Prologue: Is reading wrong?

[I miss missing. The feeling you get that motivates you everyday.

The drive to push you through a challenge just to see someone's face.

I miss missing. The feeling you get when in love. That someone just understands you.

Am I weird to say this, when life seems to try and rob me of everything?

The feeling of missing missing just seems to make me miss missing even more.] (<3)

Year 2017

Splat! The feeling of something slimy rolled down Qin XiuTing right side profile, followed by a chorus of laughter from a group of cheerleaders and jocks at the other side of the hallway. The guys were clapping Wu YongKang on the back for his extremely straight aim and the girls were softly chastising the boys for being mean although they are also very glad because the situations YongKang stirs up never fails to humour them.

"Giggle~ YongKang ge[1], thats so mean of you!" "Aiya, my dear junior sister, that book worm Qin XiuTing does not mind an egg, do you?" It was a rhetorical question thrown at Qin XiuTing that does not require an answer, thus, XiuTing kept quiet with her head down. "See?" Wu YongKang was happy he once again got a victory and continued teasing Qin XiuTing, "What are you reading Qin book worm? A sop romance again? Aiyo, for what? Do you have a guy you want to chase? Just give up hahaha, who will want you?"

Actually, many guys do agree that Qin XiuTing is rather pretty. She has long raven black hair, a small heart-shaped face and very fair skin. Plus, her figure was also not bad. However she was too quiet and dislikes socialising. She is instead always seen around school with a book in her hands.

What most people do not know was that Qin XiuTing and Wu YongKang were classmates in their junior years, XiuTing's mum was still with her and XiuTing was happier, friendlier and had a few friends. Most students have never seen XiuTing smile and so they do not know that her smile can brighten up a dark room, charm the birds from the trees and makes guys hearts beat like crazy. Her laughter is like musical bells.

Luckily, Wu YongKang was a guy with a lot of humour, hence he could easily make XiuTing smile and laugh. Each time he saw her beautiful smile, his heart hammered like crazy, so much that one day he could not hold back and confessed to her, asking her to be his girlfriend. Then, the 14 year old XiuTing politely rejected YongKang as she wanted to place her studies first. She did not want to ruin the relationship they already had so she propose they stay as friends, at least until studies are over.

Now, that was Wu YongKang first time getting rejected, for he was rather good looking too, since a young age, and had many girls swoon over him. He did not understand why Qin XiuTing is so adamant about her studies and why she did not want to be with him. To him, it was a major knife to his heart, pride and ego.

From then on, Wu YongKang was never friendly with Qin XiuTing anymore. Any moment he get, he intended to make XiuTing life a living hell, as he felt that was what he was made to go through when XiuTing rejected him. He picked on her, ganged up with others to bully her. And when her mum ran away, he was the one to spread the news and made everyone stay away from her.

It was funny how her mum ran away not long after YongKang started treating her badly and she started to drift away from her handful of friends, instead spending her time in the library finding solace within books. Her mum and her were very close and the news of her running away was a huge blow to her. Slowly, she became detached from her schoolmates.

But Qin XiuTing never blamed Wu YongKang and always forgave all his bullying as she feels she is at fault for resulting into YongKang behaving this way. As the saying goes: 'a palm cannot make a loud clap'[2]. Thus, she always kept quiet when he began his bullying. Always never provided any resistance, in the hopes that he would soon be bored of doing all these and be back to the way he was, back to being her friend, the happy one who could make her laugh.

All those times, his bullying had been verbal. However, this time Wu YongKang threw a rotten egg at her! Walking up to her, he snatched the book Qin XiuTing was reading from her hands. "Hear this everyone, Full Marks Hidden Marriage: Pick Up A Son, Get A Free Husband! What a totally romantic title, XiuTing! Do you not think this is far too childish? To read such disgusting fantasy romance?".

Following that, Wu YongKang ripped her book into half. Utterly shocked, Qin XiuTing stared at Wu YongKang for a good five seconds with wide opened eyes and her mouth perfectly shaped into a O. Realisation hits and XiuTing snatched back her destroyed book and ran away from the crowd, sobbing. All this made YongKang feel a little bad as he felt he had taken things too far but what done is done, theres no rewinding time.

Putting on a fake smug smile, Wu YongKang turned back to the crowd with his hands up in a stance showing he had no idea what just happened and said, "come, the bell is going to ring soon, lets get to class." With that sentence, everything was forgotten and everyone rushed to be on time for lessons. Not one student noticed Qin XiuTing was missing in class later on.

Meanwhile, Qin XiuTing had ran all the way to the toilet in the furthest end of school, locked herself in a dark cubicle and started crying. That toilet cubicle was built to accommodate handicapped students and hence there is a sink in that cubicle too. Turning on the water tap, she furiously washed her faced and hair, trying her best to scrubbed out the egg and what Wu YongKang had done. She had believe he will turn good, but he had hurt her tremendously so.

Qin XiuTing cried in the cubicle alone for an hour. When she came out, her face was set into a neutral expression and her aura had changed from shy and quiet to cold and unapproachable.

It is only unfortunate that after graduating from this school, Wu YongKang and Qin XiuTing will still have to meet and be schoolmates for their next school...

________________________

To Note:

The year of this prologue is the last year of their secondary school and so all the final year students are mostly 16 year olds. The next chapter and story onwards will mostly be accordingly by years, starting from the present year 2018, their first year into a college as 17 year olds. If there is a time jump, I will put the year at the top, no worries! :)

Meanings:

(<3) This was just a poem (riddle? word quotes?) I made when I was thinking too much (I seem to do this a lot heh heh) and could not fall asleep. Every sentence in this poem holds a lot of meaning to me so I guess it can be called as a late night thought?

[1] Translates to elder brother (哥) in Chinese. Just like for Korean girls, it is polite, and usually flirtatious to include such a greeting to an older guy's name.

[2] Directly translates to: 一个巴掌 拍不响 in Chinese which is like just a palm cannot make any noise if it does not have another palm to clap with. It loosely means that if a person is provoking you and you do not care or respond, his provokes are like empty air that makes no claims.