(Hong Kong's Aquarium)
Standing in front of the biggest aquarium of Hong Kong, Hai looked at the building up and down.
Right now, he is out with Hong Li-Wei on a date.
After having their plans obliterated into oblivion, being hunted down in his own hideout and Stella nearly being captured, Hai wanted to take a little vacation away from his problems.
So, he invited Hong Li-Wei to a date.
He initially planned to invite Elena too but he decided against it when he thought again.
Although he loves Elena, his relationship with Hong Li-Wei is still in its initial stages. He has to take a step at a time.
Of course, he is going to spoil Elena senseless once he returns.
Turning to the side, he saw Hong Li-Wei looking at the aquarium with curious eyes.
"Let's enter, shall we?" She nodded.
They both went towards the entrance where there was small crowd entering through the doors.
Seeing the crowd, Hai grabbed Hong Li-Wei's hand and held it without much force but firmly enough.
Hong Li-Wei turned to him and looked at his face as if asking what was that for.
"I don't want you to separate from me." He commented while calmly looking ahead.
"Hai…" She called him with a whisper.
He turned to her.
"There are only 10 people there." She pointed to the crowd that now was reduced to only 10 people.
Hai smiled slightly.
"I'm afraid of crowds." He added.
Hong Li-Wei looked at him exasperatedly.
How can someone be so shameless?
"Afraid of crowds? Even ones with only 10 people?" She asked him in disbelief at his shamelessness.
"If there are over than 5 people, it's a crowd. And if it's a crowd, I fear it." Hai commented while looking ahead and singing a small melody.
"…." Hong Li-Wei closed her mouth and decided to not argue against him.
It's not as if she dislikes it and he didn't do anything too overboard, so why bother?
She calmed herself down and they entered the aquarium after passing through a quick security check at the entrance.
After they entered, both of them noticed how the space was huge.
The building has around 10 floors above ground and 15 below the ground.
The ground floor is a spacious and dark place with the water being the only "source" of light.
The were 10 different glass panels and behind each one of them there was a different species of marine life.
Hai looked around and scanned the place with his mana sense.
After confirming that it was safe, they proceeded to start their little date.
Hong Li-Wei is the kind of person that likes all types of animals. She specially likes the aquatic ones as there are several of them still unknown to this day, hence, Hai brought her here at the aquarium as she had never been here due to always being on the run or too busy.
"Woah…" And just like a child in a candy store, Hong Li-Wei's eyes sparkled with little stars in them when she started to look inside the water tanks.
Hai chuckled seeing her behaving so different from her carefree but more serious persona.
They arrived at a water tank and when he looked inside it, he saw…
A squid with hands at the end of its tentacles?
The squid turned to look at Hai with its only eye and raised one tentacle.
Then, with its hand, it…
Raised its middle finger at him.
"…" Hai expressionlessly gazed at the squid before muttering:
"So this is the liquid zoo… Fascinating." He said while rubbing his chin and looking at the squid in its eye.
Hong Li-Wei heard his words and looked back at him and then at the squid.
She looked back and forth a few times before bursting out in giggles.
Hai kept rubbing his chin but looked at her from the corner of his eyes and let out a small smile crept into his face.
"As expected of you, you have the innate ability of attracting hate even from a squid." She remarked.
Hai simply shrugged.
"Not my fault that everyone is so jealous of me."
Hong Li-Wei looked at him amused by his words but didn't comment on it.
Instead, she grabbed his arm and went to the next tank.
Hai let himself be dragged by her while he took out his phone and searched up an image.
He looked back at the squid and showed it his phone.
On his phone, there was the picture of a classical dish in the China Federation that uses squids as its main ingredient.
Hai looked directly into its eyes and muttered:
'F*cking delicious.' And licked his lips slowly.
The squid let out a jet of ink in the water while looking at Hai as if looking at a monster.
Then, they arrived at the next water tank where Hong Li-Wei quickly brought out a phone and started to take pictures of the creature inside.
Hai stopped looking at the squid's tank and turned to look at this new one.
"…."
It was a giant turtle.
"…"
With a natural-formed hookah in its shell.
"Did we enter a meth factory by mistake?"
A squid with hands and a giant turtle with a hookah…
Everything has its limits, you know?
Hong Li-Wei didn't even bother with the absurdity of this creature and kept taking pictures.
Hai looked at the turtle while trying to make out what was that thing supposed to be.
Then, he noticed the turtle slowly turning its head towards the glass panel.
After a few couple of seconds, the turtle finally turned its head and was facing the small crowd looking at it. The turtle then looked directly at Hai, picked the pipe where it smoked in its fins and raised the pipe while lowering its head a bit.
"ºoº" Hai opened his mouth like a stupid fish when he saw it.
However, he quickly woke up from his stupor.
He put his right hand in his pocket, brought out a pack of cigarettes and did the gesture back to the turtle.
The turtle nodded, and started to smoke while turning its head away.
"*PHEW* That turtle was something else." Said Hong Li-Wei while checking her pictures.
Hai kept looking at the turtle before commenting:
"Turtles are my new favorite animal. Never have I had been shown such respect in a first meeting as today. A chad turtle." He stated before walking towards another tank.
Hong Li-Wei didn't understand what he said but followed him.
"So, I never asked this but why do you like aquatic animals so much?" Hai asked while looking at the new tank.
It was a damn fish with boobs.
'This is an obscene, meth and pornographic exposition, this is no liquid zoo.' Hai's eyebrow twitched.
"When I was a child, I used to dream what would it be to go to space. To get away from this filth." She whispered.
Hai looked at her with a side-glance while facing forwards.
"I dreamt of being able to get away from here, from this misery. I was no stupid child, I knew I wouldn't be able to change the whole world, so I thought: 'why not save myself, at least?'. Well, this dream ended up dying as I realized how absurd was to go to space nowadays, so I started to dream about somewhere far away yet close." She said while taking some photos of the fish.
"So you chose the ocean." Hai stated.
She only nodded at his words.
"The ocean is somewhere that remains not completely explored and as such, there could be a place for me there. And remember when I said that I was no stupid child? Well, I lied. I was stupid as hell." She joked.
Hai smiled and chuckled a bit but waited for her to continue.
"After studying the sea for a bit, I concluded that finding somewhere where I could comfortably live was almost impossible. Then, I turned back to the thing that caught my attention the most while I was searching about the ocean: the marine life." She started to walk towards a tank on the opposite side they were in.
Hai stood quiet in the meanwhile to let her talk. He is interested in his women and what made them who and what they are today.
One could say that Hai wants to know what there is to know about them.
Of course, he doesn't care if they have secrets, he is happy by just getting to know them better.
"When I first started to search about the ocean's life, I was fascinated by how vast it was. I mean, sure there is vastness in the fauna on land and I came to like it too, but in the ocean, this is a whole another level." Her tone got livelier when she started to talk about how she came to like the aquatic animals.
Hai let out a small smile and didn't interrupt her.
He quietly brought his phone out and opened the camera.
"It was so marvelous… Fishes of all sizes and bodies, predators and preys…"
Hai looked around and noticed that they were alone now, the others seemed to go away to see the other tanks.
"I was fascinated by the fact that the ocean is a nearly utopic society. They don't need to drink water, so they don't fight over a small amount of resources; they don't have more nor laws, yet they are so organized that it's strange; they live in a way of life where one preys on another in the literal sense, yet it is different of how it is in our society, it's more natural, controlled and out of necessity and not greed." She touched a pendant she is wearing on her neck.
Hai stealthily brought his phone up and took some pictures of her.
'Nice.' He exclaimed internally.
Hong Li-Wei turned to him.
"Neh, Hai. Am I strange?" She questioned with calm eyes.
She herself knows that no sane person would like the ocean due to the reasons she likes it. The reason being that she scorns the society she lives in and tries to find solace in the nature.
She knows that this view is rather twisted and that she can really turn into a batshit crazy woman if she doesn't pay attention.
However, she doesn't care. This world is already so f*cked up that she stopped caring about such trivial things. But she still wanted to hear Hai's opinion as he is someone important in her life.
"How should I know?" Hai said while shrugging.
Hong Li-Wei raised an eyebrow at this. She was confused with this answer of his that didn't answer her question.
"Sweet, men expect women to love them unconditionally and care for them; women expect men to love them unrelated to their appearance and respect them as independent women. Both expect several things from each other, yet both get equality disappointed. Do you know why is that?" Hai asked out of nowhere.
Hong Li-Wei thought about his words and tried to find any logic in it.
However, even after some minutes of silently thinking, she found no answer.
"I don't know." She admitted.
"Once upon a time, there was a man." He started talking while slowly walking hand in hand with her to the next tank that there was also no crowd.
"This man was called many things. He was someone who did what he needed or wanted as he knew that life is short. A certain day, this man decided to do something different. He brought a simple cloak, a big box that seemed to weight a ton and a horse. He put the cloak on, mounted the horse, tied the box onto his horse and went on a random way." He looked at the creature inside the tank.
Hong Li-Wei this time didn't take any pictures and kept listening him.
"This man met various people of different ways of life along his way. All of them looked at him with different gazes when they saw the horse carrying a seemingly heavy box. An old man said: 'Ungrateful man, the horse carries you and you still put more weight for it to carry?'. The man untied the box off the horse, tied it to a rope and started to pull the thing while riding the horse. A young man saw this and laughed: 'You have a horse and carry your weight yourself? What an imbecile!'. The man got down the horse, tied the box to the horse and started to walk while pulling the horse. Then, a little girl looked at him and said: 'Such a bad man! He is making the horse carry all that weight.'. The man then untied the box and carried it himself. A drunken man saw this and said: 'Yer carrying the box and pulling the horse? Might as well carry both to spare yerself from the trouble of dealing with two things.'. The man threw the horse on the top of his box and carried it until his house. The people on the way who saw him doing it all laughed at him." He calmly spoke before turning to Hong Li-Wei.
"What do you think that man said after arriving back home?"
She looked into his eyes before shaking her head.
"I don't know."
Hai smiled.
"He said: 'You talk, judge and give advice, yet I see none of you here at the end of my journey.'"
Hai smiled raised his hand and interlinked his fingers with hers.
"You are strange? How should I know? Will you care if you are? What do you expect from me or from yourself? At the end of your journey there might be only you or very few people. Care only for those who walk along with you, not for those who stay still and only run their mouths. And your question shouldn't be if you are strange, but if I care if you are strange."
He smiled and leaned his head on hers while looking at her eyes from the corner of his.
"Which I don't." He said and started to hum a sound.
Hong Li-Wei's lips trembled and started to raise.
Of course, he wouldn't care.
After all,
'He is the man I love.' She turned back to the water tank while feeling sweet at her heart.
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A/N: Hello there, I hope you are having a wonderful day!
So, what do you guys think about this chapter? I wanted to develop Hong Li-Wei a bit more before moving on Stella. And I was owing you guys a date with Hong Li-Wei.
Though, this is the first time I have written a date chapter, so I don't know how good or bad it is. Please give me your opinions about this chapter.
Comment what you thought about this chapter. If you liked it or not, I want to read your opinions and interact more with you guys.
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