“Look,” she said as she turned around and gestured around her – to the sweaty tattooed man carrying boxes of oranges down the road, to the red, shiny taxi cars, to the tilted hanging lights and plastic cellophanes thumbtacked on the wall of an open meat shop, to the passersby, the long batch of stairs. “Just like how Ting puts it, it’s the theory of relativity minus all the physics jargons. There’s no better comfort than being able to relate your pain with another human being. If you take walks in places like this and really look at people’s faces, you’d know that half of us are pretty much the same. Each of us suffer. It’s not just you.”
She hopped a step and turned to me again. Her long, black hair slightly bounced, the purple light coming from a flower shop next to us reflected on her face just right. “I have a question,” she whispered. “Do you think it’s wrong to want to get away and to do anything just to be able to do that?”
“You have every right to run away from what's hurting you.”
When we reached the Mid-Levels escalator, I remained four steps behind her. This way, I could see her fully and clearly whenever she turned around to point at something she found cute.
In such a crowded space, it was only natural that I would feel out of breath. Only that she looked pretty and I found myself wondering if it was the reason instead.
“Tell me something about yourself too,” she mumbled.
"Well, my father owns a fish store in Tai O and he wants me to manage it after I graduate.”
“Can I go visit sometime?"
On the way home, things felt rather different.
"...No."
"Why not?"
"He's quite...problematic."
YOU ARE READING
Dear Kafka
Romance[CPN] Riko was nearing the end of her life. What she decided to do for the remainder of it was to find someone to love. She never knew it would be so beautiful, maddening...turbulent. She got what she wanted and Lord knows it was the first time.
