Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4-7 2019 | Page 237

As the man with a broom walked closer to where we were, continuing sweeping, we felt dust fly up our noses. We stuffed our mouths full, filling our tiny hands grip-fulls of dates. The man was near, he’d almost see us. “Let’s go now!” Brother and Sister nodded their heads and we crawled on the ground, not to be seen. We passed by a few bags, each with a different smell. One had a sweet aroma accompanied with slight bitterness. It’s smell made by nose twitch. The next bag had a salty but fermenting smell. My stomach growled, I must come back! We held onto our food tightly, not willing to lose any. While we were crawling, one of the bags fell open. Unfortunately, it was not properly sealed; dried plums tumbled out of the bag like rocks falling off a hill during a mudslide. Plums pummeled Brother and covered him. “Hey! Get out of here you filthy thieves!” Yelled the man angrily as he swung his broom at us. Brother clawed his way out of the mountain of plums and rushed straight towards the door. Sister and I dodged the broom and dashed towards the dark corner, turned and ran towards the door, and joined Brother. The other man tried to catch us while we were heading out of the storehouse, but failed to as we were too fast. “Dirty creatures!” screamed one of the men. We kept running, held tight to our dates and didn’t look back. “That… That was very close. Let’s never do that again! I was so scared!” cried Sister. She held the dates extremely tight. The dates were squished, some of their skin flaked off. “Why?” I asked, “We got away with lots of food, and now we know that entire building is full with more food! We must go back, again and again!” I declared as the three of us hid in the gutter of the next building. “We cannot go back to the village. There is no food there! How do we survive? There’s no one to provide for us, and there’s no method we can create food on our own. To survive, we need to search for food and take them when we have the chance. We’d be lucky if we did find any at all.” Brother agreed. “We’re stealing! Doing bad things! We will be punished in our next life! I don’t want to do this anymore!” Sobbed Sister as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Look, Sister, if we don’t keep on doing this, how do we live?” Brother stared at Sister as her face became sour. I watched as the two of them kept bickering with each other. Bitter sadness filled my heart. Only months ago our lives were full of solitude and bliss. We lived in a village near the countryside. There was always food to be had, whether from ripe fruit that fell to the ground, or in the village storeroom where the harvest was collected. Our village was small, and everyone knew each other. A small river ran between our home and the storeroom. Everytime we became hungry, we would cross the river, jumping on rocks to get to the other side. But a few months ago, the men started to leave in groups of twos and threes. They walked and laughed up the road, saying they had a great opportunity. We paid no attention as there was still plenty of food. However, after the last harvest was collected, much of the storeroom were loaded into carts, and the rest of the men pushed it up the same road. We became hungry, our parents left looking for food, and did not come back. As the eldest, I felt no choice, but to guide Brother and Sister up the road where I last saw the carts of food. We scavenged for days, sometimes almost getting squished by hooves of horses and wheels of carts. Although Brother and Sister were afraid, I kept them moving up the road. Finally we came to the end, and found ourselves facing a massive building we had just snuck into. Hungry, yet excited, we found food! Mountains of food! This was where our village harvest were taken. We’re saved!