6 Cotton Candy

Five minutes before the bell rang, we managed to grab some breads and drinks for ourselves.

I bought a red bean bread and milk tea, while Lian-ge got himself a chocolate bar and a cream bread with a can of black coffee as his drink.

Xu Ting on the other hand had managed to force Lian-ge to treat her because of the joke we pulled on her earlier in class.

At first, she demanded me, her best friend to treat her because I was the one who teased her first. But there was no way I was gonna lose my money on her. So I utilized the greatest asset I had which was youth.

I was a year younger than both of them because I started school early. Currently, we were in our second year of high school which made Xu Ting and Lian-ge seventeen years old and as for me, I would be sixteen in winter.

So I told her that there was almost two years gap between her and me, and it was embarrassing to ask someone younger than you to treat the older one.

Xu Ting distorted face had been priceless. She had thought she got me. Well, couldn't blame her because as the time went by, they almost forgot how old I was. I wasn't especially short, although my baby face couldn't hide my age.

Thus, in the end, Lian-ge was the one who treated her to lunch. I was quite confused why she insisted Lian-ge to substitute me to buy it at first.

I meant I was the one who ought to do it and it didn't have anything to do with him. But then she told me because Lian-ge and I were basically one package. So it was the same whoever paid.

Her words got my face so red that she laughed. Lian-ge smiled at my shy reaction. I really wanted to dig a hole for myself.

However at the same time, I was beyond happy. I remembered, I couldn't stop smiling for the rest of that day. The words kept replaying in my head.

After the break, we went back to class. It was English class next and I especially loved it!

Ever since I was a kid, I had been good with language. It was as if my mind had been programmed to be especially fast in learning different languages.

I was born mix. My mom was originally from a small town in Japan called Hayama Town and she met my dad when she was a college student in Tokyo. My dad had gone there for a short exchange program.

They began dating after two years of being friends and after my mom graduated, my dad brought my mom straight to Country S and married her. With that, I was blessed with a bilingual tongue. My mom had been talking to me in Japanese ever since I was a baby while my dad instilled mandarin in me.

And as I grew up, I was told that I had a soft tongue that made me learn other language easier. Thus, beside photography and art, I had a thing for language.

I was excitedly paying attention to the teacher explanation when a small folded paper was set on my desk.

I grinned glancing at the relax back in front of me and his tousled black hair.

Without a delay, I opened the letter and saw a drawing of a bunny head with an arrow pointing to the left. Under the arrow, his familiar cursive handwriting was written in black.

'Look at the sky.'

I raised an eyebrow before turning to the window on the left.

It was a good weather today. It was especially sunny. You could see the clear blue sky. I scanned through the sky but couldn't find any bunny shape cloud. Instead, I saw a bundle of clouds in a round shape. It was detached from the big clouds.

My first thought?

"Cotton candy," I muttered.

What greeted me was a light knock on my forehead with his mechanical pencil. I pouted at him in question.

"Little glutton," he whispered back with a hint of laughter in his voice.

I stuck out my tongue at him before a smile found its way back to my lips. He smiled the same.

"Let's buy one after school," he said before turning around.

Instantly, I knew which one he meant. There was one uncle selling cotton candy in front of his small traditional dessert shop. We called him Uncle Long.

His wife took care the customers in the shop while he stood in front of the shop with his cotton candy machine creating one cloud after another.

When we were kids, Lian-ge and I often visited them to see the magic that Uncle Long would perform. He would create clouds with many kind of shapes that I wanted. I would always get away with a free cotton candy from him using my cuteness attack.

I still remembered the feeling I got when I saw my first cotton candy. It was magical, how a bundle of cloud could taste so sweet and be in any color that I wished them to be. I also recalled how it had been too big for me to hold. The cotton candy was as big as my little head.

At that moment, I marveled at the possibility of me growing big. Every time the cotton candy blocked my view, I would wonder how the world would look like when I grew up as big as the cotton candy. From that height, what would I see?

I smiled as I gazed at the sky. If I said it didn't boost my mood straight away, I would be lying. I stared at his back with a silly grin all over my face. How did I know?

A small rumpled paper knocked my head. I turned to Xu Ting.

She mouthed with a disdainful look, 'Stupid face.'

I ignored her and returned to the lovely back of my boyfriend. With a stretch of my hand, I found my fingers playing with a strand of his silky hair.

I felt the tingling in my heart, the loud erratic beating that made me feel pain around my chest.

A sweet pain that spelled, "I love you."