by Tiffany Tsao
“This lady wants to see you at work!” the owner said.
The young man raised himself off his haunches, yanked a duck out of one of the cages by its neck, picked up a cleaver lying nearby, and stalked over to the chopping block. Firmly pressing the side of its head against the wooden surface with his left hand, he raised and lowered the cleaver above the bird’s neck several times for precision. As he did so, it seemed to Shakti as if he were looking the bird dead in the eye. Finally, he raised the cleaver high to deliver the final blow. There was something about the manner in which this was all carried out that mesmerized not only Shakti, but the owner as well. Their attentions dangled, suspended from the cleaver poised in midair.
Suddenly, from behind them there came a loud crash, and the spell was broken. The young man—cleaver still bloodless in one hand, duck with head still attached in the other—turned to the area where the cages now lay in an untidy heap. Somehow they had overturned, and some of the cage doors had swung open. The lucky ducks, seizing their opportunity, had escaped, and were now running and flapping around for dear life. Shakti screamed, shrieking and waving her hands madly about her face to protect herself from the terrified birds.
“Catch them!” the owner cried, trying to seize the ducks—a course of action that only agitated them further, causing them to fly and honk and flap even more wildly.
The young man remained motionless in the maelstrom of feathery mayhem and panic—the placid eye of a raging hurricane.
“Oi! Do something!” the owner yelled in his direction, attempting to pin a duck to the wall by its beating wings.
So the young man did.
Without further ceremony, he pressed the duck he was already holding against the chopping block and neatly severed its head. Then he secured the cleaver, blade down, in a concealed holster underneath his apron. From the same place, he drew out two very long, very thin, very pointy knives.
He leapt high, skewering two ducks in midair with the tips of his miniature swords. Landing noiselessly and expertly on his feet, he flicked the carcasses off the blades with a convulsive jerk, and stepped towards his employer. The little bald man had managed to grab a duck from behind and was now clasping it to his chest as it attempted to flap itself free. The young man thrust one of the knives into the duck’s exposed stomach, stopping just short of splitting open his boss as well. In the blink of an eye, the duck was neatly slit from belly to bottom, and its entrails were spilling out onto the white tiles.
One by one, every loose duck in the area was cut down, hacked, slashed, stabbed, dismembered, or decapitated in a grisly scene worthy of any old-fashioned Chinese martial-arts flick, until finally, there remained only one, quacking with fear in a corner as he closed in on it.
Cowering behind the chopping block, Shakti watched as he took a step towards the duck and drew his arm back to run the hapless animal through. Its doom was imminent. But then, the duck made a mad dash between the man’s legs and headed straight towards her, honking and beating its monstrous wings. She screamed at the top of her lungs. Shakti Vithani was to meet her end, torn limb from limb by a mad duck. She screamed even louder and shut her eyes.
A loud thunk. Followed by complete silence.
She slowly opened her eyes, but the terrible duck seemed to have disappeared. She looked to her right. Then to her left. Lodged horizontally in the side of the chopping block, just centimetres away from her head, was the cleaver. And sitting on the metal shelf created by the flat of the blade lay the blood-spattered head of her attacker, tongue out, eyes glazed over in the dullness of death. Several metres away crouched her rescuer, his arm bent, still in the same position in which he had hurled the cleaver. But where had the duck’s body gone? It was only then that she registered a warm fluttering sensation in her lap and looked down to see the flopping decapitated bundle gushing blood all over her new white capri pants.
“Aiyah. So sorry about that,” the owner had apologized, helping Shakti to her feet and walking her out of the slaughter area.
“Where did you find him?” she asked shakily.
“Just one of those boys from around here. He say he need work, so I let him work.” He leaned in and whispered confidentially to Shakti, “Good butcher, but I think at night he’s . . . one of those.”
“One of those?”
“You know, lah. Troublemaking type.” As he leaned in closer, Shakti politely cupped one hand over her nostrils. “I hear people talk. Big troublemaker, it seems. Between you and me, I think I must let him go.”
“What’s his name?”
The owner suddenly broke into a toothy grin. “Heh heh, madam. You know something? I don’t know. On file somewhere, I think. But everyone call him Ya Sha Shou. Like a joke. They say he can really butcher duck with style one, like gong fu expert. How to translate, eh? Ah. Ya Sha Shou—the Duck . . . Assassin.”
Five years later, the Duck Assassin, now in the employ of Shakti Vithani, sat before her, awaiting instructions.
She spoke. “You know Shwet Foo?”
He gave a curt nod.
“I want you to follow him. I want to know what he’s up to these days.”
CHAPTER 15
The rays of the morning sun streamed into the Floyd flat—a hovering golden mist that enveloped the sofa and coffee table and bookshelves, the uncleared plates on the table, and the traces of eggs, sunny-side up, which had congealed into pools of bright orange. Also illuminated by the golden morning was a trembling figure who sat, scrunched knees to chest, in a dining chair, clutching a mug of salty Milo, a dazed expression on his face. He knew that Kay Huat had told him not to do anything—anything—until after their meeting later that evening, but it was too late. The deed was done. What had he been thinking that morning when he woke up, determined to conceal the truth from his parents no longer? What had he been thinking as he hurriedly scrawled the news on a sheet of notebook paper and sealed it in an envelope? What had possessed him to go through with it and hand the envelope to his father on his way out of the flat to go to work?
“What’s this, then?” his father had asked, puzzled.
“Open it in the car,” Murgatroyd had replied with a tremor in his voice. He wondered now whether it had been the wise thing to do.
On the Pan-Island Expressway, a blue Toyota sedan with red fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror swerved suddenly, almost crashing sidelong into a lorry.
“You did what?” Kay Huat asked just as his father set down two plates of char kway teow in front of Murgatroyd and himself. It was surprisingly uncrowded in Golden Serenity that Tuesday evening, and Seng Hong Low could even leave his stall for a few minutes to bring the boys their food personally.
“Eh? What did Shwet Foo do now?” his father asked, smiling at his son’s friend.
“Erh, hi, Uncle,” Murgatroyd said embarrassedly, looking down at the steaming noodles in front of them. “Thanks for dinner.”
“Hah! Where got free dinner? Must pay, what!” the sinewy Seng Hong Low held out his hand, palm up, as Murgatroyd fumbled for his wallet. Then he laughed.
“Silly boy! Of course you don’t need to pay! Kay Huat!” he called to his son, who was looking distractedly into the distance.
“Huh? Yes, Ba?”
“You watch out for your friend here. Too trusting, this one.” Wiping his greasy hand on his shorts first, he ruffled Murgatroyd’s hair and jogged back to his stall to attend to other orders. Seng Hong Low had a soft spot for his son’s friend—a gentle, innocent sort. Very blur, he thought, reflecting on Shwet Foo’s cluelessness. Blur like sotong, but a good boy, all the same.
“You did what?!” Kay Huat repeated again.
“I gave them a note telling them that I was leaving on Friday to go on the Que—”
“I know what you did!” Kay Huat exclaimed, spattering sauce all over the table as he waved his chopsticks in the air. “I just can’t believe you did it! Don’t tell me you’re going to quit your job as well!”
“Er
h. Planning to tell my boss tomorrow.”
“What?!”
Murgatroyd silently prodded his char kway teow with his chopsticks before extracting a piece of beef and chewing it slowly. He hadn’t expected his friend to be so agitated.
Kay Huat rested his elbows on the table and shook his head in disbelief. For a moment, he forgot himself and how his own plans were being disrupted by Shwet Foo’s foolhardiness to marvel at . . . well, the very fact of Shwet Foo’s foolhardiness itself. “You’re really going, huh?” He was saying it, but he couldn’t believe that Shwet Foo was really going. The little guy had somehow managed to muster up enough gumption to tell his parents. He was making plans to leave his work. Spineless little Shwet Foo. “I can’t believe it.”
Murgatroyd patted his friend consolingly on the arm. “I’ll miss you too.”
Kay Huat abruptly drew his arm away and began digging into his food. “Never mind about me. Tell me everything.”
“Everything?”
There was a glint of hunger in Kay Huat’s eyes as he leaned in closer, a bit of noodle dangling from the corner of his mouth. “Everything.”
So, Murgatroyd told Kay Huat everything, albeit in a somewhat muddled fashion. He told him about the meeting with Ann on Sunday and everything he had learned: the More Known World and the Quest, Sumfits and Oddfits and Stucks, and how he was an Oddfit. He told Kay Huat that he only had to bring a toothbrush and a clean change of underwear, and that the new toothbrush he had bought yesterday had blue and yellow bristles that would fade with prolonged usage, indicating that the toothbrush needed to be replaced. He told Kay Huat how he had tried to tell his parents and his boss yesterday, but couldn’t work up the nerve. He told Kay Huat how he had to meet Ann at Bedok Jetty on Friday and how she had been wearing very high heels. And he ended by telling Kay Huat how he gave his parents the letter that morning.
Kay Huat was used to his best friend’s imperfect and confusing way of expressing himself, and managed to put everything together. “So, you’re meeting this woman at Bedok Jetty on Friday? What time again?”
“Seven.”
“A.m. or p.m.?”
“P.m.”
“And you have to bring a toothbrush and underwear?”
“Yes.”
Kay Huat mulled over this information. “I see.” He took a long sip of sugar cane juice.
At that instant, it dawned on Murgatroyd that he was truly going to miss Kay Huat very much. He too had never forgotten that day when his friend had saved him from the merciless torments of his classmates. Kay Huat had been like an older brother to him, always taking care of him, always giving him advice, always providing a shoulder to lean on. And it also occurred to Murgatroyd that, as unlikely as it seemed, Kay Huat—his handsome, perfect genius of a friend—was really going to miss him as well.
“I really will miss you!” Murgatroyd said, tears beginning to pool in the rims of his eyes.
“Ach!” exclaimed Kay Huat, waving away all sentimentality with a flick of his hand. “Don’t worry about it, lah. Eh, you need a ride to Bedok Jetty on Friday?”
Murgatroyd was amazed by his friend’s generosity. “Erh. If can. If cannot, never mind, I can find my way.”
“Of course, can! Don’t be stupid one! Must send my best friend off, what! I’ll leave work a little early and pick you up.”
Murgatroyd smiled gratefully. “Wah, Kay Huat,” he said, choking slightly on his words. “You’re really good to me.”
“What are friends for, right? No need to get emotional now, lor. Wait until Friday.”
“Thanks, Kay Huat!”
“Okay, okay, enough already! No need to thank anymore!”
Kay Huat slurped up the last of the kway teow, and as an afterthought, asked, “So how did your parents take it?”
“Don’t know yet. They hadn’t come back from work yet when I left to come here.”
“Mmm.” Kay Huat took a tissue out of his pocket and wiped his mouth pensively. “I think they’ll take it very hard.”
“You think so?” Murgatroyd asked, hearing with much dread the confirmation of his own suspicions. “They did say they would be upset if I ever left.”
“Yeah. You know they . . . like having you around very much.”
“Yeah. I didn’t realize.” Murgatroyd glumly took out his own pack of tissues and rubbed at the new sauce stains on his T-shirt. “I feel a bit selfish for leaving them alone.”
“Mmm,” uttered Kay Huat, looking off into the distance. Murgatroyd followed his gaze and saw that his friend was watching his father deliver a plate of noodles to another table. “It is hard to be alone. Even though Ba doesn’t say, I think without Ma, he gets very lonely.” Kay Huat broke out of his reverie. “Still. What must be done, must be done, right?”
“Yeah,” Murgatroyd gave his assent in a somewhat hollow tone. “Yeah . . .”
“I’ll be right back.”
One remarkable thing about Seng Kay Huat—in addition to the other innumerable remarkable things about Kay Huat—was that he not only looked like a hero, he also walked like a hero. Chest out, shoulders back, head held high, he strode purposefully to the toilet as if he were striding off to saddle his warhorse for battle. After relieving himself, he washed his hands at the sink and stood for a while surveying himself in the mirror. He wasn’t the vain sort, but with such good looks, who could help but give in to a little well-deserved self-admiration? Even in the unflattering fluorescence of hawker-centre toilet lighting, his handsome features glowed. He gave his arm muscles a little modest flex, taking in with a little modest satisfaction the veins and bulges that appeared and disappeared, quick as a heartbeat.
Continuing this factual assessment of his person, he reflected on how, with a physique, a mind, and a personality like his, he was meant for greater things. The universe had, very simply, designed him for that purpose. Sure, monetary success was a good thing. But such paltry material achievement was the triumph of lesser beings. Not him. He was to make his mark on the world. He was to protect the helpless and fight evil and accomplish great things. And as he now knew, he was to join the Quest in order to do . . . something. Something great. And perhaps it involved exploring some area or some part of the world that he now couldn’t quite remember. Funny. He usually had a very good memory. He did remember, however, that there were only certain types of beings called—what were they called, again—who could actually do the . . . thing . . . that this Quest involved people doing. Huh. Even the details about that whatever-it-was appeared to have slipped his mind. In any case, none of that could have been all that important; otherwise, he would be able to remember it.
But wait. It was all coming back to him. The Quest, he was sure he remembered little Shwet Foo telling him, involved doing lots of great deeds—deeds that the one-eyed woman hadn’t gone into any specific detail about, but that involved spectacular feats, righting wrongs, high-speed car chases, thrilling swordfights, and all of the things that Kay Huat had always known he was destined to do. He was positive that Shwet Foo told him that those who ran the Quest were very selective about whom they allowed to join, permitting only the best and the brightest, the smartest and the strongest, and the most exceptional to enter their ranks.
Yes, that was what Shwet Foo had told him. He was certain. More than certain. And (this part, Shwet Foo hadn’t told him) they had somehow accidentally chosen Shwet Foo. There could be no other explanation for it. He loved his little friend dearly, but he also knew that Shwet Foo was no match for a feisty Yorkshire terrier, much less for the challenges of going on a Quest. Shwet Foo, he suspected, barely knew how to tie his shoelaces. Shwet Foo had done poorly in every subject he had taken at school and, before this job, which he had miraculously managed to keep, it had taken less than a month for him to get fired each time. Shwet Foo was nice, but as his father had said, blur like sotong—completely and utterly clueless. So clueless that he had never so much as suspected what Kay Huat at the age of fifteen had figured out wi
thin ten minutes of meeting Shwet Foo’s parents for the very first time—Mr. and Mrs. Floyd disliked their son immensely, if they didn’t downright hate him.
Poor Shwet Foo. Of course, it wasn’t his place to interfere, was it? For all these years, Kay Huat had shielded his friend from that heartbreaking knowledge. After all, Shwet Foo was more than blissful in his ignorance—completely convinced of his parents’ love for him, and more than happy to remain their one and only devoted son. And wasn’t that what mattered? That Shwet Foo was happy? And what better way to preserve his friend’s happiness and benefit mankind than by going on the Quest in Shwet Foo’s place? He was Seng Kay Huat. Once these Quest people saw him, once they met him, they would take him. He was sure of it. How, he thought as he surveyed himself again in the mirror, could anyone believe that this wasn’t capable of tackling any little Quest that needed fulfilling out there?
Feeling that his breath smelled too greasy, Kay Huat bent over the sink and rinsed his mouth out a few times. He was glad that things seemed to be unfolding in a manageable way now. Over the course of the past few days, he had undergone a series of emotions—frustration at his repeated failed attempts to get through to the number on that green business card, doubt about what he had thought to be his infallible instinct, despair at perhaps never achieving his destined greatness, determination to achieve some shadow of greatness by becoming a famous novelist, dull self-pity as he tried to drown his sorrows in the process of writing. Last night, after Shwet Foo had called him to tell him the “good news,” he had felt bereft of all literary inspiration. He had abandoned working on the novel and lain sleepless in bed all night. He had racked his brain thinking about how this could have possibly come to pass and what course of action to take. But now he knew. He knew all the details. And he felt optimistic that the situation was under control and that he was once again on the path to his destiny.