Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 2020complete | Page 555

Navigating this alien new plaza I walked a few blocks away, along the wide boulevards that looked shiny
new. Out of the modernist environment folk music boomed out of the corner -- so vastly different from
the electronic dance that had been playing in the pubs and department stores. Sitting on one of the
ubiquitous benches I listened -- wasn’t it similar to those that were always playing near my home. The
melody, the instrument, all resembled what my father, my mother had preferred. Their faces -- no matter
how hard I try to wipe them away, they keep on appearing again and again, no matter how hard I run and
run...
And the curse. I hate recalling it, but it flowed out with my memories long locked deep under my conscious
mind.
“Remember the past,” as if the music was instructing me, memories overflowing again. I couldn’t help but
to remember, like how a long-wound scar is re-etched open.
“Remember the past, boy, but you have to move on,” as if something was channeling through him,
through his ears that hear the music, “Regardless of your past.”
Suddenly I was back in school, textbook open, the teacher before me. “The Greater Bay Area has one of the
most spectacular histories in the world,” Was it geography, history or economics? “They were once forsaken
borderlands with a more successful colony. Within decades they transformed themselves into someplace with
as much weight as any major business center in the world. Once competing cities dropped their grudge to
unite and work towards their betterment as a community. Wasn’t it spectacular, that their goal was achieved
within decades?”
Grudges? Competition? I almost recognized whom these words were describing. I looked back at myself,
my past -- they almost covered me, like a wave. I felt my heart, beating; I looked at my surrondings, the
people that pass by: perhaps starting over is a good idea.
I almost remembered. My past, the origin of the curse.
But I decided it’s not a good idea to.
The waves abruptly stopped, disappeared, leaving me in a beach, looking over at a featureless ocean. Perhaps
that’s what you see in Portugal, staring into the Atlantic.
The music almost made me shed tears. I sat on the sand, feeling the sea breeze, watching the sea brushing
the shore gently. A long-lost feeling popped in my mind:
I almost felt like home.
Home. What was it like?
I didn’t know. But I found a newborn desire to explore, to define home.
Rounds of applause after the music abruptly ended, like how those waves disappeared. I couldn’t help but
started clapping too, but it felt more than just appreciating the music.
I have decided to settle in this place.
I would define the Greater Bay Area as my home.
And that, the chains of the curse was finally broken.