed, memories of Angel’s kiss spilling out and overflowing my mind. Do I want to be kissed a second
time? It didn’t seem fair at all, as Angel was currently engaged at Miguel, at least it was what hinted.
I’m out of Macau, I repeated at myself. After walking through the Portas do Cerco I found myself standing
on officially Chinese soil.
Zhuhai. Simplified Chinese characters, huge in size, printed in an unorthodox sans serif font, were hung on
lampposts, a minimalist design to welcome visitors and tourists. I looked up in the sky, only to see towers of
glass and steel, reflecting the dizzy sunlight on me. The monochromatic colors used, and the pillars of shiny
steel supporting the structural expressionist architecture, all suggests a futuristic theme that is executed just
perfectly.
It was different from the Zhuhai I used to know.