Fish (English version)
My younger brother, after graduating from college, decided to pursue a PhD out of his love for biology. He would go in and out of the lab every day, and after work, he would play ping-pong with me, then we would cook dinner together. But one day, something went wrong in the lab: he turned into a fish.
When I arrived at the scene, the police informed me that they were investigating the incident, and all I could do was take my brother, now a fish, home. I saw that the fish was nearly half a meter long, and its head vaguely resembled his face. He was temporarily placed in a large fish tank, frantically swimming around in the water. Shock and sorrow hit me at the same time… I collapsed on the ground, crying and shouting, demanding justice for what had been done to my brother. However, some people injected me with some fluid. When I woke up, I was already on the couch at home, with the fish tank containing my brother placed on the table in front of me.
I sat on the couch with red eyes, staring at my brother. The enormous fish tank took up half of my room. I desperately wanted to communicate with my brother, so I started waving my hands. To my surprise, he shook his body slightly. He seemed to still remember me! My brother must have been just as shocked by what had happened, constantly swimming around. I didn’t know what he was thinking, as he couldn’t cry out, but I imagined he must have been very anxious too. After various attempts, I gradually realized that he couldn’t hear me or understand the words I wrote on paper.
The doctor told me that his brain was slowly shrinking and that I needed to constantly remind him of his past to maintain his ability to think. So every day, I stood in front of the fish tank, playing music and dancing to him. Even though he couldn’t understand my words, I would tell him about my day. I kept worrying whether my little brother was suffering in the tank, whether he was bored to death. People could move around the room, eat and chat, but he could only watch me in silence.
One day, when I came home from work, I found that the fish tank had shattered, and my brother was struggling on the floor. I quickly put him in the bathtub and cleaned up the mess. I gently stroked the fish, imagining how he had tried to escape from the tank while I was away, but had no power to change his fate. I deeply understood my brother’s misfortune. He hadn’t done anything wrong, yet he had turned into a fish—not a chicken, duck, cat, or dog, but a fish. He could only live in silence, unable to even close his eyes, with tears that could never be seen. What's more, he had no freedom. People often say they feel trapped in a small room, but once they step outside, they can see a vast sky; for him, stepping outside the fish tank meant death. In a world where he couldn’t protest or have freedom, what was the point of struggling? No one’s will is infinitely strong.
I bought a larger fish tank to make my brother more comfortable. But it was clear that he was still very dissatisfied with his fate and began a new round of rebellion: a hunger strike. Whenever I tried to gesture him in front of the tank, he would deliberately swim away, completely ignoring me. But a few days later, out of extreme hunger, he started eating again. At first, he ate when I wasn’t looking, but eventually, he stopped thinking about it too much and resumed eating whenever I fed him.
More than two months passed, and I thought it must have been an eternity for my brother. Although I greeted him every night when I came home, he responded to me less and less. One weekend, I was cleaning the glass of the fish tank when I noticed him floating lifelessly in the water, though his gills were still moving steadily. I wasn’t sure if he was dead, so I tapped him. He slightly twisted his body as a reflex, but he made no conscious response. He had become numb, as if he had stopped thinking. He no longer cared whether he was a human or a fish. He wasn’t thinking about anything. At that moment, my brother turned to a real fish.
From then on, my brother could swim and eat, but nothing else. A great sadness overwhelmed me because it felt like the only connection I had with my brother was gone. Although he was living in my room, he had become completely apathetic. I would feed him, and he would eat, but other than that he just floated around the tank aimlessly. I realized I had to release him into the river, even though it meant we would never see each other again. For my brother, being a fish was not scary anymore, but being trapped in a human world was unbearable.
The moment I poured him into the river, he seemed a bit surprised. Then he swam away quickly, as if he no longer remembered me. His large figure looked awkward in the water at first, and I could see him trying to find balance. But as he swam deeper, I gradually lost sight of him. I will always miss my dear brother and remember how he fought against his fate and ultimately surrendered—after all, what’s the point of resisting?