AnYi 安亦

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Your character meets somebody new on the bus. His or her opinion about the person is changed by the end of the bus trip. How did this change occur?

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Minru had forgotten about the school when the bus stopped. A herd of screeching teenagers crammed inside. Clad in blue and yellow uniform, they reminded her of shoaling surgeon fish, but much noisier.

It had been too long since Minru was able to empathise with the simple joy of a school day coming to an end. She shuffled a little closer to the window, leaning her head on the glass. The gesture was far less romantically melancholy than it looked – the window started vibrating as soon as the bus re-started, sending a loud buzz through her head; at the same time, a small figure appeared at the vacant seat beside Minru. Without a word, he sat down, with a loud thump that came from his backpack, which he took off from his shoulders and placed on his knees.

Minru cast a side-glance at the boy. He was pulling open the zip on the backpack, filled with so many books that their edges contorted its original shape. She couldn’t help but notice the tidiness in which he kept the inside of the backpack; none of the books looked dog-eared; none of the loose paper files looked creased or messy. With practiced swiftness, the boy fished out some exercise books and a pencil case, and started scribbling on the book, using the backpack on his knees as a sort of desk.

7Th Grade Maths. Minru happened to see the title on the page. The boy looked calm and dedicated, his entire focus on linear equations; he didn’t seem to worry that the rocking and bumping of the bus may screw up his handwriting – which, as Minru caught a glimpse of, was already so horrendous that the bus might not make much difference of it anyway.

One of those quiet nerds whose entire adolescence is about school, probably. Yet another victim of the education system. Minru turned her eyes away, taking off her headphones, as another group of pupils burst into wild laughter at some teenage gossip. She was not particularly happy to have a nerdy kid doing his homework on the bus beside her, but was silently relieved that at least it wasn’t one of the screamers.

It was getting dark. The noise subsided gradually, as the majority of the passengers got off at the stops in the central area. Minru had dozed off halfway through the journey, and the bus was quiet and almost empty when she woke up. Checking her phone absent-mindedly, she suddenly noticed something was off.

The boy was still there, miming something quietly, with a 7th Grade Chinese textbook (Volume II) spread open on the backpack. At first Minru thought he was memorising the list of ancient classics – she vaguely remembered the Ballad of Mulan was included in this one, and that everyone made rhyming jokes out of it when they learned the poem. However, with a second glimpse, she realised the pages were not on poetry, but showed the final passages of Lin Haiyin’s ‘Daddy’s Flowers Had Fallen’. The realisation sent a pang through Minru’s chest. He was gazing into mid-air, lips moving in silence, but Minru was still able to hear the words. She couldn’t help but stare at the boy’s dark, sullen face. For the first time, she realised the bus had travelled far beyond the residual area of the school and was reaching its final stop.

Tears fell onto the pages, just as the boy murmured ‘Daddy’s flowers had fallen; I’m no longer a child.’ Minru moved a little closer to him, handing over a packet of tissues.

‘Have a good cry.’