1 CHAPTER – 1 (THE BEGINNING)

"If it was not Jian Yao but Hua Mu then would I have the chance to be with you, Lin Jue?

At this moment rain falls, to let the rainbow show up,

I have died once but then revived, to get an unrequited love?"

"Jian Yao… I have never loved you. Even if you were named Hua Mu, I would never fall for you. Because I did not fall for the name but the heart. I am letting you go for the sake of our old friendship."

"Friendship? Have you ever thought of me as a friend? You have always been on your guard around me. You think I don't know that?! You have only regarded me as your enemy!"

He didn't argue, "Whatever you think… hope we will never meet again. If I see you again I might kill you."

Lin Jue left and Jian Yao became alone, left and abandoned.

Her heart was broken. She could not understand why he loved that women so much when she was perfect in every way than her. Or being perfect was the fault in itself, she wondered.

When Hua Mu recovered from the injuries that Jian Yao caused, she decides to meet Jian Yao to mend their friendship. Lin Jue tried to stop her in case she gets hurt by Jian Yao again. But Hua Mu did not listen to him and went to the Northwest Territories.

Jian Yao used to live there.

But she did not find her there. She asked others, nobody knew where she went.

Later she and Lin Jue got married as they loved each other. They lived happily ever after.

THE END

Qing Le stopped typing and pressed the option 'SUBMIT YOUR STORY'.

She kept her back leaning against the wooden chair. Her amber eyes were fixed on the laptops screen waiting for something eagerly.

'THE CHAPTER IS SUBMITTED SUCCESSFULLY' – words appeared on the screen.

"Finally! It's completed," she mumbled while chewing the bread.

After fetching hot water from the kitchen, she went back to the laptops screen once again and scrolled down the comments from the chapter she had submitted a while ago.

She furrowed her eyebrows and went back to edit the chapter.

"What to do? How to edit these once again?" she sighed.

In the comment section she saw most of the readers were complaining about the ending. They were not satisfied with this. She also thought the same herself after revising the whole story in short. She got up from her seat and walked to the window that was in the opposite side of the table, she had been working on.

The sunlight didn't reach to her room through the window as there was another tall building covering her apartment. Which was why she had no option but to keep the light on from day to night. She wanted to move from that shabby apartment to another good place. But as she wasn't able to earn much just by writing novels, she gave up looking for accommodations. Instead she spend most of her times in creating the fictional character's destiny. After all she couldn't rewrite her destiny.

She came from a broken family. When her parents got divorced she was only twelve. She grew up with his father. She had no idea where her mother had gone, what she was doing.

She often wondered why they got divorced. Can't they stay together like any other families?

It's been two years she has been living on her own. Her father went abroad for business tour two years ago. At that time she was seventeen. She expected him to return in a few months. But he didn't return. Instead he sent a message to her saying he would settle there. There he married a Spanish women. He used to send her money every month. But after a few months he stopped sending money and no longer contacted her. Just like that after five years, she was abandoned once again. She had nothing to do but to depend on herself. She didn't knew much about her father's relatives, as her father never mentioned them to her. She only knew her aunt, Jennifer Frost, her mother's friend. She was an American, stayed in China because of the job. But after her parent's divorce, Jennifer no longer contacted her. So she also couldn't contact her.

Unlike other days, it was quite cool and breezy morning. As she leaned over, a strong gust of wind blew against her face and her short brown hair that reached the slender neck danced in the wind.

She thought, 'What if Jian Yao, Lin Jue and Hua Mu existed in real life, if my story came in life, would they end up like the one I made up? Or they would have a better ending than that. I really want to know…'

Realizing staying like this won't do, she sat back and turned on the phone and messages and calls started to come at the speed of storm. She forgot she had not checked the phone since last night. Most of the messages were from her college. They had a test a week ago.

'It seems the results are out… I really wish test didn't exist! How annoying.'

She scrolled down the messages and tapped on the one which was from the college. She read out loudly and then threw the phone at the corner of the bed.

"Damn! I scored the lowest in the class! Are you kidding me? I did answer sixty out of hundred and all of them were correct. How am I the last one in the list?!"

Suddenly thunder struck, a tremendous boom that made her whole body tremble. She checked the time. It was 11:38.

'What happened to the weather? The forecast didn't say anything about a storm. It's really weird,' she thought.

She hurriedly closed her laptop and grabbed the phone then turned it off.

The curtains blew away from the windows. A cold gust of air hit her face. Somewhere a door slammed, making her heart leap in her chest. It was from outside. Another thunder struck, this time it was so loud that she had to cover her ears. The light in her room flickered off and on. Off and on. Then she turned off. The room was plunged in darkness. She was afraid of darkness the most. Actually she hated it.

_____________________________________

The day her parents got divorced, she was alone in the two-story house. Her father went out to drink and her mother left with her friend, Jennifer.

Before leaving her mother glanced at her. At that time her mother's face was calm, gentle and happy. She put a gentle hand on Qing Le's shoulder. "… Take care of yourself. I can't ask you to come along. From now onwards I will live a happy life. You should also live your fullest. Remember – 'LIFE GOES ON, WHETHER YOU CHOSE TO MOVE ON AND UNLOCK THE UNKNOWN OR STAY BEHIND, LOCKED IN THE PAST. IT'S LIKE A BOOK AND YOU'LL NEVER KNOW WHAT'S THERE IN THE NEXT UNTIL YOU FLIP THE PAGE'."

Qing Le stared at her mother blankly, not getting any of her words. She had some questions like, 'Why life is a book?'

Her mother's voice was gentle and warm. She twisted her honey brown hair into a bun. Her sapphire blue large eyes were bright. She bend down and stared at her daughter. "You are pretty… except for those amber eyes. You would have been prettier if you had blue eyes like mine…" she sighed with disappointment. Then she stood up and brushed down her black leather skirt.

"Mama where are you going? Don't leave!" the twelve years old girl cried out as her mother was leaving with a purple luggage and a white handy bag. Her pigtails danced with each step.

SLAM!

"Mama! Don't… sobs… sobs..." she flopped down on the floor. There were tears on her face and her breathing was shallow and ragged. Wiping tears from her swollen eyes with her hand, she failed to suppress a sob.

She stood up and went back to her dark room. She turned the switch on but the light went out. She didn't know whom to ask for help. Her father was also out. She curled up on her bed and cried herself to sleep.

She wondered if having amber eyes was the fault and the reason of their divorce. Sometimes she went to the kitchen to fetch a knife, the sharpest one, to get the eyeball out. But she wasn't courageous enough to do that and ended up crying. When she realized her mother wasn't coming back anymore she tried her best to behave. After all she can't be abandoned again by her father. Her father spend most of his time in working. So she stayed alone at home and whenever the light went out she wrapped herself in a big blanket and curled up on the bed. And hoped for his father to come earlier so that she wouldn't have to stay in the darkness.

TIME PASSES BUT PAIN TURNS INTO 'MEMORIES'.

Whenever the power went out, the bad memories pricked her mind again and again.

________________________________

She wrapped herself in the blanket on the bed and waited for the storm to blow over.

Little did she know it was just the beginning.