By Zilin Wu
She handed a bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums and white baby’s breath to the family member.
The mourning hall was small, awash only in plaster white and raven black. Ribbons tied into floral shapes hung from the ceiling to the ground, like intestines spilling from a slit-open abdomen. She carefully avoided them, making her way to the coffin.
A staff tried to stop her, but a woman, likely the deceased’s mother, intervened. The woman’s eyes were swollen red as she cast a look at her.
She returned a smile.
The coffin was no different from the ones she had seen on television, a far cry from the bold personality the deceased once had—surely not chosen personally. The made-up body lay quietly in the enclosure of wooden panels, surrounded by lilies. She noticed that the edges of some lily petals had already yellowed.
Whether it was the years apart or the fact that they no longer belonged to the same world, the face before her felt unfamiliar. Gone were the dramatic black eyeliner, the glossy red lips, and the sharp voice that pierced through crowds. She could hardly tell if the person in front of her was the same person she once knew.
“Were you Malan’s classmate?”
She turned around. The frail, pitiable woman stood beside her. She feigned a move to return to the guest seats, subtly creating distance, but the woman followed her and sat down, pulling a crumpled tissue from her pocket and dabbing her eyes incessantly.
She nodded.
“Thank you. None of her close classmates came. Only you still remember her… ”
The woman’s sobs burst forth with her tears. She leaned back slightly.
The music softened, and the host began organizing guests to present flowers. She aimed to go first and reached for a flower.
The tray held only lilies. She paused, scanning the room, and from the disarray of bouquets scattered around, she spotted hers. Under the confused gazes, she walked across the entire mourning hall to retrieve it.
As she passed row after row of black chairs, she recalled the graduation ceremony years ago. Malan had said to a classmate who was not yet her boyfriend at the time that the flowers given by her mentor were meant for funerals in China.
That bouquet had been golden mimosa and white anemones. Her mentor had told her that it symbolized spring and hope.
The malice felt like a thorn lodged in her fingertip—a wound she could never locate despite her attempts to extract it. Then she realized: perhaps the “close classmates” who didn’t show up had also been pricked by this person, now permanently at rest and mercifully devoid of her sting.
She exhaled a breath of stale air, her muscles, tense with anger for years, finally relaxing. Her hand loosened, and the yellow-and-white bouquet fell onto the coffin lid at last.
* * *
Zilin Wu is a London-based writer and photographer. She has written many short films, a mini-TV series, and her first feature script. She has a great passion for drama and suspense. She is also dedicated to showing the nuances and undercurrents of interpersonal dynamics in modern society.