26/06/2026
A-Yuan 66: The Legend of Ka-Táu
Book One · The Light of Youth
Episode 3 — The Weight of Home
“Years later, A-Yuan would walk through countless cities, call many countries home, and meet extraordinary people whose names the world remembered. Yet whenever someone asked who had been his greatest teacher, his thoughts always returned to a tiny house without air conditioning, where an old electric fan slowly turned through endless summer nights.”
⸻
In the 1970s, Ka-Táu City was nothing like the skyline people know today.
There were no gleaming towers reflecting the harbor, no wide boulevards stretching toward the sea.
The harbor itself was the city’s beating heart.
Every morning, before anyone opened their eyes, it was the ocean that awoke first.
Cargo ships announced the dawn with long, echoing horns. Fishing boats drifted home beneath the first light, while the fish market flickered awake under dim yellow bulbs. Street vendors began calling to early customers. Bicycles and three-wheeled carts rolled through narrow alleys, and the air carried an unmistakable blend of seawater, diesel, fresh grass, and steamed buns.
This was the world that raised A-Yuan.
He never questioned whether he was happy.
As a child, he simply believed everyone’s childhood looked like this.
⸻
Their home was small.
So small that if one person turned over during the night, everyone else would hear it.
There was no air conditioner.
Only an old green electric fan that slowly swept from side to side, like a quiet old guardian keeping watch over the family through another humid summer evening.
When it rained, the corrugated metal roof became an orchestra of hurried percussion.
When typhoons arrived, everyone grabbed basins to catch the leaks dripping from the ceiling.
During the rare cold fronts of winter, his mother would pile blanket after blanket over her children before quietly ironing school uniforms for the next morning.
Many years later, A-Yuan would sleep in luxury hotels and centuries-old castles across Europe.
Yet whenever the wind brushed against a window at night, he still heard the gentle hum of that old fan.
Some sounds never leave the people who survive them.
⸻
His father had never received much education.
He began working while he was still little more than a boy himself.
His generation believed only one thing with absolute certainty:
A family could endure poverty.
It could never afford laziness.
So his father worked.
Every day.
Every season.
Almost every year of his life.
He rarely smiled.
He almost never said, “I love you.”
His love existed elsewhere—
in the alarm before sunrise,
in hands hardened by decades of labor,
and in the worn envelope of wages quietly placed upon the dinner table every month.
The men of his generation had never been taught how to express tenderness.
They only understood responsibility.
Responsibility was a mountain.
And like every mountain they had climbed, they believed it could only be conquered through endurance.
If a child made a mistake, he was scolded.
If he repeated it, he was punished.
Not because his father lacked love.
But because this was the only language love had ever spoken to him.
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His mother was another kind of sea.
She rarely argued.
She never challenged her husband in front of the children.
Long before dawn, she was already awake.
The blue flame beneath the stove was often the first light inside the house.
She stirred rice porridge with one hand while packing lunch boxes with the other.
Sometimes there was braised pork.
Sometimes only a fried egg.
On lucky mornings, a single sausage was enough to brighten everyone’s day.
As a child, A-Yuan believed his mother knew everything.
She knew when one child had returned home carrying sadness.
She knew when his older brother had secretly skipped home after another adventure.
She knew when his second sister had quietly slipped her candy into A-Yuan’s pocket.
She knew when his eldest sister had taken the blame for someone else.
She always knew.
Yet she rarely spoke.
Some people hold a family together not through words—
but through silent devotion repeated every single day.
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A-Yuan was the youngest of the family.
His older brother was like the wind.
Restless.
Fearless.
Forever chasing the next adventure.
Every tree in the neighborhood had been climbed.
Every drainage ditch had become an expedition.
His second sister resembled gentle rain.
Quiet.
Patient.
Whenever their mother became overwhelmed, she silently stepped forward to help.
Sometimes she would hide a piece of candy inside A-Yuan’s pocket.
Then smile.
“Don’t let Dad find out.”
His eldest sister was different.
She was a tree.
Like the old banyan standing faithfully at the entrance of their home.
No matter how fierce the sun.
No matter how violent the storm.
She remained exactly where she was—
protecting her little brother.
⸻
One summer afternoon, A-Yuan accidentally broke the family’s only glass cup.
The sharp sound of shattering silenced the entire house.
His father turned.
He looked at the broken pieces.
He asked no questions.
Instead, he quietly reached for the bamboo cane resting in the corner.
A-Yuan stood frozen.
He said nothing.
Not because he had no explanation.
But because children of his generation often believed adults were always right.
Just as the cane was about to fall—
his eldest sister rushed forward.
She wrapped both arms around him.
“It was my fault.
I should have been watching him.”
Their father hesitated.
Then the cane descended.
Not onto A-Yuan—
but across his sister’s back.
That evening, while applying medicine to the bruises, she smiled.
“It’s alright.”
“Just be more careful next time.”
Only many years later did A-Yuan understand what courage truly looked like.
Sometimes it is not standing beneath a spotlight.
Sometimes it is quietly standing in front of someone you love—
when they are too frightened to stand alone.
⸻
At school, teachers liked A-Yuan.
Not because he was the loudest.
Nor because he was the cleverest.
But because he was earnest.
When the teacher said,
“Memorize this.”
He memorized it.
When they assigned dictation,
he memorized it.
When they announced an exam,
he memorized everything.
Slowly he discovered something unusual about himself.
After enough repetition,
an entire page seemed to photograph itself inside his mind.
He never thought of it as talent.
He simply noticed that teachers smiled more.
His parents looked relieved.
So he memorized more.
And more.
And more.
Yet he rarely stopped to ask what those words truly meant.
He carried libraries inside his memory—
while still searching for understanding.
⸻
As the years passed, drawing quietly disappeared from his life.
One afternoon, his teacher pinned one of his paintings onto the classroom bulletin board.
It was a harbor at sunset.
Ships preparing to leave for distant horizons.
The teacher gently placed a hand upon his shoulder.
“You have a gift.”
His classmates applauded.
But when A-Yuan returned home, another mountain awaited him.
Textbooks.
Stacked higher than the sketchbooks beneath them.
Silently, he opened a drawer.
Placed the drawing inside.
And closed it.
He did not cry.
He simply whispered to himself,
“I’ll draw again after the exams.”
He never imagined those few words—
“Later.”
“After this.”
“Someday.”
would become decades.
⸻
Years later, A-Yuan often wondered whether his life might have unfolded differently had he never placed that drawing into the drawer.
Yet he also understood something else.
Without those towering stacks of textbooks,
he might never have found a way beyond the narrow alley where he grew up.
Life rarely asks us to choose between dreams and reality.
More often,
it asks us to hold tightly to the only rope within reach—
hoping it will one day lead somewhere beyond the horizon.
Back then,
A-Yuan believed he was holding onto examination papers.
Only much later did he realize—
what he had truly been carrying
was the hope of an entire family.
⸻
End of Episode 3 · Chapter One
