Group 1 | HKBU21stp

Fish Door

Hon Lai Chu

On that scorching noon, like a leaf, he fell on the head of Light. Light, thus, knew that this unbearable heaviness would irreversibly change his breathing rhythm. At that point, they were standing on a massive reef, against the menacing sea; if any one of them fell into it, they would not get any help. But they both had muscular legs and knew exactly where they were. Light thus named him Leaf after forgetting his name, because Leaf endowed Light new meanings. The name Light, which he always loathed, was given to him by his mother. But Leaf had never met his mother. It was already seventy-two days after his mother’s burial when they reached the rocky beach from different directions and met each other.

When Light got back home, he mapped out the shape of Leaf as his self-customized map, with the route of his forthcoming journey. He had never had a person as his destination, so he never expected that the journey would be so long and would take his whole life to finish. He hung the map on a wall, next to the unpaid bills and to-do lists, but this travel plan gave him an illusion of having found a new path. In his deep consciousness, he knew his alcoholic mother was leading the way.

"Only a few things can bring hope to life." She told him once after getting intoxicated: "Sometimes, we just wait for someone to open the door that has been locked, and this person will cut off the broken lock, thrust into you and ransack your life." Throughout her life, she didn't take herself to any rehabilitation center, nor did Light. Instead of wasting time on quitting alcohol, they thought it's better to get deeply sober on different alcohol. He was, therefore, distraught for no one at the burial had taken any alcohol.

All those who attended the mourning looked no different than pedestrians, with glassy eyes and dry skin, chattering, laughing, exchanging their business cards, unseemly, pretending to be sad, or swiping on their phones. None of them had any drinks but was hopelessly dazed. At that moment, Light had not fully realized that what he genuinely loathed was not the guests but himself, except for one thing they had in common: they were just as incapable of excessive drinking as he was. At that moment, little did he know, Leaf would give him a great blow just as hard as his mother’s, killing him at least twice in his short life.

When Light arrived at the caretaker’s office, he did not notice that there was a drowning look on his face. The AC was blowing hard. In a shivering voice, he told the caretaker that he had already lost the last key. "I can’t go home." He spoke almost in a desperate voice. Unexpectedly, the caretaker didn’t take out the thick, weighty telephone book, but pointed out to the turbulent sea with his stubby fingers.

Light followed the caretaker’s description and found the locksmith who was standing next to the sea and staring at a fishing dangling rod. Light suddenly felt a vast shadow landing in his weary life, which allowed him to discern the locksmith’s name and could only walk towards Leaf like a fish hurling to the trap.

"Take me off the treacherous currents." Light didn’t say that.

But the caretaker was right, "None of the doors would be a problem for him. Those who went out to discard the trash but were accidentally locked out of their homes; those who got trapped in the bathroom or bedroom for unknown reasons; or those who were afraid of the outside for various reasons, all opened their doors with his help and finally were able to return to the office on time in the morning." He squinted and squeezed an intriguing smile towards Light with wrinkles stacking on his face, like a rough maze.

When Leaf was standing in front of him and opened the stiff door, sunshine came through the window, passed through the house and inundated the rims of his eyes --- he felt a golden somnolence which overwhelmed him after throwing off the disguise for too long.

"What a graceful mansion." Leaf stood aside and complimented. To express gratitude for his help, Light invited him in. Leaf wandered throughout the house, making an unfamiliar footstep imprinted on Light’s eardrums. He had a hunch that the sound would last forever. However, what was on his mind wasn’t the noise but what he could offer to Leaf.

Leaf didn’t bring up the charge but for a cup of coffee to moisturize his dry lips from the prolonged exposure to the sun. In the scent of coffee beans, they were sitting opposite each other at the dining table. Light clearly knew that the irregular heartbeat was not because of the caffeine but the start of an official exchange. He was expecting a disclosure of himself in exchange for something. Long afterwards, he truly felt that was a wrong judgment, but he never ever blamed himself. After all, he was born in a barren land; people were busy with getting replacements: new houses, new furniture, new lovers, new clothes, new pets, new cars, new enemies, new neighbours, new faces, or, new newness... Only replacement can produce profit. People here, including himself, wished they could be the replaced ones or, at least, foster the replacement process. He was not tired of how it works either, only if he needed to be involute if he wanted to keep a distance from it. Some people find an exhausting job, some live in a house which leaves them in the hole, some stay with the loved ones who break their hearts, some have babies, some wander in the cities, and some create families full of grease and dirt. But Light just needed a locksmith to deal with his plight, even though he knew he could hardly act as a lost key.

When the dusk overwhelmed the window, Leaf had used his words to build an inky forest for Light, which made him think he needed not be a fish.

"There are many buildings in this large estate, but most of them are empty because no one can afford such an expensive rent. After nightfall, all the windows without lights on prove this." Leaf told Light. As the night went late enough to hide people's shadows, he would, sometimes, unlock the rusty door of a long-vacant unit and lie on the floor. It was not that he didn’t have a house of his own, but his house, like most houses in the city, had a layer of blank that drove everyone away.

"Why is that?" Light asked, but did not receive an answer.

"Are you looking for someone?" Light asked again.

Leaf shook his head and said he was no longer looking for anyone.

"Do you want to get the last impression of home?"

"Not interested."

"So, is it to get the furniture left by others?"

"There is nothing but the dust that accumulated over time," Leaf only said. Making a living means to keep yourself alive first and then to keep others alive.

The sky was already dark and the locksmith had overstayed his polite hour in the house of Light, so Light showed Leaf the room where his mother had lived, with the door closed, for a long while. “It has been abandoned for a long time, so maybe you can try to keep it as you wish, like an empty unit.”When the words were spoken, it was inevitable that it was not an exchange but to end the exhaustion for both of them.

Leaf found that there was no unlocking skill needed to open that door except for courage. He thought that the belongings of Light’s mother must be stacked in the room, still, there was nothing except for the excessive smell of alcohol, reminding him of the ubiquitous disinfectant in hospitals, both of which gave him a sense of paranoid cleanliness, so he had to put down his fishing tackle with a slight fishy smell.

Light didn’t talk much with Leaf. In the days that followed, they often shared a tense silence, like the mucus in an aloe vera, thick and slippery. The outline of Leaf was a sea lane in which Light didn’t know where the destination was and he just hoped that it was somewhere more distant. He didn’t tell Leaf that he had already quitted his job, which he had been able to leave on time since graduation, after his mother died of alcoholism. It was not that he was shocked by her death, but he inevitably realized that the reason why he had been in a deep slumber was not because he never drank, but because he had never done anything to excess.

On sweltering summer days, they always walked to the beach in the afternoon, with Leaf fishing and Light not swimming but collecting rocks. Leaf would count the catch at the exact spot, and if it reached a certain even number, he would release all the fish back into the sea. But the purpose of his fishing was not in waiting, nor in catching or releasing, he just needed to practice repeatedly how to open the fish’s mouth.

"The hook must be taken out of their mouth to allow them to escape from the dilemma. " Leaf said.

"What if they insist on not opening their mouths? Light had little knowledge of fish.

"They would be seriously injured. Leaf said that the mouth was the lock of all doors.

Light was sure that Leaf had never tried to open his mouth although Leaf did open the door of his house, then his mother's door, and some other doors that he never knew. So, of course, Light was not fearless, but certain things were bound to happen, and he could only accept them as they happened. Similarly, he seemed to be able to perceive the shape of the future, but when it paved a path ahead by following his pessimistic imagination, he still had to stay in the dark for a while.

After the first typhoon of that year, Leaf never appeared at the beach or returned to his mother's room, although his fishing tackle was still lying on the ground as usual. In the rainstorm, Light went to the caretaker's office to inquire about Leaf’s whereabouts.

"Did you lose the key again?" the caretaker asked, frowning.

"No," Light answered, though he didn’t mean it, "I’m able to go back to my house."

"So why do you need a locksmith?" The caretaker didn’t understand.

Light then developed a new habit of taking a walk every day, from the administrator's office to the neighboring housing estates, without saying anything. The city’s night sky is broken and dark, but the dense lights of the buildings are brighter and dazzling than the starry sky of the wilderness. He stared at every lightless window for a long time, until his eyes were sore and he could accept the fact that Leaf was in a place where he was not.

Indeed, the hints that Leaf left could not be clearer: he had opened all the doors for Light, and Light must walk in alone through that last one although he was still hesitating outside the door. It was not because he was afraid of something hidden behind the door, but because there was likely to be nothing, just as he thought.

After the typhoon passed, Light still strolled alone to the beach and took a rock everyday to count the date. He pieced the rocks together like he had done with his broken self, but he was not a rock after all, so he could not be made whole. He had thought that these rocks would fill his pockets and lead him to the bottom of the sea. But as the seasons passed, the surface of the rocks became smoother, and they were displayed on the floor of his house, allowing him to feel again a weight that did not belong to him after he fell asleep.