The Lone Wolf
She heaved another breath of resignation as she stepped out of the alley. That was when her attention was caught by the red minibus parking nearby. What attracted her was the sign on top of the mini bus. The light behind it was going on and off by itself and the words “Shek O” kept flashing, as if it was urging her to let out the howl building up in her.
***
“Wolves...hunters in the wild...they are more similar to us than we might think.”
As Sung Ling plugged in her earphones, her mom’s sand-like voice slipped in between the lines narrated by a deep charismatic male voice in the podcast playing on her phone.
1 “Ah nui , when are you going to bring home a boyfriend?” “Wolves are social animals...”
“You are almost 30. People at your age have kids who are attending kindergarten already.”
“They are more likely to survive when they live as a pack and hunt collectively as a team...”
“Who’s gonna take care of you when you grow old? You need a family of your own. You need children of your own!”
“A lone wolf who hunts alone is less likely to survive in the wild…”
“You don’t wanna be all alone for the rest of your life...”
Sung Ling quickly devoured her breakfast and picked up her bag. Before she stepped out of her house, she heard the male voice saying, “Solitary life is a constant fight for survival in the wild...”
***
1 Ah nui: means daughter in Cantonese Ladies in their shocking pink windbreakers and sharp yellow visors gossiping loudly and casting judgmental glances at every outsider of their group…
“Wolves howl together to scare off strangers…”
Boys in all white uniforms jumping and chasing after one another…
“When wolves want to play, they would prance around and lower the front of their bodies with their tails wagging…”
A little boy in light blue primary school uniform shouting goodbyes at his parents as he stepped onto the school bus…
“Young wolves take off to form their own packs or join others after staying in their parents’ pack for at least two years.”
A couple arm in arm, giggling and blushing...
“One litter of pups is produced by a new wolf couple every year.” By the time Sung Ling had boarded the MTR train, the podcast’s introduction of wolves was almost over.
“The hierarchy of a wolf pack can be reflected through the wolves’ behaviors. The leaders of the pack are known as the Alphas.”
*Ding!
A Whatsapp notification popped up on her screen.
Wilson, The Principal Good morning! Please come to the principal’s office today after lessons.
Sung Lee let out a sigh and her eyes rolled back. Her thumb lingered at the right bottom corner of the screen for a little while before giving up on unlocking the screen of her phone entirely. *Ding! The screen of her phone lit up again. *Ding!
*Ding!
*Ding! *Ding!
*Ding!
*Ding!
*Ding! *Ding!
She unlocked the screen of her phone, tapping into the Whatsapp app, while the narrator of the podcast said,“Alphas have the right to feast on a prey before other pack members. ”
Colleague 3@ POWERENGERS Wilson did it again! Did you read the article about our school on the South China Morning Post?
Colleague 1@ POWERENGERS What did he say this time?
Colleague 3@ POWERENGERS Remember last time when that English Day was more successful than what we had expected? He mentioned it in the interview and said it was his idea all along!
Colleague 1@ POWERENGERS Urgh...he didn’t even want to fund us in the first place . We had to put in extra money in order to help the students to set up those booths.
Colleague 2@ POWERENGERS As always, he only knows how to take credits for things he has never gotten involved in…but who dares to point that out to him?
“Less dominant wolves in the pack tend to act submissively towards the alpha.”, the podcast played.
When Sung Ling thought the Whatsapp messages would stop coming in, white speech bubbles started to appear again.
Colleague 1@ POWERENGERS Have any one of you received the appraisal results from Wilson yet?
Colleague 2@ POWERENGERS I went to see him yesterday already. He said according to Lisa’s report, I should have included more interactive tasks with my students...and my classroom management skills were awful cus the students were mostly sleeping throughout my lesson .
Colleague 1@ POWERENGERS What more can he expect from our students? It’s good that they are all sitting in the classroom and not putting up a fight.
Colleague 2@ POWERENGERS I think what angers me the most is Lisa said she was satisfied with my performance after the invigilation and yet, the things she wrote in the report...
Colleague 3@ POWERENGERS Lisa is such a backstabbing bitch!
Colleague 1@ POWERENGERS She’s backstabbing everyone, including Wilson.
Colleague 2@ POWERENGERS I heard she has been aiming for Wilson’s position for quite some time but to be honest, I think she is no better than Wilson if she becomes the Principal….
Sung Ling was about to reply to the last message of the group chat when a white notification box with the title “Lisa, English Panel” dropped from the top of the screen, one after another.
Lisa, English Panel I have assigned you to make the Paper 3 English and Integrated Skills paper. Please hand in the 1st draft by this Friday.
Lisa, English Panel Oh! And please fill in the book refund forms for me. I have placed them on your desk.
Lisa, English Panel And one last thing, I need you to write the writing template for the last writing assignment. I need this by tomorrow.
Sung Ling’s brows furrowed in displeasure and her eyes cast at the workbooks in her bag, covertly calculating how many pages she still needed to mark before she could distribute them back to her students. Just then, the podcast played, “Next in line are the beta wolves. They take charge of the wolves with middle and lower rankings. They are like the right hand of the alphas in which alphas might take a second opinion from them. At the same time, they are also constantly challenging the alphas for the rule of the pack.”
Sung Ling dropped her phone into her bag, zipping it. While she listened to the endless “Ding”s echoing from the bottom of her bag, she could sense the bitterness which had already been dwelling in her heart for quite some time growing and a foul word was at the tip of her tongue when all of a sudden...
“Miss Sung!” A voice called out to her while she was changing line at Admiralty Station.
Turning to her right, Sung Ling saw a girl waving at her. She didn’t recognise the face but she recognised the uniform she was wearing. At the same time, the narration about the Omega wolves was playing in her ears.
“Omega wolves are the adult wolves at the bottom of the hierarchy but they serve an important role of acting as the ‘social glue’ in the pack by providing comfort and light relief to others in the pack especially the pups in times of conflict.”
“You are early today, Miss Sung!”
Sung Ling turned down the volume of the podcast and intentionally pulled the corners of her lips up to form a grin but deep down, the dark mass within her chest was roiling and twisting.
“Can I sit at the back during English lessons? Michael kept kicking my chair and pulling my hair yesterday. It’s really disturbing for me, I…”
Sung Ling nodded her head instinctively.
“Thank you! Also, Yuki and the other girls have been ignoring me recently. I don’t know what I did to deserve this. I never...” Sung Lee deepened her attention on the little red light jumping from Admiralty Station to Shau Kei Wan Station along the blue line as the student prattled on. She barely caught anything from the podcast except for phrases like “working cooperatively”, “stay together”, “as a team”, “in union” being singled out and the word “survival” which always followed behind. Alongside the non-stop “Ding” sound piercing through the gaps of her bag’s zip, she felt she was surrounded by an orchestra of distress.
“Ms. Sung, where are you going? School is this way.”
Sung Ling pointed at the convenience store outside of Shau Kei Wan station.
“Oh!” The student immediately understood. “I will head on first then! See you at school!”
Sung Ling’s feet did not stop when she reached the convenience store. She walked on, turning a corner and entered an alley hidden from the public eye. She dived deep into her bag, fishing out a lighter and a box of cigarettes. She was about to light one of them but her finger hesitated when she took note of the few men standing around her. “To increase the chance of survival, a lone wolf will howl long until it attracts another unattached wolf.”, sounded the narrator’s voice. There were always a few others who were also there in the alley, smoking, but on this day, though none of them were aware of her presence, she felt a sense of nausea rushing up her throat, denting her urge to smoke. Smoking seemed to have lost its only charm of stress-relieving today.
***
The idea came to Sung Ling abruptly, something she had never thought of doing under the context and her role at that moment, an reckless and irresponsible act that would surely be condemned by her “pack”. Yet, as if something had possessed her, her legs led her to jump onto the red minibus and by the time she had come to her senses, she had already been on the empty minibus for quite some time and it was winding its way up the mountain, heading straight towards Shek O beach.
The moment she was dropped off at the beach, all alone, she gasped at the scenery before her and at her own actions. She could feel her phone vibrating furiously while her “Break Free” ringtone kept on playing over and over again but she chose to turn a blind ear on them.
Unplugging her earphones and turning off her phone, she heard no human voice and noises at the beach. Only the sounds of sand sizzling under the sun, of waves gently lapping against the shore, and of the breeze brushing its way through the palm trees, were present. At this place where it used to be packed with people on weekends, she felt no human footstep, saw no human countenance and sensed no human body heat. The lone wolf, who was haunted by the sentence “Solitary life is a constant fight for survival in the wild...”, took off her heels and her disguise, and left her bag and the burden inside. Bared footed, she stepped into the water, and alone, she howled...not for the need to find a mate, not for fending off enemies, not for survival…but for feeling “alive” for the very first time.