Say it in Red | Episode 30: A Summer's End - Hong Kong 1986

Say It In Red

Even in the last week of August, sometimes the summer feels like it'll never end. The warm breeze slipping through the screen door at night, the buzz of car engines and cicadas, and the flood of light that pours across the streets after sundown... Even on its very last day, summer can feel eternal.
This week, Sara and Runa visit the disco, tour the city, and experience romance in the 80's in A Summer's End - Hong Kong 1986! Join us as we follow Michelle, a 23-year-old office worker living with her mother in Hong Kong (and as the game's title implies, we're right at the start of August in 1986). Michelle lost her father when she was still in school and since then, she's become more studious, more serious, more dedicated to her work and more focused on providing for her mother and advancing her career. A single accident causes her to break her new heels on the way to work one morning, though, and this threatens to throw off the rest of her entire day - Michelle swears it's caused her usual 0.01% text entry error rate to more than triple. After suffering through the entire day wearing convenience store flip flops that clash horribly with her 80's business blazer and plaid skirt, she takes her boss's recommendation and heads across the city to find a cobbler. That's where she meets Sam, and that's where Michelle's entire life, her steady routine of going in to work each day and returning home every evening gets disrupted. Sam is gorgeous. Sam looks handsome in a t-shirt and overalls and stunning in a jacket and mini-skirt. Sam invites Michelle out without the slightest hesitation in her voice. Michelle keeps swearing that the next time she sees Sam, it will be the last time the two of them ever have to speak... but each time, she ends up spending more and more time at Sam's side, in her shop, beside her at a disco club, in her apartment, and eventually in her bed. What is it that Michelle wants, truly? What choice will she make, when faced with the prospect of life with Sam and the threat of losing the stability in her life? At the end of the summer when Hong Kong is as vibrant as ever and political turmoil looms the city, Michelle and Sam watch the stars and consider what it would mean to have a future together.
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Content Warnings for this Episode:
Discussions of homophobia and misogyny as explored in the text
Discussion of Misogyny, Suicide, and death by disease in our summary of the 1935 silent film, New Women: 00:51:00-1:00:00