wdm_ass3

Glasses were quickly bedewed and the sudden rain made the dusk sky into strange yellow-bronze. Umbrella-less passers-by were running on the pedestrian outside the window with sound of stepping into water everywhere. Chen picked up her backpack filled with reference books, exercise papers and question brochures. The countdown timer on the other side of wall said, “16 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes and 5 seconds left before NCEE.” She dragged her steps, bowed her head.

****

“A little bit late but…”“Give me that first?” Chen sighed without sound. She raised up her left hand slowly and lowly, handing out the photo. Shiny side of the photo paper, under the burning sunset sky dyed into golden bronze color by the rainy clouds quickly piling up from the other end of horizon, scored her vision with a bright glisten. Chen closed her eyes unconsciously.

****

“When it starts to rain, everything gets better.” What can match up to the echo they found in each other on that rainy night, failed to get tickets to the movie they both intended to see and ended up sharing songs through same set of earphones outside the movie theatre under the eave of a shabby newsstand? What can substitute the messages writing “look, raining outside ;)” when one of them failed on everything?

****

Chen turned around with hands crossed behind her back. The boy standing in front of her smiled with a strange, barely hidden rapture, eyes stuck on the photo in her hand.

****

The cyan dado paint had already been more than half faded, filling up the wall surface with mysterious patterns. Chen opened up her eyes, trying to stare at some point on the wall to stay calm. “So that’s all, right? …well indeed I had hoped that you can make more. You are always taking photos aren’t you? …It will be raining in a few minutes and I don’t have my umbrella with me. I am leaving now. Bye.” His warm eyes spared the last look on her, and turned to the direction of the door. Floor quaked to his footstep. The sound of his paces reverberated within the dim lobby, then dispelled by the growing rain pitter-patter outside.

****

The young Uygur man, yet actually still a boy, smiled brightly with an easy pose, surrounded by his classmates. The born beautiful arrangement of his face muscles was showed off even eye-catchingly with the smile, the stubbles on his chin added to his handsomeness. Simply give the Uygur’s figure a glance and people would know that he was absolutely stronger and bigger, physically, than other Han schoolboys and most Uygur ones. Even hating this photo and being never want to look at it the second time like Chen, she was still easily impressed by this person’s appearance. Yes indeed he is beautiful, thought Chen, but he is not that seductive, right? She just cannot understand and get over the fire in his eye when he saw the photo of this guy, together with his continuous request of asking her for taking him such a photo. What will he do after getting the photo? Going up and ask for a photo session like a little fan of him? He doesn’t even know about him!

****

The only things around is his slightly disordered breath, which she can tell he was trying his best to hold back the excitement having the photo he had been longing for half a month in hand, and the air was still dry and hot after a whole day heating by the violent sunlight. Her ears could feel the change of air pressure. She always did. She knew it was going to rain.

****

We were running along the track around the soccer court to the east of basketball courts. All sports courts were filled with students, running, screaming, bustling with the unique excitement which only appears after afternoon classes and before the night self-study: nobody was looking at us, or the whole world was looking at us. He was silent and focusing on his steps: talk while running always got us stomachache. He was several meters ahead of me and I had never caught up with him successfully, the view of his back just lead me throughout our running. The noisy world and dysphoria caused by the hot, dry weather seemed gradually muted down with the continuous repeat of our footfalls. Sweat dropped from sides of my face directly to the ground, I suddenly felt like I was running along my way to, God knows where, the world, and I was willing to continue running, moving like this if the man beside me was him. The golden sunshine dyed his short black hair into shiny yellow. I didn’t and don’t like that color, I just felt warm and not empty. Suddenly it started to rain, the sports ground were instantly filled with dissatisfaction and condemning about the damn rain running the free time. We were also caught in the rain and the only thing I can still remember is that he took of the uniform coat and covered my head with it. But of course, when a person is too focused on something, s/he will definitely miss out some crucial details.

****

He proudly aggravated the “Ri-” sound in “Ricky Martin” and tried to pronounce a perfect rhinolalia for the“-tin” but failed. I knew he always did this when saying this singer’s name because he was his favorite. But that’s not important. I quietly put the porcelain coffee cup containing steaming Caramel Latte back onto the table without giving my answer to the logogriph. I finally could put down a comma to my, experience, or say tragedy, throughout the three years passed, because I got to know about what and who he really was.

****

Things changes and happens.
It was in the only Pizzahut in town. Yes, of course very expensive at that time, but it was still amazingly crowded. He asked me out saying he had some problem with the English assignment given for that weekend. – I didn’t know why discussing several assignment questions will be arranged at a place like that, either. It was the coldest time in winter, temperature was always lower than minus 25 Celsius. I waited there until he showed up. That day sucks: I was even afraid of asking for a queuing ticket at the counter. Finally we settled down at a table in the corner of the space, waiting sheepishly for our order but not daring to catch a waitress and shout out “why our food is simply still not here yet after 1 hour after being ordered?!”. I didn’t remember what we had talked about that day, but that’s indeed when I found he’s not carrying the exercises with him: I was told not to bring them with me because he said he would. Then he took out a pen and a piece of paper, smiling unnaturally, said, “What if we have a simple logogriph?” – “Fine, go on.” I replied. “What if we have the first letter of the name Harry Potter,” “So that’s an H,” I said to myself, “the last letter of the name Michelangelo,” “An O,” “the sixth letter of the name Ricky Martin,” “…it’s M and?” “again the last letter of Michelangelo?”

****

The boy is musing while listening to me. I put the remaining half of sushi back into the box and rub off the sweat on my forehead. I am never sweating because of the sunlight nowadays: the humid, mild but stifling weather is just exactly the same as my life now. “Then what did you do?” “Of course I still treasure him until now. I don’t know when this ends, but in his last call several days ago, he has already been complaining about lack of great 1 around him and how he is now longing for a boyfriend.”

NOTE:
1) NCEE = National College Entrance Examination, the most important examination for Chinese high school students. The most common way to being admitted by common universities apart from learning art, music, acting, etc. and be admitted by professional art colleges with lower requirement on the grade of this examination.
2) Uygur = a nation in China. People of this nation looks much like Europeans, which means very different from Han people. Uygur people, in ancient times, are rather barbarian and live nomandic life, chansing water sources and feeds for their livestock. This built them a strong, wild and free national character. Uygur boys/girls are usually to be considered as "handsome"/"beautiful" by Han people. And also, Uygur people are usually physically stronger and more dynamic than Han people.