虽然我们认识的时间不久，不过你总会面带微笑照顾你身边的人。如今你走了，虽然你尸骨未寒，我们会尽量为你把后事办好。

小英 is a friend of mine, she has left us, and in very sad circumstances, and I shall attempt to tell her story here.

I was introduced to 小英 about 2 years ago. She was working as a singer in a hang flower joint. I was never a big hanger, in fact, the amount of flowers I hung for her is miniscule. But she has always greeted me with a smile and spent time talking to me when I was there. I was told that she was also always the one to do the housework in her company hostel. The one to buy household necessities. She always put in 100% effort into her work and her employer was very pleased with her, even if she didn't meet her quota. Unfortunately, due to her not being able to meet her quota, she got to leave the joint about 1 month into the job and go back to China. She still keep in contact with me even after she's back in China, which is not that common with the other singers I've met.

However, 1 day, she didn't respond to me any more. She must have moved on in life I thought, found a new boyfriend or something. Nevertheless, I still message her once in awhile to see if she will answer me again. I know a friend of her, 小呗, who is working in Singapore as a singer now. 2 weeks ago, I thought to ask 小呗 how is 小英 doing. I didn't get to do it and the friend went back to China on leave. Apparently, 小呗 also lost contact with 小英 some time back. But last year, they managed to find each other again, only to lose contact another time later in the year. This time 小呗 met up with a mutual friend of 小英 and asked the friend about her. The story the friend told her is devastating.

小英 was married to a psycho before I met her. The reason she came to Singapore that time was to get away from him. When she went back, she was staying with her parents. Sometime last October, her husband went to her parent's place while her dad is away with a hammer. She was beaten to death, and her mom is in the hospital since then in a coma state. After beating her to death, he jumped out a window to his death. That's not all. Her body is still in the morgue. Naked. It's been almost 1 year, and her family has not come to collect her body for cremation and burial. And worse, they didn't even bother to clothe her. When I hear this, I was thinking, maybe the mom's hospitalization fee is taking too much of a toll on the family's finance, and they have no choice but to ditch 小英。 Even though this is deplorable, I can still sympathize with them. But then, I asked myself, how about the clothes? Are they too poor to even buy a few pieces of cloth for her? Even if that's true, I am sure she will still have some clothes in the house that they can use. Why aren't they even making this effort to cloth her?

After hearing all these, a few of us decided that we want to do something for her. We pooled some money and gave it to that mutual friend. She had always wanted to do something for 小英 but she do not have the money. At first I was having my doubts on the trustworthiness of this friend, but I don't have any other choice as 小呗 say she can't do it, in the end she turned out ok. We couldn't do anything about the cremation, as that require either government intervention or approval from the family, so we settle for just buying some clothes for her. After this is done, the mutual friend was so frustrated dealing with the family over this that she said she's washing her hands off this already. I heard that when the family heard that some of 小英's friend is chipping in money to help them, they keep asking how much will they get, instead of what we are doing for her.

Show 小英's body after we clothed her

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This is 小英's body after we clothed her.

Now I have a thought. The morgue must have wanted to get rid of her. Keeping her body there is racking up a bill of ￥60000 already. Her family are not doing anything, so they have no way of collecting the money. Keeping her longer will increase their cost. I thought that if we go talk to them, there just might be a creative way to send her for cremation and no one gets into trouble. But if we are to do that, that means we have to find a place to keep her ashes, and probably per her a visit regularly to tend to her. This is supposed to be done by her family, and are we ready to take up that responsibility? Do we have enough funds to do that? So the thing to do now is to talk to the morgue, then we can decide on a course of action. But none of us can go talk to the morgue. Poor 小英。

Update: I just talked to a friend about this. He told me that the psycho's family offered to 小英's family ￥30000, back when there's no ￥60000 bill, for her cremation. It was rejected. We suspect that it's because they wanted more. If we are to somehow go behind their back and settle with the morgue for her cremation now, we don't know what kind of trouble her family can cause us. So I guess that's it. Poor 小英。