Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4-7 2019 | Page 112

“You need to stop pitying yourself and playing victim. Look, you keep running away from your problems,
they will eventually get worse. You ran away for too long, all this happened because you never took the initiative.
You’re pathetic because you foregone the chance to be strong, and chose to remain and consider yourself pathetic. You
kept clinging to some childhood fantasy, never looking at the bigger picture. The people and events that occur around
you. You’re still an immature brat, the world isn’t made for you!”
I have no words to retort. He was right, everyone called me pathetic and I took that to heart and accepted it. I
distanced myself from every person, they form assumptions of me as a scrawny, childish kid. Since I considered myself
pathetic, everyone else agreed with what I wanted them to perceive, resulting in all the misfortunates I experienced.
What kept me going was the dream to become part of the Ming Voyage my father was a part of, but that was never
enough to begin with. The crew despised me, since the reason I am a part of this is cause of some childish dream.
Everyone else probably joined due to more realistic, more dire circumstances. Impoverished families, lack of education
and more. I was too stubborn and naive, and the crew despised that.
For the first time since coming here, I answered him not with thought, but with speech. But my voice felt so
alien, I could not perceive nor comprehend what I said. But, what I could sense was a faint smile from him, as if having
a melancholic understanding with my answer.
“So, you finally realised? Take the initiative, have humility, and maybe you would finally be understood. This
is goodbye now… old friend.”
He turned his back on me. I unconsciously extended my hand as my last ditch effort to call him back but with
a blink, he left no traces for me to scour. The ship I so dearly adored as “paradise” finally sailed its last journey. The
ship’s hull crumbled, the foundations collapsing, and in mere seconds I was barely kept onboard by a few wooden struts,
until those crumbled away. Then, I suddenly fell into the abyssal sea as the last remains of the ship vanished into it. As I
landed into the waters, something was off. The impact gave me a shock of insurmountable pain, the sensation of the
water, the immeasurable salty taste on my tongue, and how my mouth, eyes and ears felt clogged by pressure. They all
felt too… real.