A fairytale

Long ago, there is this little boy... let's call him 'B'. He was unhappy, or at least he was unhappy with his family. He had a stepmother, a younger stepbrother, born to his father and stepmother. His mother committed suicide by consuming poison and died a few years back. As a result, he hated his family, hated his father, hated his stepmother, except for his brother, who was very close to him. To express his hatred, he often ran away from home, although his father will always find him in the old house they used to live in and also played a lot of pranks with the stepmother.

Ah Boy studied in the elementary school, which his father was the coach of the school basketball team. He had a teacher whom he was very fond of, called ‘C’ but she’s in a love triangle with the VP of his school. He also had a very good friend who was always criticized and alienated by his fellow basketball teammates, named ‘D’. Life went on as much as any other days, until it was time to celebrate his stepmother’s birthday…

On that fateful day, he again played another prank on his stepmother again and remarked that the birthday cake was ‘poisoned’. In her rage, she chased him out of the house, and there, he was wandering on the street again. Then, by means of fate or whatever, an old man appeared and presented him a medicine, a medicine which will enable to increase his rate of growth ten fold and make him an ‘adult’ overnight. He drank, and he grew… at an amazing rate. By the next morning, he was an ‘adult’.

Upon becoming an ‘adult’, B set off to try to accomplish a lot of things which he once could not. For a start, he went back home and vandalized the whole place. He went back to school, got to know C as B’s brother and tried to impress C as C’s affair with VP became public in the school. He managed to spend a night alone with C in the school laboratory on the second night of his adulthood and managed to date C out for a movie at the third day. But sometimes, things seem to be going too perfect for everyone else… and sometimes, reality is not what it appeared to be.

You see, the medicine which B took accelerated his growth and that growth is constant throughout. As such, he was growing older and older by the minute at the accelerated rate. And he knew. And he regretted taking the medicine. And this feeling became stronger by the third night, when he found his father and VP playing arcade in the arcade center. Speaking to them, as D’s brother, he found out that his father was not what he used to see, and that his father cared for him a lot. B accompanied his father ‘back home’ and discovered from the quarrel that sprouted from nowhere while he was there that him and his mother were the third party in his father’s family… and that his mother was the intruder to the peace of the family. It was a shocking discovery nevertheless. Then he realized his mistake. But it was too late… He was growing towards the last stage of his life. And there was no turning back… It was all too late. There was no way to return back to the way it was in the past. He was dying and he knew it. He went to the cinema and found C waiting for him all the while, but he was far too old by now to be recognized. C remarked to B (not recognizing that he is B) that she got all the time to wait for the person she was waiting for. Sadly for B, time was not a luxury he could enjoy. He was wasting away…like an old man.


This fairytale is actually adopted from Andy Lau's latest movie, 童梦奇缘. I actually chose to post the story of the movie into a fairytale like this because I found the story quite fruitful for some thoughts. One lesson is that we each have the same amount of time, accelerating this amount of time won't help much. We may have time, but there are people out there who do not. Also, this story teaches us that sometimes, things are not what they seem to be on the surface and only with more careful probing can allow you to see what actually happened. Moreover, doing things without thinking and taking things for granted may have an adverse effect, as time is unable to turn back. There is no turning back. How many of us often took what we have for granted? Then when we learned to treasure it, it is just way too late... I think there are a lot more to be learned from this story, but it will be up to you to watch it and appreciate the themes behind the show. It's just too overwhelming for me to post it here. Watch it and you will know.

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