by Chan Ho-Kei
Like a seed falling from a tree, doubt took root in her heart without her noticing, and it would grow larger and larger.
Apart from the original post, Nga-Yee lost sleep over many of the follow-up comments.
Her colleagues taught her how to navigate bulletin boards and social media, and each night, after Siu-Man went to bed, she’d quietly turn on that old computer and carefully read each new post. Nga-Yee had heard her share of nasty comments over her solitary behavior in secondary school, so she understood that most human beings had a dark side, but she was shocked by the scale and brutality of the attack. The commentators seemed to morph into a giant monster that devoured rationality.
—Fuck! Everyone in Hong Kong should shun this lying liar. She’s just trying to look pathetic for the judge
—Would you want to fuck something with a face like that?
—Nothing special, but I would
—She’s a whore, you could have her for three hundred
—I wouldn’t have her if you paid me three hundred. She’s a public toilet
—Scum like her should be euthanized
Nga-Yee was stunned to see her sister becoming a target of public abuse and objectification from a bunch of strangers. They’d never met Siu-Man, but they spoke as if they knew her intimately, projecting their imagination onto her and wielding it as a cudgel. These posts were full of filthy language, as if speaking from the other end of a fiberglass cable was an excuse to be lewd and disgusting, even about an underage girl. To put it another way, it was precisely because Siu-Man was underage that they thought the law would favor her, so they had to redress the balance in the interest of “fairness.”
There were also quite a few people playing detective, along with “psychologists” analyzing Siu-Man’s motives for making this false accusation and therefore diagnosing what syndrome or personality disorder she must have. Occasionally someone would come along and try to present the other side of the story, but they were inevitably rudely rebutted, and the discussion would devolve into personal attacks and meaningless arguments.
Nga-Yee felt as if she were looking at human nature at its most naked, splayed before her in the most unattractive posture.
And Siu-Man had innocently gotten swept up in this fray.
For the next two weeks, an uneasy atmosphere filled their home. The post brought media attention back to this case on a much bigger scale than before. Reporters came to their door a few times, but Siu-Man refused to speak to them. Some also went to Wong Tai Sin and tried to speak to the prisoner’s wife, with the same result—Mrs. Shiu was avoiding journalists, which meant the stationery shop was closed for business. The newspapers and magazines covered this story from many different angles, some agreeing that it was a miscarriage of justice, others criticizing this behavior as a form of bullying. Yet whether they were pro or anti, it didn’t change the fact that Siu-Man was now a public figure. As she made her way to and from school every day, people pointed at her and whispered.
There was nothing Nga-Yee could do to relieve this pressure.
She thought of taking Siu-Man out of school for a while, but the girl hated that idea. She wanted to live her life as normally as possible rather than allowing it to be disrupted by “this nonsense.” Nga-Yee felt powerless, but she didn’t want to look weak in front of Siu-Man, so she pushed aside her jumbled emotions and smiled broadly as she tried to cheer her sister up. There were quite a few times after the incident when Nga-Yee had to hide in the toilets at work so no one saw her crying.
By May, there were fewer newspaper stories, and trolls were losing interest too. Siu-Man gradually started talking and behaving like her old self, although she’d lost a lot of weight and there was something unstable in her eyes. Nga-Yee decided that if her sister had been strong enough to get through the last three weeks, she’d surely be able to deal with whatever came next. Siu-Man had had the right idea: carrying on as usual was the best medicine.
But she was wrong.
Just as Nga-Yee thought everything was going back to normal, Siu-Man stepped from the window of their twenty-second-story flat.
Nga-Yee couldn’t believe that her sister would commit suicide. Things had slowly started to calm down, their lives settling back into their regular tracks rather than spinning out of control.
“Siu-Man wouldn’t kill herself! Someone must have broken in and pushed her—” Nga-Yee now said to Sergeant Ching.
“We have ample evidence to show she did this herself.”
That afternoon, their neighbor Auntie Chan had a builder around to fix her front door, and they both saw Siu-Man arrive home at ten past five, definitely alone. At around eight minutes past six, the moment of Siu-Man’s fatal leap, two residents of On Wah Building, directly opposite Wun Wah House, saw the whole thing. It was sunset, when many older people liked to sit and look out into the street. These two noticed Siu-Man open the window, clamber out onto the sill, and jump. One of them was so terrified, he fainted, while the other started screaming for someone to call the police. Both were certain that no one was behind Siu-Man when she stepped out. To clinch it, surveillance had captured Siu-Man’s final moments. The footage exactly matched the eyewitness testimony.
Nga-Yee already knew that there were no signs of a struggle in their flat. When she opened the front door, everything looked exactly as it always did—apart from Siu-Man’s absence. This was real life, not a novel or some cunning murder disguised as a suicide. That sort of thing didn’t happen, or even if it did, it wouldn’t happen to an ordinary fifteen-year-old girl.
The only strange thing was that she hadn’t left a note.
“In fact, quite a few people don’t leave suicide notes. Sometimes it’s because they acted on the spur of the moment and didn’t have time,” said Sergeant Ching slowly. “Miss Au, your sister’s been under a tremendous amount of stress for months now. I’ve seen many cases like this. Please trust the police to investigate thoroughly. Given all the controversy surrounding your family, we’ll definitely leave no stone unturned.”
Nga-Yee understood perfectly well that any fifteen-year-old girl might end up being driven to suicide by the relentless pressure, but she still couldn’t accept that Siu-Man had killed herself over anonymous bullying. This was the death of a thousand cuts, strangers slicing away at Siu-Man’s flesh, slowly torturing her to death.
Nga-Yee longed to seek justice from every single person on the internet who’d had a part in this, but of course that wasn’t possible. No matter how hard she tried, she’d never be able to get to every one of them.
“But what about whoever wrote that blog post? That’s who killed her! Shiu Tak-Ping’s nephew! He’s a murderer!” Nga-Yee yelled.
“Please try to control yourself, Miss Au,” said Sergeant Ching. “I understand you’re upset and angry, but there’s very little the law can do in this situation. You say this person is a killer, but the most you might be able to do is bring a civil suit against him for libel. All he did is write some words. Right now what you need is psychological support. I’ll put you in touch with a volunteer organization that provides grief counselling. Hopefully you’ll feel better soon.”
What he said made sense, but Nga-Yee couldn’t take any of it in. She turned down his offer, but to shut him up, she accepted some pamphlets from the organization, and her heart filled with hatred and helplessness.
In the weeks after Siu-Man’s death, Nga-Yee arranged her last rites. She hadn’t expected her experience of booking her mother’s funeral the year before to come in handy this soon. Hardly anyone came to Siu-Man’s wake, though there were plenty of reporters lurking outside. More than once, Nga-Yee was stopped and asked, “How do you feel now?” “Do you have any thoughts about your sister’s suicide?” “Do you think netizens are the real killers?” and other tactless questions. One magazine’s story had the headline FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL COMMITS SUICIDE: ADMISSION OF GUILT, OR ACCUSATION? with a pixelated headshot of Siu-Man in a corner of its cover. When Nga-Yee saw
it at a newsstand, it was all she could do not to rip the entire stack to shreds.
As far as Nga-Yee was concerned, the media was just as bad as the people on the internet. If netizens were “the real killers,” then those reporters who’d hounded Siu-Man in the name of “the people’s right to know” were their accomplices.
Yee-Chin’s funeral the year before had been quite well attended. Throughout the day, her bosses and colleagues from the dim sum restaurant, the neighbors she’d shot the breeze with, old friends from back in To Kwa Wan, and even Au Fai’s coworker Ngau all showed up to pay their respects. By contrast, only a handful of people showed up for Siu-Man. What left Nga-Yee most baffled was that by evening, not a single one of her classmates had appeared, only her form teacher Miss Yuen.
Could Siu-Man really have been so unpopular?
Nga-Yee recalled the post claiming that she hadn’t had a single friend at school.
Impossible. Siu-Man was so animated and full of chatter, she couldn’t have been isolated. Sitting in the family section of the hall, Nga-Yee grew more and more uneasy. It wasn’t the thought of Siu-Man being friendless, but the idea that the poster might have been speaking the truth.
Fortunately, at half past seven, Nga-Yee’s worries were eased when two figures in school uniform showed up: a short-haired girl leaning on the arm of a boy.
They walked up to the altar and bowed. Nga-Yee noticed that their eyes were red from crying. She thought she’d seen them before—hadn’t they brought Siu-Man home last Christmas Eve, when she got sick at a party? Their mother had stayed up all night nursing her. The young couple didn’t say a word to Nga-Yee, just nodded at her before leaving. One other student turned up later on, and that was it. It was Thursday night, and perhaps her classmates couldn’t stay up late with school the next day, so they’d just sent a couple of representatives.
After the funeral and cremation, with Siu-Man’s ashes resting in an urn by their parents,’ Nga-Yee’s grief welled up all over again. For the last two weeks she’d been running around, making arrangements, and hadn’t had time to think about anything else. Now that everything was over and she was back in the empty flat, she felt hollowed out and stricken. She stared blankly at every corner of her home, as if she could still see her family there: Siu-Man playing with her rag doll on the rug by the sofa, her mother preparing a meal in the kitchen, her father by Nga-Yee’s side, his resonant voice calling something out to his wife.
“Siu-Man … Mom … Dad …”
That night, Nga-Yee drifted into sleep, clinging to memories of happiness despite their poverty.
A few days later she got a letter taking away even this last oasis.
The Housing Authority informed Nga-Yee that she’d have to move out of Wun Wah House, leaving this flat and all its memories.
“Miss Au, I’m sure you understand, we’re just following the rules,” said a manager at the Housing Authority headquarters in Ho Man Tin. She’d made an appointment to voice her protests in person and was now sitting in a meeting room there.
“I—I’ve lived in this flat since I was little. Why do I have to move?”
“Let me be frank with you, Miss Au,” said the manager, shuffling some papers. “You’re all alone now, and Wun Wah House is for families of two or three people. According to our regulations, single-person households are restricted to flats of two hundred square feet or smaller. You’re currently underoccupying your flat; we’ll find you a new place more suitable for your needs.”
“But this—this is my home! I need to stay here to remember my family!” said Nga-Yee. “They’re all dead now, and you want to chase me away? Do you have to be so inhuman?”
“Miss Au,” said the manager in his neat suit and gold-rimmed glasses, looking directly into her eyes. “I have a lot of sympathy for your situation, but do you know how many families we have on our waiting list? If we don’t find them flats as quickly as possible, they’ll be stuck in cramped, unsuitable lodgings. You called us inhuman, Miss Au, but couldn’t I just as easily say you were being selfish by clinging to your home when other people need it more?”
Nga-Yee’s face turned red, then white. She had no response.
“Look, Miss Au, we’re offering you another three months in this flat, and you’ll be able to choose your new place from a list we provide you.” Each time the manager opened his mouth, her name was the first thing that came out of it, as if to emphasize that the problem lay with her. “Although these other places might be farther off, perhaps Yuen Long or North District in the New Territories, they’re all newly built, so the facilities are much better than Lok Wah Estate. We’ll let you know if anything comes up, Miss Au, and please keep us informed if you decide to travel outside Hong Kong.”
It was clear that this was the end of the interview.
Nga-Yee rose to her feet helplessly. Just as she was about to walk away, the manager took off his glasses and said, “Miss Au, don’t think I’m some highly paid civil servant. I worry about paying my rent too. These days, private flats sell for millions, even the ones someone died in. The housing situation here is terrible. The only way to live is to take what you can get, even if it’s not what you wanted. Just be a bit more flexible, and you’ll be fine.”
All the way home, Nga-Yee seethed at the manager’s final words. He was telling her to give up hope and accept her fate.
Her father’s accident, her mother’s illness, her sister’s suicide—these things were her fate, and there was no avoiding them.
Nga-Yee sat on the bus, not realizing how forbidding her expression looked: crinkled brows, red eyes, teeth clamped tightly together, as if she were about to blow apart from the strain of holding in a monstrous injustice.
I will not accept my fate!
Nga-Yee couldn’t forget how she’d felt speaking to Sergeant Ching in the morgue. A complicated mixture of pain, bitterness, and resentment.
The killer is the person who wrote that post! He’s the reason Siu-Man killed herself! I need to confront Shiu Tak-Ping’s nephew—these were the thoughts swirling around in Nga-Yee’s mind.
She didn’t know what she would accomplish by meeting this person—or rather, she didn’t know what would happen if she met him. Would she scream at him for being a cold-blooded killer? Force him to kowtow before Siu-Man’s grave and beg for forgiveness? Beat him up? Insist that he die in reparation, a life for a life?
No matter what, this was all Nga-Yee wanted. It was how she would resist her fate, an ineffectual protest against cruel reality.
She remembered that her colleague Wendy had a relative, a Mr. Mok, who’d opened a detective agency. She’d mentioned it the year before while they were sorting through a box of old detective novels in the library. Now Nga-Yee called him at the agency and asked if he might be interested in taking this case, and how much he would charge. It was a simple enough task, finding out the name of Shiu Tak-Ping’s nephew, as well as where he went to work or school and what he looked like. That’s all she’d need to ambush him and say what she needed to say. A run-of-the-mill case, perhaps easier than usual because Shiu Tak-Ping had been in the media so much recently.
“This sort of job usually costs three thousand dollars per day plus expenses, and takes me five or six days, so that’d be twenty thousand total. But seeing as you’re Wendy’s colleague, Miss Au, and I’m sympathetic to your situation, I’ll give you a discount: two thousand per day. So you should count on spending twelve thousand or so,” said Mr. Mok, a man in his fifties, at their first meeting. Although Nga-Yee had spent a fair bit on her mother’s and sister’s funerals, she’d saved up more than $80,000 for Siu-Man’s university education, and she had no use for the money now. She agreed right away.
Four days later, on the evening of June 5, Mr. Mok phoned Nga-Yee and asked to meet. He had something to report.
“Miss Au,” said the detective solemnly after his assistant had served their coffee and gone back out, “I ran into a spot of bother during my investigation.”
“Was it … money?” Mr. Mok had seemed honest, but now Nga-Yee wondered if this was a prelude to his fee going up.
“No, no, you’ve misunderstood.” He chuckled. “Let me say first of all, I personally carried out this investigation rather than having my employees do it. I’m tired of trailing cheating spouses and jumped at the chance to be part of a meaningful investigation. For the past few days, my assistant and I have been sniffing around the Shius’ home in Wong Tai Sin. Actually, I found this out on day two, but I took another two days to make absolutely sure.”
“You found Shiu Tak-Ping’s nephew?”
“Well, that’s the problem.” Mr. Mok took a stack of documents and photographs from his bag as he spoke. “Shiu Tak-Ping doesn’t have any siblings—he’s an only child.”
“Yes?” She didn’t quite understand.
“That means he can’t have a nephew or a niece,” said Mr. Mok, pointing at the pictures. “Shiu Tak-Ping’s father died four years ago, and he currently lives with his wife and seventy-year-old mother on the tenth floor of Lung Gut House, Lower Wong Tai Sin Estate. Not only does he not have any siblings, his only cousin emigrated to Australia many years ago and doesn’t have any children—though even if he did, Shiu wouldn’t technically be their uncle.”
Nga-Yee gaped at Mr. Mok. “So who wrote the post?”
“I don’t know, and Shiu Tak-Ping’s family doesn’t know either.”
She stared at him, unable to speak.
“I got talking to a neighbor who knows old Mrs. Shiu well, and apparently they have no idea what’s going on.” Mr. Mok shrugged. “I’m not sure why anyone would pretend to be Shiu’s nephew and write such a screed. I’d thought it might be the work of Mrs. Shiu or his mother, but if it were either of them, surely they’d take advantage of the interest from the press to put in a good word for Tak-Ping—yet they’ve continued to refuse interviews.”