The problem with being the most powerful person in Hong Kong was the sheer, soul-crushing boredom. Gummy Bear—a name she’d ironically chosen for herself because it was the exact opposite of what she was—could, with a flick of her wrist, still the rain over Victoria Harbour. She could command the neon signs of Mong Kok to rewrite their advertisements into sonnets, and with a concentrated thought, make the Star Ferry pirouette on the water like a ballerina. She was a god in a city of eight million mortals, and it was profoundly, devastatingly lonely.
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Her power was a barrier, a sheet of perfect, soundproof glass between her and the world. Conversations were pointless; she already knew what people would say. Friendships were a farce; she could feel the flicker of their envy, their fear, their secret calculations the moment they learned who she was. Romance was impossible; how do you trust a "I love you" when you can feel the lie vibrating in the air like a plucked string?
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So, she built a life of quiet, controlled isolation. She lived in a pristine, minimalist apartment at the top of The Peak, a space so devoid of personality it could have been a hotel suite. She worked a remote, undemanding job in data analysis, a petty puzzle to occupy a sliver of her mind. She was, by any objective measure, profoundly unlikeable. She knew this. Her sharp tongue, her impatience with mundane delays, her inability to feign interest in office gossip or a stranger’s small talk—it all stemmed from the deep, aching knowledge that none of it mattered. She was playing a game whose rules she could change at will, and it had stripped all the joy from playing.
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One Tuesday, during a downpour that she had, in a fit of pique, suspended in mid-air over Central, she decided to conduct an experiment. She sat in a cha chaan teng, a noisy, steamy café alive with the clatter of porcelain and the shouted orders of waiters. She closed her eyes and, like tuning a radio dial, she opened her mind to the thoughts around her.
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It was a cacophony of worry, desire, and triviality.
...wonder if he saw my text...
...this egg tart is too sweet...
...the MTR is going to be a nightmare...
...I hope my mother’s medicine...
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And then, weaving through the mental noise, she found the threads about herself. The barista thought she was stuck-up because she hadn’t smiled. A woman at the next table thought her dress was intimidatingly expensive. A young man stealing glances thought she was beautiful but cold, a statue he wouldn’t dare approach.
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See? she told herself, the familiar bitterness a comforting old friend. Unlikeable. An object of curiosity or resentment. Nothing more. She was about to shut the noise out, to re-immerse herself in silence, when a different frequency snagged her attention.
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It was from Old Wong, the man who ran the decrepid flower stall tucked under the staircase next to the café. His thoughts were slow, weathered, and simple, like smooth river stones.
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That girl. The quiet one. She walks like she’s carrying the sky on her shoulders. So heavy. I should give her a flower. The pink one. It might lighten the load.
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Gummy Bear’s eyes snapped open. The rain, which had been frozen in a billion glittering droplets, suddenly fell with a collective splash. People shrieked and ran for cover. She barely noticed.
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A flower? For me?
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It made no sense. She hadn’t used any power near him. She’d never bought a flower. She was, to him, just a recurring silhouette. Yet, he had seen not her power, not her coldness, but her weight.
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The next day, she found a single, perfect pink gerbera daisy leaning against her apartment door. There was no note. She brought it inside, placed it in a glass of water, and stared at it for an hour. It was the most illogical thing that had happened to her in years.
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A crack had appeared in the glass wall.
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Driven by a curiosity that felt alien, she began, tentatively, to lower her defenses. Not all the way, just enough to listen, to truly look. She started with the unlikable parts of the city, the ones that mirrored her own.
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She began visiting Mrs. Chen, the notoriously "difficult" old woman who ran a cramped newsstand in Sheung Wan. Everyone said she was sour, always complaining. Gummy Bear, listening not to her words but to the hum of her being, felt the deep, resonant grief of a widow who had outlived her husband, her friends, and her era. Her sharpness was a fortress against a world that had moved on without her. One afternoon, Gummy Bear didn't just buy a paper; she sat on the stool beside the stand and said, "Tell me about your husband."
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Mrs. Chen had stared, then her tough, wrinkled face had softened. She talked for an hour. Gummy Bear didn't say a word, just listened. She didn't use her power once.
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She visited the rooftop community garden in Sham Shui Po, a scrappy, defiant patch of green fought for against the concrete. There, she met a group of activists who found her aloof and condescending. Instead of dismissing them, she started showing up at dawn, her hands, which could reshape reality, getting dirty in the soil. She didn't make the plants grow faster. She weeded. She watered. Slowly, the conversations shifted from polite suspicion to shared jokes about aphids.
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And she kept visiting Old Wong’s flower stall. She never used her power to divine his thoughts again. She just bought a flower each week, and they exchanged a few words about the weather. It was mundane. It was magnificent.
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The climax of her re-education came on a sweltering night. She was walking home after helping the gardeners string up fairy lights for a mid-autumn festival party. For the first time, she hadn't been an outsider looking in; she'd been handed a spool of wire and told to "make herself useful." The feeling was intoxicating.
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A gang of youths, emboldened by darkness and cheap alcohol, surrounded her in a narrow alley. One of them grabbed her arm. "Nice purse, siu jeh. Don't make a fuss."
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A year ago, she would have teleported them to Lantau Island or turned their shoes to lead. The power surged in her, a thunderclap waiting to be unleashed. It would be so easy. So satisfying.
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But then she looked at them. Not as nuisances, but as people. And she saw them. The frayed cuffs of their jeans. The desperate bravado in their eyes. The lead boy, she felt it now, was terrified his mother would find out he’d lost his delivery job. He wasn't evil; he was desperate.
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The fury drained out of her, replaced by a profound, aching sadness.
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She didn't move. She just looked at the hand on her arm and then into the boy's eyes. "You're better than this," she said, her voice quiet, but layered with a depth that wasn't entirely human. It was a voice that held the memory of frozen rain and the scent of pink flowers. "Your mother, Li Feng, she prays for you every night at the Tin Hau temple. She believes you're a good boy."
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The boy’s face went white. He snatched his hand back as if burned. The others shuffled back, the predatory energy dissolving into confusion and fear. They scattered, leaving her alone in the alley.
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She hadn't threatened them. She hadn't humiliated them. She had simply seen them. And it was the most powerful thing she had ever done.
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She walked the rest of the way home, her heart pounding not with adrenaline, but with a strange, new emotion. When she reached her building, Old Wong was just closing his stall. He saw her, and his wrinkled face broke into a smile.
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"Ah, siu jeh! You look... lighter tonight."
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And she was.
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She entered her silent, sterile apartment. The single pink gerbera from last week was still vibrant in its vase. She walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out at the spectacular, glittering tapestry of Hong Kong. It was a city she could control with a thought.
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But control was no longer the point.
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She thought of Mrs. Chen's smile when she brought her a warm winter scarf. She thought of the gardeners cheering as the fairy lights flickered on. She thought of the terrified boy in the alley, and the hope that maybe, just maybe, her words had planted a seed that would lead him down a different path.
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A single, warm tear traced a path down her cheek. It was the first tear she had shed in a decade that wasn't born of frustration or rage.
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She was still overpowered. She was still, in many ways, unlikeable—abrasive, impatient, and set in her ways. But that wasn't the whole story. She was also the woman who listened to old widows and weeded gardens. She was the woman who saw the weight in others because she carried her own.
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The love she had found wasn't a grand, romantic passion. It was quieter, more profound. It was the love in a shared struggle, in a moment of understanding, in a simple, unasked-for flower. It was the love that came from being seen, not for your power, but for your pain. And from choosing to see others in return.
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Gummy Bear—the lonely, overpowered lady—stood at her window and finally let the truth wash over her. She was loved, after all. Not by everyone, and not in the ways she might have once imagined. But she was loved in the ways that truly mattered, by a city she was finally learning to touch without breaking, and by the small, stubborn circle of people who had seen the crack in her armour and offered not a sword, but a flower.
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She smiled, a real, uncalculated smile that reached her eyes. Outside, for no meteorological reason, the neon signs of Hong Kong flickered, just for a second, into a harmonious, brilliant shade of warm, glowing pink. It was a small thing. A happy accident. And it was enough.
ns216.73.216.64da2
and then Add to home screen.