4Ep.. Borrowed Hands
For four days, Siu didn't draw. He endured the itch in his hands. Just the sight of the pen frightened him—his mind might empty again. He turned the tablet face-down in a drawer and piled books on top.
What broke that resolve, of all places, was a hallway at dawn. On his way back from the convenience store, the first-floor grandmother had collapsed by the stairs. Medicine scattered across the floor, her hand trembling on her leg.
Ma'am! Where—where are you hurt?
My leg… it won't straighten. Oh dear, I'm so sorry…
The ambulance would take fifteen minutes. Siu held her hand and could only stamp his feet. There was nothing he could do. There never was. He was a useless man who knew nothing but drawing. …Drawing. The instant the word surfaced, he was already taking the stairs two at a time.
Inside, he swept the books aside and woke the tablet. He gripped the pen. He forgot to be afraid. A drawing where she gets better. Where she rises and smiles brightly. No greed, no calculation—only desperation. Please, just spare her.
As he drew the final line, a voice rose from below. “…Huh? Oh—it straightens? I'm fine, look at that?” It was the grandmother. Her leg, healed like a lie—he could even hear her waving off the paramedics.
Siu sank to the floor, pen still in hand. He laughed. It worked. So the power wasn't all bad. It could even save someone. For the first time, his hands felt useful. And that night, he learned what he had given up.
Washing his face, he looked in the mirror—and he could not tell where the face there had grown up. Me… where did I come from? His old school, his childhood alley, his friends' faces—all blank. A small drawing, a small price, he thought. That must be how it worked. The drawing that saved a life—took half of him.
The phone in his hand rang. It was Hari.
Author. You drew again just now… didn't you.
He had no answer. Siu staggered to the window and pulled the curtain aside. Beneath the streetlight, that person had come one step closer. Close enough now to make out the outline of a face. And that outline, somehow, was not unfamiliar—which frightened Siu all the more.
