Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4-7 2019 | Page 31

“I was in my pajamas and I never saw the clothes I wore the other day ever again. I asked him how did I get
here? He said I fainted. But I didn’t believe him. He had that look on him that usually appears when he is guilty. So I
asked again and again. He gave up, took my hand in his, and explained: ‘We were kidnapped, it was Bo Ling, he
wanted the opium even though we didn’t have any.’”
She shivered.
“But I knew he was hiding more; it wasn’t an excuse to why I couldn’t remember anything. For the third
time, I had to ask ‘How did I get here?’
He hesitated, “I carried you.”
I was getting angry: “Yeah, because I couldn’t walk on my own,’ I said sarcastically.
He went down on his knees, “I am so sorry, this will never happen again.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I will stop I swear. I won’t deal drugs or steal or put your life ever in danger again!”
He was stuttering, spitting the words out. I was so confused. He was so apologetic, and… regretful. He saw the
confusion on my face and explained further: “They drugged you, but- I - I - I stopped him”
He was hesitating, choosing his words carefully.
“What do you do?”
“I stopped him.”
“No. You are hiding something.”
He paused for a moment, thought about something, then said. “The only way to escape was to—”, he
hesitated, ‘kill him.’”
Stranger
She looked at me, trying to read my thoughts. I looked back at her. She was beautiful. She had big black eyes,
surrounded by long and thick lashes, thin eyebrows, and straight black hair that extended to her back endlessly and
clumped together in chunks as the rain poured over it. It was cold and windy, and the boat was swinging side to side
vigorously. But the story was too mind capturing to care.
“On that night, I saw the first vision: I was on the floor curled into a ball. I hugged my knees tightly and
squeezed my eyes on my thighs. Then I opened my eyes, it was blurry, and it was dark, and I was in a strange room. I
closed my eyes again and when I opened them I realized that I was standing up holding an object, but my eyes were too
blurry to see. I never told Na’Lan about the vision, I don’t know why.”
She stared at the ocean blankly, “After the incident, we pretended not to care; we moved on.”
She rubbed her temples, “But in here,” she pointed at her brain, “it never did.”
She looked at me straight in the eyes again, and she looked so tortured.
“We continued with our normal routines and ignored what happened. He kept his promise as well, he quit his
illegal trading and I never saw his family again.” I wondered if she regretted it, but then she said “it was the right thing
to do, because —”, she looked down at her stomach and rubbed it. “I was pregnant.”
“We were so happy; my Ah Yu was our own little sunshine. He gave us brightness and hope.”
She looked down at her stomach, smiling at him. Her smile wasn't like anything I have ever seen before. Her smile was
big, showing all of her teeth, it was like a smile you would have while laughing. It made her look even more beautiful.
“He was more than just my sunshine, he was my planet, my universe, I couldn’t live without him.” Suddenly,
the smile went from lovely to crazy. She was obsessed with her baby.
Stranger
“Na’Lan got a job so that we could afford a living for our family. Na’Lan worked as a sailor at first on one of the small
ships, then he was upgraded to a pilot’s assistant, then to ship manager, and finally to a pilot. The pilot gets a big cabin
for his family on the ship. There were two rooms in the cabin; one for us, and one for the baby. I already knew what I
wanted for the baby’s room,” she said smiling, still glaring at the ocean.