Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4 - 7 2018 | Page 150

The key clanged again. The guards broke his remorseful reverie.
‘It’s time now.”
He went through the streets to the stone table. The crowd’s bellow of rage was earsplitting. People along
the road started throwing stones at him and the guards did not bother to protect someone who was going to
die a minute later. Some of the stones hit his back and some hit his head. He did not feel pain though, until
he mounted the stone table and saw in his memory his master’s death re-enacted in front of him like a
cursed drama script. On the stone table he could not see his brothers in the crowd. ‘They should despise
me,’ he thought to himself. ‘Even seeing me disgusted them.’
The executioner stood beside him and raised his sword up in mid-air. Wujing closed his eyes ready to
receive his death penalty.
In the darkness he waited a bit, expecting a sharp bolt of pain on his nape and then he would wake up in the
afterlife. He only felt snaps of icy wind in the end. When he opened his eyes, his long-lost brothers leapt
into visibility.
‘I think our master wouldn’t like you to die either,’ said Wuhung.
The next second, tears were rolling down his cheeks. Now even though he realized this was only a dream
and he would soon wake up again in hell, he already felt contented. At least he had received the forgiveness
and acceptance that he had craved for all along.