Traveling on the highways and byways that day, I lost my ear.

    Tires rolled on the scorching road, the everlasting laughters filling the bus. It was a perfectly fine day. It came undetected.

    A kangaroo twice as big as a normal one jumped into our path, forcing us to stop. Someone has to tell that gentleman to get out of our way, and that’s me.

    Just as I was a few steps away from him, I fell, right under the gentleman’s feet. I lifted my head, every single hair on its leg revealed clearly in my sight, and the next thing I saw, oops, a hoof.

    I spent 16 years of my life without giving much thought to my ears. In retrospect, they were a lovely pair. When I lost one I could not help but notice that it was impossible to re-create it, but hey, at least I had my share of symmetry. But there was one thing I didn’t expect — I could still hear.

    Not that it meant physically sound waves entering my auditory canal, but my brain still heard things. When I looked others in the eyes, sounds couldn’t help but play automatically in my head.

    One day when I was lying in my sickbed, staring into the eyes of a wounded person that seemed to have just come from a fight scene, a sound rang in my head, “I am going to take revenge...revenge.” Another day I saw an old man sitting on a park bench with an elusory glitter on his face, and “time for me to pass away...” echoed in my head.

    What is wrong with me, I thought, trying not to cry out in distress.

    I could’t hear, but I could hear.

    Life went on, miserably though. I could never forget the weird look in others’ eyes, the whispering scenes and the sarcastic voices in my head. I tried to ignore the nonsense, but my lost ear had even made me start to think that I was incomplete.

    It was killing me. That unknown power drove me to go back on that highway, to the place I became incomplete. With the foresight that I might return empty-handed, I went back on the journey alone.

    One plastic trumpet, one rabbit ear, abandoned solo cups, another trumpet...among the abundant resources scattered all over the road, there was everything but my left ear. I dug up almost one-fourth of the road, rummaged around all the bushes, time wasted.

    Nothing, not even a single ear-like object that fits the size of my empty ear hole. Just as the sense of despair was drowning me, I saw, a khaki stray dog, with three legs walking haltingly towards the end of the road. It struggled but didn’t stop.

    This was life. Unfair, cruel, determined, but you still needed to stand up, hold tight, and fight.

    Ears? I’ve got the other four features. Annoying internal sounds? What’s so bad about listening to others’ thoughts. I have more than what I have lost.