Fiction: Group 4
With midday’s fervor imminent, Stephen stepped on the train rolling his suitcase behind him.
Looking around, the lighted square where he had lunched was bright and ecstatic with the apathetic wail of
largish men in striped-maroon polo shirts, and chin-tilted, snappy women in high-heels and bright
jewelry, and the swelling, futile pleas of young property men in ill-fitting suits.
Taking in all this, he adjusted his collar as he handed his ticket to the attendant-man; thanking him
in assured English, it stirred a few cries of surprise from the Guangzhou populace: “what a
splendid
-looking
boy! And he speaks English!” they cried. Stephen wondered if he really was that handsome to the
Guangzhou population, for he had the inherent, fortunate tendency of self-doubt. He wondered if the
language he had first learned as a young boy really could accumulate so much jealousy and admiration.
But all that didn’t matter! — Passion and Desire gleamed in the cloudless, rich skies above, and he
could even see, outside, as the train engines started with a low roar, a beautiful, remarkable-looking girl
laughing with the brown-irises of her eyes in full-flowered bloom.
A PENSIVE, SYMBOLIC INTERLUDE
Of the whole boarding event, his father, Mr. China, a coherent, explanatory man who had a taste
for Keats and a habit in investing “in an around the pearl”, wrote in an excerpt to a conservative and
aristocratic sixty-something:
“Talking about the past I can only feel loves and dreams… and the feeling of all those years being
washed away. At fifteen I fell in love with the tonic and unutterable kindness of early-morning; at fifteen-
and-a-half I fell in love with the wild, effervescent beauty of the stars.”
II
“SETTLED IN BADMINTON”
December of his first and only year at Badminton was a bright star in Stephen’s memory. After the
lamentable failures of a highly-academic fall, in which he struggled achieving only five out of eight marks in
chemistry and extended algebra, the carnival and bankruptcy of a rich and more pleasant winter -- football,
dinner-dances, karaoke and movies out in the town, uninterrupted dreams late through winter mornings -
- fell with glowing affection on the faces of many, like a baby laughing when she first learns to swim.
GALLANT IN IMPRESSIONABLE FORM
The game with Greentown Yuhua, the state school team, was played late from five far into a snappy,
emotional winter dusk of the most beautiful blend of pearl, pink, and gold, fading into the evening amidst
the cries and despairs of wild, crashing boys. Stephen, at centre-forward, his red captain’s armband flapping
gloriously in the December night, surging and commanding in furious exhilaration, plunging into the dirt
from the bloody tackles of a thousand aching legs and Chang’s broken glasses… he had a sense that he was
playing the most romantic and historical sport... flung on the elusive ball he twisted in impossible dribbles
scarcely perceptible to the astonished spirit that he left in his wake, and in the heroic scenario of him
strong-arming and revelling in the beating tide of a thousand cheers afar gushing, flowing, thundering,
roaring, so close to him... he ran behind and fired an impossible shot into the top corner of the Yuhua net –
the only goal of the game.
THE
ZHUHOU
OF BANTER
By time of Christmas he had completely forgotten about Cecile. The frivolous and calamitous tone of her
betrayal, discovered by one of those up-to-date girls who took pride in their specialty —— Eleanor Weiley
(in Hong Kong) had seen that Cecile had gone off with one sultry boy or the other at the megamall ice rink.
But, however spooked from this, Stephen had secretly appeased his weird philosophical desire for a modern
tragedy. He didn’t show or tell anyone, however, lest it would be judged as “cringe” (as people his age said
so often nowadays). As what would be congruous with popularity, he acted bawdy and outrageously crude
at even the mentioning of her name – “So what happened with Cecile… is it true that thing about
Cecile…”
