A hermit’s life

Yesterday a young girl from the village wandered into my lands. When I appeared suddenly before her. She looked slightly embarrassed and flushed. I asked her in the authoritative tone of a landowner why she had come all the way here….all by herself….did she not know how dangerous it is?

The girl told me, she had overheard some of the villagers talking in the kopitiam about, how the man who lives on the hill has recently turned his back on the world and has become a hermit.

Since she has never seen a hermit before. She was curious. Then the girl asked me – is it true that hermits don’t like people. I told her, that is not true at all. As when you live all by yourself in the middle of nowhere, there’s only one person to deal with all day, so you have no choice but to like yourself.

The young girl laughed, gave me a char siew pau and cycled off.

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