2022年8月11日 星期四

A tale of Chai and Tyler

Stories usually starts from once upon a time. Ok, so once upon a time there were two brothers who lived in the same abbey but as time went by the younger brother, Chai, grew stronger and expelled the elder brother, Tyler, to leave the compound onto a hut at the fringe of the abbey. Since then Chai and Tyler were strangers to each other for decades. Chai owned all the properties in the abbey so his living was getting better and better while Tyler was confined in his small hut so he could barely make ends meet. Yet Chai, from time to time, sent his henchmen to threaten Tyler because the latter tried to get his hut out of the control from his younger brother. Chai saw Tyler's movement as a stealing of his property so he kept threatening his elder brother that he would reclaim the hut or in the last resort to smash the hut if Tyler dares to claim the hut's ownership. Their confrontation lasted for decades and the tension kept on.

On the other hand, amid the brothers' struggle their rival neighbour, Sam, was watching opportunistically trying to intervene into the affair for a profit so he teamed up with Tyler so that he had the excuse to step in the siblicide. Under the shear pressure from his younger brother, Tyler had no alternative but to align with Sam whose plan was to stir up the confrontation and if Chai does send his henchmen into Tyler's hut then he would back Tyler up to fight with Chai. Sam's idea was to drain Chai's resources through a prolonged fight to eventually take down this rival.

Chai realized Sam's plan so he has been unhappy on Tyler's mingling with this rivalry under his nose. He repeatedly warned the two from further interaction. Chai also warned Sam not to visit Tyler's hut as he saw such move as a challenge of trepassing on his abbey. However, in order to lure Chai to fall into a fight with Tyler, Sam kept doing nuisances and till one day, a servant of Sam climbed over the fence of Tyler's hut at night and pissed over there. Chai bursted into furious anger and blamed Tyler on his failure in safeguarding the fence as well as Sam's trepassing. Despite in rage, Chai condemned Sam's behaviour but all he did over Sam was limited to condemnation only. However, to punish his elder brother, Chai sent henchmen to smash the fence of Tyler's hut. 

The above story was found in a long lost broken manuscript so no one knows what happened next. Because of the open ending, some readers find it interesting in speculating how the author would complete the story. However, most readers puzzle on why Chai would react in a rather unsensible way that Sam was indeed the culprit of the incident but he remained unscraped. Despite of the prior serious warning but when things did happen, all those warnings just sounded more bark than bite. From Sam's point of view, it was nothing but a big slam on Chai's face in respond to his serious warning. On the other hand, poor Tyler was the scapegoat. The author did not reveal whether Sam's servant was a solicited trepass or not but the point is that it seems even if it was an unsolicited one Tyler was unable to say no to Sam. No matter what, Tyler's fence was smashed by Chai's henchmen anyway after the incident. Poor Tyler!