by Chan Ho-Kei
“Oh dear.” If only N were here, Nga-Yee thought—he might know of a solution.
“The book, Miss Au?”
Nga-Yee hesitated. If she said that N had the book and he wasn’t here yet, would the attendant stop her from entering the school grounds? But N had arranged to meet Kwok-Tai and Lily in the library. What if they got tired of waiting and left?
All of a sudden it came to her—social engineering.
“I’d rather bring it to the library myself, if that’s all right,” said Nga-Yee, patting her bag as if the book were in there. “I don’t want to trouble you. With the computers down and all the teachers busy, I’m sure you have a lot of extra work today.”
“I do indeed.” The attendant smiled ruefully. “I usually alternate lunch breaks with my coworkers, but they’ve all been called away by the principal and department heads to pitch in. I can’t leave my post. Do you know where the library is?”
“Fifth floor, right?”
“Yup. I’ll leave you to it, then.”
“The last time I was here, I came with a Mr. Ong—do you remember him? He’s in the public restroom nearby—upset stomach. When he arrives, could you tell him where to find me?”
“No problem. There’ve been a lot of upset tummies recently. It’s so hot, and restaurants can be careless with the way they handle their food—”
Nga-Yee didn’t wait for him to finish, but turned and headed for the stairs. That was not a bad bit of social engineering, if she did say so herself. Of course, leaving N literally in the shit was maybe not the most elegant way to finish things.
“Hang on! Miss Au!”
Her heart thumped. Had she given herself away? She turned to see the attendant holding out a plastic badge.
“You forgot your visitor’s pass,” he called out, still smiling.
She thanked him and pulled the lanyard around her neck as she hurried up the stairs, trying hard to stay out of his line of vision. She wasn’t cut out to be a liar.
At the fifth floor, she found the library more occupied than on her previous visit, though that was still only four or five people. These older students weren’t here for the books, but clustered around the computer tables, printing batches of what looked like club notices. Violet To was behind the checkout desk again, though this time she wasn’t reading a novel, but watching the group around the printer. When she noticed Nga-Yee standing in the doorway, her first reaction was surprise, but she recovered and nodded in greeting.
“Hello there,” said Nga-Yee. Kwok-Tai and Lily didn’t seem to be there yet, so she thought she might as well talk to Violet. “Isn’t it your lunchtime?”
“We have our lunch break in shifts,” said Violet a little awkwardly. “I have to be on duty for half an hour, and someone will take over later.”
Violet had been in the library after lunch the week before—probably the roster changed a lot, thought Nga-Yee.
“What brings you to school today?” asked Violet.
“Siu-Man had a library book she forgot to return.” Half the truth would have to do for now. Nga-Yee could hardly say, “I’m here to expose the true face of Lily Shu.”
“I don’t remember her borrowing anything—I guess I wasn’t on duty then,” said Violet. She looked at Nga-Yee for a few awkward seconds before Nga-Yee realized that she was waiting for the book.
“Um, I don’t have it with me.” She smiled in embarrassment. “Mr. Ong is coming with it. You know, the man you met last week …”
“Oh.” Violet nodded and turned her attention back to the students at the computer table. Was she worried that they would damage the printer?
“Hey, I got your text. What the hell?”
Nga-Yee spun around, startled to see Miranda Lai. Her two handmaidens were behind her, and although they didn’t look too different from the other girls, their elaborate hairstyles and overaccessorized phones made it clear they weren’t wallflowers.
“Yes?” said Violet.
“I got a text saying I owe you people money.” The Countess kept talking to Violet, having apparently decided to blank Nga-Yee.
Violet tapped at her keyboard and studied the screen. “Right, you did some printing that you haven’t paid for. That’s HK$135. It’s almost the end of the school year, so you should really pay this by today—”
“I don’t owe anything!” The Countess took an aggressive stance. “I’ve never exceeded my allowance! We get fifty dollars a day free, right?”
“That’s only for black-and-white. The records show that you printed in color. That’s three dollars per sheet, and you printed forty-five pages.” Violet spoke slowly, completely calm. “Maybe you pressed the wrong button and printed in color by accident?”
“I’m not that stupid!” spat the Countess. “This isn’t a new printer—I’ve been using it forever. It must be your mistake.”
“Yeah, Vile-let,” sneered one of the handmaidens. “Don’t think everyone’s as dumb as you.”
“If you won’t pay, I’ll have to report it to the teacher in charge,” Violet grumbled.
“Oh yes, you snitch, you love tattling, don’t you? Go on then!” This was the other handmaiden.
“It’s just a hundred-plus. Obviously I can afford it,” sneered the Countess. “But I’m not going to pay if I don’t have to!”
“Up to you, but rules are rules,” said Violet placidly. “If you don’t pay, I have to tell the teacher, and he’ll tell your parents.”
“Oh, now you’re threatening me?”
Nga-Yee backed away. As the only adult in the room, she wondered if she ought to intervene, but the visitor’s badge diminished her authority. If she tried, the Countess and her handmaidens would probably turn their sarcasm on her.
She’d retreated as far as the long table, where the students standing by the printer had noticed the commotion, when Kwok-Tai and Lily walked in.
“Hello, Miss Au. How are you?” said Kwok-Tai politely. Lily bobbed her head in greeting.
Nga-Yee froze. She’d have loved to slap Lily hard, grab her by the collar, and demand to know how she could be so vicious, yet she couldn’t bring herself to say or do anything. Perhaps Lily was already tormented by guilt, and—forcing the culprit to suffer this burden for the rest of her life, rather than beating her to a pulp now, would be the greater punishment—
“Where’s Mr. Ong?” asked Kwok-Tai, interrupting her thought.
“He’s—He’s on his way.” Nga-Yee forced herself to keep her voice level.
“Okay.” Kwok-Tai had noticed the quarrel between Violet and the Countess. “What’s going on over there?” he asked.
“Some misunderstanding over fees for the laser printer,” said Nga-Yee. Trying to distract herself from Lily’s presence, she went on. “Don’t you pay cash when you use the printer?”
“Normally. But if there’s no one on duty in the library or computer room, we put it on our tab and pay later.”
“How can you tell who owes how much?”
“We have online accounts, the same ones we use for the school chatboard—”
An almighty bang stopped everyone dead: Kwok-Tai and Nga-Yee’s conversation, Violet and Miranda’s quarrel, the other students’ covert observation of it. Standing in the doorway, dressed in his usual hoodie and panting hard, was N. The crash was the library door swinging open violently.
“N? What’s wrong?” asked Nga-Yee. She’d never seen him so flustered.
“Call—call Miss Yuen. Tell her to come here now,” gasped N to Violet, not even glancing at Nga-Yee. Violet clearly had no idea what was going on, but did as she was told.
N charged over to where Nga-Yee was standing, pulled out a chair, and slumped into it. Nga-Yee opened her mouth but he waved her away before she could speak, still breathing hard.
Less than a minute later Miss Yuen hurried in.
“Mr. Ong! Miss Au! What’s happening?”
N’s breathing calmed a little as he walked over to the counter, where he set down a bo
ok: Anna Karenina, Volume One. Nga-Yee recognized the green cover—this was a Taiwanese edition from the eighties, now out of print.
“So stupid of me—I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before,” N babbled. “On the way here, I happened to look inside, and found—”
He flipped open the book. About a hundred pages in were two miniature sheets of pale yellow notepaper. He unfolded them and spread them out on the counter:
Dear Stranger,
By the time you see these lines, I might no longer be here.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about death every day.
These slips of paper, palm-size with a border of cartoon animals, brought tears to Nga-Yee’s eyes, and she had to stop reading. “That’s Siu-Man’s handwriting,” she said, her voice choked.
Miss Yuen looked stunned, and the students were now openly staring.
“Siu-Man did leave a suicide note—but we didn’t know where to look for it,” said N. He set the two sheets of paper side by side. The paper was ruled, thirteen short lines on each. Nga-Yee continued reading.
I’m so tired. So very tired.
I have this nightmare every night: I’m in a wilderness, then dark things start chasing after me.
I run and scream for help, but no one comes to my rescue.
I know for certain that no one is coming to rescue me.
The dark things rip me to shreds. As they rip off my limbs they laugh and laugh.
Such horrifying laughter.
The most horrifying thing is that I’m laughing too. My heart
is rotten too.
Every day, I can feel thousands of eyes full of hatred boring into me.
They all want me dead.
I have nowhere to run.
On my way to school and back, I think if the MTR platforms had no barriers, I would step in front of a train.
An end to everything.
Maybe it’s better if I die. I’m dragging everyone down.
Every day in class, I look at her.
She doesn’t show it, but I know she hates me.
And I know what she’s done in secret.
She calls me boyfriend-thief, drug fiend, whore. Although
“And then?” Nga-Yee flipped the notepaper over, but the other sides were blank. Like a madwoman, she began flipping frantically through Anna Karenina.
“That’s it. Just these two pages,” said N, looking somber. “When I realized this was only part of the letter, I thought of something—if we’re lucky.”
Nga-Yee and the others watched, uncomprehending, as he dashed over to the bookshelves. They only came up to his shoulder, and Nga-Yee could see that he was going quickly through the titles. Finally he grabbed one and came back to the counter.
Anna Karenina, Volume Two.
N put the book down and began flicking through it. Nga-Yee realized what he’d meant about being “lucky” when he came to page 126: an identical folded sheet of pale yellow paper nestled there. Trying to keep her hand from shaking, Nga-Yee reached for it.
“Luckily no one tossed it out,” N murmured.
The letter’s contents didn’t help their confusion.
already.
I didn’t write her name as an accusation.
After all you don’t know me, and I don’t know you.
I just wanted a stranger to hear everything I’ve suffered as proof that I once existed in this world.
By the time you read these lines, I might not any more.
“That doesn’t line up, does it?” said Kwok-Tai.
“It looks like there’s a page missing,” said Miss Yuen.
N riffled the pages with his thumb three times, but nothing fell out.
“Is there a Volume Three?” he asked Violet.
“No—” she started to reply, but Nga-Yee got there first. “This edition only has two parts.”
“Then—” N lowered his head in thought, then abruptly turned to Violet. “Quick, check Siu-Man’s borrowing record.”
“Her record?” Miss Yuen repeated.
“She borrowed the first volume to hide the pages in. I don’t think she’d have checked out that one book and inserted the rest of the letter just anywhere in the library. Much more likely that she took out a stack, divided the letter among them, and brought them back—accidentally leaving one in her locker. The rest of the note is probably in another book or books.”
Kwok-Tai frowned. “Why would she do that?”
“No idea.” N shook his head. “Maybe she wanted to make sure we wouldn’t see the letter before she killed herself, so she left it in this roundabout way. Dividing it among several books made it more likely to be discovered. Not many students read books these days, after all. If she’d put it in a single volume, it could have stayed there undiscovered for years, until long after she’d been forgotten.”
Nga-Yee felt a stab of pain. How could Siu-Man have said all these things to an imaginary stranger, but not to her own sister?
“She must have felt very confused as she wrote these words,” N went on. “On one hand, she didn’t want other people to know how she was feeling, but she desperately needed to unburden herself. And so she chose to share her thoughts with someone she didn’t know, who might or might not exist—”
“Found it,” Violet interrupted. She read off the screen, “Anna Karenina, Volumes One and Two. Nothing else.”
“Nothing else?” chorused N and Nga-Yee.
“No.” Violet clicked a couple of times. “She borrowed these after school on April 30 and returned Volume Two on the morning of May 4. I guess in the break after third period.”
Siu-Man had died on May 5. Sorrow welled up in Nga-Yee. So Siu-Man had already been suicidal, even before that final assault from kidkit727.
“She’d never borrowed any other books?” asked N.
Violet shook her head. “The borrowing record only shows these two.”
“I don’t remember her ever mentioning library books,” said Kwok-Tai.
“Oh!” Nga-Yee exclaimed. “Could it be among her other books? Maybe those textbooks—”
“Good idea. We should go look. Miss Yuen, could you keep an eye out in case the rest of the note ended up in her locker or somewhere else in the school?”
“Of course. I’ll carry out a thorough search.”
Clutching the three pages tightly, Nga-Yee bowed in thanks. She felt pulled a hundred different ways, with no idea what she should do next.
“Let’s meet another day,” said N to Kwok-Tai as he pushed open the library door. The boy nodded.
Nga-Yee and N returned their visitor passes, then hurried along Waterloo Road toward Yau Ma Tei station. Nga-Yee was so dazed she’d forgotten about confronting Lily. Nothing was more important now than finding the rest of her sister’s last words.
And even in this partial letter, it was clear that Siu-Man knew who was smearing her, and that this person hated her.
She had known what Lily was doing to her. An agonizing thought.
“Hey! This way!”
Nga-Yee turned to see N standing by the side entrance of the Cityview hotel, pointing at the automatic doors to the lobby.
“Aren’t we going to your place to look for the missing pages?” asked Nga-Yee.
“Stop asking questions, just come with me.” N strode into the hotel, and Nga-Yee could only run after him.
They hurried through the foyer and into the elevator. N pressed the button for the sixth floor. When the doors opened, he led Nga-Yee down the corridor to room 603. Ignoring the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from the handle, he produced a keycard and swiped it so the red light turned green and there was a faint click.
Nga-Yee felt as if she’d stepped out of reality. It was a fairly standard four-star hotel room. On the bed were two laptops with multicolored cables running from them, and on the desk, by the complimentary fruit basket, were several black boxes about the size of take-out cartons, two screens, and a keyboard with a touch pad. More cables of various thicknesses ra
n haphazardly across the floor, several of them plugged into the forty-two-inch wall-mounted TV. Three tripods stood by the window, the ones on either side fitted with video cameras (one long lens and one short), and in the middle was a circular receiver, like a satellite dish. A dark-skinned, severe-looking man was sitting at the desk. He had earphones on and was staring intently at the screens, breaking focus only momentarily to wave in their direction when N and Nga-Yee entered.
Nga-Yee felt as if she’d tumbled into a Tom Clancy novel.
“Any movement?” asked N, walking over to the window.
“Not yet.”
“I’ll take it from here—you can go.”
The man removed his earphones, grabbed a black rucksack from near his feet, and walked toward the door. He nodded at Nga-Yee as he passed her, but didn’t say anything, as if her presence was no surprise.
“Who was that?” asked Nga-Yee as soon as he was gone.
“He’s called Ducky. I guess you could say he’s part of my support team.” N was in the chair, staring at the screens as Ducky had been a moment ago.
“Ducky?”
“He used to have an electronics stall in Sham Shui Po on Apliu Street—Apliu as in duck house. Hence the nickname.” N didn’t take his eye off the screens. “He’s now the owner of several computer components shops.”
“And what are you up to here?”
“Do you have to ask? Surveillance, obviously.”
“But what are you—oh!” Nga-Yee suddenly realized what was on the screen: the Enoch library. She darted over to the window, and sure enough, the cameras were aimed at the school. They were several hundred yards from the west wing, too far for Nga-Yee to make out details, but these cameras were powerful enough to produce a sharp image of what was going on inside.
“Don’t touch those tripods,” N called out. Nga-Yee had barely brushed one of the cameras, but even that was enough to make the screen image wobble.
“What’s going on? Who are you watching?” All this spy equipment was making her uneasy.
“You hired me to find kidkit727, so of course that’s who,” said N simply.
“Isn’t that Lily Shu? We have all the evidence we need, so what’s all this for?”
“Haven’t I already said, what we have isn’t conclusive?” N glanced at Nga-Yee, then beckoned her over. “Let me show you what conclusive evidence looks like.”
