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5:00PM, King’s Road, North Point.
“Are we…there yet?” Out of breath, my wobbly legs were about to give in. Never have I ever thought I would be moved by the sight of the plate ‘North Point’ pinned at the top of an MTR station.
“Almost there, it’s just two blocks and a left turn away.” Contrasting to the awkward situation I was in, Kou was marching down the street in great shape with her gaze fixed straight ahead of her.
“That’s great to hear…this whole walking thing is killing me.” The word ‘almost’ instantly sent a sense of relief. I inspected the surroundings, in the hope of spotting a place for a brief break where we could sit down and get ourselves a drink before we got going again.
Yet Kou did not show any signs of stopping, as if there was no need to pause on our journey.
“How could you be worn out from this? Aren’t you a mageka?”
“Easy for you to say, missy. We’ve been walking nonstop from Happy Valley all the way to North Point - it’s totally reasonable to feel exhausted.”
I initially planned on walking to the Happy Valley Terminus to take a tram to North Point after having lunch at home, and then head over to inspect the location where a suspected homicide performed by the ‘vampires’ took place and the dead body was found. Kou, however, insisted on getting there on foot since “The weather’s so fine!” and “It doesn’t take long to get there anyways,” as she claimed. At first, I assumed the journey would take less than thirty minutes judging by what she said - only to find out halfway that it took twice that instead. From Happy Valley to Causeway Bay and along the King’s Road haul, my legs were turning numb after an entire hour of stepping on paths paved with bricks and asphalt.
I was a mageka but nowhere close to an aspiring athlete. Since my life throughout the past three years has mostly been consumed by work, I haven’t been pouring much time into exercising. That accounts for the decline in my physical strength, and hence this buffoonery.
I should spend more time jogging near home afterwards to avoid facing similar situations like this, or perhaps I should just hit the treadmill at home as an alternative to save time.
“Is that so? To be honest, I don’t find this challenging at all - I mean I’d be totally fine even if you asked me to turn around and run back to our place right now.” Kou kept going, but she finally slowed down a little to match my pace after seeing the bad shape I was in.
“You know? I used to walk home like this back in secondary school.”
“Walking for an hour every day? On the infamously crowded King’s Road?” I looked around as I spoke: The narrow sidewalk was packed with passers-by and lines of people queuing up at the bus stops - the gap between people was virtually zero in this hustle and bustle.
“Were you doing this for stamina training or fat burn?”
“I just did it out of interest. Doesn’t everyone?” Kou gazed at me with a naive expression.
“I believe an average Hong Konger would not walk one hour to return home unless they’re left with no choice…”
From what I know, most Hong Kongers would search for other means of transportation. They’d pick rides over walks if it took over thirty minutes on foot for them to get to their destinations. After all, it was hardly a healthy measure in the long run for anyone to walk down streets covered in billowing smoke.
At that instant, something caught my attention. As I lowered my head to trace the source, I noticed that Kou was wearing a pair of low heels.
“Wait a minute. You’re in heels!? Aren’t your feet already sore from this traipse?” I gasped in astonishment.
“I used to run around the classrooms in heels in my secondary school era. This is nothing to me.” The look on Kou’s face said ‘meh’.
“Secondary school? Heels? And running? You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Out of disbelief, I unconsciously raised my voice.
“No I’m not.” Kou did not wink for once.
“No way this is real. Don’t try to trick me into believing ‘cause I’m a ‘new immigrant’. Where on earth would there be a secondary school in Hong Kong that requires students to wear heels to school?”
“”There’s one at Kowloon Peak,” she answered.
Granted, I was not the typical kind of new immigrant from mainland China Hong Kongers refer to. From a literal sense, my identity as an immigrant was indeed true since I have only been here for three years. But in government records, I was a ‘Japanese’ who has resided in Hong Kong for more than seven years and had been issued an identity card with the right to abode.
“How?” you may ask. Well, of course…magic.
Three years ago when I came to Hong Kong at the age of twenty-one, the first thing I did was create an identity for myself that would not arouse suspicion using magic. Kou told me at that time if I held a Hong Kong Identity Card instead of a Hong Kong Permanent Identity Card, it would be much more difficult for me to find a job, as I had to take into account my travel documents and restrictions, such as the legal limit of stay. To avoid complicating things, she suggested that I create an identity of a permanent resident, and reside in this city as a ‘Japanese expat’. Therefore, you may say I was both a new immigrant and a ‘local citizen’.
This disparity gave me a weird feeling from time to time. My stay in Hong Kong was not long, therefore I hadn’t quite familiarised myself with a lot of local daily conversation topics, such as the ‘collective memories’ and quotes from ‘80s movies, not mentioning the map of Kowloon and the New Territories.
It would seem odd for one who has lived in Hong Kong for years to not know about these sorts of things, but Kou always laughed it off and told me not to worry my head about it. She said she knew someone who had no clue where Yuen Long was, nor did he listen to a single Cantonese song despite having lived in Hong Kong for twenty years, but he was a native Hong Konger and identified himself as such. Thus the general classification of whether a person was ‘local’ or ‘foreign’ on the basis of their knowledge towards a place was pointless - what mattered most was their attitude at heart.
Identity cards were merely a form of document for your identity, while the sense of identity laid in a person’s heart. As long as you identified yourself as belonging to this place, then it was your home.
Every time Kou straightened me out, she always asked, “Then, where do you think you belong?”
As of now, I have yet to come up with a definite answer to this very question.
“But ain’t no way that’s the school you went to!” Channelling back to reality, Kou and I were still disputing over wearing heels to school as a teenager.
I knew that Kou was referring to a convent school at Kowloon Peak. However, it was situated in the Choi Hung district in Kowloon, which was a whole Victoria Harbour apart from Happy Valley, the place where she has been residing since she was a kid. So, how could she have possibly chosen to study there?
“Who knows?” Kou shrugged, as an act to give off a mysterious vibe.
“Viola and I went over this a while back, so I know which school you went to. Just cut the crap already.”
Viola was not only a common friend between Kou and I, she was also my colleague. She brought up the topic of secondary school when I had lunch with her the other day, and that was how I learnt where exactly Kou graduated from.
“Do you think what Viola claims must be a hundred percent right?”
“What’re you talking about? Wasn’t she your senior at university?”
“Who said what I told her must be the truth?”
“And what use is there for you to hide which school you went to…”
I mean - what good does it do for you to hide…the fact that you came from a prestigious school?
If I remembered correctly, the ranking of the school Kou went to was much higher than that of the ‘Kowloon Peak Secondary School’ - as Viola called it. Nonetheless, both schools were considered prestigious schools in Hong Kong from an outsider’s perspective. The question here was: What could be the reason behind this deception?
Also, according to Viola, Kou had earned herself an exceptional result of 7A2B at the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE), a public examination every Hong Kong high schooler had to take, and was admitted straight to university in the subsequent year via the ‘Early Admissions Scheme’ after she completed her Secondary Six studies. Her outstanding scores had been in the newspapers and on the website of her alma mater. This information could be accessed easily, so there was no way for her to conceal the fact.
“There could be a million reasons…” Kou still refused to admit the claim about her past, yet midway through her speech, she stopped abruptly and pointed at the back alley to our left.
“And here we are!”55Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEr6dPsl7Sb
