Boy Number Four: The Chinese Fist Kung Fu Boy

When I saw Boy Number Four, he was practicing some sort of Chinese Fist Kung Fu

There’s a hill behind the boy’s dormitory at school. Boy Number Four stood on the green slopes, wearing a white T-shirt and white pants while practicing a set of slow fist routine. I’ve never seen a teenage boy move so slowly before, so I thought it was quite strange, like watching someone sleepwalking.

When I came to again, I was startled to see that he had sleepwalked all the way over to me.

“Hey, do you wanna practice with me? I can teach you,” he proposed.

“… not really,” I answered, “your fist routine is very slow, and only old men would practice this sort of thing.”

“So what? My grandpa taught me this fist routine,” he replied.

“Yeah, your grandfather’s an old man, isn’t he?”

“What does it have to do with old men? Are they not human?” He questioned.

“When people get old, they stink,” I said.

“But you’ll get old too,” said the boy.

“I won’t, I’ll die after turning twenty-five,” I answered.

“Idiot.” He said to me, then left to practice his sleepwalking fist routine.

The next morning at five o’clock, someone quietly came to my bedside and shook me awake.

“Wake up, wake up ….”

I opened my eyes and saw that it was Boy Number Four.

“Get up. I wanna show you something ….”

He pulled me out of bed and dragged me to the rooftop of the dormitory while I was still half asleep.

“What did you want me to see?” I asked.

“Shush—” He hushed me gently. His eyes fixed on the skyline, so I followed suit.

There in the distance, the sun peeked out from behind the horizon, then, it stayed there for a few seconds, before finally leaping out entirely. I watched and gasped in amazement.

Then, the light from the sun became stronger, so the two of us had to squint our eyes.

“I can’t look anymore, or else I’ll go blind.” He turned around, with his back to the sun, the light outlining his white T-shirt.

“Hey, this is my first time seeing the sunrise,” I told him.

“I know.” He replied. “You said you didn’t want to live more than twenty-five years. So I thought you should see the sunrise.”

“Yup, and now I have,” I replied. Sunrise is one of those things that you simply had to witness and experience for yourself.

“How was it?” He asked.

“I can perhaps live a little longer” I answered. And we both laughed.