︱tape: 09 - tai po at dusk︱

the bus swings around the intersection, the streets through the window pivot until it once again becomes a parallel stream of boutiques and doorways, my fingers on the pane, their touch abstracted by the raindrops that soften all the crowds into kaleidoscopic vapour with flashes of red and green when we pass through intersections where at each stop, the door folds open while the bus rolls to a stop, striking the fringes to signal its rest. the minibus throws me around at each shot of acceleration, the window’s image ripples, while the l.e.d speed monitor over the driver calculates 60 km/h, my hand on the railing struggles to hold on, bare legs under my skirt cool against the pleather seat. getting off near an mtr station, my shoes break into a puddle before my steps find their rhythm with the crowd's errant movements that still blur together and i find myself in separate fingers that suddenly realize they are without until walking into the station, the metal pillars grey with the rainy weather despite the normal commotion of students refilling their octopus cards at convenience stores in their damp uniforms, a somewhat hurried man in a wet overcoat picks up a bouquet by the flower shop’s amber panes, all of us heading to the train that would carry us away in one smooth movement like the motion in one’s mind before the blankness of deep sleep dissipates into dream beyond the scrolling advertisement screens of inaccessible sheen of new lotions. at tai po market, i’m let off at a station platform rather than an underground concourse. the rain is lighter here and the dusk fades like a light bulb whose warmth recedes after being switched off. my watch ticks another minute and i wait at the mall’s entrance near the taxi loop. traffic stops and goes at regular intervals, lights surface from the mist where i can make out faint balconies of faraway apartment towers. ko, my room-mate, charges in with his mo-ped which reminds me of a dwarfed motorcycle with oversized handles and a bulbous trunk fixed to the back. he sticks his foot and tilts forward to offer the backseat.

“your carriage has arrived madam minakami,”

“thank you, sir,” i jest. our conversations were like that, always trying to one-up each other on a fantasy or sarcasm that would give lilt or chuckle to our otherwise dulcet voices. my voice was never as airy as other girls, only a hard sigh. ko was a childhood friend who moved to canada and decided to come back to hong kong which was considered to be a somewhat dumb idea by a lot of friends who went off to live in spacious houses instead of apartments. no one i knew wanted to stay here anymore as the streets only looked like the home they would talk of on rooftops over cans of beer where someone would get slightly nostalgic about it, speaking of relatively uninteresting stories of where they used to go in light tones. ko always told me it was like that one game he played, mother 3, where he would be on the 6th chapter and the once bustling theme of tazmily’s hurried markets were suddenly emptied into a slower reprise that seemed homely.