You woke before the station staff had time to call an ambulance though they tried to insist on calling one anyway, just to be safe and, to be honest, I agreed, but you flatly refused.
"I'm fine. It's just some anemia."
"But-"
"Thank you for your help, but I'm really fine. Misha, let's go."
And so we did. Up and out of the first aid room and back to the beating heart of the train station.
"Are you really anemic?" I asked quietly.
You gave me A Look. "Do I look anemic to you?" you asked.
I looked you up and down. "I honestly have no idea," I replied truthfully.
You chuckled. I think that was probably the first time I'd seen an expression on your face that wasn't sour or cross. "I'm just a little unwell," you said. "Not anemic."
"Right… Should you go to a doctor?"
"No," was your immediate reply. "Hey, didn't you want to know why most people don't know about all this supernatural stuff?"
I eyed you suspiciously. I knew you were just trying to distract me. I sighed. "Why?"
You acted as if you'd won some argument and started down the stairs to the trains again. "There are a few reasons why it's kept secret on purpose, public safety and all that, but the main one that I think you'd be interested in is this…" You reached the bottom of the stairs a looked back at me. "If everyone knew about magic, magic would cease to exist."
I nearly tripped on the last step. "What? It just vanishes?"
You shrugged. "It's a popular theory and no one wants to test it."
"I can guess why…" For a while my mind wandered, and I forgot about your mysterious illness. If magic, or whatever the stuff was, vanished, would I vanish too? That was a sobering thought.
We reached the platform and got on the train. I must have been looking warily at you because you patted me on the arm. "Don't worry. It's only one more stop."
And you were right.
The announcements in the train were repeated in three languages, Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, but I still caught the name of the station: Kowloon City.
"We're there."
There were, somehow, even more people in this Kowloon Station than at either of the others we'd been to, all heading this way and that, all knowing where they wanted to go. I found myself rather overwhelmed and I worked hard to stick close to you. I think at this point all the adrenaline from earlier events was beginning to drain away and I was starting to touch back down to the ground, and the ground was a scary place to be right now.
"Where're they all going?" I murmured to you as we went through the turnstiles.
"I don't know," you replied. You sounded as confused as I did which didn't make me feel any better.
We rode the escalator up and I followed behind you till we reached the exit. You stopped on the top step. I stopped too and tried to figure out what you were looking at.
This exit of the train station opened into a massive, unpaved courtyard surrounded on all sides by buildings with hardly a gap between them. The buildings themselves were odd, looking more like matchboxes stacked one atop another all the way up to the sky, some dozen storeys away. It was only midafternoon, yet the bare lights strung around on wires were already lit as were many of the windows making the space look like an eerie night sky.
"Is this… the Walled City?" I asked you. "I thought this place had already been demo-ah!" I winced and quickly looked to my left.
"What's wrong?" you asked, pulling me to one side. You sounded concerned.
"Nothing, just felt like something poked me. Something prickly." I looked again but all I saw were a sea of passive faces going about their business.
A dark expression crossed your face.
"What was…?" I began.
"Not now," you said. "This way."
By that point I was used to following your lead and so didn't ask more as I trailed behind you through the winding warren of the Walled City.
When it became clear that my father wanted me to move back to Hong Kong, I'd gone on a binge of movies from my hometown and the Kowloon Walled City was one of the most iconic locations for crime gang stories. A no-man's land, with only the rule of might governing it, the place had an almost mythic quality, like some kind of impossible place, an inverted Shangri-La of all things sordid.
Yet reality was quite different.
True, the ramshackle squishing together of walls and floors with webs on webs of wires threaded through everything like blood vessels was accurate, but the general feel was very different. It was brighter and cleaner and the people we passed as we delved deeper into the settlement were well dressed, some even in suits, and the children all wore proper shoes as they ran and played. The place also didn't smell at all like I'd imagined while watching those films. Whoever was running the sewage system was doing a good job.
Sure, it was a far cry from what I was used to in small town Scotland - louder and more crowded - but it wasn't bad. I could actually see myself coming to rather like it here.
Yet even as my feelings towards the place improved, I could sense your mood dip. Your face was still blank as usual but there was a tension in your neck and shoulders that hadn't been there before. You hand on the strap of your instrument case was also tense. As usual I wanted to ask what it was all about, but I managed to keep my mouth shut as I followed you through the rabbit warren.
Up steps, down steps, across bridges made of threaded rods of steel and bamboo, we wandered for what felt like hours. As we did, I heard the shift in ambience, first as children returned home from school, then as their adults returned home from work. Kitchen exhaust fans rumbled to life and TV sets were switched on. What I could hear was all in Chinese, but the chime of a news show is pretty universal. It must have been around six or seven in the evening.
I glanced ahead at you. I was pretty sure we'd passed this passageway twice before, but you seemed to know where you were going so I decided it was best to keep my big mouth shut.
Finally, you stopped at the top of a set of stairs on a two-by-two metre platform. There was a single door in front of you. We were in a quieter part of the complex, if you could describe a chorus of yowling cats and a radio set to full blast as quiet.
"This is it," you said.
I joined you at the top of the stairs and stared at the door. On the whole, it looked similar to the ones we'd spent the last few hours walking past - a sliding barred outer gate with a painted metal door on the inside, but there was something very odd about this one.
"See anything odd?" you asked.
I nodded. "What are those lights?"
"Lights?"
"Yeah." I traced a line with my finger around the perimeter of the door where the little bits of pink and red blinked.
"Ah, is that how you see them…" You set down your instrument case on the ground and began to unzip it. "You're interested in magic and stuff, right? Well, this door has a protective spell on it. Those lights you see, they're the inscription."
"The inscription…?" I leaned closer to the door and saw that the lights really were just pinpricks of light. There was no bulb or wire. "Wait, you make it sound like you can't see them."
"Well spotted. I can't. That ability is reserved for you divine beasts." You pulled something long and shiny out of the case. It was a sword.
"Whoa!"
You pointed the blade away from me. "Don't worry. This is just for demonstration purposes." Before I could ask what exactly you wanted to demonstrate, you went on, "to have a spell that actually does something, it needs three things: an inscription, a medium, and an energy source." You pointed at the door. "Those lights you see, they're the inscription. They're basically the instructions of how and what is supposed to happen."
"Okay… so the medium is…" I looked around. The walls looked normal, no lights anywhere. "The door itself."
"Correct. Try opening the door."
I stepped forward without hesitation and pulled on the metal door handle then gasped. The strength in my limbs gave way and I dropped to the ground. The lights on the door flared to life, becoming big balls of flames and I instinctively tried to let go of the handle, but even that was too much for my suddenly weakened body.
My vision clouded, going hazy. I slumped.
"What…"