Winfred Wong: Son of the Tank Man

“Leaving the country?”

“Yeah, I’ll be going to my dad’s home country, where the people there still value the importance of maintenance of order and where I was born.”

“Where are you from? You don’t have an accent.”

“Felomeim. I moved here when I was like two or three.”

“For real!?” he said in a dubious tone. “I mean it’s always a good thing to go on a trip back home, but Felomeim? Will you ever be able to come back safely?”

“What makes you think I’ll come back?” I asked, but never got an answer from him.

The office, which overlooked the front of the building, occupied a whole floor, which I considered unnecessarily large, except the fine red brick wall behind the reception desk, and we exited the elevator when I had my eyes on a delicate glass-made flower vase holding a Victorian carnation with gray-green leaves and ostentatious red flowers that somehow smelt like a lavender sachet on top of the reception desk.

“Good morning, Oli,” I said to an elegant, red-haired lady sitting behind the desk that veiled her face.

She stood up, revealing her adorable face. “Good morning, Ashton and—” She paused dramatically when she set eyes on Aaron.

“A—” I opened my mouth to speak, but he interjected, enthusiastically but impolitely; after all, to him, modesty was just a myth.

“I’m Aaron,” he said and stretched out his arm to shake hers.

“I’m so glad to meet you, Aaron. I’m Olivia. You can call me Oli,” she said, inclining her slender torso forward ravishingly.

“My pleasure, Oli.”

It was not until their little friendly handshake that I discovered how cordial her wide smile was for the first time in five years of working together with her when she brought her enviable cheekbones into prominence, radiating confidence. I noticed she had incomparably tender skin, with one shallow line grooved on her left face, and an almost indiscernible small scar just a centimeter above the bridge of her pert nose. I reckoned it was because I had never really snatched at the opportunity to look at her long enough to study her countenance – every time when our eyes met, I would shy away from starting a conversation with her – without, inadvertently, being deemed as a lunatic despite the deplorable fact that I had always found her deadly captivating. It only occurred to me that I had been keen on her the whole time later and perhaps back then I was just too timid to be able to acknowledge my own feelings.

“It’s like a custom to start off with a handshake with the reception lady, and it’s always good to start off this way,” I said. “And now, if you would.” I motioned him to go inside with me.

“I like your hair,” Oli said as if she didn’t hear me.

“Thank you. I like your hair too. It’s so shiny,” he said, running his fingers through his outer hairs, giving out a confident beam that was nearly as cordial as hers.

I don’t know why, but I can remember there was a sticky bad feeling out of nowhere welling up inside me at that time and I just wanted to stop them from looking at each other, and so I then coughed twice deliberately to intrude.

Realized my patience had worn out, “Oops, sorry, let’s go,” he said, and then we walked away, though her eyes held his spellbound like their eyes were interlocked.

“She is beautiful, isn’t she?” I said on a whim when we passed by the red brick wall.

“Yeah, she is gorgeous,” Aaron said.

He was still looking over his shoulder at that time. And he only turned around until the red brick wall had completely blocked his sight.

“Be careful, Aaron, be careful. I think she is a maneater,” I said, partly jokingly, partly seriously.

“A maneater?”

“Watch out boy, she’ll chew you up,” I sang, but he looked bewildered, with his lips dipping down into a frown and his wrinkled lively nose. “Never heard that before?”

He shook his head, and I shook mine.

“It’s one of the most famous songs back in 1980s and I think it’s one of the best songs of all time.”

“Wow. That’s about, half a century ago,” he drawled, then gave out a vicious smile, which lasted only for less than a split second, as though he had discovered something ridiculous.

But I caught sight of it. And I thought he was disrespectful, like he thought old songs were not worth listening to purely because they were old, so I shook my head again when I suddenly heard something that I thought can only be regarded as a dreadful racket, but was described by him as his favorite song of all. And I figured maybe that’s why he could tolerate the noisy engine on his motorcycle.

“What!?” I said to myself, stunned by the discovery that someone was actually fond of it, when he was hurrying to the window.

Prompted by a wave of curiosity, I edged over to him and managed to convince myself to take a look out onto the road. And from there, I saw a pair of large loudspeakers relentlessly converting electricity into unpleasant noise on the backseat of a roofless black van moving forward at a very slow pace. It was like the attention-seeking driver was trying to show off his newly acquired toys by wittingly turning up the volumes to maximum.

“That’s your favorite song? You can’t be serious,” I said in a murmuring voice, as he was humming softly to himself. “I would’ve called the police already if it were yesterday.”

But when he heard what I said, he stopped humming theatrically and glared at me with deep furrowed brows and unspoken disapproval emanating from his visage, like I had just done something abominable.

“What!?” I said, not knowing what else to say or do, my eyes moving round on his patronizing look.

He swayed his head a little. “Nothing, just wondering where everybody is.”

His look then shifted abruptly from slightly angry to a bit wheedling, obviously trying to change the subject, as he started looking around, pretending to be as curious as possible with his arms unnaturally swinging back and forth. So I grasped the chance to pull down the noise-canceling blinds, which Brian snapped up from the December sales that got under way last week just because it’s cheap, before taking a good look around.

The plainly adorned office was so spacious that half of it was empty because we only had a small team comprised of five people, four gentlemen and one lady, working in this place, excluding Olivia, and as I snapped my head around, I found out that, bafflingly, none of my colleagues were present. ‘How couldn’t I have realized it before?’ that’s what had popped up in my mind instantly at that exact moment. But looking back now, the reason was quite obvious. The sticky bad feeling hadn’t even scattered a bit and had somehow blindfolded me until then.

So I turned back and took a glance at the ornate clock hanging high on the red brick wall, which showed it was already five minutes past nine. Knowing how much they value punctuality, I reckoned that they must be in the manager’s room having a meeting, or discussing some minor matters, or some sort of that.

The manager room was weirdly situated on the left corner of the empty half of the office, and if anyone ever wanted to get there, he or she would’ve to cross the ‘grassfield’, the empty half of the office, first. And strolling across the ‘grassfield’ alone without being summoned was something we all considered a taboo, except when you were going to deliver a resignation letter. There were many reasons why it’s a taboo, like because when you were in the empty half, everyone would automatically have their eyes upon you just because you were exposed as though you were a giant on an actual grass field and we all thought it was sort of not good for you to catch everyone’s attention for some minor matters, but that’s not the point here. The point is it’s safe to cross the ‘grassfield’ at that time as I had Aaron by my side.