2025 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize – Grand Prize Winner, Middle Grade Category
From the judges: “‘Wo de’ is a story about two school boys in Taiwan and their growing friendship. It is observant, subtle and evocative, full of sensory detail that make the world feel rich and alive. For a young writer, this story is remarkable for its tone and sense of longing and nostalgia. We look forward to hearing more from this impressive young voice.”
There was nothing left to lose.
I had already practiced and re-practiced all day.
Still, time betrayed me. Minutes were vanishing in a blur. Even the sky looked wrong—the sun sinking too low, the sky turning purple too early, like the whole world was holding its breath.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It shouldn’t. But it did.
I sat by the window, my gaze hitched upon the needle-like stars beginning to pinprick the purple sky.
A window seat was a luxury on such a rocky bus ride, let alone a seat at all. The street bus felt strangely silent and bare without the usual jibber-jabber from other passengers.
Letting out a heavy sigh, I slumped further into my seat as my eyes fixated on the sunset stretching across the western horizon. The intense focus from bu-xi-ban tutoring melted into the landscape. Beyond the sunset’s streaks on Tamsui River, I stared blankly at the long shadows chasing the edges of the jagged mountain peaks.
Focus, Ming-Xuan, I scolded myself. You’ve got an entrance exam in three weeks. The reminder hit me like a splash of cold water—blunt and harsh. I fumbled for my packet of Mandarin proverbs in my schoolbag, but my fingers trembled at the edges while I unfolded the crinkled sheets.
The senior high entrance examination hung over my shoulders, its shadow stretching with every passing minute like the ones skimming the cement road ahead. I could almost set my watch by the rhythm of the rumbling engine, the horrible rattle of the glass, and the faint hum of the radio near the baseball-capped driver up front.
All of it was a familiar lull, the noise filling my ears like background noise. I breezed through each character on my packet, my fingers tracing the words. What if this isn’t enough? The thought whispered doubt with each brush against the paper. I’ll never be ready.
“Got your nose buried in that again?” The voice was light, almost teasing. All I could do was blink at him. Thrown off by his remark. By his copper-brown hair. Whatever sneer I had died in my throat for whoever made fun of me. The casual smirk, as misplaced and vivid as it seemed that day only four years ago. Hua-Biao. He was a classmate I never really knew well—though he was always the last person to enter the classroom and the last to leave. Not that I ever really paid any attention to that.
But there he was. Swaying with the shaky bus, his hand dangling from the ceiling handgrip across from me, like it belonged there, lazy and careless. Swallowing my unease, I nodded stiffly at him. An automatic gesture. Our quiet tradition, if you could call it that—two classmate-strangers who crossed paths too often in too many after-school bu-xi-ban sessions.
Hua-Biao swung his schoolbag to the other shoulder, almost brushing the passenger next to him.
Even as the bus rolled down the street, I couldn’t help but notice how effortlessly relaxed he was . . . too unfazed. His half-lidded eyes, his tall frame leaning lazily against the rattling walls, as if the world was nothing more than a slow-moving ride home. Like everything was that simple.
It wasn’t.
Ding! The bell above the door jingled. It kept ringing long after the customer stepped past the threshold of Baba’s pharmacy an hour before closing time for the night.
I jolted in my seat, snapping back from my math textbook. Baba greeted the auntie in Mandarin, and though I was behind the clerk’s counter—which he took great care to clean—divided by a purple curtain over the doorway, I could still hear the smile in his voice.
It would be the first thing I remembered about him, long after time had swallowed up the years to come.
The motions of my life carried on like clockwork, locked in a relentless tick in its own pattern.
Listen to the whistling kettle plugged into the wall near me on the kitchen table. Watch, through the gaps between the shelves, the silhouette of Baba bending over a customer’s prescription, his eyebrows clothes-pinning.
Then with my eyes, I followed him to the back shelf where the ginger and licorice were stored—things I barely understood but knew were a part of the world we lived in.
I took it all in—that one last glimpse—before the frayed purple curtains parted close at the next sigh of the ceiling fan whirring in the room.
I shook off the ghost of a thumb cramp from writing, dragging my gaze back to the math problem in front of me, but I couldn’t concentrate on schoolwork. Because every time I glanced back at the questions, some vision of myself, trapped at school,
overmastered me: those endless hours of early morning sessions, the classroom’s suffocating silence, and the quiet voice asking me, Are you doing enough? Why can’t I focus? The tiny words seemed to stretch impossibly wide, making the walls in this room closing in tighter on me.
Every morning started the same way.
I flipped my books open on my desk. My eyes locked onto the green chalkboard. The motions were automatic: crack open the pages, steady my hand on the pen, and scoot just enough in my chair to catch the breeze from the one working fan in the classroom.
The layer of chalk dust covering every piece of furniture in the room was thicker this morning than usual. Not to mention the louder scratching of frantic pencils on paper.
I’d been with my peers for three years too long, and now, the thought of leaving junior high—the same routine, the same Lao Shi at the front of the room, her face turned to scrawling lessons onto the board—was nothing more than a distant inevitability.
The lesson sheets we’d been handed would show its face again, etched into our futures, deciding which school districts we could enroll in. Preferably somewhere closer to home here in New Taipei City.
It felt like an invisible hand pressed on every person in this room.
I glanced at the clock. 8:09.
As expected, the door creaked open, and the unmistakable sound of shoes clapping against the concrete floor in an easy metronome followed. Hua-Biao sauntered into the classroom, his grin unbothered. He breezed past Lao Shi, barely sparing the teacher another glance before tossing his bag into the seat behind me.
At least some things are constant, I scoffed to myself.
But even that rang hollow, like a warning. We were all running out of time; graduation was just around the corner in a few months.
My eyes darted back to the board nervously, skimming through the agenda. But my mind wasn’t there: Doesn’t he know how important this is? Even the Back Row had fallen back to sleep when Lao Shi returned to facing the chalkboard.
Tap. Tap.
My back stiffened at the nudge. I ignored it.
Tap. Tap.
The longer I delayed it, the more insistent it became like a hornet droning in my ear.
Does he ever stop? I seethed.
I whirled back in my chair, ready to snarl at him, just like I would’ve back in year two when his silly pranks were never-ending.
We’re 15 years old now. Grow up.
But I didn’t get the chance to. Instead I came face-to-face with him, and he leaned forward in his chair, which caused a mortifying loud creak.
“Hey,” Hua-Biao rasped, clearly not bothering to lower his voice behind Lao Shi’s back. “Got a pencil I can borrow?
Seriously? With the exams coming up?
Hua-Biao quirked a frustratingly perfect eyebrow at me. I fumed in silence. I bit the edge of my sentence, restraining myself to only grab a spare pencil, the movement too controlled and sharp.
Xie xie, he mouthed. A simple thanks. He took the outstretched pencil from my hand and quietly turned to his workbook, already lost in the rhythm. My mind couldn’t quite do the same, not with the weight pressing down on me. The ticking clock, my classmates shuffling papers, Hua-Biao’s indifference. It was like the world was running ahead, and I could never catch up.
“Busy as always?”
There. The voice cut through the silence. That same voice had broken my concentration. Again.
I refused to look up this time in shock, so I only half-attentively listened to his feet shuffling on the bus.
“No.” I lied, finally turning my eyes to him towering above me, tucking my papers away from sight into my backpack with practiced ease.
“You and your books,” he snickered. Nearly snorting.
The engine hummed beneath our feet.
Then Hua-Biao slid into the empty seat next to mine and made himself comfortable with an almost exaggerated lack of concern for neither the cramped space nor the frown tightening on my face.
Out of all the places, I glared at him. You choose to sit here?
Hua-Biao had also turned his head toward me at the same time, his eyes scanning my face at him. I openly scowled at him.
He just smirked. With so much casualness, as if none of this—the storm of the exam looming ahead, the silent weight on us—had ever bothered him. “Here,” he mumbled, digging around in his bag on the floor until he tossed me a flash of blue over his shoulder.
I caught it. Guai Guai. I recognized its silly blue pirate mascot on the bag of chips. The packet crinkled as I fidgeted with the good luck snacks in my hands that I’d seen stashed behind cash registers and computers.
I would’ve laughed at the joke, the thread of implication, but Hua-Biao shrugged at me and looked me in the eyes, unflinching, “You’ve been studying so hard. You need something that isn’t brain food. Once in a while.” Still grinning, he leaned back in his chair with a deep sigh.
“Well . . .” I started, then paused in a dizziness of excitement. What am I doing? “. . . since we both live around there, do you wanna look around Tamsui lao jiay with me?”
I could almost feel the exam stress falling away with the idea of walking without a narrow purpose hanging over it. I imagined stepping out of it as a break. Hua-Biao was hiding a smile. I could tell by the way he tucked his chin into his school uniform coat. His eyes closed, and it was like the world outside the bus faded away, leaving us in the quiet of our minds.
Just for a heartbeat.
The Tamsui streets took on the heat of a fever.
Alive with the roaring drone of motor scooters, the gas fuel was a sharp smell against the otherwise fresh breeze rolling off the river.
Chatter from aproned vendors in their stalls rivaled the squall of the white seagulls overhead roosting on the power lines.
We dodged the busier roads, taking the narrower ones. The throng sweated in the humid spring air. The crowd would’ve left me scurrying away if not for Hua-Biao’s nagging me to “keep up”. His legs made long strides across the cracked pavement.
Sometimes I caught myself trying to keep pace, but his steps were always calmly one step ahead, pushing me forward.
For someone who appeared to care little about a bus ride home or a senior exam, I knew by the flicker in his eyes whenever he turned around to look for vehicles before crossing roads, this place—our home—fueled him with solid determination.
It was something even I hoped would never be taken away from him.
Once we escaped the honeycomb of people, Hua-Biao wandered off to order some food from a friendly-looking lao ban obscured by the veil of steam rising from her pots.
I waited by the trees, each one filtering green, dappled shade at my feet. From here, I could see the western sun above the river. The mirror image was distorted in shimmering streaks of rosy pink and burnt orange.
It flashed against the surface, blinding me for a moment.
I looked away, my eyes instead tracking Hua-Biao trotting back from the food stall, eager for someone who crossed the world in his trademark, carefree way with the wind dancing lively in his hair.
Then the thought hit me—one I would never cease to forget about our time in Tamsui together whenever I thought of his grin: Not misplaced.
In the paper bowls, in his hands, steams an overly large tofu. Hua-Biao was already holding it out to me, but I hesitated. His face was full of mock-seriousness. “Ming-Xuan! Don’t tell me now that you haven’t tried a-gei before!” And he practically shoved the steaming paper bowl into my hands.
Sure enough, the hot noodles and fish burst from the tofu pouch at the first bite. I nearly burned my taste buds off.
“You know,” he mumbled through a mouthful of food, “at this rate, I would think you would be going into overdrive with . . . uh, those.” His eyes made a beat of contact with mine, twinkling with leashed laughter, then nodded to my school bag. My books.
I tried to change the subject with him. “You can’t just move through life doing whatever you feel like. You’ll have to push yourself to it too.”
At my words, Hua-Biao met my gaze, a grin already tugging at the corners of his mouth. “That’s one way to look at it.” He even had the gall to wink at me.
For the next hour, we leaned on the wooden deck railing by the wharf abutting the bay’s edge, where the salty breeze would lift strands of hair from my face. We watched the water lap at the fishermen’s boats and hiss at every break of a wave.
I didn’t exactly know what he was thinking. I mean, what was there to think about when the world was sprawled out before him like this, its vastness both a comfort and a question? Could he be wondering what the future held, like I was?
Or, perhaps both of us were questioning in our own ways. Silently questioning our narrow views of the otherwise broad glow of sunset.
I sneaked one more glance at him. In his eyes, he seemed no different than he was on the bus. Except for the quiet intensity he had in this suspended moment. His gaze was unwavering, holding the yet spreading amber and violet colors on the western horizon.
The room was too quiet.
No, it was too loud: the scratch of pencil on paper; the whine of the fluorescent lights above; the ticking clock—mocking me for wasting the first two minutes of the exam. Around me, my classmates hunched over their row of desks, hands poised over the bubbled answers. Occasionally someone’s cough would pepper the din at the back of the testing hall. Hands clammy against my pencil, I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to reread the first question—an essay prompt, something about Taiwanese historical diaspora.
Diaspora, I repeated. Okay. I know this. I should know this.
The soft rustle of pages turning from the row behind me only amplified the deafening silence. Everyone else was moving forward.
Think. Think. I studied this. Wait. No, I skimmed. God, why did I skim? I blanked. I can’t do this.
Nerves raced through me: my spine hunching desperately, my palms slick with sweat, and my teeth biting down on my lips. A soundless sigh escaped my mouth. I glanced at the clock again. I lost three minutes. Each tick was a reminder that I was falling behind. Panic clawed at me.
I furrowed my brows as if that would help me. Focusing on my thumping heart, I closed my eyes for a second. And tried to find the quiet of my mind. I did. I found it—his voice.
The memory hit me.
“You don’t wanna burn out before the big day, right?”
Hua-Biao dragged me back to the river park last weekend, both of us groaning at the thought of more bu-xi-ban classes. Only a few days before the dreaded examination. In spite of myself, I laughed, the sound tumbling down the river.
When the laughter subsided, he said somberly: “I plan on going to school in America. Uh, the U.S., I mean.”
By the way he paled, I knew his indifferent facade would be challenged in California.
He scuffed his shoe against the dock, avoiding my gaze like it was something dangerous.
“My mama wanted to study there when she was my age, but instead she chose to stay in Taiwan. She didn’t know when the next time would be when she could come back. But with me,” —he went back to fiddling with his backpack straps, the only sign of nervousness I had ever seen in him—“it’s different.” He looked down at his hands, his fingernails blanching white from the tight grip on the wooden deck railing. My smile froze in place. A mask I couldn’t hold steady.
Baba never dreamed of leaving Taiwan. For him, there was always a certainty in his place in this world, an anchor he never thought to question. I understood Baba. But I also understood Hua-Biao. I knew my family had no plans to leave Taiwan for now, but deep down, a part of me longed to leap into another world, daring to take that risk.
Though the thought of going on without Hua-Biao hurt, I knew I had to let him go. He would have his adventures, and I would have mine. Wǒ de. As his friend, it was all I could do.
“Well, this is your chance.” I chose my words carefully. You’ve got what it takes. And hey, you can always come visit in the summers. Why not give this one a shot?” To my surprise, my voice didn’t falter, didn’t crack, not betraying just how much I’d miss him.
I glanced out at the waters, calm and gentle, tethering to the edges of a fisherman’s boat rocking back and forth.
Then my gaze drifted further, beyond the rolling edges of the distant, green mountainsides framing the horizon like a window to another world—one both Hua-Biao and I would grow up to live in.
The river, the park, and the memory faded, but his voice stayed, echoing in my mind: “You’re right. The moment won’t wait. You can still be here, now.”
I relaxed, the pressure lifting.
Pressing my 2B pencil on the sheet, I began with the first letter. The first word. The first sentence. Each broadening with every heartbeat and thought. And everything else will follow, his voice finished.
The scribbling motion was soothing, grounding. It was the rhythm of something I knew well, something familiar. The rustles of my classmates, the quiet scrape of lead on paper, and the walls of the room shrank away to something smaller, more manageable, no longer closing in on me.
The exam score lay on the coffee table, a constellation of numbers. Beside it, the high school registration forms: rows and columns stretching into the future. My future. I sat there, pen hovering.
What’s the point? I sighed. Hua-Biao wouldn’t even be at the same school. Down the street, Hua-Biao was packing up for his flight to America. It would be the last time I’d see him in years.
“Don’t worry about the future.” Baba stepped into the living room behind the pharmacy, wiping his hands on an old towel. The scent of alcohol and chrysanthemum clinging to his sleeves. He’d been cleaning the shelves again.
I offered a weak smile, though it did not reach my eyes. I guessed he thought I was distracted about school—though really, it was more about Hua-Biao. I let him think that.
Baba lowered himself slowly to a seat at my side, the leather couch sighing under his weight.
He held my gaze for a moment before speaking, “Take it one step at a time. Everything will come together.”
The words were meant to soothe. They did, almost. But in the way his eyes forked at the corners and the tension pulling at his temple, I saw something else. So much gray, I mused. So many wrinkles.
Suddenly, he coughed into his hand, a hoarse sound. I’m struck by the hacking sound.
Has he always been so . . . old? The Mandarin word, lao, sounded strange in my head as if it was something foreign, but really, I hadn’t really seen it until now. I watched him: Watched his body shake with the fit; watched his hand pressed against his mouth to stifle the jagged gasps; watched him wince at the pain not just from the cough—but from the effort to conceal it.
My eyes burned.
By the way his face blurred—not because he moved, but because of the unshed tears against my eyes.
He waved a hand in the air, trying to sweep away the worry in the stretching silence. “What does your heart say?”
Wǒ de xīn. Heart of mine. Wǒ de. Mine.
A long time ago, it would’ve spoken so easily; its voice would’ve leapt without doubt. But now, its voice was tangled in everything I hadn’t said out loud. “Wo. . .wo bu que ding,” I stammered. Uncertainty swelled within my chest, trembling at the edges. Each breath threatened to become a sob. I don’t know.
Baba’s almond-shaped eyes softened. “You don’t have to be.”
They flitted across my face with the love from someone who had seen me find myself for such a long time and had known somewhere in that time, I had grown up. “It takes some faith for the bigger picture to fall in place.”
My heart skipped a beat.
I already knew—even when I was only fifteen years old—that there would always be days ahead when I would instantly be transported back to this moment, to the pharmacy with Baba. To my home.
About three years later from that day, at my high school graduation, I would stand by the Tamsui River. I would hear Baba’s words again as each wave seemed to tremble with the last of the day’s sun. In that golden hour, the river was kissed by the sunset’s broad amber light.
Each curling wave caught the sunlight on the water, bending it into arcs of gold and tossing it all back into the sky. And despite the shifting, crinkling ribbons of color, it would stare back unwaveringly into my eyes, its glint never trembling, at wǒ de—just like when Baba’s heart met mine.
On graduation day, I went back.
I went to the riverside. The sky hung low, muted by a lid of gray clouds. A concrete slab pressed down on the soft percussion of rain pattering my umbrella. I hadn’t meant to stop.
I had just graduated from high school and was passing by the dock on the way home from New Taipei Zhuwei Senior High. I was already thinking about college. My new life.
But I stopped.
Puddles began to pool around my drenched sneakers, their miniature neon mirrors reflecting the signs of a new restaurant chain—where the old a-gei stall used to be—its bright lights flickering like memories, distant and already fading.
Frustrated, I kicked at a pebble by my foot. It skittered down the dock. I bent over the railing to see ripples spinning out in the rain until the rock disappeared into the gray, distorted waves of the river.
Then, slowly, the water stilled. And still, my heart held on.
Because even after he left, and even after I had already told myself a hundred times that we would never meet again, my heart refused to let our memories—those from four years back in junior year—sink into stillness, to be swept away by time. They stirred just beneath the surface, unwilling to settle.
Although our futures walked down different roads, him in the U.S. and me in Taiwan, I wouldn’t let go.
So, I came back. To where I last saw him.
Last year.
Last year, he did come back.
Before I knew it, it would be the last time I ever saw Hua-Biao again. It felt impossible.
I was standing by the dock railing, just like I would again after high school graduation in a year’s time. The river would keep throwing foam at the rocks below restlessly, just like it had four years ago. The breeze would keep rolling off the waters. I swear I felt the wind stop.
He was strolling down the riverside park, hands stuffed in his pockets. The world held its breath as he walked in the direction towards me. I knew I did.
At the sound of footfalls—sure, but heavier though—different this time. Older. The flash of surprise once he looked up, once he saw me, was fleeting, overtaken by a few unnerving seconds of silence while he squinted like he needed glasses. Probably from the eye strain he got from reading in his tenth grade. But then, his lips curved into that smile, the same one that hadn’t changed since we graduated from junior high all those years ago.
“Ming-Xuan!” He waved. I waved back.
The dipping sun made the sky fall in shades of hazy purple. The river shimmered with it and glowed in ever-changing hues of blue.
Four years was yesterday, and yesterday was just this morning, yet morning seemed only light-years away.
All these years, whenever I thought of Hua-Biao, I would think of two things. Either the time he fell half-asleep on the bus, his head tilting against the window in that carefree way of his. Or the way he leaned on the railing by the river, looking out. That day, we had gotten back to the habit of quietness as we caught up on each other’s lives.
The American school calendar gave him an early winter break—it’s called Christmas, he told me that day—to visit his family around here, while I was finishing up my first semester in senior high school.
“So . . . um,” I stumbled over my words, trying for something light, something easy. For both of us. “How does it feel being back home?”
He didn’t answer at first. Instead he stayed quiet. His eyes wandered around us: over the narrow streets, the river, the shuttered shops, and the trees that clung stubbornly to the few brittle leaves they had left against the cold, sweeping wind.
He breathed in, then sighed into the howling wind, his breath caught in short-lived fumes from the chilly winter air, and the breeze, ever mischievous, would paw at his unkempt hair, tangling it like the thoughts he refused to untangle. And, like always, think that there’s nothing more in the world that could offer him for his time. I wondered what else he had breathed out over the years and lost to the wind. Finally, his eyes traced back to mine. Held mine.
When he spoke, it was a whisper: “Everything looks smaller than I remembered.”
There was no telling what filled the gaps between those words. Regret? Shame? Or just the quiet ache of someone realizing that the world he loved didn’t wait for him to return.
But I was the one who never left. And even I could tell—something or someone had changed. An invisible tide had gone out.
Maybe it was everything.
And for a moment, just a moment, he’d forget about the weight of time. As though he was trying to shake off the years slipping by like water. The times crossed—and uncrossed.
But then, he’d remember.
He’d pause—his eyes turning skyward, catching the last glint of sunlight for maybe a second longer, as if he was trying to hold the sun, just for a heartbeat, before it escaped into the night. And just before he would turn to head back to the States tomorrow, to everything he dreamed of left unfinished there, I’d remember:
He’d linger, standing there as Tamsui, the place in our hearts, began to glitter below, a constellation on the water. The lights winking faintly down there like the stars above our heads.
A broader reflection of the blue skies above and below. And ahead. Then he’d turn to me, his gaze meeting mine—steady, unflinching, like the way he watched a waning sunset pull away from the horizon with his heart poured into it—the kind that fills you with everything you’d ever need without asking more of it, no longer wondering how much longer the light would last the same, but finally knowing that it had always been meant to fade or change.
And while knowing that, he would flash the same dimpled grin at me, part his lips, open his mouth, his voice soft, and tell me to hold mine. Wǒ de.
Alice Kuok was born and raised in Taiwan. She lives in Taipei and is a current eighth grader. In 2024, her writing was recognized by TaiwaneseAmerican.org, where she was a finalist in the middle school category. When she isn’t writing, she can be found wandering around Tamsui Old Street with her family, avoiding the humid outdoors in the summer, or fending off scratches from her two loving cats.
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