by Chan Ho-Kei
“That’s up to you guys.” Hao shrugged. “Lock the videos so they’re hard to share, and people will fork over their G-dollars. It’s no different from paying for an entertainment magazine.”
People who didn’t know how to code always thought it was so easy, Chung-Nam reflected. In fact, it would be near impossible to keep any video from being downloaded and reposted on YouTube.
“This might work even without encryption,” Ma-Chai piped up. “Before Apple started iTunes, people said it would never work, because of piracy—but plenty of people were willing to pay.”
“I’m still not sure,” said Chung-Nam. “If you want gossip, wouldn’t you just go to Popcorn? It’s free.”
“We don’t have enough penetration,” said Hao. “Popcorn gets thirty million hits a month. If we got numbers like that, we’d make good money on ads alone.”
“If we got numbers like that,” said Chung-Nam.
“I’m with Nam,” said Ma-Chai. “Popcorn’s so far ahead, we could spend ten years trying and never catch up. Remember the fourteen-year-old girl who falsely accused that guy of assault? The story went viral only because it was posted on Popcorn.”
“We can’t help that they got there first,” said Hao, spreading his hands. “But doesn’t that show there’s room for GT to expand? Think about it: the story first appeared on Popcorn, but if we’d been the ones who doxxed her, people would still have registered and paid up to find out her real name.”
Ma-Chai frowned. “She killed herself, bro. That’s really how you want to earn a buck?”
“My dear, innocent Ma-Chai,” said Hao. “Money is money, there’s no good or bad about it. If you earn a profit on the stock market, you’re taking it from other investors. Does that make it dirty money? So you believe in karma. How do you know that girl’s suicide wasn’t exactly what she deserved? Every single thing you code could lead to a tragedy someday. Are you going to take responsibility for that? As long as it doesn’t break the law or get us sued, we should take the money that’s on the table. Hookers drum up business on the Popcorn ‘adult friends’ board—does that make Popcorn a pimp? This city’s about survival of the fittest—fleece or get fleeced. Good deeds don’t get rewarded these days. Nothing matters in Hong Kong except capitalism and the market.”
“But it’s different when it comes to people’s lives …” Ma-Chai hesitated, uncertain how to form his thoughts into sentences. “What do you think, Chung-Nam?”
“Mmm, you both have a point,” Chung-Nam said diplomatically. “The girl chose to kill herself. If you want to blame someone else, why not say the whole of society was at fault? Anyway, let’s talk about that when it happens to us. The main thing now is to finish building our platform.”
Hao pouted, as if to say “You coward, sitting on the fence,” and went back to his seat. Ma-Chai swung back to his keyboard, and lines of code began flying across his monitor again.
Neither of them saw Chung-Nam smiling darkly to himself.
How could they have guessed the girl’s actual killer was right in front of them?
2.
Ever since getting out of jail, Shiu Tak-Ping had taken to wearing a cap every time he left the house. By pulling the brim down low, he mostly managed to avoid eye contact.
He’d been home a month now, but hadn’t returned to the stationery shop—his wife was holding down the fort. The schoolgirl had killed herself ten days before he was released, and naturally the journalists were swarming again. The only way to avoid those piranhas was to stay in the apartment.
Luckily, the press lost interest after a month or so, and now he only had to deal with nasty looks from his neighbors. He went out occasionally for lunch, but never at peak times. He also stayed away from his regular cooked food stall at Lower Wong Tai Sin Estate and walked a little farther to Good Fortune Restaurant on Tai Shing Street. In the past, he’d looked around as he strolled, paying particular attention to skimpily dressed women, but now he kept his eyes firmly fixed on the ground ahead.
“Tofu and roast pork rice, and a hot milk tea,” he said to the waitress.
He looked around to see if there was anyone he recognized. The incident had shown him people’s true natures. They’d once smiled and haggled in his shop, but now they turned around when they saw him in the street or, worse, shouted foul things as he hurried past. The shop had lost half its customers, and with the rent going up, finances were tight. His wife complained so much when she got home each day, he could feel calluses forming on his ears.
Tak-Ping scanned every face in the restaurant, gratified to find none of them familiar.
Glimpsing a camera at the next table, he thought for a moment that the paparazzi had caught up with him, then realized he must be mistaken—this was an old-fashioned twin-lens reflex. No journalist would be using such an antique.
The camera was so unusual, he couldn’t take his eyes off it, even after the waiter brought his tea.
“Excuse me,” said the man abruptly.
“Wh—What?”
“Could you pass the sugar?” He pointed at the bowl on Tak-Ping’s table.
Tak-Ping did as he asked, still gawking.
“Thanks.” The man took the bowl and stirred a couple of spoonfuls into his coffee. “You’re into photography?”
“I am. Is that a Rolleiflex 3.5F?”
“No, 2.8F.”
Tak-Ping was astounded. Rollei was a well-known German brand, and the 3.5F a fairly common model—you could get one for a few thousand Hong Kong dollars. The 2.8F was much rarer, though, and one in good condition could set you back a healthy five-figure sum.
“Have you used a twin-lens before?” the man asked.
Tak-Ping shook his head. “Too expensive. All I can afford is a Seagull 4B.” This was a Shanghai brand that cost only a few hundred.
“Forget it.” The man smiled. “Seagulls look all right, but their pictures are lifeless.”
“A friend was selling a used Rolleicord last year for fifteen hundred. I almost got it,” said Tak-Ping.
“That’s not bad. Why didn’t you?”
“Wife said no.” Tak-Ping grimaced. “Women. She nags if I so much as buy extra film.”
“Film? Aren’t you on DSLR?”
“No. All I have at the moment is a Minolta X-700 and a couple of lenses.”
“Oh, that’s all right.” The man nodded. “But it’s all about digital these days. I use both.”
“Single-lens digitals are too expensive.”
“You can pick up secondhand ones cheaply online,” said the man. “Want me to give you a website?”
Tak-Ping shook his head. “It’s fine. I don’t really understand chatboards or whatever. Anyway, I heard you need a powerful computer to go digital. I don’t have that kind of money.”
“Only if you’re doing a lot of editing. Don’t you have a computer at home?”
“Yes, but we hardly ever use it. Got it a few years ago with our cable. I only use it for chess and PPS videos. Do you really not need a powerful computer?”
“If you’re just storing and viewing photos, any old model will do,” said the man. “You’ll have to install a couple of programs once you’ve bought your camera. Know anyone good with computers?”
“Um, maybe, if it’s not too difficult.” Tak-Ping was thinking of a couple of friends who shared his interests, though he hadn’t got in touch after being released—he didn’t know if he was still welcome. The thought was daunting. “Never mind. My wife will give me hell if I buy another camera.”
“Ah. Well, nothing to be done.”
Their food arrived, interrupting their conversation. They ate in silence, and Tak-Ping decided not to linger after the meal.
“I’ll be off, then,” he said.
“Right, bye.” The man nodded and took another mouthful of coffee.
As he walked home, Tak-Ping couldn’t stop thinking about the camera. For the first time since his release, his footsteps felt light and he was able to keep
his mind off his family, the schoolgirl, and prison. He decided to treat himself—either to a digital camera or a cheaper Seagull.
Let the wife complain if she likes, he thought. In this world, you have to go with the flow and take your pleasures where you can find them.
3.
“Shiu Tak-Ping is a bastard,” N announced as he opened the door.
He’d agreed to take Nga-Yee’s case on Friday evening. The following morning, she’d gone to the bank to clear out her account. The teller kept asking if she was the victim of some scam, and she had to smile and repeatedly assure him that she knew what she was doing. In fact, she had wondered if this was any different from handing money over to a con man. What if N said he hadn’t found anything? There’d be nothing she could do. Still, she handed the notes and coins over. He said he’d call if there was any news, then started herding her toward the door less than a minute into their meeting. It was only when she got home that she realized she had no way of getting in touch with him. Trying to calm down, she told herself he’d surely call soon. In her head were the competing voices of the bank clerk saying, I hope you’re not being cheated, Miss, and Mr. Mok describing N as an expert.
After handing her savings over to N, Nga-Yee was left with only the hundred-dollar note she’d had in her purse, her Octopus transit card with about fifty dollars on it, and a little over ten dollars in loose change. She’d been grocery shopping the day before, so she had enough food for the moment, but it was still two weeks till payday. Even if she lived on instant noodles, her daily commute would cost twenty dollars a day, and she could hardly stop going to work. And there were the water and electric bills. She regretted never getting a credit card, but her mom’s warning—not to spend money she didn’t have—had sunk in too deep.
When she went for her library shift on Saturday afternoon, she asked her coworker Wendy for a loan to tide her over. This surprised Wendy, who knew that Nga-Yee was usually careful with money. When Wendy asked why, Nga-Yee said something vague about unexpected expenses.
“Okay, here’s eight hundred. You can pay me back next month,” said Wendy, pulling out all the hundred-dollar bills from her wallet.
“Thanks, but five hundred will do.”
“Don’t worry, I know you’re good for it. If something’s wrong, you know you can tell me.”
Wendy had transferred to the Central Library from the Sha Tin branch two years earlier. She was a warm, chatty person, about five years older than Nga-Yee. Nga-Yee found her a bit overfriendly, and always found an excuse when Wendy organized an office outing for a meal or a movie. Yet it was Wendy’s friendliness that had prompted Nga-Yee to ask her for help. Her concern, coupled with the bank clerk’s questions that morning, left Nga-Yee feeling like one of those foolish scam victims on Crimewatch, which made her more anxious about N’s progress. She kept checking her phone in case she’d missed a call from him.
After three days, she finally lost patience.
On Tuesday, June 16, she went back to Sai Ying Pun, ready to demand a progress report, but she hesitated at the corner of Second Street.
Am I being an idiot? What if I annoy him so much he stops the investigation and fobs me off with some excuse? Even though she was a paying customer, she had a strange fear of him, like a frog seeing a snake and instinctively recognizing it as a natural predator.
She’d been standing there for ten minutes, unable to gather the resolve to keep walking, when her phone rang.
“You might as well come up, now you’re here, or someone might mistake you for a stalker and call the police,” N said, and hung up.
Nga-Yee looked around wildly. She was nowhere near number 151, and there was no way N could have seen her from his window. She hurried to his building and up the five flights of stairs.
“Shiu Tak-Ping is a bastard,” he said, opening the door to her. “But he’s not kidkit727.”
“What?” She’d expected him to grumble that she was hassling him, not to give her actual information about the case.
“Shiu Tak-Ping had nothing to do with that post.” N managed to clear enough space in the mess for her to perch on the couch. “Mok’s report said that Shiu had no idea who did it, but he’s the main person mentioned in the post, so I had to see for myself.”
“You mean you met him? Couldn’t you just find out what you needed to know on the internet?”
“There are some things it’s simpler to ask in person.”
“You saw Shiu Tak-Ping? And asked him yourself? Surely he wouldn’t tell the truth.”
“People are strange creatures, Miss Au. Once you get them to let down their guard, they’ll say more to a stranger than to their own family.” N put the camera on the table in front of her. “I followed him for two days; then yesterday I pretended to be a photography fan and struck up a conversation.”
“What—so you went up to him and said, ‘Are you kidkit727?’”
N laughed. “Don’t be silly. We chatted about cameras.”
Nga-Yee picked up the twin-lens reflex and studied it. “And just like that, you worked out that he had nothing to do with kidkit727?”
“First of all, Shiu Tak-Ping, his wife, and his mom know nothing about computers or the internet. He said he didn’t do anything online except play chess and watch PPS videos; I verified that against the browsing history of his home broadband and all their cell phones. None of those three would have the first idea how to scrub a digital footprint from a chatboard. I also asked if any of his friends were computer experts, but that didn’t turn up anything either.”
Nga-Yee was silent, listening attentively.
“Second, Shiu’s politics are at odds with what’s expressed in that post,” N continued. “If the mastermind really was him or someone he was close to, it would have been written differently.”
“Political stance?”
“Shiu once campaigned for a pro-establishment candidate—the poster is still up in the stationery shop. And the clerk at the Yau Ma Tei convenience store said that Shiu complained that young people today are all ‘wasters causing trouble for Hong Kong.’ It’s clear that he leans to the right.” N moved the laptop from his desk to the coffee table. It was still open to the Popcorn chatboard. “Yet this post was clearly written by a libertarian, and a young one at that, one who uses trendy resistance slogans. For instance, ‘Everything in Hong Kong is upside down and back to front these days—there’s power, but no justice. The law doesn’t mean anything anymore, you could say that black is white, and people would agree,’ or talk about ‘bowing in the face of injustice.’ A conservative would never say such things—at the very least, they’d have left out the politically loaded phrase ‘power but no justice.’ Birds of a feather flock together. I don’t believe Shiu would have anyone around him with such opposite views, yet close enough to write this screed on his behalf.”
“Okay, but even with these two points, aren’t there always exceptions?” Nga-Yee retorted. “For all we know, Shiu might just happen to have met a computer expert, and they clicked, so he asked him to help clear his name. The phrases and whatnot might be part of the plot.”
“Fine, let’s suppose kidkit727 is a brilliant deception, created by someone whose thought processes are as thorough as mine, so they know how to embed a fake personality within the words. Someone with enough self-restraint to stop after a single post rather than keep fanning the flames,” N said smugly. “Yet this genius was stupid enough to strike while Shiu was still in prison, and the situation was most difficult to control?”
“Difficult to control?”
“Imagine you’re Shiu Tak-Ping. Would you ask your computer expert friend to post while you were stuck inside, unable to do anything as your wife and mom came under siege from reporters? Or would you wait till you were out and could speak directly to the TV cameras.”
Only now did Nga-Yee understand what N was driving at.
“Shiu Tak-Ping’s relationship with his wife isn’t as loving as that post suggested, bu
t he’s not enough of an idiot to hurt his stationery business. That shop was the family’s only source of income, and his wife was running it while he was inside. Trying to claim innocence while he was still in jail doesn’t seem worth the effort. He missed out on his fifteen minutes of fame—by the time he was released a month later, the media had lost interest. His cunning friend kidkit727 was surely aware of that.” N paused a moment. “And most important, after your sister killed herself, Shiu came in for even more criticism and hatred. If he really was responsible, he’d have been hurting himself as well as her.”
The mention of Siu-Man sent a wave of sadness through Nga-Yee. “So you’re saying my sister was the target?” she said, trying to stifle the pain.
“Yes, that’s the most likely scenario. Of course, we have no concrete evidence, so we can’t rule out any theories right now.”
“If Shiu really has nothing to do with kidkit727, why doesn’t he just tell that to the press?”
“What would he say?” N chuckled. “ ‘Actually, I don’t have a nephew, but a mysterious stranger defended me online and tried to lessen my guilt.’ That would just muddy the waters and make the press and public hound him even more.”
Nga-Yee thought about this. It made sense.
“Speaking of which, now that I’ve met Shiu, there are some parts of the post I don’t understand.” N was no longer smiling as he sat with his hands clasped over his chest.
“You mean—”
“What it says about Shiu Tak-Ping is accurate in some ways and exaggerated in others.” N gestured at the camera in Nga-Yee’s hands. “It’s correct that he enjoys photography and only owns secondhand cameras. I’ve been to his shop, and there are indeed quite a few photo books on sale, although I don’t know whether he got rid of the ones focusing on attractive young women. It’s clear from the range on offer that Shiu’s interest is genuine. And he was happy to chat about old camera models with me, a complete stranger, so we know this wasn’t just a front. By the way, you should put that down. It’s borrowed, and it’s worth twenty-five grand. You can’t afford to damage it.”