Cud
Doing whatever it takes to retrieve a broken heart
My friend and I were out researching late — on that night hike on Lantau Island, the one I told you about. And then we hear this, like, quiet rustling from the trees. And my friend looks at me and we both know something’s wrong. Then, six buffaloes come charging at us.
Jellyfish Man’s voice was trembling. I loved the sound of it.
My friend runs and runs and climbs up a tree. But the buffaloes chase him. I cover myself in mud to hide, and crawl downstream. The buffaloes keep storming the area and ramming the tree my friend is in. He’s crying and screaming. Then, a very angry one rushes over to me, and I roll out of the way. My head would’ve been crushed by the buffalo’s hooves. It’s over now.
I played Jellyfish Man’s voice message again. I scrolled through all the unanswered messages I had sent.
“Do you want to meet up”
“How are you?”
“I miss you”
I look up from the steak I’ve been cutting to face my council of friends sitting at the dinner table. My friend takes my phone and replays parts of the voice message again.
“That was the last time he messaged?” my friend asks.
“Yes. It’s been two weeks.”
My friend pauses. They’re all deep in thought. Bless them for trying to help me.
“Ever since he went on that hike, he hasn’t been the same. The heart’s gone out of him. It’s like he lost all his feelings for me.”
My friend’s boyfriend chimes in, “He probably just met someone else. Or he stopped liking you. You shouldn’t take it personally.”
The council adjourns. I’d get tired of listening to my sad tales about getting heartbroken over and over again if I were them. My heart is like this steak I’ve been chewing on: dense and sinewy.
Soon enough, we get going. I tell my friends that I’ll go dancing with them tonight. That’ll get my spirits up, they say.
Maybe Jellyfish Man is just taking longer to reply to me because he’s busy. He’s a graduate student, after all, studying jellyfish, of all things. I bumped into him earlier this summer at Ocean Park, where he was an assistant at the jellyfish breeding lab. I was working part-time on the other side of the park at the Hair Raiser. My job was to remind children that the minimum height to ride the rollercoaster was 120 centimeters.
Jellyfish Man snuck me into his jellyfish lab after my shift ended. He always had a dissatisfied look on his face when he was in the lab. “Shouldn’t I be out in the real ocean and not in Ocean Park?” he kept asking himself.
Fair point.
In the lab, the jellyfish were barely visible in their clear glass tanks. Without the strobing, rainbow-colored lights of the exhibit to illuminate their bodies, the jellyfish looked like wads of phlegm that I could have coughed up in the sink.
“Why do you keep them in round tanks?”
He leaned in. “If we put the jellies in rectangular tanks,” he said, “they can’t flow with the current, and they’d all get stuck in a corner.” I think that was probably when I fell in love with him.
We got a room at a hotel nearby. I placed my head on his chest and fell asleep to his heartbeat. He was the warmest thing I’d felt in a long time. At three in the morning, we awoke to the sound of texts pinging on his phone.
“You up? It’s getting hot.”
The jellyfish tank temperature monitor sent him a text every time the temperature fluctuated outside an acceptable range. He put on his shirt backward, ready to leave, but I stopped him from bolting out of the door.
“Do you think I’m an unsettling person?”
He gave me the same look as he does to those jellyfish, a nurturing pity.
“No, not at all. I think you’re a relaxed and happy person.”
I felt it again. That familiar flash of pity. He kissed me goodbye. I’ve been thinking about that kiss ever since.
#
The next day, with my only pair of hiking boots on, I board the last night ferry to Lantau and wave to the ferry master. The next ferry isn’t until tomorrow morning. Lantau Island is enormous and I don’t know what or who I’m supposed to be looking for exactly. I know it’s not the best idea to go alone, but I’ve written down the hotline for stranded hikers that I heard on RTHK. One of my talents is getting lost and found.
The air is tepid. I find myself on a country trail in the wetlands. The mangroves that grow between the wetlands and the sea protrude at unnatural angles, like people caught in a snare. The light of my torch flashes like a camera shutter, catching the undergrowth. The terrain is level, but I watch my feet in case they snag on tree roots. I wish he was with me on this trek. He would know how to navigate an environment like this.
The water buffaloes that live here are known to roam around freely. Jellyfish Man is a gentle person. He wouldn’t do anything to provoke them. He must have been traumatized or deeply hurt to change just like that. He cared about the buffaloes as much as he cared about me.
As I walk along the path, I think I hear my grandmother’s voice telling me I’m making a mistake.
“You’re a tiger,” my grandmother told me when she read my fortune during our annual trip to the temple. “An ox will break your heart this year.” Are oxen and buffaloes the same thing? I suppose the ancient Chinese people who created the Zodiac probably had a broad concept of cows. I no longer wanted to believe her, considering that none of her predictions had come true last year, or the year before that. I went through the motions and lit some incense. Maybe this would be the year I would meet someone nice. The smoke rose higher and higher into the sky, and I hoped that my wish for the new year had been heard.
I am deep into the country trail and swatting the sandflies hovering around my ankles as I go. I stray away from the path towards a lusher patch of green as I ascend into the mountains. The air is cooler here, and I take a big gulp of it. My eyes have trouble adjusting to the dull wash of the moon above and the sweeping light of my torch. Eventually, I find a secluded spot without too many bushes, where I stop and switch the torch off. I take a breath and feel a kind of peace. Other than the whirring insects, I hear nothing. It shouldn’t be long until I find signs of the herd. I lick the sweat off my lips.
Suppose I'm not going crazy, and the buffaloes have stolen his heart? And let’s say, if I bargain with them and the buffaloes do return his heart to me, and all his feelings for me come back, what will I do with it? His heart will be hot and steaming in my hands. It will pump and pump and pump until I have to pass it to someone else like we’re playing hot potato. Once it cools, I’ll keep his heart safe.
As if they have been there the entire time, six pairs of glowing red eyes open in the black. The eyes float towards me through the undergrowth. The drone of the jungle is cut by the sound of grass crunching under hooves. The matriarch has the sharpest and longest horns of the herd. The youngest stands in the center, protected by his mother and the rest of the family. Their muscular bodies move as one.
I steady myself from the shock, and bring myself to speak.
“I’m here to get my love back.”
Their leader turns to face me. Her long face is angular and weathered. She breathes out a long huff. She chews in a hypnotic trance, and I focus on her jaws as they move in circles. Her eyes are blood red. The buffaloes stand very, very still. I can’t imagine them charging and ravaging and stomping.
The mother flicks her tail and the others let out a low hum, as if speaking an ancient language. The herd begins to turn away from me.
“Please! I know you have it.”
The buffaloes continue on their path. I’ve suffered all this for nothing.
“Wait! If you can’t return his heart, take mine. I no longer have any use for it, and I’d like to get on with my life.”
The leader is chewing and chewing and chewing. Could she be considering my offer?
“Please, please. Just take it.”
I feel like I’ve been rejected by him again.
“It’s no good for me, but I promise it works well. My heart is more than you’ll ever need. I don’t know where to put my love, so you might as well keep it.”
The buffaloes don’t take another look at me.
“What about a trade!” I shout.
I slump down in the damp soil, defeated. I’m stuck here with a heart that nobody wants.
Then, the herd stops. The leader slowly turns her body towards me. She looks me in the eye and shoots out a black tangled mass from her mouth. The dead thing plops there, and makes a little hill on the ground. I take a closer look. It’s not black — it’s red. It’s all that’s left of a heart.
The herd inches towards me as if it smells all the life left in me.
I cradle the mass in my hands, and all of a sudden, a fast beating thumps in my ears, head, and chest. My heart swells, my stomach drops, and sadness floods over me. His heart crumbles in my palms, and a yearning pulsates in my temples. Tears well in my eyes, and I wail until I am sure the whole island can hear me. I erupt into laughter and feel a pang of pain all at once. The droplets that cling to the spider webs look beautiful. I am drunk on feeling.
The buffalo queen’s mouth opens wide.
I run. I run as fast as I can, gripping his dead heart. Liquid terror drips from my fingertips. The herd goes wild and they let out an unearthly shriek. They bellow and chase me. They stampede over the rocks and plants and crush everything in sight. I know that I’ve wronged them, but I let my legs go as far as they can take me. I don’t dare look back.
The ray of the first light hits the side of the mountain. If I make it home, this is what I will do: I’ll find a quiet place to burn his heart. I will cherish the moments we had together, and hold his heart close to my own living heart, before setting his ablaze. I’ll see the smoke rise, and I will be more careful about who I offer my heart to.
I know those red eyes are coming. They will never stop. No matter where I go, they will come to take my heart, to replace the one I took from them. I’ll have to answer for what I’ve done. It’s only fair.
Until then, I live with the heaviness in my chest.
Natalie Wong is a writer from Hong Kong. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California’s Writing for Screen and Television program and has experience developing original TV projects in Asia and the US. She writes about the magical and horrifying things that happen when people can't express their emotions. Recently, her feature screenplay Gor Gor was recognized as a quarter-finalist by the 2023 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. Natalie's writing has appeared in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and she runs the blog You Make Me 食 Sik about food she doesn’t like.
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Brilliant piece, endearing.