Every morning at 7:20, I would meet a boy outside the entrance of his housing block at Ma Tau Wai Estate, and we’d walk two kilometres to school. The boy, like me, had grown up near the colonial-era airport; he was my classmate, my neighbour and then my first boyfriend. In the soft light and sharp air of winter mornings, wearing navy blue sweaters pulled over our school uniforms, we drank warm cartons of malt Vitasoy. As we walked past the Kowloon City police station and court building, past luxury low-rises and churches and hospitals, we’d gossip about our classmates and sing Jay Chou songs. Once we were on La Salle Road, we let go of each other’s hands and stood an inch apart so that the teachers at our Christian public school wouldn’t tell us off.

He was the tallest boy in class, which felt like a win when I was fifteen, with a patch of distinctly copper-coloured hair on the left back of his head that he swore was natural. I knitted him scarves and kissed him on a bench outside his housing estate. He wrote me letters and kept a photo sticker of us in his wallet.

• Tags: Hong Kong, Issue 26, Karen Cheung