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Knock knock
Hung Sheung Sin did not wait for an answer, and pushed the door open. For others, it may have seemed rude, but for her, it was progress. She had a habit of barging into her son’s room without warning, particularly in the middle of the night.
“Mami! What are you doing here?” Kam Shing On yelped, startled.
“Your secret. What is it?” Sheung Sin demanded.
For the past few days, he had been taunting her with his fake funeral, and some supposed deep dark secret that he was vexingly tight-lipped about. There were few things that Hung Sheung Sin hated more than not knowing; she liked to think that her brain held the secrets to the universe.
“I’m not going to tell you, I’ll take it to the grave,” he huffed.
She sighed, and pulled out a rusty pocketwatch from her trench coat. “You leave me with no choice. There’s no resisting my hypnotism, you know that.”
“No, Mami, wait—” Kam Shing On hollered. If I’m going to tell her, it’ll be of my own accord, not under hypnosis, he thought. He took a deep breath and swallowed a lump in his throat, trying his best to ignore the tightening ache in his chest. “My s-secret is that um… well, actually what I’m trying to say is…”
Sheung Sin stared at his reddening cheeks and busy gaze darting anywhere but her eyes, his clammy hands fidgeting with the hem of his blanket. It did not take a psychologist to deduce how nervous he was. It was rare to see him in such a state, struggling to grasp his words when he normally talked her ear off.
“... Mami, I’m gay,” he finally said, the words rolling off his tongue. There it was; there was no turning back now. His heart was leaping out of his body.
Hung Sheung Sin’s face was stoic as it so often was, and virtually indecipherable to Kam Shing On’s dismay. Was it anger? Disappointment? Denial? He was begging her to say something, just anything at this point.
“Mami… are you mad…?” he asked softly.
Finally, she spoke, maintaining her stone-faced demeanour, “Yes.”
Kam Shing On’s heart sank at once, writhing away from his mother though there was nowhere else to go in his tiny bedroom. He was no stranger to his mother’s constant disappointment and reprimands, and had faced harsher lashings from her, but her simple response hurt more than her hardest slaps.
“I’m not finished,” Sheung Sin snapped sternly. “I’m mad because you thought I wouldn’t be accepting of you. What kind of person do you think I am?”
He turned around slowly, finally daring to look at her through his teary vision. “I don’t know! The other day, when Mr. Chan was talking about his nephew that came out as gay, your face was all scrunched up, and you looked disgusted! I saw you shaking your head and everything!” he sputtered.
Hung Sheung Sin rolled her eyes. “Oh, that day? I was too busy reading a message from Dai Lung Sang to hear the conversation. He was texting me about a roach infestation on the tenth floor at Zip Lung. Of course I was disgusted!”
“So… it was all a misunderstanding? You won’t hate me for… for liking men?” a smile spread on On Jai’s face, the first genuine smile he had displayed in weeks.
“Of course not! I can hate you for being stupid, lazy, or incompetent, but not for being gay,” she scoffed.
“Mami… I never should have doubted you. You’re the best,” he said, burying his face in her arm as he did.
Hung Sheung Sin looked at her son curled up against her like a kitten, and suddenly felt the onset of warm tears and a light tug at her heart. She pressed her quivering lips together into a smile. Yes, Kam Shing On was an idiot most of the time, but at the end of the day, he was her son. She wrapped her arms around him into a tight embrace, something that she rarely did. Nevertheless, this seemed like a special enough occasion for it.
Deleted lines (cause they ruined the flow)
“I’m mad because you undermine my intelligence like this. You think I don’t already know this?” Sheung Sin rolled her eyes. “Please, everyone with a pair of eyes and a brain knows that you’re in love with Chu Ling Ling.”
–
“Of course I’m not mad. Besides… I’m gay too. I’ve actually been in a relationship with Lung Lik Lin for the past eight years,” she confessed.
On Jai widened his eyes and gasped, “You and Lin Jie?!”
“Yes, you got a problem with it? Now, that is a secret you better take to the grave,” she threatened.