Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction Group 3 - 2017 | Page 153

He remained on the ground, sitting. He took off his suit jacket. The bottom part of his shirt was revealed
to be drenched in blood. Tiny traces of grass surrounded the wound.
“The walls… do you want to know why, I put them there in the first place?”
His question did not interest me, like all the other puzzling questions that were asked to me so many years
ago.
“I put them there… because I had to. Most of the land that covers this city… it used to be part of a place
called Shanghai… and before that, the Old City of Shanghai. A utopia of the past… is now relived in the future.
There was something compelling about the old state of the city. And so I researched, and I found out about the
walls, and how they used to use them. And so I knew I had to put some walls here. Just so people would know what
this city was. Just to know… its name. Do you know its name? What’s it called?”
He took his cigarette and breathed in for a long time, and coughed. “Go ahead,” he said with a crooked voice.
“Do what you’re here to do. Take me.”
I stared at him.
And then I advanced towards him.
He closed his eyes and dropped his cigarette.
“I’m not here for you.”
My answer caused him to open his eyes slowly.
“No, that can’t be true…”
He then closed his eyes once more, and muttered, “Stop playing around and just end it all already.”
“No,” I answered. “It’s not your time yet.”
His eyes remained closed. “Please…” his voiced trailed on.
“No. I was just here to see… to pay my respects. I have to go.”
He didn’t reply. His eyes were closed, and his body was dead.
He was asleep.
I felt my scythe in my robes. It was lively in a place like this. I walked back the way I came from, and
proceeded on the path to take me out of the crumbling city that was known as “Old Shanghai”. The path was still as
broken as before. The corpses remained silent. I passed a little robot dog wearing a cute little red ribbon on its neck.
It was dead.
The sun had never shone as bright as it did today. The sky was as blue as the ocean and the birds were
chirping a pleasant melody of joy and happiness. The winds were crisp and cool.
It was the start of a beautiful morning.