Like most things since he moved, the cafeteria of Vicente's new school was completely different.
In Taipei, his primary school didn't even have a cafeteria. Instead, he and his classmates moved around the classroom, switching seats until they found their friends, and pulled out their lunch-boxes at their desks. Vicente often found himself sitting alone at his seat, poking at lukewarm leftovers from the night before. On the rare occasion that his friends joined him, they always left after they were done eating for extracurriculars.
In Arlingdale, where everything was brand new and completely foreign to him, the one thing that simply had to stay the same was how he was left behind. Just barely avoiding being trampled by his classmates, all of whom were racing into the cafeteria and hogging tables for their friends, Vicente stood in the entrance and wondered who would let him sit down.
He hadn't talked to anyone in his class, except to introduce himself, and he was sure that nobody remembered his name — not that he remembered any of his classmates' names, either. Taking a tentative step into the cafeteria, his lunch-box knocked against his knees.
His eyes fell on Leon, who was sitting right in the middle of the cafeteria. He was surrounded by kids, all of them chattering excitedly. It seemed that his little brother was just as popular no matter where he went.
He was considering just hiding in his classroom and having his lunch there when he finally saw someone he recognised. Ling was sitting alone at a little table, eating her lunch with one hand and doodling in her new notebook with the other.
It took Vicente no time at all to sit down next to Ling. He pulled out his lunch, and asked, feeling like a hypocrite, "how were your classes?"
Unsurprisingly, Ling replied in Mandarin. "I didn't know some of the things my teacher was saying." She stabbed her dumpling with her flimsy plastic chopsticks. "And everyone was speaking English."
Having spent the past years of her life in Taiwan, it was clear that Ling was having a much harder time adapting. Vicente opened his lunchbox, finding the same meal as Ling's — the frozen dumplings that Yao had found at the supermarket the night before after realising they'd have nothing for lunch otherwise. "Did you make any new friends?" He asked.
She shook her head again. "Nobody talked to me."
He didn't have anything to say as reassurance. Vicente stared down at his dumplings, limp and dull-looking in the harsh light of the cafeteria. He'd made dumplings — well, potstickers — with Yao once, pressing fresh, soft wrappers over little dollops of cabbage and pork, sealing them with clouded slurry, and frying them until the filling was juicy and hot, and the wrapper somehow crispy and soft at the same time. But that was in Hong Kong, and it all felt like it'd happened a million years ago. Vicente took a bite of a stone-cold dumpling. The dough was tough, and he couldn't even tell what it was stuffed with. He grimaced.
Like their mediocre meal on the flight from Taipei, Ling seemed to have the same reaction as him. She glared at her lunchbox, and the sad little dumplings inside. "Ew."
And again, he felt the same, but Vicente nudged her anyway. "Don't say that, it's not too bad."
"I don't want it."
The last time they'd had dumplings was at a diner in Taipei, a few months before they moved. The dish of dumplings, arranged elaborately and smelling the a mixture of cabbage, pak choi and rice flour they were made of, had spewed steam the entire meal, fogging Vicente's glasses over. Together, he, Yao, Leon and Ling had finished five whole plate of them. Now, Vicente made himself finish one of the overly-chewy dumplings, and said, "we won't have anything to eat until dinner."
Still glaring, Ling picked up one of the dumplings with her chopsticks and bit at it, then scrunched up her face in poorly-veiled disgust. "Ewwww."
They finished the rest of their lunch in silence. When the bell rang, Ling was off first, clutching her notebook to her chest and lunchbox knocking against her knees. Vicente packed up and left, much slower, and saw Leon again. He was alone, nose in some brightly-coloured comic book.
"Ka Long!"
He turned at the mention of his Chinese name (in Cantonese, no less), but his eyes were still trained on his comic book. "Hi."
Like he did with his younger sister, Vicente asked, "how was class?"
"Good."
"Did you make any friends?" He already knew the answer to that question.
"Yeah." It was clear Leon didn't want to talk.
Still, he tried to keep the conversation alive. "Have you got any homework yet?"
"No." Leon began to turn away, idly flipping a page in his book. Vicente stood there as Leon walked away, to a group of children who must've been his new friends. Then his watch told him he had a minute to get back to his classroom, and he left, too.
…
Outside their apartment, Vicente found Yao fiddling with his pencil case, pulling out a jangling key and pushing it into the keyhole. "Father and Mother aren't home yet," he explained as the door clicked open.
Once they were inside, Leon went straight to his room, arms full with books that he must've borrowed from the school library. Ling and Yao both sat down at the dining table; Ling pulled out her sketchbook again, Yao pulled out his planner. After standing at the doorway for quite a while, Vicente decided to follow Leon into his room.
There, he pulled out a few textbooks from his school bag. Some of them felt a little familiar, like the mathematics textbook that still taught him division and fractions, and the science textbook that held information on plotting graphs, observing plants and drawing diagrams.
But there were some textbooks that were completely different. He no longer had a Chinese textbook, for one, and the French textbook that took its place was filled with vocabulary he didn't understand. His social studies book no longer talked about the railways of Taipei, or the local festivals, but talked about Western history, mythology and thousands more things he'd never heard about. Vicente pushed them back into his school bag, and dug around his drawer for a book.
The book that he managed to retrieve was The Journey to The West, an outlandish tale about monkey kings and talking pigs. He'd read it a few times before, but never enough to remember every minute detail of it. So when he opened up the book, Vicente let himself be lost in the words that seemed to fly out of the pages and shape the world around him.
There was a rock that since the creation of the world was worked up by the pure essences of Heaven and the fine savours of Earth, the vigour of sunshine and the grace of moonlight, till at last it became magically pregnant and one day split open, giving birth to a stone egg, about as big as a playing ball, the book read.
Paragraph after paragraph flew by, page after page and chapters upon chapters. It was all so recognisable, it felt like a safe haven in a strange world, and before he knew it, Vicente had finished the book. When he looked up, Leon was gone, and one look at the clock told him he had missed dinner.
But no matter, he thought. He closed his books and fell asleep, right then and there, dreaming of monasteries and the Silk Road.
...
A/N: The English-translated excerpt of "The Journey to The West" was translated by Arthur Waley.