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it was better for her to have chosen science subjects. she still tells herself that, late at night when she rummages through her old things in the box-like cage she calls an apartment, when all she’s left of her old witticism and creativity are yellowing exercise books and fading ink.
she faintly remembers being told to believe in one’s dream is to spend all of one’s life asleep, so she gave up hers in search of a brighter future.
hong kong has no vacancies for dreamers.
STEP FOUR: ENTRANCE
when she got her results for the university entrance exam, she felt like the biggest fool alive. three year spent studying subjects she didn’t like, pouring blood, sweat and tears into an entrance exam for a university she didn’t really want to study in.
and it was all for nothing. she felt as if the sky was collapsing on her.
this was it, she thought, what good would i do without even a university degree? how will i ever face my parents?
— because all these years, she’s been taught, the world does not pity and it does not wait for you to pick yourself up. there is no opportunity for those who’ve already failed.
STEP FIVE: THE REAL WORLD
the first few years after her graduation — a farce of a happy affair, an emphasis that she had failed — she had felt like a fish out of water.
she was harshly thrusted into the real world, where everything was louder and meaner. her parents, who found her an absolute disgrace, refused to help her, so she found herself shouldering as many jobs as possible in a day, living paycheck by paycheck.