Goddess at Big Four

[Franklin]

Since this website will be gone this summer, around the same time Goddess and I graduate, I feel obliged to write another short novel in memory of the last semester of our school life, and the last half year's existence of Spurstalk that used to be so good and so much loved once upon a time. As you guys know, the Lunar Goddess has signed with PwC (which I'll refer to as the "P company" in my novel) and she's determined to go there working, so I'm writing this novel to record how our friendship evolved over the past year and to fathom how things will progress beyond graduation based on my imagination.



Goddess at Big Four

By Mark Franklin

-In honor of our last school memory

Chapter One

Everyone has his own unique imagination of goddess in his mind. I had been a celibate for about 26 years since I was born – not saying there hadn’t been any girls I liked or girls that liked me – actually both happened in the past two and a half decades of my lifetime, but unfortunately they never happened at the same time.

I met with this girl in our first semester of graduate school, a dim morning in November. I came from behind the stairway while she was walking towards it so we saw each other face-to-face. She wore a black coat and a pair of black-framed glasses – typical look of a female graduate student, in my opinion. Her hair was thick and long, color dark brown, and what impressed me most was the whiteness of her face – which looked so pretty and lovely I almost forgot to breathe while gazing at it. I happened to remember that she was someone from our class, but I didn’t even know her name at the time, so I just gave her a light smile in a courteous manner. To my surprise, however, she didn’t smile back to me as I expected. I kind of felt embarrassed, as you could tell, my smile was nearly frozen at the moment.

She just gawped at me with no movement of her eyes, or legs. She made me feel as if I were a childhood friend of hers whom she hadn’t seen for a long while… “I’ve seen her somewhere before?” I thought to myself, I thought hard but still couldn’t recall such a friend. I was sure as hell I hadn’t ever met her in the real life before I went to graduate school, but why did I smile to her then? Did I have such a stupid habit of smiling to all girls who look decent, or had I really seen her somewhere before, like in my dreams maybe?

I turned around and climbed up the stairway, to put an end to the embarrassment, but I could feel her eyesight were still on my back…

Thereafter, I began to pay specific attention to that girl, and learned that her name is Phoebe, from a province down south where I’ve never been. I was then sure I hadn’t ever really met her before, but why did I feel so familiar with her in the dim lobby that morning? I couldn't stop asking myself that question.

I thought that she was also paying me more attention after that morning, but our first talk didn’t come until early December. It was a computer class… our teacher assigned us group tasks, four person per group. A buddy and I had to be in the same group for sure, but we were short two. My buddy asked me to recruit two more people into our group, I wasn’t quite interesting doing this job because… Well, most of our classmates were girls and, I was kinda shy, I mean I would flush sometimes just talking with girls. So I just stood up and looked around, but couldn’t figure out what to say. I even thought at the minute my buddy asked me to do this for the only purpose of embarrassing me, to be honest, what a bastard!

It was this girl that came to my rescue. She called my name, and as I turned my eyes to the direction the sweet voice came from I immediately recognized that lovely white face…

“Hey, ah, Judy and I…” she pointed to another girl sitting right next to her, saying “are not grouped yet, so maybe we can form a group together…”

It was the first time I actually heard her voice. Oh boy, how sweet it sounded…

“Ah… OK, great… thanks…” I couldn’t even put up a complete sentence at that moment, I was just too elated that we’d got a group so my embarrassed could be ended, or for some other reason…

So we finished the task together, our four names signed in the file folder – Shawn (my buddy’s name), Frank, Judy and Phoebe.

[Franklin]

Chapter Two

We finished the task faster than other students did, so after we submitted the file we could afford a few minutes for chat in the classroom.

Phoebe was standing right next to my seat, so close that my nose even caught the scent of hers… Oh, boy, that inebriated me literally. I hadn’t caught a girl’s smell so good since my sophomore year, to tell the truth. And the weather was already rather cold in December in our city, so she was dressed in some winter clothes. How I wished it was summer! (And it would turn out to come true in about half a year).

“Frank, so… what did you major in for undergraduate years, may I ask?” Phoebe was already trying to know more about me, I though.

“I… I majored in physics. Don’t make fun of me please…” I always thought it kinda weird for a Physics major to switch to literature, to be honest.

“Wow, that is cool, Frank. So you’re good at both science and literature, rare talent.” Phoebe eulogized me with great enthusiasm, and then she continued “and it suits your name pretty well.”

My name is Mark Franklin, but one of our teachers also got the first name Mark, so people in our class chose to call me by my last name, or simply as “Frank”. Sure I knew whom she was referring to… she was referring to Benjamin Franklin – a founding father of our country who was also a scientist.

“Thanks, but… I’d rather change my name, to be honest. I even got myself a penname…”

“A penname, so you’re a writer?” She asked.

“Yes, this week I just got done writing a short novel titled Stranger in Hometown…”

“Hahaha…” she couldn’t help but laughing, “what a funny name, what’s it all about?”

Sometimes I thought it was her name “Phoebe” that suited her personality perfectly… bright, optimistic and lively, while my name “Franklin” only sounded like a pompous fool on me.

“Ah… it’s about my personal story, like an autography…” I responded.

“So, would you like to share it with us?” She said. I knew it was herself that wanted to read it. I dreamed of becoming a writer, to tell you the truth, but I knew my writing could barely match the amateur level at best. I highly recommended it to my friend Shawn, but he didn’t give a damn about it, which said a lot.

“Sure.” I agreed briskly. I began writing this novel after that morning I met her. The novel was mostly about my personal experience and it was fair to say the main goal of this novel was to make the readers know me through it. It seemed that, I always had someone on my mind while writing it and Phoebe might just be that “someone”.

So I wrote down on a small piece of paper the address of my blog page where I posted the novel, and she took note of it carefully on her cellphone.

“Ah… wait a minute…” I suddenly though of something improper, something that I had to warm her about… “There are, um… well, some erotic scenes in this novel, so maybe you should skip those parts…” I said tentatively.

She heard each and every word I just said, but didn’t give any wordy reply. She just giggled…

[Franklin]

Chapter Three

“What the heck had you just done, Mark?” The more I thought about it the more accusation I felt in my mind… “How could you let such an innocent girl read your erotic writings?”… I couldn’t stop thinking.

For the next several days I kept praying that Phoebe wouldn’t read those parts. She was a decent girl so she would probably skip those parts, I hoped so.

Then one Friday morning we had a class, my friend Shawn skipped that class so I was sitting by myself, with two empty seats on my right – until two girls came into the classroom and took those seats.

They were Judy and Phoebe, as you could predict. Phoebe sat next to me and Judy further next.

“Frank…” a familiar sweet voice called my name, it was Phoebe’s voice, which speeded up my breath and heartbeat. She said “I read your novel…”

“You… you read the whole thing?” In a trembling and apologetic voice, I somehow managed to say.

“Yes.” She nodded and said… it almost knocked me out. I felt as if she just caught me with my pants down, seriously. I tried my best to put up a wan smile on my face which had already turned red.

I had mixed feelings at the moment. I was delighted of course. Finally I got someone who read my novel from end to end, but a short while later I came to realize that it probably didn’t mean she really liked my writing, but that she liked… she liked me? Could it be possible?

I didn’t dare to think that way strongly. I didn’t dare to fall in love with anyone at the moment, to tell you the truth. I was still a student, and I grew up being a good student attending on the very best schools in our town, sure I didn’t wanna mess it up when I had only 1 or 2 years left in my school life. But a more important reason was that, I was once badly hurt by a girl whom I had a crush on during high school time. I was afraid that Phoebe was just playing around with me. I was a person who took love seriously. I mean, I’d rather be a celibate than play emotional games with the opposite sex, but if I fell in love with anyone I’d be serious as hell. Even if she disappointed me, or rebuffed me, I would not retaliate or hate her, but I’d bear all the pain on my own… and it would be a really painful process, as you could tell, it almost killed me last time, to be honest.

Phoebe and I still got to see each other in the classroom once in a while, but we rarely talked, or maybe there wasn’t anything we could talk about. It seemed, we were about to go our own separate ways.

Did I like her, did she like me? I had no answer to either question. I didn’t even quite know the feeling of liking or being liked, to be honest. It was just how things were for the next about half a year. Every time we attended the same class sitting in the same classroom, however, I would always have a hard time not peeping towards her side. Could it be sort of an indication that I had already fallen in love for her, really? I didn’t dare to think that way strongly.

And it was that day… a rainy afternoon when we were all attending a grade meeting, all students of our grade attended that meeting. I and several other students had an appointment with a boss at night, so I didn’t go home right away after the meeting was over. It was early June, the hot and rainy season, but the weather wasn’t too hot that day thanks to the rain.

While I was unlocking my bike, I sudden saw a familiar buxom body figure walking towards the library. Thank god, she didn’t notice me, so I could stare at her without feeling any guilt. I tried my best to observe every tiny movement of her body, not until that moment did I realize how exquisite it was. I hadn’t ever seen her dressed in such short skirts before, that was probably the reason why.

She didn’t look super hot or anything, but it was her extraordinary elegance that transfixed me, it really did. She was the perfect definition of natural beauty, to be honest.

As she climbed up the stairs of the library I began to see more and more of her white fleshy legs, I just stood there watching, motionlessly, until she finally disappeared at the gate… How I wished the stair walk was a bit longer, so I would be able to see even more, even something under her black skirt. Then, a sense of guilt overwhelmed me suddenly… “How could you think about that, Mark? Damn you…” I accused myself.

[Franklin]

Chapter Four

I could hardly describe my feelings of the moment. I wished she was one of the students that I was gonna go together with to meet that boss. I wished she would join us… I was afraid I probably wouldn’t see that exquisite body ever again in my lifetime.

There was one last chance, however – the summer semester. We’d have some classes to take together during summer semester, that’d be my last chance and, could it be possible that she was thinking the same? No, probably not, she probably already had a boyfriend, a smart, handsome dude about twice the size of mine (I was only 5’7). But at the very least, I thought that I would get to see her again, and maybe get to have another short talk with her again if lucky enough, and I’d be very satisfied with that. I didn’t dare to dream of anything more, to be honest.

It was the first day of summer semester and I came a bit late that day, so I had to find a seat in the front row. Yeah, most students didn’t give two craps about summer classes so they’d just sit as rear as they could. After I sat down and put my books out of my damn schoolbag, I heard the door open again and the steps of high-heeled shoes. The sounds came closer and closer to me, and finally vanished when they were likely only an arm away from me. I knew that someone came into the classroom and took a seat behind me, and I felt somewhat happy knowing someone came even later than I did. There were maybe one or two empty seats behind the row I sat in, but I didn’t sit there because… as you could tell, I didn’t wanna sit next to girls.

I tried my best, but still failed to prevent myself from taking a quick glimpse back… I thought that it could be Phoebe, and found that it indeed was her. For the remainder of the summer semester we’d mostly always sit in the same seats we took this day…

We didn’t talk to each other. I wanted to start a talk with her, but just didn’t know where to begin with. Nonetheless, I could clearly hear her talk with friends. They were sitting very close to me and I paid intensive attention to whatever she said. And more importantly, it seemed they were talking intentionally louder than normal, as if they were trying to ensure their words could be heard by me, for some reason.

I remembered one day she and Judy were talking about her boyfriend or something. “She indeed has a boyfriend… It’s unthinkable such a lovely girl as she is could still be single…” I thought to myself. I didn’t feel envious or upset, however, but just relaxed.

Then I heard they continued to talk about her boyfriend something… I heard such words like “sissy boy”, “evil woman” etc… but how could a girl refer to her boyfriend as a sissy boy, or him referring to her as “evil woman”. They had already broken up? Was she deliberately saying that aloud to stir me, to let me know that she once had a boyfriend but had already broken up with him? I could infer from their talk that her boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend to be more accurate, had treated her bad. I wanted to have a try, if that was the case, but how could I make sure I would treat her good and satisfy her? Did I really love her or was it just about sex appeal?

It had been a week or so since the semester began, we still hadn’t talked yet. Finally it was her that broke the silence…

“Frank…” She called me from behind, which I’d missed it for half a year already – her calling my name. “Are you still writing them novels?” She asked.

“No… not anymore, I’ve been writing articles instead…” I responded in a voice that was as calm as I could make it.

She nodded but didn’t say anything anymore…

What should I do then? Should I wait until she made another call, but what if she didn’t make any more calls? Why did I always wait for the girl to act? So finally, after a few minutes of deep thinking, I decided to restart the talk…

“Ah…” I turned back and said to her, “I’ve written an article which you might have some interest in though, of the romance genre, would you like to read it?”

“Sure, what’s it about though?”

“It’s about, um… platonic love, about the different love levels of the three main characters in a Chinese Wuxia novel. I’ll send it to your mailbox later tonight…” Phoebe and I were both in the clan of our class, all clan members being able to see each other’s email address, real names etc…

“Do you know who I am?” She asked me, wittily… Of course she knew that I knew who she was. She just asked me anyway, on purpose.

I just nodded vehemently, as a response. She didn’t say anything either, but just giggled.

[Franklin]

Chapter Five

For the next a few days we finally got some topic to talk about. We talked about that Wuxia novel by Louis Cha and several other novels by him as well. And I could tell she felt very glad to talk with me, like every time the class was over I could hear her humming some song. Did she really like me? What could I do to confirm it?

Then it came that day… Rhea came here to have a word with me, she told me that our professor (Rhea and I were studying under the same professor) asked us to see him at 10am that morning, which meant we’d have to leave the class halfway. But before Rhea and I were gone, Phoebe began to put away her books and stood up to leave… Phoebe knew I would have to go before 10am, and I guessed she didn’t want to see me going away with another girl so she chose to get away beforehand. And as you could predict, she didn't look too happen when she left. I had a quick glance back and noticed that her face looked rather sad as if she was about to cry.

So, Phoebe went away, so did my soul. Rhea and I came downstairs to see our professor, and I was so half-minded I didn’t get a lick of what he said to us. He even reprimanded me severely for my blitheness, but that was the least I cared. I just wanted to know how Phoebe felt. Did she feel really upset? Would she come back next day to talk to me again?

Yes, she did come back the next day and we still talked to each other. God, I knew she was such a kind girl who wouldn’t mind such trivial issues. But here came another serious question to me… Phoebe’s birthday was just a few days away, but what kind of gift could I buy for her? I was just a brokeass student who couldn’t afford any impressive gift. Should I just send her a card, with a few lines of wishes written on it? That sounded kinda um… childish, to be honest.

There’s no gift that matches what you make for her by yourself. So finally I decided to make the gift by myself. Thank god I had got some literature talent in me, especially the talent of poem composing, so I chose to write a short poem for her birthday.

It was a Scarlett song that I derived the poem from, say, I wrote the poem based on the tune and rhyme of that song. It was only my first time to try writing a poem in English, to tell you the truth, so it supposedly took me a whole lot of time to get it done, about two and a half nights in total. Here was the poem:

The Lunar Goddess
Sky is cold, air so quiet
being alone the lonely night
when the dark has dimmed my way home
you give me the soft light
Your face lovely and white
smooth pearl like
but why always hide part behind long hair
only come full one month a time
Lend me a pair of wings
so I can fly
toward where you at, while I still have breath
you're a goddess in my eyes
gazing at buxom outline
for a million years
you're full of wonders
Heat my soul, fill my life

At first, I just intended to write this poem as a gift for her birthday, and a method of thanking her for reading and approving of my novels. But… poems are typical expressive texts, and my true feelings were naturally delivered through the lines. I came to realize that it was more than just gratitude. I also shared the poem with Reck - a friend of mine from New York, he told me that I must really like this girl to call her goddess, and he was damn right.

This poem was really tricky though, like, Reck thought it was dedicated to Scarlett Johansson at first because I used to be a die-hard Scarlett fan, and Phoebe knew it too and thought that way too. But I bet after reading it a few times, Phoebe had already realized that it wasn’t written for Scarlett… How could I post such a romantic poem written for someone else, on her birthday?

It was still my fault though. I should’ve addressed it clearly to her, to Phoebe. Almost everybody thought it was another work of art for Scarlett at first, and Phoebe was no exceptions of course. I really liked this girl, but I could still feel a mysterious force out of the deepest part of my heart that kind of repulsed me in some way… the guilt of loving someone while still being a student myself? So I decided to put it on hold instead of hastening any actual move, but I still needed to find a way to express my feelings, to let the “goddess” know how much I loved her, and that was exactly why I wrote this poem, and why I would continue to write one such poem each week. I believed that if both of us had faith, our loved would always remain fresh despite time and space.

[Franklin]

Chapter Six

So it entered the last week of our summer semester. Phoebe rarely attended the classes that week because she had a part time job – a teaching job at a private education institute. She also skipped classes regularly the weeks before but I didn’t quite notice it, I just remembered the classes she was in, it seemed like. I also wanted to skip some classes because the whole crap was boring as shit, to tell you the truth, but I decided against that idea… because I didn’t want to miss any possible chance to meet her again.

And a chance came on Tuesday. We had a class in the afternoon that day, and another one at night. The afternoon class was temporarily arranged in the so-called multimedia classroom – the place where we had the first talk. But we didn’t talk at all that afternoon… it was a different classroom so we kinda chose our seat randomly, and I somehow sat like a few rows behind her seat.

It was unlikely to start a talk with her over such a good distance, but at least I was sitting behind her this time, not the other way around, so I could observe and appreciate her beauty freely for as long as the class lasted. Her hair was so nice and her arms so white, just gazing at her back elated me so much I could hardly move my eyes away from her, to be honest. I really wished the class would last forever, despite how goddamn boring it was.

It didn’t last forever, of course, but we had another class that night, luckily, so I could hope to see her again that night, and to have a talk with her hopefully.

We both attended the night class, sitting in our usual seats. However, we didn’t have any talk throughout the class nonetheless. I was too numb to initiate a talk, so most times it was her job to start it, but this night she remained silent the whole process. I thought there had to be something wrong, but what was it?

She didn’t talk to me but she did talk with several other classmates, and from their talk I learned that she was going to leave for D.C. the next day for an internship. But we had exams to take at the end of summer semester, so maybe she would have to return for a short while to take the exams then go back to D.C. right away? Why couldn’t she just wait until the semester was over? It was only one and a half hours’ drive between our city and D.C. but still it was a long distance even if you had a car, which Phoebe didn’t have. She was from another city, as I mentioned above, and she was living here in an apartment she and a few friends rented together. So she’d have to take bus, railway then subway and maybe another bus before reaching her destination, a tiring journey you could tell.

And now I felt why she didn’t have a talk with me this day. She must feel upset as hell in her heart, I thought. I turned around my head once during a break and happened to find that she was also looking at me, our eyes met but neither of us said anything, not even any smile this time…

I had a feeling that I would probably not see her again, not have another chance to talk to her again for the remainder of summer semester, or even of my lifetime as well… I couldn’t think any further that way because the depression already nearly killed me.

I didn’t sleep well that night. I didn’t sleep at all, to tell you the truth. I was just lying there, trying my best to remember every detail about her, everything I had seen from her during the afternoon and night – her white arms, her thick long hair, her clear charming eyes… I didn’t know when tears had filled my eyes already, I tried to cry myself to sleep but couldn’t. I needed an outlet badly, and the best outlet for a poet is – poetry. I wrote down another poem in the morning after, I spent the whole night composing the poem in my mind…

The Lunar Goddess-

Dawn is coming, night is gone
sun light rises above ground
staying awake in bed rolling around
echoes in my head an old love song
the Lunar Goddess leaves me in tears
while I'm waiting here all day long...
My face darker and hair turn brown
while you're always young
you cheer my heart up give me light
and I don't wanna be a passer-by
the Lunar Goddess leaves me in tears
while I'm waiting here life long...

The poem was very miserable, to be honest, true reflection of my mood that day. I posted the poem on my social networking page at noon the next day. I didn’t expect anything back, I just wanted to let her know how much I loved her, and that I would wait for her no matter what. She read the poem not too long after it was posted, and she would respond strongly, with a very big surprise to me the very next day…

[Strange Love]

Going balls deep?

[TDMVPDPOY]

Going balls deep?

why has he started to put beads into his ass?

[Franklin]

Chapter Seven

I felt sleepy as hell in the morning, but still could hardly fall asleep for some odd reason, and it was already time to go to school. I sat in the classroom, not sleeping but not getting a lick of what the class was about either. I felt lightheaded and my heart was beating at twice the normal speed.

“Has she packed up her luggage yet? What’s she doing right now?” I kept asking myself these questions. From her talk the night before, I knew that the train was going to set off in the early afternoon, so maybe she’d arrive in D.C. before dusk.

It was a long ass morning for me, it felt like. So when the morning class was over, what I was supposed to do was take a short nap somewhere, right? That sounded very logical, but I got something more important to do…

I went straightly to the computer room in the library, eating some crap I brought from home on my way there. I just didn’t feel like eating anything at the school canteen, to be honest, the food always tasted as if they never put any salt in, not at all.

After taking a seat there, I started the computer, and then put out that piece of paper carefully, the paper I had written my poem on… I typed every word, one by one, in the script box then published it. The button was signed “publish” but the word might be a bit too big for my poems, because I only made them accessible to three best friends of mine – Rhea, Fernando (my homie who was also a hardcore sports fan just like me), and of course, Phoebe. Actually I only wanted Phoebe to read these poems, but I needed a couple witnesses, so that Phoebe could know that I only wrote poems for her, no more poems for no one else. (And it would turn out that, all three of them ended up working in the finance/accounting industry after graduation, for some odd reason, and it rarely happened to graduates of our major. I guess if you also want a job in this industry you may as well read my poems too!)

Phoebe read my poem about 10 something minutes after it was posted, and surely she viewed it on her cellphone because she must be already on her way to D.C. at the moment. “Phoebe read my poem…” I sighed internally. I felt relieved and so much satisfied. It was the happiest moment of each week for me when I saw that she had read my weekly poem, to tell you the truth. I also felt glad when I found Rhea or Fernando viewing my poems, even giving me approvals sometimes, but still it was Phoebe that mattered most to me, much more than Rhea and Fernando combined, more than even the whole world’s people combined, to be honest…

But how would she feel about the poem? Would she have some sort of sympathy for me? Would she feel sad or sorry about me? I didn’t want to make her unhappy or anything, the point I wanted to make was that, I wanted to wish her the best and I would always like her unconditionally no matter what, no matter if she treated me good or bad.

Maybe the poem sounded just so bitter, it made Phoebe think that I was about to give up the pursuit. I indeed thought about giving it up, to tell you the truth, and I thought about it quite a few times in the months after as well… she was just so brilliant it made me feel like a complete loser sometimes, to be honest. Regardless, however, Phoebe still seemed to like me, and she would turn out to be the strongest motive for me to man up and be grown.

A teacher had asked me to come over to help her with some office stuff in the afternoon that day, I couldn't decline it of course, despite that I was tired like a bastard who hadn’t taken a minute of sleep the night before. I got the work done even faster than I myself could ever believe, so I could go back home right away around 3:30 that afternoon.

[Franklin]

Chapter Eight

I slept rather well that night and felt very good when I woke up the next morning, yet I didn’t quite feel like going to school that day because I knew Phoebe had already gone to D.C., so she wouldn’t attend the class that morning, I thought. The possibility of seeing Phoebe was the only incentive that drove me to school everyday since my first “Lunar Goddess” poem, or to be exact, since I realized how much I loved her…

But I still went to school anyway, for some reason. Maybe I just wanted to have a look at the seat she usually sat in, or maybe I could even find a hair of hers left on the table if lucky enough.

I walked into the classroom and sat in the front row, my usual seat, and put out a book that I could pretend to be reading. I came rather early that morning and the classroom was still nearly empty when I arrived. Other students gradually came as I was “reading” the book there, but I didn’t feel at all nervous as I usually did, because I knew Phoebe wouldn’t come. I felt nervous in the past days because I feared that Phoebe could choose another row someday, a few rows back… but it never happened, she always sat just behind me, less than two seats left or right.

I heard some girls stepping to and took seats in the row behind me. Although I thought Phoebe wasn’t among them, I still couldn’t help but shot a quick glance back… and I was seriously surprised, because I saw a girl in white shirt with grid pattern, so clean and so touchable. Her thick long hair was still glossy as silk, and the face was so beautiful, especially with such a kind smile on it… she was smiling to me, it was such a meaningful smile like she was saying to me “you didn’t expect me here today?”

I turned my head back straight as swiftly as I could. I couldn’t believe my eyes even, couldn’t believe what I had just seen was real. I put a hand on my chin and found that I didn’t shave… she probably wouldn’t care but still… I wanted to always show the best possible look of myself to this girl, which was easily understandable.

The teacher didn’t have much to teach that day, it was the last day before exam and he left about 2 hours for the so-called Q&A process, or students’ discussion process. So, the class only went 1 hour or something that morning, and when the class was over I heard that sweet voice calling her own name softly and repeatedly, “Phoebe, Phoebe…” It seemed like she was encouraging herself then, but why?

Right next to me sat another classmate. Dude was a college teacher himself and he was studying here for his second Master’s degree. We usually talked with each other, almost during every break between classes I’d initiate a talk with him and I really had learned a lot from him. His surname was Sharpe so I just called him Mr. Sharpe. But this time, before I could start a talk with Mr. Sharpe, someone else did it.

“So, you’re a college teacher?” asked that familiar sweet voice.

“Yes, Mr. Sharpe is an associate professor already.” I answered the question for Sharpe. I didn’t know how I suddenly turned so aggressive and bold to join the conversation, maybe I did know… I knew it might be my last chance to have a talk with Phoebe for the semester, or maybe even my lifetime. Phoebe probably thought the same, and that was exactly what she was encouraging herself for, I thought.

It turned out that Phoebe wanted to be a college teacher, and she wanted to ask Mr. Sharpe for some tips and advice on how to be a successful college teacher. But in reality, I could feel, Mr. Sharpe just served as a proxy in the conversation between Phoebe and me. Mr. Sharpe knew it too, he was about ten years my senior and he must have also felt sort of specialty between me and her.

Phoebe talked about her career expectations, she even thought about applying for a teaching job at my high school alma-mater. I discouraged her from that idea nonetheless. I told her that students from that school were always naughty as hell.

“But, aren’t students from there the best in this city?” She asked me.

Yes, they were smart, just as smart as they are naughty. They would set fire on your ass for fun if you allowed so, to be honest. You could probably never see a fight or hear a dirty word there, but you would be seriously fooled if you underestimated these little evil minds, to be honest.

“They’re naughty as hell though, rebellious. I mean… they’d outwit you and drive you mad for fun…” I continued to say, “But anyway, thanks for your endorsement.”

“I’m not referring to you though.” She said in a pretentiously serious voice. Then she couldn’t help giggling in such a lovely manner. Her tone sounded so intimate to me, more intimate than what you could expect to get from common friends.

I really enjoyed the talk with her, and it was certainly the happiest day of the year for me thus far (until Nov. 19), but the pleasantest experience always ends fast… As we stood up to leave, the familiar smell sneaked into my nose and reminded me of that day when our first talk took place.

[m>s]

So are you gong to ask this girl out or what?
i won't read I'll just ask this question until the answer is yes

[Franklin]

I will ask her out for sure, but not at this point of time, I'm not even sure if she's back in town or not. I'll drive to her hometown, giving her a vigorous embrace upon meeting her, then bring her home, but I don't know when she wants to come back tbh. Maybe a few days later I'll ask her that question online, or maybe I should ask a friend first, I'm not sure. I really miss her but I don't want her to come back immediately just because of me. She'd been away from home for most of the year 2014 so she has every reason to enjoy her time at home now, for as long as she likes, tbh.

[sook]

just get on tinder or something Rogue. find a nice bitch to drape around you and get her jealous.

This girl is getting to your head if she's making you write.

[Franklin]

I can't shake if off, bro :cry. She really cares about me though, and she would really feel jealous as hell if I show some similar level of kindness to another girl, like when I wrote that poem for Rhea after she injured herself falling down the stairs, she replied to that poem with some cold & satirical comments and I could tell she didn't feel too happy reading something so considerate written by her expectant bf for some other girl, tbh.

[Franklin]

Chapter Nine

It seemed the right time for me to make the “move” now, to speed up the pursuit, and it wasn’t supposed to be that hard… just ask her out for a dinner or something. But… it didn’t seem an easy job to me and I wasn’t looking for excuses here, because I was totally inexperienced and that our professor didn’t want us to have any serious relationship during school time. I had always been such a good kid and good student I would never want to disobey the teacher’s rules, though my parents (especially my mom, to be honest) thought quite differently.

Well, you could just play it like a game, like most school loves worked, like a learning process. Once graduation came, so did the end of your relationship. But I never felt like being in for such a thing, because I was such type of a guy who took everything seriously, especially when it came to such a serious topic like love. And another reason, I didn’t think it all right to start a serious relationship until you became completely independent, financially independent on top of all. I just hoped that, we could remain good common friends (which we already were) through the last year of our school life, then I’d try to push it one step further after we had both found our desired jobs.

I learned from the three-way conversation of Phoebe, me and Sharpe that she desired to be a college teacher, and then it became my job target. I didn’t have a clear expectation of career… I never really had one to tell you the truth. I just wanted to work where she worked, so I could drive her to work and back home everyday and take good care of her. And a college job, no matter teacher or staffer, would give you about three months of extra vacation every year so Phoebe and I would be able to really enjoy our time traveling around the city as well as the suburbs. I even dreamed that, we would purchase a home in the countryside near our workplace - most colleges were located in or had been relocated to suburban areas – and it wouldn’t cost too much. And it’d be easier for her parents to buy another house there than those urban estates, so we would be able to “settle” not too long after graduation.

So we kept contact on line, sharing job information especially those college job opportunities, but unfortunately most college jobs wouldn’t be available until early next year.

I kept writing the “Lunar Goddess” series poems, one poem each week. Although I wasn’t sure if she liked the poems, she still read those poems anyway, probably she knew those poems were all dedicated to her, but she didn’t react strongly… maybe she was just wait for me to “act”, and writing the poems wasn’t enough of an “act”.

My mind was pretty much puzzled and contradicted, to be honest. On one hand I really missed her and wanted to see her, but on the other hand, however, I usually felt tempted to avoid her because I was afraid I would lose control of myself… I would probably burst to tears upon seeing her, rush to her side and hug her vehemently in my arms, and then start kissing her all over the cheeks and neck, like an animal… I really loved her, but I had to abstain from it until I was mature enough and ready for a serious relationship, as a man with some good sense of responsibility would do. I was already 26 so I couldn’t connive with my animal self to act like those pubescent jerks did, to be honest. So I had to confine my love within the domain of literature.

We chatted quite a lot online though. I carefully saved all our chat in a doc file, and saved a copy of the file in each and laptop USB storage device I had so it’d never be gone.

And of course, I’ve also downloaded some photos of hers from her social networking zone. Too bad there weren’t many photos, too bad she wasn’t a celebrity like Scarlett… but still, she look so pretty and lovely and you could never get bored gazing at these photos. And the more I gazed at them the deeper obsessed I became.

[Franklin]

Chapter Ten

Finally there came the chance for me to see her again, and it had been already four months since last time… it was Nov. 12, Wednesday, I received a text message about 9am in the morning. It was a notification of job interview which was scheduled on the same day next week. Phoebe probably had received the same notification too because I knew she also applied for this job, a college teaching job, actually it was Phoebe that recommended this job to me, in the first place.

But still I wanted to send her an email, just to confirm it. I logged in my email and began to organize the words carefully, just as I always did every time I was to send her an email. I was an amateur writer, she knew it… I didn’t want to screw up my good image in her mind with some misspelling or stupid grammar errors. I spent like half an hour writing this email - apart from the concern about spelling and grammar I was also hesitant on what to write – should I thank her, continue to act cool and calm, or should I just tell her my true feelings?

Before I could make the decision, however, I received a message on AIM, from her.

She received the notification, just as I thought. I was so elated at the moment, to be honest. I told her straight how happy I felt, and I proposed to drive her there, she agreed… Boy, I was absolutely overwhelmed by happiness at the moment, to be honest.

So I carefully prepared for the interview. It wasn't that I had much interest in this job, but I thought that if she wanted to work there, I would go there too. We would buy a nice house near the lake there, and it was rather cheap because the college was more than 15 miles away from downtown, and we couldn’t afford any house nearly as good anywhere else within the city limit. Actually the house and possibility of living in there with her was the only appeal I saw from this job, to tell you the truth.

Finally it came the day that I had craved and imagined for so long. I arrived where she lived at about 7am in the morning, and it was still rather dim out there. She didn’t come out right on time. In fact I only waited there for about five minutes, but it felt like five hours…

I saw a girl coming towards me, waving her hand to me, smiling… I almost lost my breath, God… I couldn't describe how jubilant I was at this moment. I smiled back and waved my hand too, and turned my head aside quickly before she could see the tears of joy in my eyes.

I started the engine immediately so the thermal air would fill up the car before she sat in, and after she sat in the first thing she said to me was, “Haven’t seen you for so long…”

It wasn’t anything special. A common friend would also say it to you after a long time of not seeing you, but I could sense the meaning inside it, “Yes…” I responded, I was speechless, I felt really sorry…

“Have you had breakfast yet?” I asked her, just to redirect the talk elsewhere.

“Not yet.”

“I bought it on road.” I handed her some fast food I bought near my home, it was already rather cold now.

“Thanks…” She took it, and asked me, “How’ bout you? You ate something for breakfast.”

“Yes, I got up really early today…” We were already on our way.


- To be continued

[JudynTX]

And I thought Avante was crazy.

[Strange Love]

just get on tinder or something Rogue. find a nice bitch to drape around you and get her jealous.

This girl is getting to your head if she's making you write.

Our nig is devoting way too much time on this girl without actually making a single move.

And he's all over the place now. Just imagine if she says no to his advances at this stage? I fear for our nigga tbh. He might just think jumping onto upcoming traffic is a solution if that ever happens. :cry

[Franklin]

Our nig is devoting way too much time on this girl without actually making a single move.

And he's all over the place now. Just imagine if she says no to his advances at this stage? I fear for our nigga tbh. He might just think jumping onto upcoming traffic is a solution if that ever happens. :cry
No, see my title bro. If she says yes then I'd treat her as good as I can and would love her forever as if she was a true goddess to me. But... if she says no then it'd be a moral victory for me, because nearly the whole class knew that it was her who flirted with me in the first place, and that I bought her flirting and began to love her thereafter. She initiated the whole shit, if anything.

Of course, I wrote some love songs for her to show I love her, I really do but it's not like I cannot live without her, I have experienced things that were much worse than this when I was younger, tbh. It's like, when you're riding on a tiger's back you're afraid to dismount. Whoever quits this shit first would bear considerable moral accusations and I will always end up on the winning side of any moral battle, tbh.

[Franklin]

I attempted to make a move last month though... I contacted her online, but only to learn that she was already away home, just arrived home that day. I was literally kicking myself for procrastination at the moment tbh, if I had done so just one day earlier I would've probably already made it official :cry.

Strike while the iron is hot - that's probably the lesson I should've learned from the whole issue here, or maybe she's just not the right one for me, I'm not sure. I've been living as a celibate for 26yrs since I was born and I still don't really feel like needing any pussy urgently, to be damn honest. I love her because she's such a wonderful person, just talking with her enchants me a lot, and it doesn't have much to do with sex. She is fine and sexy, yes, but that's surely not what I like most about her tbh.

[m>s]

Stop telling us about it and tell her about it

[ohmwrecker]

These are worse than Avante's lists.

[Franklin]

Stop telling us about it and tell her about it
I will contact her online maybe a couple days later, when the civil service exams scores are out. Hopefully we'll have another chat online, if she asks me what i've been doing lately I'd say I've been writing a new novel. And sure she'll ask for it, and then I'll "tell her about it", tbh.

[Franklin]

Chapter Eleven

“You… you look thinner, Phoebe… could you please work less hours?” I asked her, sort of begged her, I knew she was working part-timely at a private education institute.

“But the classes have been scheduled already… I have to work until the autumn semester is over.”

I really hated that institute for the moment… but just a few weeks later I’d wish the autumn semester had lasted longer, so she would’ve been still working there, staying in town when I decided to make the “move”.

“Ah, I…” I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to ask her to quit that job… she wasn’t very satisfied with it, she complained about the pay during the mini-semester in summer several months before. But who the hell was I to make such a request? Phoebe was a good kid she didn’t want to live on her parent’s fund the shameless way as I did. I had to respect her choice, which then became a religion of mine, whatever her choice was.

She unwrapped the breakfast and began to eat… apparently she didn’t see me as a stranger or anything now. A girl should never eat anything a stranger gives her, especially for a well-educated decent girl like Phoebe. It was a hotdog something I bought on the street, and it wasn’t something like those packaged biscuits sold in supermarkets, I mean it didn’t look sanitary at all but… she ate it anyway. She trusted me, I assumed, and I felt happy as hell at the fact that she trusted me.

Of course she trusted me… otherwise she would’ve never sat in a car I drove in the first place.

Not too long after setting off, I received a text message from the teacher who called us for the interview, he asked if we were going to the interview – probably he was on the school bus but didn’t see us. I was driving the damn car so I handed my phone to Phoebe, asking her to send him a reply. But… should I ever let Phoebe use my phone? My phone was like an antique, to be honest. I’m an old school guy and I’m never a fan of those smart phones, so the phone I was using was a Motorola, which I had been using for three years. I bet most people don’t even use their smart phones for more than two years. For example, most iphone 5 users will throw their phones right away in the trashcan as soon as iphone 6 is released. It’s not about money, of course, but I just don't feel like holding a phone in your hand all the time as if it was a photo of your dream girl. Yes, I once felt the impulse to buy myself a smart phone, so I could see her lovely face all the time, but finally I decided against that idea somehow.

But another reason – which was probably more important – why I didn’t want to let her see the phone, was that… I didn’t want her to see her nickname on my phone. I sorted all my friends by their nicknames, like, a C.J. for Carl Johnson, and my friends didn’t mind. But the problem was that, Phoebe’s acronym on my phone wasn’t just her name initials… it was LG, which was short for Lunar Goddess. I didn’t want to reveal it to her yet at the moment, though I was pretty sure she probably already knew it, knew that I love her, a lot…

Maybe I should’ve kept it a secret, maybe I should’ve tried to hide my feelings better in those poems… so it wouldn’t have diluted the thrill when I actually make the move.

But I had already said the words asking her to make the reply for me, damn, I wish I could withdraw those words. Thankfully though, she didn’t browse my contact list so she didn’t see “LG”. Thank God, my heart was beating like a beast until she gave the phone back to me, to be honest.

[Franklin]

Chapter Twelve

The traffic was pretty smooth because we set off rather early, well before the rush hour. We talked about many things, but mostly about job hunting. This job interview was the first one I received, to tell you the truth. It wasn’t like I was too crappy to put up a resume that appealed, but that I didn’t seriously apply for nothing. Most colleges would only begin to recruit as late as February next year, and I was determined to work at some college or something alike because she had told me she wanted to be a college teacher. I mean, even if I couldn’t become a teacher I’d still want to work where she works so I’d be able to drive her to the workplace and back home everyday, which of course was all contingent on the bold assumption that she would get married to me.

I didn’t really care about the jobs, not at all. There’re like a million jobs you can choose from, but you’re lucky as hell to find someone who isn’t your parent but loves you just as much, to be honest. And I believed Lunar Goddess was just that person for me. But how did I know it?

Through our talk, I learned that she had another job interview this day, but had to give it up due to the conflict. It was a middle-school teaching job. Even though it was just a job at middle school, it sounded much better than the one we were going for – a teaching job at a third-class shitty college, because the middle school was thought to be just as good as my high school alma-mater (though I highly disagree).

I could have headed all the way back and drove straightly to the middle school, but I didn’t… I was selfish as shit, I thought at the moment, I just wanted her to be with me instead of attending the mid-school interview while leaving me out in the car. Or maybe not, maybe she really wanted the college job, I thought. Or maybe she knew she couldn’t get that mid-school job due to intensive competition, as she herself said.

Just a few minutes later, she told me she passed over some other job opportunities as well… like a world 500 fortune company. It was a damn good job and she already received the interview invitation, but she turned it down because, I thought, because it was located in D.C. instead of our town. Could it be possible that, she turned down all jobs opportunities from other cities because she just wanted to stay here, because she knew I was such a lovesick homeboy who would never leave his hometown? She was right, but I remembered I had told her that I was also applying for jobs in other cities… I just didn’t want her to limit her choices only to the jobs in our town, in case I really meant something in her heart. I mean, I’d even follow her to the moon if she wanted to go back there, to be honest.

We had already driven on the highway for about fifteen minutes, and we were already crossing the Alk River – the widest river in our city.

“We’re crossing the Alk River. We’re arriving there soon.” I said. The college was located near the Alk River. The distance I’d driven was similar to a marathon’s, and we were about the hit the finishing line, but I felt little delight. I wished I could drive farther and farther more, all the way to her hometown…

“Why is it called Alk River?” She asked curiously. She hadn’t even heard about this river obviously, it was too far away from the downtown.

“Hmm… I don’t know, maybe because the river is alkaline.”

She didn’t say anything instantly. After a while of thinking, she said, “I like this city better than D.C., because we have both rivers and sea here, I like them rivers and seas.” And to tell you the truth, our city wasn’t nearly as good as D.C.

I should’ve asked her, “Don’t you also like the people here?” Or get it straight, “do you like the people… like me?” But I wasn’t subtle enough to pick up the hint at the moment… damn me.

To make things worse, I said something that seemed to hurt her…

“Most colleges have been moved to such rural areas, which kinda sucks.” I said.

“Yes, they concentrate colleges in rural areas, and call them college towns. There’re many such college towns here, it seems like…” She paused for a little while then continued, “It’s pretty much the same in my hometown as well.”

“There’re also college towns in your hometown?” I asked it almost naturally and automatically. I didn’t mean anything, actually. Those words just escaped my mouth somehow. But why the hell did I ask this? Was I internally looking down upon her? I swore I wasn’t. I realized how terrible it sounded as soon as I had just said it.

She said yes, and said something else. It appeared that she didn’t feel annoyed or anything, but… she didn’t say anything for about five minutes afterwards. I could feel that what I had just said really hurt her, but I really didn’t mean it. I kept looking to her side, but she looked outside. There wasn’t much to see outside the window, she just did so to avoid my eyes, it seemed like.

[Franklin]

Chapter Thirteen

“Ah… should we turn right at this corner? Yes, probably…” I turned the wheel right, while speaking to myself. I had to say something to break the silence. I wanted to say something to make her forget about the stupid stuff I had just said, but she’d probably never forget about it… why am I always such an asshole? Why do I always say or do something that hurts the ones who love me?

“It’s a big lake over there.” I continued.

“A lake?” finally she said something meaningful. Maybe I was just a bit too sensitive, maybe she didn’t mind at all… I hoped so.

“Yes, a real big lake, kinda like a reservoir… not like those so-called lakes on our campus which are in fact tiny ponds.” I continued to drive for a few minutes then the college appeared in front of us. “Look at the blue school bus out there…”

“Yes… it appears that we aren’t too late.” She said with a light smile.

She already got over it, I thought. Thank God…

I drove into the campus. It was the first time for both of us to go there, and I happened to find that the campus was arranged in a similar style as my alma-mater. “It looks kinda like my alma-mater, I think.”

“I don’t quite remember how your alma-mater looks, though I’ve walked over there a lot of times…” she said.

She often walked to my alma-mater… yes, it was just next door to the current college we went to, but there still had to be a reason why she went to my alma-mater so often… yet still, I didn’t say anything back. I was too dumb again to recognize the hint, damn me.

We drove all the way to the building where the interview was scheduled to be held. I parked the car carefully then we walked towards the building together, always with two or three steps of distance between us though.

She climbed the stairs first… in fact, I intentionally fell one or two steps behind her, so I could gaze at her exquisite body freely without making her feel any discomfort.

We reached the top floor, and in the first office just opposite the stairway she saw a friend of hers – Lily, who was also going there for the interview, supposedly. They greeted each other, and it always puzzled me why girls had to stand so close when greeting each other.

“Lily, hi… you’re also here for the interview? We could’ve come together if I knew you were also coming.” Phoebe said.

“Yes, the teachers are gone for a meeting now, they asked us to wait here.” Lily said.

I followed Phoebe into the office, and of course Phoebe had to introduce me and Lily to each other. “This is my classmate, Frank… and this is my classmate from undergraduate years, Lily.”

We both said “nice to meet you” or something, but Phoebe was the only one I’d really feel nice or glad to meet, to be honest.

Lily asked us to each take a seat, and of course, they’d sit together, and there weren’t many empty chairs so I had to take a seat in the corner of the room. As I walked past them, I vaguely heard Phoebe saying something like “what shall I do?”

Why was she saying this? She was facing a dilemma, what was it? She said that in a very low voice, much like whisper, apparently she didn’t want me to hear it. I supposed, probably, it had something to do with me.

There were two possibilities, I thought. One, she disliked me and she got quite annoyed by my stalking moves, she wanted to get rid of it all but didn’t want to hurt me, so she was asking her friend for some advice; Two, she liked me but I was too shy to actually make a move – not such stalking moves but some real moves like asking her out for dinner or something, without no school pretexts or shit, so she was hesitating about whether to make the move herself. It would’ve been very bold of a girl to make such a move - usually it is what the guy should do, but I’m such a goddamn wimp…

But, how could Lily know it all? It seemed like, not just our classmates, but most, if not all the students in our school had already known it. Finally I got the feeling of being an A-lister, but… I had disappointed her time and time again, and if someday I disappointed to the point where she decided to give up on me, what a goddamn fool would I look like, and how could I survive all the laughter and ridicule from our classmates?

I could never blame Phoebe, the Lunar Goddess, for sure. Even if she had done something wrong, it was still all my fault.

[Franklin]

Chapter Thirteen

“Ah… should we turn right at this corner? Yes, probably…” I turned the wheel right, while speaking to myself. I had to say something to break the silence. I wanted to say something to make her forget about the stupid stuff I had just said, but she’d probably never forget about it… why am I always such an asshole? Why do I always say or do something that hurts the ones who love me?

“It’s a big lake over there.” I continued.

“A lake?” finally she said something meaningful. Maybe I was just a bit too sensitive, maybe she didn’t mind at all… I hoped so.

“Yes, a real big lake, kinda like a reservoir… not like those so-called lakes on our campus which are in fact tiny ponds.” I continued to drive for a few minutes then the college appeared in front of us. “Look at the blue school bus out there…”

“Yes… it appears that we aren’t too late.” She said with a light smile.

She already got over it, I thought. Thank God…

I drove into the campus. It was the first time for both of us to go there, and I happened to find that the campus was arranged in a similar style as my alma-mater. “It looks kinda like my alma-mater, I think.”

“I don’t quite remember how your alma-mater looks, though I’ve walked over there a lot of times…” she said.

She often walked to my alma-mater… yes, it was just next door to the current college we went to, but there still had to be a reason why she went to my alma-mater so often… yet still, I didn’t say anything back. I was too dumb again to recognize the hint, damn me.

We drove all the way to the building where the interview was scheduled to be held. I parked the car carefully then we walked towards the building together, always with two or three steps of distance between us though.

She climbed the stairs first… in fact, I intentionally fell one or two steps behind her, so I could gaze at her exquisite body freely without making her feel any discomfort.

We reached the top floor, and in the first office just opposite the stairway she saw a friend of hers – Lily, who was also going there for the interview, supposedly. They greeted each other, and it always puzzled me why girls had to stand so close when greeting each other.

“Lily, hi… you’re also here for the interview? We could’ve come together if I knew you were also coming.” Phoebe said.

“Yes, the teachers are gone for a meeting now, they asked us to wait here.” Lily said.

I followed Phoebe into the office, and of course Phoebe had to introduce me and Lily to each other. “This is my classmate, Frank… and this is my classmate from undergraduate years, Lily.”

We both said “nice to meet you” or something, but Phoebe was the only one I’d really feel nice or glad to meet, to be honest.

Lily asked us to each take a seat, and of course, they’d sit together, and there weren’t many empty chairs so I had to take a seat in the corner of the room. As I walked past them, I vaguely heard Phoebe saying something like “what shall I do?”

Why was she saying this? She was facing a dilemma, what was it? She said that in a very low voice, much like whisper, apparently she didn’t want me to hear it. I supposed, probably, it had something to do with me.

There were two possibilities, I thought. One, she disliked me and she got quite annoyed by my stalking moves, she wanted to get rid of it all but didn’t want to hurt me, so she was asking her friend for some advice; Two, she liked me but I was too shy to actually make a move – not such stalking moves but some real moves like asking her out for dinner or something, without no school pretexts or shit, so she was hesitating about whether to make the move herself. It would’ve been very bold of a girl to make such a move - usually it is what the guy should do, but I’m such a goddamn wimp…

But, how could Lily know it all? It seemed like, not just our classmates, but most, if not all the students in our school had already known it. Finally I got the feeling of being an A-lister, but… I had disappointed her time and time again, and if someday I disappointed to the point where she decided to give up on me, what a goddamn fool would I look like, and how could I survive all the laughter and ridicule from our classmates?

I could never blame Phoebe, the Lunar Goddess, for sure. Even if she had done something wrong, it was still all my fault.

[Franklin]

Chapter Fourteen

So I sat in the corner of the office, brought a book out of my schoolbag and started to pretend to read it. I didn’t hear anymore of their talk, but they were talking all the time, in a low voice so it wouldn’t bother me or the other two attendees who were also left waiting in this office. And, I guessed Phoebe and Lily were still talking about me because I saw them looking towards my side every now and then… maybe I was just being narcissistic and oversensitive.

We waited there for about 15 minutes in total. Then, a teacher came and led us to a large classroom where we’d continue to wait for our turns of interviews. The teacher was in his late 60s, hale and affable. He briefly introduced the job to us, about the pay and welfare and other stuffs… but I couldn’t care less about how the job really was. I’d only want the job offer in case she liked it and wanted to work there. It seemed like, making her happy had become my top priority somehow, some when. So I kept peeping to her side, and I was sure the teacher also noticed it, but I didn’t care.

She had told me she had classes to teach in the afternoon that day, and that was exactly why I hated that institute, as I said above. I wished she had a full free day so after the interview was done I’d be able to invite her to a dinner or something, and later even have a walk somewhere, preferably some romantic place like a tranquil park or riverbank… but they were all pipedreams because of the damn classes in the afternoon. But why couldn’t she ask for a day off? I didn’t ask her to do so… actually I couldn’t ask her or even request her to do anything. She was the goddess and I’d have to do whatever I can in support of her, whatever her choice was.

Therefore, I kept checking my wrist watch, and I was afraid that we couldn’t get back in time. I just hoped shit could be done as soon as it could, best before 11am so we’d have the time for a quick lunch. But it turned out just the opposite… I became increasingly worried as several more interviewees were arriving gradually, and there were a total of 12 something interviewees. I bet it wouldn’t be done by noontime, and I was right. The interview began around 8:30, and it was about 10:30 now, when I was just done with my interview, but the whole shit wasn’t half done yet. And Lily and Phoebe were still waiting for their turns, Phoebe next to Lily.

Maybe the teachers also noticed the time issue, so they decided to speed up the process a bit. They made some changes to their plan, like… they began to call up two interviewees at a time instead of one, so one could stand by waiting while the other was being interviewed, and the one who had just been interviewed could go back to the classroom right away and call up another one, and so on.

Lily was called up first - the three of us were sitting in the same row, Lily between Phoebe and me – so I could see Phoebe in full length with Lily the obstacle gone. She looked so beautiful that day, damn me… I hadn’t ever noticed how beautiful she was in the morning sunshine. She was sitting right beside me in the car, but I could only have quick glances at her while driving the damn car, but now I could see and appreciate her beauty without any distractions… her thick long hair draped down her shoulders; her grey coat extending all the way down to her hips, covering half of her yellow skirt, which was a perfectly fitting color for her black leggings…

Suddenly I noticed that she was also looking at me… we smiled simultaneously as soon as our eyes met – just like every time we looked at each other face to face, it happened once during the computer class the year before (the first time I talked to her), and once again on our last class of summer semester a few months ago (which was also the last time we saw each other until this day). There might be other times, but I couldn't recall exactly when they were.

I felt so happy in my heart each time it happened, even though it only lasted no more than a few seconds each time.

Just a few minutes later it came her turn… she stood up and walked to the door, but before she walked outside the door she gave me a look, and saw me raising my fist as a sign of encouragement – just as she did when I was on my way to the interview room upstairs, and I saw the goddess smile again…

[Franklin]

Chapter Fifteen

I felt empty-headed after she was gone… what they hell was I still sitting there for? It seemed like, once the goddess was gone, so was my soul. I felt completely lost… just staring at the empty blackboard, thinking, and finally I thought of something to do when I checked my watch. It was already 11:10 and I estimated it would take me about one hour and a half to get to downtown (I was a slow driver, to be honest). Apparently there wouldn’t be enough time for Phoebe and me to have lunch together, but I couldn’t let Phoebe go to work empty-stomached, of course. So yes, I had to buy some fast food from the canteen so Phoebe would eat it on our way back.

I jogged out of the classroom, and met with Lily at the stairway – she just finished her interview obviously.

“Hi, Frank. Why are you in hurry?” Lily greeted me and asked. I wasn’t very familiar with her, to be honest. I hadn’t even seen her before this day… maybe I had seen her somewhere at school because she was also studying at the college Phoebe and I went to, but there was no way in hell could I know who she was, or the other way around. But she greeted me in a way as if we had been friends for years, pretty much the “best friend’s boyfriend” way I though.

“Ah… I’m going to the canteen to buy something.” I couldn’t talk to her longer because I knew Phoebe was being interviewed right at the moment and she’d be back soon. So I rushed all the way to the canteen.

There weren’t many choices at the canteen, to be honest. There were some good dishes but none of them seemed right to carry away. The only take-away type of food sold in the canteen, as I figured out, was just some cheap bread with basically no flavor. But at least it was just out of the stove, so it was warm. I wanted to ensure goddess could at least eat something warm before going to work.

I carefully put the food in my schoolbag and sealed up the sipper so people wouldn’t see it (I wasn’t sure if the school allowed any food in the classroom, so maybe I’d better conceal it in order to avoid troubles). Yet still, I couldn’t help but touch the bag – the part where the food was – all the time, to make sure it was still warm.

I climbed up the stairs as fast as if I were an athlete. And thankfully when I was back in the classroom, Phoebe was not in yet, and she would be back just one or two minutes later. As soon as she was back, I approached her seat to ask her if she wanted to go. It was already about 11:20, and I didn’t want her to be late for her work, since she cared so much about it. But what was probably more important was that, I didn’t want to leave the food cold again.

“Maybe… maybe it’s time for us to leave now, I’m afraid. It’d take me about one hour and a half to arrive at your workplace.”

I wasn’t calling her name. I felt nervous as hell even when I was just thinking of her name, to be honest, let alone speaking it out.

“You’re going to leave?” Lily asked, “Instead of waiting for the results?”

“Yes, I have some classes in the afternoon.”

“But… can’t you ask for a day off?” Lily asked again. Actually that was just what I had wanted to ask, but didn’t dare to.

“No, I have to go to the classes this afternoon.” Goddess said adamantly.

“See…” I shrugged a bit, and said, “She’s just always that responsible for her work…”

They didn’t say anything but both laughed a bit after I said this… suddenly I realized how weird it sounded. It sounded as if I were much closer to Phoebe than Lily was, as if I knew her so well, as if she was already more than just a friend to me… when in fact I hadn’t even seen her for more than four months prior.

[Franklin]

Chapter Sixteen

I had already internally regarded Phoebe as my girlfriend, it seemed like, and the same for her as well probably. And I seemed to care more about the time than she herself did. “So… shall we go, now?” I asked her.

“But… wouldn’t it be a bit too impolite to just get away without notifying the teacher?” She responded. What a kind girl she was! “Just wait a bit longer, OK?” she asked me.

Of course I had to say yes, she was my goddess and I had to accept whatever request she made. “OK…” I said.

“Wait for another half hour?” she said, in a rather naughty tone.


I couldn't say anything then. It’d be very hard for me to drive back to downtown in just one hour, and that would be exactly the time left if we waited for another half hour, knowing that her classes was to start at 1 pm. But I couldn’t resist her either, because she was my goddess. So I really didn’t know what else to do, but respond with a wan smile and mutely accept it.

“But, would it be all right if you arrive there late?” I asked her.

“It doesn’t matter. It’d be fine as long as I go there today.” She said.

It kinda puzzled me, to be honest. I thought the classes were very important to her so she couldn’t miss them, couldn’t even ask for half a day off. But just now she said she wouldn’t mind being late, which made me doubt if the classes were really so important. Not until this moment did I somehow suspect that, it could be her test to me. She wanted to know which I cared more about, the job or, the goddess.

It was an easy choice for me, of course. I didn’t really give a damn about this job in the first place, and the only reason why I was there was that she was also there.

I didn’t feel that worried then, because now I knew that she was just testing me. Neither the job nor the afternoon classes really mattered to her, not nearly as much as I did… how terrible would’ve it been if I said something like “hey you can take the bus and go back downtown while I’ll be staying here with Lily waiting for the result.” Of course I would’ve never said that.

So I picked up the book and resume my pretence of reading it. There were another two interviewees sitting right in front of me, one was a girl and the other a guy. The girl looked so tiny like someone from junior mid school if you don’t look at her face, while the guy was like an adult in his 40s because his hair seemed was pretty diluted, just as dense as his sissy beard, I thought. At first they sat with an empty seat between them, but now I found the guy had moved one seat right to sit right next to the girl, and I continued to see something else… The young dotard extended his hand to the girl’s face, touching her cheek affectionately. They were - what would you call it - lovers, I supposed. Damn it… It was in the classroom, yes they were adults… we were all adults but still it kinda obtruded, to be honest. I didn’t want to see it anymore because it would otherwise pollute my eyes. So I quickly turned my eyes to the other side…

And found that Phoebe and Lily noticed my quick move, and they laughed. Yeah, they knew I had been a lifelong celibate, and I had never dated any girl so they were laughing at me, but it didn’t seem unfriendly at all. Maybe they just found it funny – someone in his mid 20s had never even grasped a young girl’s hand. Sometimes I even felt the society was so screwed up, for example, I always aspired to being a good student but more often than not people – even including my parents – considered me a fool, or even a queer. Maybe I was a bit too old-school and it was my problem rather than the society’s, but I just didn’t want to become part of that trend, if the trend included such shameless behaviors like kissing or fondling a girl right in the classroom, before those wide open eyes of other people’s. I also had the one I loved but I just didn’t see the need to show it off everywhere, to tell you the truth.

So I had no other direction to look to, but upwards… I looked at the ceiling, thinking… maybe it wasn’t really the pride or anything that made me despise the couple in front of me. I didn’t despise them at all, even, but only envied them. How I wished I could do the same with goddess. I’d dreamed it countless times, hugging her in my arms firmly, rubbing my nose against her fleshy cheeks and dropping kisses all over her face. I could’ve made another pair of lovers inside the classroom, but I didn’t because I was such a big wimp.

[Franklin]

Chapter Seventeen

So we waited another thirty minutes or something, and it was already ten to twelve then. Lily went to the washroom so once again, I could see the goddess straight away. I turned my eyes to her side as soon as Lily was gone, and found that, she was also looking at me, tacitly. She opened her mouth but didn’t make any sound. She knew I could read her lips, which I’d always dreamed to kiss. With every exaggerated movement of her lips, she seemed to be saying to me, “Shall we go?”

I stood up instantly, took my bag and walked to her side. “Yes, let’s go.” I said.

“Wait until Lily comes back. She just went to the washroom and she’ll be back soon.”

Lily was back sooner than I expected, maybe just half a minute later.

“So you really decided to go?” Lily spoke to us. The teacher asked us to stay right here, maybe there was another round of interview in the afternoon. So if we went away right now it would be equal to forfeiting this job opportunity, no one would sign the paperwork for us or whatsoever, to say the least,. But the fact was, neither of was really gave a damn about the job, not at all.

“Frank, maybe you can stay here with her. I can take a bus and…” Phoebe said, before I interrupted her…

“No. We came here together so we’ve got to go back together too…”

So Phoebe and I went away together, waving goodbye to Lily.

We sat in the car but I didn’t start the engine right away. I unpacked my bag and brought out the food I had just bought from the canteen… thank God, it was still warm.

She looked thrilled… it wasn't like the food was worth much, but at least she was convinced that I cared about her. She didn’t feel like eating anything. She told me she wasn’t hungry, maybe she really wasn’t hungry but I just couldn’t accept the idea of her going to work without eating anything for lunch. I requested, or even begged her to eat something, finally she relented. She didn't eat much but she ate something, at least.

She talked so much on our way back and I could hardly stop her. I liked to listen to her sweet voice for sure, I couldn’t listen enough to it but she had classes to teach in the afternoon, I didn’t want her to exert her throat too much. I didn’t just want to hear that voice for one hour… I wanted to hear it everyday for the rest of my life. I was treating my affections pretty much the same way… I didn’t want the excitement to fade away too soon… I wanted to preserve it for a whole time instead of using it up abusively in a few years like most young people did.

She talked about the jobs she had interviewed for, and how some other classmates had been. I didn’t really care about anyone else, but I was still so fascinated listening to her talk. You could never get bored with Phoebe beside you, I can guarantee it.

I wanted to drive slower. I even wished the trip could last forever… but on the other hand, I had to drive as fast as I could because she would be late for work otherwise. Thankfully, when we arrived at her workplace it was still only 12:50. Thank God, we arrived there in time and safely, thank God my goddess wasn’t late.

She opened the door, but didn’t step our right away… she looked at me and said, in a rather courteous manner, “Thank you so much today…”

I didn’t look at her, for some reason, I didn’t dare to maybe. I just responded, looking down at the steering wheel, in a low and tentative voice, “It’s my honor to do something for you…”

She didn’t say anything back, but just giggled.

I had wanted to say that to her for long, but why did I only say half the sentence? Why didn’t I just man up and say those three words to her straight away? I was still a wimp.

“Be careful driving, Frank.” She waved me goodbye, shut the door closed then walked towards the building.

I couldn’t stand staying there anymore… I feared I would rush out of the car and catch up with her, hugging her from behind and beginning to kiss her feverishly like mad. So I just drove away…

[Franklin]

Chapter Eighteen

On my way back home I received a text message. I thought it was from the teacher who invited me to the interview, or Lily, a message about the job interview… but it wasn’t. It was from Phoebe, my Lunar Goddess, and it didn’t have anything to do with the job interview…

“Thank you so much today. Be careful driving on the way, and send me a reply when you’re home.”

I felt so elated reading this message, to be honest. I had never received such messages from anyone but my mom before. She cared about me, and I was nearly moved to tears at the moment. I wished to drive back and to do what I should do, but I had promised my mom I’d be home in the afternoon. ‘There will be chances to see her again…’ I thought to myself, sort of a consolation.

I arrived home about half an hour later. I parked the car but didn’t get out instantly. I stared at the empty seat beside me, the seat Phoebe was still sitting on just half an hour ago… I tried to look for some hair on the back of the seat but couldn’t find anything. I even wished she had left her handbag or laptop in the car so I would then have a reason to meet her again, but she left nothing behind in the car. She only left a lot, in my memory.

I didn’t know if I was already lovesick, I probably was. I wanted to touch whatever she had touched, read anything she had read. For example, she told me that she planned to write a literature analysis as her scholar thesis, about Runaway – a short novel by Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro. I had read that novel a couple of times since she told me about it, to tell you the truth, maybe even more than she herself had read it. The protagonist of that novel was named Clark, and his wife was Carla. I didn’t know why she chose this novel, maybe it was a message she wanted to send me… she wanted to run away from the stalker that I was, say, she probably didn’t like me at all. But she could just say it to me straight, if that was the case. I’d still love her anyway and I’d always believed that, you don’t have to “have” someone to love him or her. I would never treat my girl in such a possessive manner like Clark did with Carla.

I sent her a message reply as soon as I arrived home, even before taking off my coat. “I’m already home now, thank you.”

I didn’t do anything, couldn’t do anything but go all the way back to my bedroom, lying down there in bed looking out of the window soullessly… I wanted to fall asleep so I would probably dream what had just happened in the moon, but couldn’t. I felt I could still see her lovely face, her supple lips, her fleshy cheeks and the freckles on her nose… it might be illusion I knew, but I still wished they were real, even enjoyed it.

So I was lying there all along, until I heard a message notification sound from my phone at about three and a half PM. It was from Lunar Goddess? That was my first reaction, and I was right. In the message she said that she had received a message from Lily, her friend, who told her about the interview results in the message. It turned out that, there was indeed a second round of interview, and all of us were qualified for it. So what should I do? Should I rush the hell back to the college to attend the interview and later sign the paperwork? Hell no. Instead, I responded with a message carrying these words, “I won’t go there anyway since you won’t. There’re many other chances ahead of us. Thanks though.”

I really felt like a man after sending this message to her, to be honest.

[Franklin]

Chapter Nineteen

I thought I’d have to wait another four months or even longer before I could see the goddess again, but it turned out that I’d see her again just nine days later.

There was a so-called group recruitment meeting on Friday the next week, which was specifically arranged for students of our major. Of course I planned to go there, it wasn’t that I wanted to look for a job or anything, but that I thought the Lunar Goddess would be there.

I went there as early as I could. I planned to stay in the hall throughout the process so I wouldn’t miss out on her. I was just ambling around inside the hall, not giving a damn about the posters and brands. The meeting started at 2:30 pm and it was already past 3 pm now, but still Phoebe hadn’t appeared yet… I saw quite a few other classmates though, like Fernando, Rhea, and that girl named Handy. I rarely talked with her, to be honest, because I thought she was a bit pretentious and sophisticated, typical type of girl I always disliked. But when she approached me to talk to me, I wouldn’t resist it either. We talked about job opportunities and stuffs alike, and suddenly, she diverted our topic to Phoebe, for some reason. Obviously she also knew about my crush on goddess, and she knew I only cared about the goddess.

“Phoebe is definitely the happiest of us all…” She said.

“Why?” I asked, confused as hell. I knew there was a reason she mentioned Phoebe. There might be some updates about Phoebe she knew that I wanted to know, I thought. Or maybe she was just trying to make fun of me, or whatever it was.

“She signed with the P Company!” She responded.

P Company was one of the biggest four accounting firms in the world. She told me about it like a month ago, I could remember. She told me that she received her first invitation of interview, from the P Company. I thought she was determined to work at college so I didn’t pay much attention to the jobs outside the education area back then, to be honest. I wanted to apply for that firm too as soon as she told me that, but it was already past the deadline. She probably should’ve told me about it beforehand, but why? She wasn’t my girlfriend or anything back then, right? She still wasn't, up to this day.

“She… she’s always the best, no surprise…” I said, but I did feel very surprised.

I knew she wouldn’t come. I didn’t say anything anymore but I really wanted to thank Handy for giving me this info, so I wouldn’t waste anymore time waiting for someone who wouldn’t come. She should’ve told me about it, but again, who the hell was I to make such a demand?

I rode my damn bike towards the southeast gate of our campus. I was so dejected I didn’t even look at the street in front of me. She had found a job already, such a badass one, while I was still hunting for jobs like a damn dog. What a loser I was!

“Hi Frank, you came to school today?” Some familiar voice called my name.

Who was it? Phoebe? I must be under illusions, again, I thought. But when I looked up, I realized that it wasn’t illusion, it was real, dreaming-like though. I saw Phoebe, who was dressed in formal suit. I had never seen her dressed that way, to be honest. She looked so serene in the suit, only problem was… the weather was already rather cold in late November, and she didn't seem to wear anything on her legs but some thin silk stockings. She must feel very cold right now, she was even chilling, and even her voice was slightly trembling…

“Ah… yes.” I wanted to say something intimate, but dropped that idea when I saw that another girl was walking beside her. “I heard that you signed with P Company, is it true?” I shouldn’t have asked. Handy wouldn’t have lied to me, I mean, there’d be no reason for her to tell such a lie. Yet I still asked… just to confirm it, to get a confirmation from Phoebe herself.

“Yes, I just sent the paperwork there…” She responded.

“Congrats, then…” I really didn’t know what else to say, “So, I got to go home now.”

“Take your way, bye…” she said and waved me goodbye. I rode past her but I didn’t go right away… I looked back and saw her whispering to the girl next to her, pretty much the same way she whispered to Lily nine days ago.

And it turned out to be the last time I saw her. I still haven’t seen her again yet up to this day when I’m writing these words here, to be honest.

I really had no idea what the hell she whispered. Maybe she described me as a stalker, or maybe she still liked me and was asking for advice. But, somehow I felt that, she was changed. She was no longer the same innocent girl that I first met about a year ago. She was the goddess and I was just a lame ass student. Her ceiling was in the sky and I didn’t want to encumber her career. I didn’t want to be a male version of dream killer to her… The past was just like a dream, I felt, and now it seemed the right time to wake up from it.

The first thing I did as soon as I was home was starting my laptop and searching all the info about P Company online. I knew it was a badass accounting firm, and the pay was incredibly high. I felt I had already lost her… but what if I had acted more like a man at that college the week before? I would’ve already wrapped her up, but now I was on the brink of losing her, even if my hope wasn’t completely dead yet.

I shouldn’t feel that way, of course. I should wish her success, and all the blessings I could think of. “You don’t need to have her to love her…” I kept telling myself that, but could still hardly quash the depression and concern.

[Franklin]

Chapter Twenty

Not everything I saw online about P Company was positive, of course. Like, I saw some news reports about employees there dying from excessive fatigue. And it wasn’t really that easy to get promoted there, like you had to pass a certain number of subjects of CPA exams to get promoted to certain positions.

All of a sudden, I felt that Phoebe wasn’t really that lucky to sign with P Company, it was probably just a trap, especially for someone like Phoebe who didn’t know shit about accounting, who hadn’t learned shit about it before. She was smart, yes, but she wasn’t too good at math. Her talents were mostly in literature, I thought. I really didn’t fancy her chances to succeed as an account, to be honest.

So, I began to worry about her, and the more I learned about P Company the bigger such worry grew.

I didn’t sleep well that night… I didn’t sleep at all that night, to be exact, and it was the second sleepless night I had because of her. I felt sleepy as shit all the way through, but I just couldn’t fall asleep, for some odd reason.

I woke up in the morning the next day. Or to be more accurate, I got off the bed in the morning, because I stayed awake the whole night. The weather was foggy as hell outside, I couldn’t even see the buildings right on the other end of the same street, and my mood was pretty much the same.

I had a short nap around noon time… thank God I fell asleep somehow. I would’ve otherwise died, to be honest. It wouldn’t matter to have several sleepless nights, like my friend Reck who often stayed up the whole night. He was from New York where there was no night, so it was understandable. But it’d be a whole different story when you had some exams to take the very next day, on Sunday, the civil service exams.

Phoebe once told me that she’d like to get a government job, as an alternative to college teaching jobs, therefore such jobs also became my targets. I took some exercises the weeks before, and I felt fully prepared, but not after the sleepless night of course.

I felt much better after the short nap, so I decided to contact Phoebe online asking her if she was still going for the civil service exams. She said she would, but she wouldn’t let me drive her there, and in the end she encouraged me. She wanted me to stay focused on my own exams. I didn’t want to disappoint her… I’d just do my best despite the result – the attitude she had instilled in me.

I slept as well as a baby Saturday night. I felt good as hell on Sunday, when the exams were scheduled. I did pretty gracefully in the exams… at least I felt I did, despite the results.

The very next day, on Sunday, I went to school again for a job interview. No, not any job offered by our school, but a researching institute nearby. I only went to school first to get something printed, like my resume and some photos etc…

But I didn’t go for the interview right away either. I rode to the community where she lived, ambling around the building where she was supposed to reside… I could feel that she was right in there, or at least I pretended so. I just wanted to get the feeling that, she was close to me, again, just maybe ten or twenty yards away, regardless of the many layers of concrete and steel between us.

The interview progressed gracefully, to my surprise. I hadn’t experienced any job interview that went so smoothly, I believe it was Phoebe that gave me the courage, the strength as well as the good luck. I shook hands strenuously with the HR manager, and it seemed that he was very satisfied with me. But I told him I’d rather wait for the results of the civil service exams before making the decision to sign any paperwork. He understood me and he sent me best wishes… it was the first time I ever met with him but I felt as if we had been good friends for years. I hadn’t met with anyone who understood and appreciated me so much since high school time, to be honest. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the civil service exams… maybe I should’ve signed with that institute right away so I would catch up with Phoebe. A contract would’ve probably given me some more courage, to push me through the threshold to finally make the move, before she went back to her hometown…

[Franklin]

- to be continued


Now the story has already proceeded to December. I want to put it on hold for a while until I attain some further progress in the real life. I don't really have much to write about at the moment, tbh, and I still need to learn more about Big Four as well as accounting before I can write any more solid stuff. I'll try to contact her again online maybe tomorrow or the day after. I know most of my friends around this place (like m>s, Reck, sook and many others) have been supporting me all along, and i want to thank you all here.

[Franklin]

Chapter Twenty-One

I almost already got an oral offer from that research institute, but I still felt hardly any delight. I mean, even if I could get employed there, I’d probably never make even nearly the same figure Phoebe was expected to make working at P Company. If she should attain a manager position at P Company and start to make five figures a month, would she look down upon me? Or in other words, would I even be relevant to her life then?

It made me feel guilty to think that way… I knew I had to wish her success, but from my own interest I’d rather wish against it, for the fear of losing her. Or to make it correct, for the fear of losing the chance to pursue her, since you couldn’t lose anything when you didn’t even have it in the first place. She was far more brilliant a student than I was and she was leaving me even farther behind now. Maybe I should just disappear from her life already…

But still, I couldn’t abstain from the interest of searching about P Company on line… I craved to know more about the company she was going to work at. The more I learned about the P Company, however, the more I felt that the job was probably not as good as its name suggested. The job itself was boring as hell, not to say the extensive workload and meager pay. Most employees there have to stare at computer screens more than ten hours a day… I couldn’t even imagine how much harm it would’ve done to goddess’s watery eyes. It killed me to think what goddess was going to endure working there, to be honest.

I’d wish her the best, for sure. I would never let myself be an obstacle on her way to the dreamland, but there was no guarantee of success… I wanted to be someone that she could fall back upon in case she didn’t succeed. It reminded me of the lyrics of an old song - “if you’re enjoying happiness, please forget me… if you’re suffering unhappiness, please tell me…”

I really wanted to cry every time I saw a negative report about P Company… the heavy workload, lack of humanity, and the disappearances of those young lives who were previously employed at P Company… I felt as if she was going to a war zone but there wasn’t anything I could do to help her. I wished I had transferred to accounting major in my sophomore year, as my friend Brian suggested, so I would be able to at least help her a bit. But how the hell could I know I’d fall in love for a girl who would get employed at one of the world’s biggest four accounting firms?

Was it too late for me to start learning accounting though? Phoebe hadn’t learned that shit either, so why couldn’t I? If she could get a job at P Company, why couldn’t I do the same? I learned online that P Company, as well as the other three, would have another round of recruitment in spring, so my chance was still sort of alive. I mean, even if there was only a slim chance I’d still devote 100% of my efforts to it, though I had little interest in accounting. I felt inspired for the moment, and wrote such thoughts right into my poem of the week…

The Lunar Goddess - wish I could fly
...
I never think she'll ever let me down
And now she is set to stay in town
But somehow I did not feel no delight
I'm worried she is gonna fly so high
...
If she can do it, I'll also do it
There I'll always be, wherever she is
...
I wish I could fly
I wish to hug her every night
I will travel with her through the day
Because I don't wanna get away
...
I wish I could score
I'll love the goddess no matter rich or poor
I wish I could fly, I wish I could fly
I wish I could fly
...
At times I felt I was about to melt down
But her encouragement kept me strong
She is the goddess in whom I believe
The biggest treasure in the world for me
...
If she can do it, I'll also do it
I'll just do it, though I don't really like it
...
I think I can't cry
I think I ought to be man-like
I'll act it out which I've never had
No matter the result good or bad
...
I won't feel any sore
I know it's just a life's learning course
So I've never lied, and I'll never lie
Love her till I die

The pride from childhood surged back to me… I was a badass student in high school and our high school was one of the best here. I really felt proud of it, to be honest. Although I failed to convert it into any career success, I still had the superb intelligence left in me. I believed I was still smart enough to learn anything.

Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to become clear to me, everything… Phoebe knew she could get that offer from P Company even before we went to interview for that college job. And it was also for this reason that she turned down other better jobs, job offers from D.C. and some other cities. She was fully determined to work at P Company, even though she knew the work there wasn’t easy, even though she had better options outside our town which she turned down. But why… why was she so determined to work at P Company?

She wanted to stay here, to stay with me, knowing that I was such a homesick boy who would probably never leave my hometown? But there were other jobs in our town which were much easier, and which were just as profitable as the one at P Company. So why did P Company become her exact choice?

I seemed to have an answer now… because the building where P Company was based was just opposite that high school I mentioned above – my alma mater. She wanted to work there so whenever she looked out of the window she could see my high school alma-mater. She loved me so she loved my alma-mater as well, just like why she visited my college alma-mater so often…

If that was the case, then I was a true class-one asshole. I really wanted to kill myself for still having doubt about her… All the signs were indicating that she loved me, yet I still had doubts if she really liked me? What an asshole must I have been to doubt the genuine love of such an innocent lovely girl?

It wasn’t really doubt, maybe. I knew she probably loved me, and I knew I should’ve acted it out just like a man should do, but my wimpy self always took the best of me whenever I was thinking about making this “move”. It was more of cowardice than doubt, I thought, I was just a wimpy pussy as I’d always been.

But I couldn’t continue to live this way, if she really liked me. I wouldn’t mind being embarrassed and jeered at, or whatever there might be. There was nothing in the world that would scare me more than the possibility of losing her, or disappointing her. I didn’t want to put it off until next year. So finally, I decided to make the move in the third week of December…

[sook]

Rogue...too much bro. Too much.

[Franklin]

Rogue...too much bro. Too much.
Agree, bro. She's probably already decided to move on, just like our nigga m>s once said. I just had a short chat with her online and she seemed very reluctant to talk with me. Maybe it's just the nature of Cancer girls to treat their loved ones cold, I don't know.

Anyway, girls don't love beta males. I've already shown her how much I love her and like you said, it's already enough. I've gotta be an alpha again and be a badass so she'd come back and pursue me again just like what happened last June and July, tbh.

[sook]

Agree, bro. She's probably already decided to move on, just like our nigga m>s once said. I just had a short chat with her online and she seemed very reluctant to talk with me. Maybe it's just the nature of Cancer girls to treat their loved ones cold, I don't know.

Anyway, girls don't love beta males. I've already shown her how much I love her and like you said, it's already enough. I've gotta be an alpha again and be a badass so she'd come back and pursue me again just like what happened last June and July, tbh.
You don't have to be an alpha, but show her you care and that you could grab her in public and show your affection for her. Girls want that. Underneath whatever beauty, superficial tendencies, ego they have...they are insecure and want a man that they can bitch to and tell them that they're pretty etc..

Ask her if she's free and if she says "Yes", then hop right in and make the plan. Females can be indecisive and want to be on a set path sometimes. Spring for some nosebleeds at a mavs game and show off all the knowledge you've accumulated over the years. Make her laugh with the edgy jokes you've read on here or somewhere (stay away from the racist ones though tbh :lol), then hold her hand and make some shit up if you have to, like , "I've been to countless games before, but this has to be one of the best ones." Don't say why, let her guess. Make eye contact when you want and hold it (not to a creepy level). Introduce her to your friends and express your willingness to meet hers (they like to travel in packs and win the approval of their herd). Believe it or not, all the basic stuff you would think would work...probably will. The smarter/intelligent the girl is, the more likely this traditional approach will work. And even in the rare chance it doesn't, she'll think you're "super sweet" for what you've done and you'll probably have to go with that niche/image and build on it some more. Just make your move son, don't keep us waiting so long.

[Franklin]

You don't have to be an alpha, but show her you care and that you could grab her in public and show your affection for her. Girls want that. Underneath whatever beauty, superficial tendencies, ego they have...they are insecure and want a man that they can bitch to and tell them that they're pretty etc..

Ask her if she's free and if she says "Yes", then hop right in and make the plan. Females can be indecisive and want to be on a set path sometimes. Spring for some nosebleeds at a mavs game and show off all the knowledge you've accumulated over the years. Make her laugh with the edgy jokes you've read on here or somewhere (stay away from the racist ones though tbh :lol), then hold her hand and make some shit up if you have to, like , "I've been to countless games before, but this has to be one of the best ones." Don't say why, let her guess. Make eye contact when you want and hold it (not to a creepy level). Introduce her to your friends and express your willingness to meet hers (they like to travel in packs and win the approval of their herd). Believe it or not, all the basic stuff you would think would work...probably will. The smarter/intelligent the girl is, the more likely this traditional approach will work. And even in the rare chance it doesn't, she'll think you're "super sweet" for what you've done and you'll probably have to go with that niche/image and build on it some more. Just make your move son, don't keep us waiting so long.
thanks a lot, bro. I'm seriously wishing that someone else had said something like this to me one month ago, when she was still in town. :cry She's still at home, I had a short chat with her just now, and she said that her mom wanted her to stay home a bit longer knowing that this might probably be her last long vacation to spend at home. I miss her but I can stand it, and as soon as she wants to come back I'll "act" immediately, like I will propose to drive to her hometown and come back together with her.

Girls want approval of their herd, and Phoebe (Lunar Goddess) has already got more than enough of it when all our classmates already know that I love her. She probably loves me too, I think, otherwise some classmate of mine (like Rhea) would've warned me of it. But no, they all seemed to applaud it, showing me encouragement. So I think that, at least in the eyes of the group of people we both know, we're already expectant girl/boy friends to each other, tbh. There's already such an atmosphere where either of us, if quitting it, would bear considerable moral accusation, imho. Plus, my cousins also want to see this Miss X. They know I already have an expectant girlfriend and they asked me to show them some of her pics, of course I wont do so without Phoebe's consent. And I'm confident enough that Phoebe will win their approval easily, but I've gotta make it official first, imho.

[Franklin]

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Strike while the iron is hot”… That was the most important lesson I should’ve learned from my miserable love issue.

So I decided to finally make the move. I sent her a message online on Tuesday night, asking her if she was still in town – she told me she would have a one-week training session to take in D.C. in December. I thought there were only three possibilities – she was already undergoing it in D.C., she would go there next week, or she had already come back from it. Therefore, before asking her out, I had to make sure at first that she was in town, easy logical.

I asked her if she was still in town… she told me that she was already back from D.C., but not in town… she was back home already, she just arrived home that day.

I felt lightheaded at the moment, seriously. It was probably just my fate, I thought, I had been made a fool again by the joint force of fate and Phoebe. What if I had made the decision one day earlier? What if she decided to leave just one day later?

There was a time, I thought, in summer, when she really liked me. But I let it pass away thanks to my chronic procrastination. If I had acted bold in summer, if I had told her straight that I loved her just about a month ago, I would’ve already made it official probably, but now…

It was just a punishment to me, for my procrastination, for my being such a damn pussy through the past half a year.

There was a time when she liked me, even as recent as on November 19th she still liked me, I could feel. But I hesitated, and waited until it all turned cold.

Maybe it was just the nature of those Cancer girls to treat their loved ones cold, I didn’t know. Maybe she thought she had already got me so she didn’t need to show so much care about me. I was born in October, and my zodiac sign was libra, which was probably the worst fit to Cancer. Maybe it was just fate, my crush on Phoebe was fated to turn out forlorn. Should I just accept it or act like a man to fight this fate?

She had bigger ambitions and stronger fortitude, while I was just a wimpy beta male who could seemingly never grow up. I really thought about giving it up, seriously… no, I still loved her, and I had to stick to it. I mean, even if the whole thing had to be ended, it must be her to do it – it was her who initiated it in the first place.

But more importantly, I thought she might still need me… she would possibly need me if she didn’t succeed at P Company. She didn’t know shit about accounting, so it was possible that she would quit that job some time in the future when she found out it wasn’t the right one for her. And, I couldn’t imagine how she would handle such a situation without a loved one supporting her, to be honest. She could treat me like shit and jilt me, but I would never do it to her. She was my goddess, and a light smile from her would mean even more to me than a Nobel Prize.

So, the next Thursday, after thinking about it quite a few times, I decided to send her an email that contained all the info about P Company I had gathered… Of course, my purpose was to dissuade her from going there to work. It was only December and there were still many job opportunities in front of us.

She contacted me online later that day… she thanked me, but insisted. She said she wanted to go there because, if she didn’t, she would probably regret. Yes, it was one of the world’s four biggest accounting firms, and she must feel proud to get employed there. She said she would get out and look for new jobs if she felt really unfit there someday, and she believed there wouldn’t be any problem getting another good job with some working experience at Big Four. So what else could I say? I promised to give her whatever support I could afford, no matter what her choice was.

And she thanked me again. Even though she just said “thanks”, I could feel there were so many meanings behind this single word, to be honest.

She then asked me to review her thesis proposal, which she would have to hand in before nine am the next day. I’d been assisting our professor on his research program since April so it was supposed that I was already a semi-pro in article writing. I agreed gladly, of course, it was always a pleasure for me to do something for her.

It was already rather late at the moment, well past ten pm. So I told her to go to sleep, and to check her mailbox the next morning… I intended to get done reviewing it, correcting some ambiguities or shit, no matter how long it’d take. I wanted to make it the best it could be, to be honest.

But she said she’d be waiting online that night… she knew what I thought, and she didn’t want me to stay up too late. God… I was almost moved to tears.

[Franklin]

Chapter Twenty-Two

So she was already back home, and we didn’t have no more communication for the rest of this year except for an email I sent her on Christmas Day, with my festival wishes. She responded and thanked me, but her writing was brief and her tone was rather cool…

I talked to her again online on January 10, and no matter how long the message I wrote she’d just respond with few words like “yes, got it”, “thanks”. It seemed like, she already felt reluctant to talk with me, and her tone sounded plain as hell. I remembered September and October last year we had a lot of chat online and she sounded much more friendly than that, but now… Did she feel annoyed by my procrastination, had she already given up on me possibly?

I experienced a tough period of time through the later half of January. I tried to apply for a staff job at our university. The pay was average but I really liked the type of it, the extra holiday time, for the most part. But… wasn’t I planning to apply a job at PwC? Yes, but I wanted to grab a job at hand now as an insurance, no matter what it was, and so I would have some courage to make the “move” when the new semester began and Phoebe returned.

There were many people applying for those jobs and I made the final round of interview. I was very delighted, to be honest, thinking that making the final round already nearly guaranteed me an offer. I was very optimistic about it, and I really wanted the job which was very important to me. It was not only a job for me, but also a permission to make the “move” for Phoebe. To my chagrin, however, I was snubbed in the final round… I felt upset for nearly a month, not just because I missed another job opportunity but more importantly that I had to further delay the “move”.

But thankfully I could still see some hope during this dark period. Phoebe and I hadn’t talked at all since January 10, but there were still vague communication between us in the most oblique manner… She changed her twitter signatures according to the moods of my poems, mostly encouraging words. I wasn’t sure if she still liked me or not, but she still cared about me, even to the slightest extent.

Maybe it was my problem to always mistake friendliness as affections…

It was Phoebe’s encouragement that helped me through the tough period, and I really wanted to thank her. During our chat on January 10 she told me that she wouldn’t come back too early, because her mom wanted her to stay home a bit longer. There weren’t any classes in the last semester so she didn’t need to come back right away when the new semester began on March 2. I thought she would be back in late March, in April or even May, but she would be back anyway, and I would then tell it to her straight.

She didn’t initiate any more talk to me, and I arbitrarily assumed that it was because she wanted me to focus on the job market. She didn’t want to distract me, so I didn’t approach to talk to her either…

The new semester began on March 2 and I had a brief meeting with our professor for some job advice. He promised to give me whatever help he could possibly gather in order for me to get a job at some other college. I was very grateful to him, of course, and he was like the only other person besides Phoebe who cared about my job issue.

Our professor was very kind to me, just like a friend of mine in some way. He often dissuaded us from having any school love or taking any part-time job because he wanted us to focus on schoolwork, and that was another main reason why I had waited all the time, delayed the “move” time after time…

[Franklin]

Chapter Twenty-Three

I interviewed for a few jobs in March but none of them cranked out any good results, and to make things worse, there were already few good opportunities at that point of time, much less from then on. I really felt worried, I could handle unemployment but I just couldn’t accept the possibility of losing Phoebe, which in my opinion would inevitably take place if I failed to find a good job, much less getting no job at all.

It was already late March and I was still empty-handed. There was a large group interview meeting on our campus in the last week of March and there were said to be some good job opportunities, so I decided to try my luck there. There had been similar meetings in the prior semester but I skipped them all so this was the first such meeting I attended, because I knew that most college job opportunities would came between February and April. I didn’t pay much attention to other types of jobs because I knew back then that Phoebe wanted to work at college, I initially planned to look for college jobs with her, interviewing for those jobs one after another… I didn’t really even start looking for jobs until Phoebe signed with the P Company, to be honest.

I cast my resume to quite a few employers but most of them were middle schools or private education institutes, not the ones I most desired. There was only one employer that really appealed to me, but as you could tell, the most appealing job might also be the most difficult to acquire. It was a research institute, and it was my biggest interest to do some researching work. I didn’t quite like teaching, to be honest. I only wanted to work at college because a college teacher often has a lot of research to do.

I didn't expect any positive response due to the severe competition, of course, and it would later turn out that I only received one interview invitation out of all the 20 some resumes I cast that day. And the invitation was from the research institute.

It was a rainy day when the interview was schedule, but thankfully dad had a day off so he could drive me there. I also got driver’s license but I just didn’t quite like driving into downtown area which was always so damn crowded.

I didn’t wear no suit, just the common clothes I wore everyday. The interview progressed gracefully for me and I could tell that the interviewers really wanted to hire me because of my mixed education background. I got a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s in literature, weird and rare combination, to be honest. They thought I fit the job much better than other candidates, when the interview was over I was nearly sure that I would get that offer.

And indeed, the very next day I received a phone call from that institute… I never thought it could be so fast and so easy, it was less than a week ago when they first received my resume and now they were offering me a job. Finally I also got a job, a really very good one, and more importantly it meant the permission for me to finally make the “move”. I sealed the paperwork right away, get it all done in one day, and then, the very next day, I thought it was time for me to “ask her out”.

I greeted her on twitter, the first talk between us since January, and told her that I had found a job and described it briefly. I couldn't wait to tell her the good news. I wanted to make sure that she was the first of all our classmates to know it. She congratulated me, of course, but said nothing else. I thought maybe she was still at home because it was only early April, but when I asked her about it I learned that she was already back in town, she had been back for quite a while now…

At that moment, I got an ominous feeling somehow…

I asked her when she had come back, but she didn't even answer it straight, she just said she’d been back for a while… she didn’t sound interested at all talking to me, to be honest. I felt lightheaded... I really didn’t know what to say next. Again, it was Phoebe who broke the silence just like it usually happened last summer. But from her tone, somehow, I felt as if the one I was chatting with was not the same Phoebe I knew from last year.

She asked me what kind of research institute it was, and of course I told her some further details. I was really glad that she wanted to know more about the institute I was going to work at, because it probably meant that she still liked, or at least cared about me. She even asked me when I was going to report duty. “Late July, I think. And you?” I asked.

“October maybe… the first week after the CPA tests.” She responded.

“So… what’re you busy with these days?”

“I’m writing my thesis, and after getting it done I’ll start to study something about accounting.”

I didn’t know what the hell to say next… and again she broke the silence.

“Um… is your job related to physics?” She asked.

“Yeah sure, I guess that’s exactly why I got it.”

“Sounds good, all you’ve learned are going to be used. Unlike me, I have to learn everything from beginning…”

“Why do you choose such a tough road though? There’re still many school job opportunities available, don’t you wanna have a try?” I asked her.

“I just wanna focus on my preparation for CPA exams so I’m not gonna look for any other jobs, I don’t wanna be distracted… It’s not easy at the beginning of everything, but when you’ve get through it the road ahead will be smooth.”

There was another long silence after that response from her. And once again she broke the silence with a second straight message.

“It’s just like, one has a lot to learn during the process of leaving school and going into the society. The society is complex but it doesn’t mean one can stay at school forever without working… In fact, everyone is learning painfully.”

I could see some deep meanings in her second message… I thought it was that, she was summoning me to “act”. And I also thought that, yes, I had waited long enough.

“Yes, you’re right… So… When you feel tired of studying, could you please go out for a jaunt with me?” I wrote this message as a method of “asking her out”, though in a not-so-straight manner, the meaning was delivered clearly enough, I thought.

“Thanks, I’m feeling good as of late, maybe sometime later…” She responded.

Maybe she wanted me to ask more directly? I thought, but I didn’t want or dare to think the other way around…

“OK, I’ll talk to you later, bye…”

[Franklin]

Chapter Twenty-Four

I didn't want to ask her out right away… she said she felt good as of late, so I decided to wait another week or so. I wanted to schedule it for April 19. It was on November 19 when we went to that college for job interview, and the number 19 had been a number of special meanings to me since then.

So, after a week of silence, I finally made up my mind to contact her on twitter on Saturday night, April 18, asking if she had time tomorrow. My fingers were almost trembling, yet I still managed to hit the “send” button somehow.

“Do you have time tomorrow? I want to meet you…”

She didn’t reply immediately, and I was worried as hell. Did she just ignore my message on purpose? I waited about half an hour, no response, and another half hour, still no reply… Was she hanging out with her friends so she didn’t see my message, or even having a date with some guy? I couldn’t dare to think that way any further… So I logged out my twitter and began to play some video game to kill the long ass waiting time. I played the game for about an hour, and then I felt maybe I should check my twitter again. And to my great delight, I saw her reply…

“I was just having a class which wasn’t over until eight thirty. I won’t have time tomorrow, how about Monday or Tuesday?”

She knew what I was worrying about, so she explained to me about the delay. I felt relieved seeing that message, but I couldn’t see any delight between the lines of her words. Was she trying to act cool? She sounded indifferent but… I didn’t want to think about anything else, nor did I dare to.

“Fine, I’ll then contact you later, Monday or Tuesday. Have a good night, bye.”

At that moment I really thought that she accepted my proposal, and I was very optimistic about my upcoming “date” with her, with the Lunar Goddess who had appeared in my dreams almost every damn night since July last year.

I made a thorough plan about my first “date”, and I had a whole Sunday to prepare for it. I went to some restaurants nearby to check the environments and select a few favorite options, and I even drove to several places of interest in our city in case she wanted to visit them. I planned to ask her out the very next day, on Monday, but the plan had to be changed when I received a call from my professor. He asked me to edit my paper as quickly as possible. Although he didn’t set any deadline, I wanted to get it all done on Monday so I’d be able to go fresh-handed for Phoebe the next day. I didn’t want anything to possibly distract me on the day which might be the most important day in my lifetime.

So, I contacted her on twitter again on Monday night. I asked her if she had time tomorrow, I wanted to meet her… almost the same thing I said on Saturday night.

“OK, I’ll be at school tomorrow.” She replied.

I knew she would say OK, and my optimism and hope were further stoked. I felt so elated that night I could hardly fall asleep because I was going to see Phoebe, big time… what I had dreamed of countless times was going to come true tomorrow.

She didn’t sound too delighted, not enthusiastic at all. Maybe she had experienced such things before, I thought. She had a relationship previously, or even more than one, but that was the least I cared at the moment.

I spent nearly the whole damn night thinking about what would be proper to say to her. Should I propose a dinner or something first, or say straight that I love her? I was really out of ideas I had never tried such things before, seriously talking.

I shaved my face the night before, and it was the first time I used a razor. I only used scissors to cut my beard before. It seemed that I wanted to try as many first times as I could before my most vital “first time”.

I got up very early the night morning. I washed my face and brushed my teeth neatly, I wanted to present the best me when I met Phoebe again, the first time after about five months.

[Franklin]

Chapter Twenty-Five

I arrived at school around 10am in the morning. I thought maybe she needed some time for makeup, and she was so busy during the weekend maybe she wanted to get up a bit later than usual on Monday and Tuesday when she was free. I sent her a text message first, but didn’t receive no reply, 5 minutes later, 10 minutes, 15 minutes… About twenty minutes later, I decided to give her a phone call, only to find that the number was invalid… She no longer used that number, it appeared like. Why didn’t she tell me that she had changed her phone number?

My cellphone was too old to access the internet, so I had to go straight to the public computer room to contact her online. I walked through the rows like two or three rounds but damn it, I couldn’t find any empty seats. I went out, taking a few deep breaths and then back again into the computer room. This time, thankfully, I found a computer that was not being used, though there was no seat next to it. I had to stand there while using the computer, but I couldn’t care less about it. I just wanted to build contact with Phoebe as soon as possible.

I downloaded the android simulator and the installation was so slow like it would take a decade. And finally, the installation was done and I got to log in my twitter account…

“I’ve already arrived at school. Where are you? I’m gonna go where you’re.” I sent her a message.

“I’m in the library.” She replied.

“Library, good, I’m in the library too, which floor are you on though? The fourth floor…?” I asked her.

“Second floor, I’m in the public computer room.”

Damn, I thought. I’d been here for about half an hour now, having walked through the rows a couple of times but I didn’t see any familiar face here, and the computer numbers were very limited after the refurbishment. Was she shitting me around?

“I’m also in this room, but why I haven’t seen you yet?” I looked around right after sending the message, but still couldn’t find anyone I knew.

I looked back at the screen, checked her words… yeah, she indeed said she was here. I wiped my eyes and looked around again, and finally I saw someone waving at me. I thought it was Phoebe, of course it was her, but she looked quite different than the one I saw last time, not even remotely the same as the one I saw on the morning of November 19. Maybe she didn't have any makeup today, but her facial look has changed a lot in the past months. Yes, five months were long enough for a lot of things to be changed…

Her face was still white, even without makeup, and the natural look of her face looked even better with the slight reddishness… It was really her, indeed, but I felt nothing seeing that face again, nothing but nervousness.

“For how long have you been here?” I asked.

“Since 9am, I think. I’ve been here since then all the time…” She said.

She had been here long before I arrived, but she didn’t see me? Could it be possible? Or was it possible that, she intentionally ignored me?

“But… haven’t you seen me yet?” I asked her. I had walked right past her a few times, and I was wearing the jacket I usually wore, the same one I wore on November 19, so there was no hell of way that she could neglect me…

“Nope…” She replied. Was she really so focused on her work that she didn’t see me at all when I passed her by just a few inches away? Or was she just lying, indicating that she didn’t give a damn about me at all? I should’ve known it, should’ve saved myself some face by walking the hell right away. But I didn’t… even if I knew I couldn’t succeed. Those past ominous memories popped out of my head all at once, and I already knew that the result awaiting me may probably not be a good one. But still, I couldn’t leave without an answer. I wanted to get the answer straightly out of Phoebe’s mouth.

“What’s the matter?” Phoebe asked. She knew damn well why I came to school that day, but she still asked deliberately.

“I… I want to… to invite you to have a dinner… with me, could you…?” I couldn’t even put up a complete sentence.

“So… you come here today just to ask me out for a dinner?”

“Yeah and… I have something to say to you.” I noticed that she didn’t say anything right away, I thought maybe she wanted me to go for the point, so I continued tentatively “I… you know, all those poems I wrote were written for you, Goddess…” It was the first ever time I referred to her as “Goddess”, and it’d turn out to be the last time as well.

[Franklin]

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Well, Frank, lets go outside to talk, OK?” She began to stand up carefully. She walked gingerly in front of me and led both of us out of the room, out of the building…

“Frank, I know it but… I don’t really have that meaning, I never meant so…”

Those words sounded cold as hell in my ears. Although I had more or less been prepared, they still pierced my heart like a sharp sword.

“You never meant so, never at all?” I asked her in a serious voice.

“Maybe I’ve done or said something that made you misunderstood me, but I really never…”

“You lie.” I felt I was brave and bold like Joe Wilson at the moment. How I wished I had acted this bold a year ago, or even six months ago. “Tell me the truth, Phoebe. I know there was a time when you… you really liked me, right? Tell me the truth” I insisted.

She didn’t say anything, but responded with a few slightest nods… and a wan smile on her face.

I smiled too, “OK, that’s good enough for me. You once liked me…” I really didn’t know what to say at the moment. I was right, she once liked me, and if I acted bold back then she would’ve probably already been my girlfriend.

“But Frank, I no longer have such feeling for you now.” She paused for a moment and continued, “I must be responsible for you, and also for me, so I don’t want to impose such a relationship on us… We’re just not the right types for each other.”

“So what’s the right type for you?” I asked her.

“I want some sociable guy… you’re a good person, I know. You’re a local dude with such good education background. You will find someone you like, someone who really fits you.”

She knew what a person I was from the very beginning. If she thought I was not the right type then why did she flirt with me then? And she didn't even want to admit that she flirted with me or liked me, once upon a time.

“But, you’re the one I like… I’m a bit introvert so I want to find some lively girl, just like you, and I think our personalities can complement each other well.”

“That’s just how you think. Maybe you’ve found someone that fits your criteria exactly, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee any success.”

“But you once liked me, right? You admitted it.” I asked again.

“Yes, but that’s past form already… it takes the right people, right place and the right time to make a successful relationship, it’d be impossible without any one of them.”

“So, if I had acted bold in November, the result would’ve been completely different, right?”

She turned her head away, with some painful expression of her face. She remained silent for a few seconds, then said it again “That’s all past… we can’t go back to a past time point…”

It was hard to say whether it was she who rejected me, or the other way around. She once liked me and was waiting me to act, but I acted like a damn wimp and didn’t act until her interest was completely gone. I left her out cold first, and now I just got fed my own bitter medicine.

“Sorry, Phoebe, it was totally my fault…” I apologized to her.

She waved her head and said “No, don’t say that, Frank. You’re a good person, and there’re rare such persons like you today who’re so faithful to love…”

“Thanks…” I waved my head too with a wan smile. “But… may I ask… when did you start to give up on me, when was my last chance?” I had to ask her those questions, on what could be our last face-to-face chat in our lifetimes.

“You know, when I began to respond to you reluctantly…” She responded.

“You mean around the time you signed with the P Company? You got such a good job so you started to look down upon me?” I asked.

“NO. It doesn’t have anything with the job, not at all. You don’t really understand me, Frank.” She said, “I have a few roommates from undergraduate school all of whom came from the rural areas, they’re just little teachers back in our small hometown but we’re still very good friends.”

“Well, sorry. So it was indeed my fault. I left you out waiting too long, you once liked me but I let you down.” I paused for a moment and continued, “But still thank you anyway, for giving me the spiritual support that helped me through the dark January and February…”

“I didn't give you no support, Frank.” She said with a fake smile, “what have I done to make you think so?”

“You changed your twitter signature according to my poems… you still care about me, at least…”


“When… and what signature did I wrote?” She just didn't wanna admit it.

“In February…” I didn’t wanna argue with her, you could never win an argument over a woman, to be honest. “I just wanna know where I may have done wrong, Phoebe, I wanna learn a lesson from it so I won’t make the same mistakes again. Have I done something wrong on November 19? Or something wrong just now?” I knew she had made the decision a long time ago, but just didn’t know exactly when she made the decision.

“Maybe, next time you find a girl you like, you should act more actively, Frank, if anything.” She gave me this advice. Some of my friends and even my mom gave me the same advice last summer… I should’ve listened to them.

All of a sudden, this one idea came to my head, and I asked right away “Hmm… do you already have a boyfriend?”

“Nope.” She said, waving her head.

“You’ll find someone ten times better than me, there’re many elite dudes at the P Company.”

“I told you it has nothing to do with job.” She paused for a moment, and asked “So, have you ever liked any girl before?”

“Yes, like I wrote in Stranger in Hometown. There was a girl I had a crush on during high school, but she didn’t respond to me at all. Maybe, I think, if you don’t like me you ought to do the same…”

“No, I just responded to you as a friend should do.” She said, “It’s just common story every graduation season, there’re heartbreaking breakups everywhere.”

“So, do you have any relationships before?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And why did you break up with him?”

“He went to a western state… he found a job over there… and I didn’t really like him too much, to tell the truth.”

“So…” I really didn’t know what else to talk about, but I didn’t want to end the talk so soon… “So, we’re still friends, aren’t we?”

“Of course, we are.” She said genuinely. “We’re classmates and we’re friends.”

“Even after graduation?”

“Sure. It’s God’s arrangement.”

It was already lunch time and we didn't seem to have much more to talk about. But still it seemed neither of us wanted to end it… finally it was me who put an end to the hour-long embarrassment.

“Sorry for wasting so much of your time, Phoebe.” I apologized.

“It doesn’t matter. So you’re going back right away?”

“No, I’ll go back to the computer room to shut the computer.”

We went back to the classroom together, and said goodbye to each other…

[Franklin]

The Last Chapter

The most useful info I got from our talk was that, she once liked me. But it only made me feel even more painful… it was MY mistake that broke two hearts, both hers and mine. It must also be a painful process for her as well to make the ruthless decision, I thought. But I believed… I believed that she still liked me, even to the slightest extent.

She acted cold on me. She wanted to convince me that she never liked me at all, so I would feel a bit better. She knew we were not the right ones for each other, but she also knew that I still liked her so much, so she needed to find a way to get rid of it all.

Maybe she should also take part of the blame. She should’ve had faith in me. She should’ve read my poems carefully to keep reminding herself how much she was being loved. So when I finally proposed it to her, she would’ve said yes. And we would start to live a happy life together just like most fairy tale stories. But… she didn’t have faith in me? She knew how damn faithful I was, she knew it even better than myself did. It was my inactivity that left her cold and broke her heart, really?

I thought about all the possibilities, over and over again, but still couldn’t decide which was the correct answer.

Just like my friend Brian predicted, she decided to move on a long time ago, but I had no idea what time the decision was made. So was it my procrastination that wore out her patience, or something else? She told me that our personalities didn't fit, she was gregarious and outgoing and me very quiet, but this can be understood in two opposite ways. Our characteristics may complement each other very well, but she didn't agree. I said it was my fault that I hesitated all the time and finally let her down, but she said it was not the case. And when I said it was the P Company job that made the difference, she refused to admit it either. But I could tell it was just around the time when she signed with the P Company that her attitude to me seemed to have changed, drastically.

She said to me that she didn't have no feeling for me now (which is probably true). But a more important reason, I fathom, is that I don't have the resources to satisfy her desires. She's gonna work at the P Company where most of her senior colleagues make 10 times more than what I'm expected to earn, and apparently she is convinced that she can find a better dude over there. I should've quit it all as soon as I knew she signed with P Company, to be honest.

She must have known what I was going for that day, so she prepared the words carefully to turn me down, I could tell, all those bullshit pretexts she concocted. There was a time when I could've succeeded if I acted bold, but that time was long gone just as she said, and it may not be a bad thing for me. She's probably just not the right one for me, I want some girl who has strong faith in love but obviously she doesn't seem to have it, and yes there are few such girls in the world today so maybe it's just my fate to be a lifelong celibate. I just wanted to live an average life, as an average person, but she has much higher expectations, much higher than where I can ever get my hands to.

She said I'm a good person and that people like me who're so faithful to love are very rare in the world today. She also had a hard time rejecting me, I could tell from her facial expressions. She denied everything, she refused to admit she cared about me.

I had some ideal expectations for our future, OUR future, but they were ruthlessly shattered by the cruel reality. In an ideal world maybe she would've chosen me, but in this monetary world she had many more things to consider. I’m a bit too childish and after the months’ of wimpy act, she is already convinced that I’m not the person who can give her happiness. She may still admire me as a person, but not as a competent potential boyfriend, much less a good husband.

I shall take my own share of blame too, of course. I should've shown her my pure love with real actions but not blank words, and it was my relentless hesitance that made a girl who once liked me lose her patience finally. She, as a friend of mine, suggested me that I should act more actively and boldly next time I find a girl I like. She is still very kind to me, but only as a friend now... I'm still naive like a kindergarten kid when it comes to love, maybe things would've been completely different if I had listened to my friends’ advice when the iron was still hot. But in my opinion, everything that seems bad now may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Maybe I have done something wrong, or said something wrong that broke her heart, or maybe she declined me for some other reason. But anyway, she decided to move on a long time ago, and now it's my time to move on...

I had always been a celibate before falling in love for her, and now she just beat me back to what I was. Life has returned to its normal usual state for me, and Phoebe is gonna pursue her own desired lifestyle. And I don’t wanna say I reaped nothing from the past more than half a year’s emotional devotion. I reaped experience and learned a golden lesson, and most of all I have such a great friend now whose name is Phoebe, who in my eyes is the next generation of Hillary Oldham Clinton. And I want to send her my best wishes even though I know I’ll never be her Bill.

[spurraider21]

i promise that nobody reads these

[Avante]

i promise that nobody reads these

Dude, shut the fuck up.

[TDMVPDPOY]

Franklin

in china, promotion by sexual services is very rampant man

will you be happy ur gf is sleeping all the way up at ur cuckold expense?....some guys today dont care, as long someone brings home the money whatever way it takes...

[2pac > Kobe]

i promise that nobody reads these

I do you fucking cunt

[Franklin]

Postscript

Or there’s another possibility… She knows that I can’t handle the pressure of seeing my loved one take on such heavy workloads, so she decided to set me free and face all the challenges herself. She has been working part-timely since the second semester here, and god knows how many years of part-time work she had done back during her undergraduate years. Maybe her family doesn’t have that much fund to subsidize her life in such a big city, or maybe her parents have to preserve their cash for her little brother. She has a part-time teaching job at a private education institute. The number of classes is limited but who knows how many hours she has to spend to prepare for each class? She rarely goes to sleep before 11pm, often well past 12pm or even late to the midnight sometimes. Maybe she’s already used to heavy workloads, but apparently I am not, I can’t even tolerate seeing my loved one work so hard.

The feeling thing is just a pretext, in my opinion. It comes and goes all the time. I may also have one or two periods of time everyday when I don’t feel quite affectionate with her, but when I open the folder and see her pictures the feeling comes back to me immediately.

Does she think that I’m too lazy? Could it be the reason why she decided to give up on me? She always thinks highly of people who’re devoted to research works, so I guess it’s probably not a main reason. She is a great person and a great friend, and I wouldn’t feel surprised if you tell me that she may give up her own happiness in exchange for that of her loved one’s. Maybe she doesn’t want to drag me into her busy life style, and this assumption perfectly explains why her attitude to me changed so much after she signed with the P Company. She wants me to seek happiness on my own, looking for a local pretty girl that I like, and live a happy life with her. Life would be easier for me if I get myself a local girl from a family of similar status, and that’s the kind of life Phoebe wants me to live, while she will be facing all the challenges and heavy pressure by herself. She knows that I love her to death, so the only way to make me leave her is acting cold to me, convincing me that she doesn’t have the feeling for me anymore…

I’m just a spoiled kid in her eyes, to be honest, and she doesn’t want my life to be changed so much because of her. She believes that my life would be happier if I had a local girl than if I had herself as my girlfriend, but the point she missed is that, she was the one who released me from the cage of celibacy, and only she has the key to switch on/off that mode. Now that I’m already back in my normal celibate mode, I won’t fall in love ever again (male or female) unless she passes on the key to someone else. But the key exists not in her hands, but in her heart, and her spirit, therefore it is not replicable. So, it’s not really my choice to be a celibate, but rather the Goddess’s choice… and I’m living happily this way. Something might seem to be missing in my life, but life itself is designed to be imperfect, in my opinion.

I may probably never know the real reason why she turned me down but… anyway, she made her choice and I have to respect it, and I’ll still live up to my promises. I would do everything in my power to give her whatever support she may possibly needs. She is a great friend and a great personality, and it’s a great honor to be a friend of hers, even if just a casual friend.

All my best and genuine wishes to Phoebe a.k.a the Lunar Goddess…

- Mark Celibate

[Franklin]

Franklin (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=26380)

in china, promotion by sexual services is very rampant man

will you be happy ur gf is sleeping all the way up at ur cuckold expense?....some guys today dont care, as long someone brings home the money whatever way it takes...
that's kinda true and it happens in most if not all Asian countries imho. those people have no fucking religion or faith.


I do you fucking cunt
Thanks bro :toast

[TDMVPDPOY]

that's kinda true and it happens in most if not all Asian countries imho. those people have no fucking religion or faith.


Thanks bro :toast

man they promote that shit from main stream tv with the wanker entertainers, to the gold diggers, to the avg person

once they hit that age +30 with nothing to at their disposal whether its assets and shit, they are considered used goods pass by date, then t hey have the nerve to call out all the men why they are single and no one is chasing them..lol blaming men who goto shitter countries to look for a wife...

there are guys who are proud to marry very hot girls who are known to be prostitutes or working girls in their prime, i dont understand those beta chumps who marry those type of girls who every men in the neighborhood has fcked...

[Franklin]

to be goddamn honest with you bro, I wasn't really pursing LG or any actual person, instead I was trying to pursue some type of pure love, but only to find that there doesn't really exist such a thing in the real world. A man and a bitch come together to fuck and have babies, and that's just how marriage is designed. And that's why I never mentioned the term "marry" or "marriage" in any one of my poems, it would've been a taint to my poems tbh.

[m>s]

Hey the only thing I've been wondering is how does someone just "take the CPA" without any background in accounting? In America that test is harder than the bar exam and it takes 5 years of college classes dedicated to accounting plus 6 months to a year of preparation for the exam.

[Franklin]

Hey the only thing I've been wondering is how does someone just "take the CPA" without any background in accounting? In America that test is harder than the bar exam and it takes 5 years of college classes dedicated to accounting plus 6 months to a year of preparation for the exam.
Agree, mein komerad. She's just delusional imho, she thinks she's gonna make great money but I'm afraid it'll turn out to be just a pipedream, just like my LG dreams about her. The HR motherfuckers must have brainwashed her tbh and they're quite good at doing that. High salary & fast promotion is their bait, they lure you into their trap and begin to use you as a slave imho. In China the test is also hard as hell, but it's just what she has chosen. She wants to be brilliant and outstanding but at the end of day she'll probably get nothing.

[Franklin]

They recruit a hell lot of college graduates (equivalent to about 20% of their total employee's number) every year and most of them will quit within 2 or 3 years, some of them can't even reach the half year mark imho. She told me it had nothing to do with the job that she declined me, yes she is right. It has nothing to do with the job, but the choice of job represents her ideology that's absolutely different from mine, which's the main reason imho. She told me last summer that she wanted to work at college or as a mid-school teacher, I thought back then that we had similar goals of life and that was the main reason why I allowed myself to gradually develop a liking for her but it seems just a lie in hindsight, or she had somehow changed... We're from different worlds it seems like and we're probably the worst fits for each other just like our zodiac signs suggest, so she is right, we can still be good friends but that's all.

[TDMVPDPOY]

Hey the only thing I've been wondering is how does someone just "take the CPA" without any background in accounting? In America that test is harder than the bar exam and it takes 5 years of college classes dedicated to accounting plus 6 months to a year of preparation for the exam.

need bachelors degree, then further study of 5-7 subjects cpa program + equivalent work experience...to qualify

[TDMVPDPOY]

Agree, mein komerad. She's just delusional imho, she thinks she's gonna make great money but I'm afraid it'll turn out to be just a pipedream, just like my LG dreams about her. The HR motherfuckers must have brainwashed her tbh and they're quite good at doing that. High salary & fast promotion is their bait, they lure you into their trap and begin to use you as a slave imho. In China the test is also hard as hell, but it's just what she has chosen. She wants to be brilliant and outstanding but at the end of day she'll probably get nothing.

most of these hot looking girls who get recruited to good companies to work....1/4 they are recruited for their brains, the rest is looks....when u have meetings with clients...what u think actually goes on when some manager brings along a beautiful girl to a meeting she has no business being in? its to distract attention to sign contract quicker in exchange for some sexual services...

[Franklin]

most of these hot looking girls who get recruited to good companies to work....1/4 they are recruited for their brains, the rest is looks....when u have meetings with clients...what u think actually goes on when some manager brings along a beautiful girl to a meeting she has no business being in? its to distract attention to sign contract quicker in exchange for some sexual services...
So I guess as an average person you should never expect to fuck such a sexy girl as Phoebe, at least you shouldn't try to keep her as your own sexual servant. You're probably right bro, she probably knows she can't pass those damn exams, and the exams are never what she set her hopes on imho. I'm a lifelong celibate and even I fell into her trap, so now she must be convinced that she is so hot and awesome that she can easily tame anyone who has a dick between his legs. But that's simply not true and I'll tell you why in my following postscript. I spent a few hours today thinking about the past, and now I've realized that I never really loved her, but instead just used her as a medicine to help myself feel better about the past...

[Franklin]

Postscript

It may be a bit harsh to Phoebe but… although she refused to tell me the entire truth, I feel obliged to reveal some of my real thoughts… I fell instantly in love with Phoebe the first time I saw her in the dim lobby that morning, but how could I fall in love with a stranger so easily and so quickly?

The answer has to be found in my prior novel of this series… the one Phoebe had read, but one that she probably hadn’t read carefully…

I loved her indeed, with my full heart. But… there has to be a reason why I loved her so much, right? Just like Phoebe said herself on my judgment day, we hadn’t seen each other much, anyway, so it was reasonable that she didn’t have a feeling for me. But why didn’t I feel that way too? I don’t know nothing at all about her past except her hometown and alma-mater, so how could I love her so much?

I loved her genuinely and she knew it, but what she still doesn’t know is… I loved her, but it wasn’t because of who she was. Up to this day I still don’t even know her enough to actually love her, said from a very objective perspective, so what’s the real reason? It may not matter at all to her now, she doesn’t like me anyway, but still she deserves to know the truth.

Phoebe is my friend and I want her to know my truth, even though she refused to tell me hers, so she wouldn’t feel guilty at all about rejecting me, hopefully.

The story dates back to my last semester of undergraduate years, about the same time four years ago… I was walking along the corridor on the ground floor of our school building, towards the lab where I had some experiments to do. Unexpectedly, right after I turned a corner, I saw someone walking towards me… no, not me, but towards her lab.

My lab was in the farthest end of the corridor, right opposite the toilet room, and hers was right near the corner I just walked by. She just went to the toilet room, I thought, and she noticed me just as soon as I saw her… but neither of us said a word.

You might have already guessed it out if you’ve read my first Stranger in Hometown novel… Yes, she was Chelsea, the innocent girl who liked me throughout all four years of undergraduate study, but who ended up getting nothing, not even a negative result like the one Phoebe gave me.

She was in a black coat, an old-style pair of glasses in a black frame, and light blue jeans. Her hair was long and spread over her shoulders. It was about 10am already but the corridor was dim enough with only some weak sunlight through a narrow window at the end of the corridor. We walked past each other quietly, very close, but still no touch even by the clothes.

I reached my lad door but I didn’t open it instantly, I looked back and saw that she was opening her door… she didn’t look to my side, of course, but just walked in and closed the door gently.

That was probably the first time Chelsea and I appeared in the same place just by the two of us, and it was also the last time as well.

Her zodiac sign was Gemini and mine Libra, the perfect matches for each other, and we seemed to have all the elements needed for a happy relationship – the right time, place and persons – just like Phoebe pointed it out, but except one thing… except that I was a complete class-one asshole.

She was disappointed with me, of course, for my hesitance and for my cowardice. But she never gave up on me, even on the last day, our graduation ceremony she was still waiting for me to make the “move”, and I knew it, so I didn’t even show up that day…

I don’t know if I ever really liked her or not. Maybe I just sympathized with her, or just felt deeply sorry to her… I never even gave her any positive response to her flirting acts. We exchanged no more than four sentences throughout the whole four years, but she was still waiting for me, all the fucking time… I was just an absolute idiot and a shameless motherfucker, and I probably still am.

But one thing was certain… I owe her an apology. I owe her a full set of happiness… I owe her everything I have, even including my life. She wasted the best four years of her lifetime on a complete asshole that I was.

I tried to forget everything about my undergraduate years, and I haven’t even contacted some of my best friends from then since graduation, because I was a complete motherfucker.

So now, you probably know why I felt instantly in “love” with Phoebe when I saw her in the dim lobby on that morning in November?

Maybe I’ve never really loved anyone since high school graduation because my sexual self was killed by Leigh, and it’s been dead as a mummy since then. I’ve been a hardcore celibate all the way through. You may think that I have misunderstood friendliness as affection, but that’s not the true case… The truth is that, I wanted to convert my sense of apology into the sense of love, so that it can possibly be accepted by someone else, someone who can help me get out of all the moral accusations that I imposed on myself. And that “someone” appeared in my life about two years later.

I felt shocked when I saw this girl that morning… the same clothing, same long hair, and her round fleshy face looked so much like Chelsea’s. I instantly thought at this very moment that God might have given me a chance to redeem myself. And thank God, the girl seemed to have some interest in me too.

And the whole story you’ve read above… in this novel.

Chelsea was a bit introvert just like me, but despite her shyness she still tried maybe a dozen times through the four years to summon me to make the move towards her. But I was a pussy and asshole all the time… I never did a damn thing, never had even said a good word to her, not to say admiring her, much less writing her any piece of literature like a poem or anything…

But she was still waiting for me, all the time… she had faith in love, but the faith turned out forlorn. I was the very first person she gave a liking to, easy to tell, but it turned out that she gave her love to a fucking piece of dog shit. Maybe she was just too stupid, or maybe I was too much of an asshole. Even if I didn’t like her, I should’ve at least pretended so and started talking to her actively, even for a very short period, to let her know more and more about me and finally she’d lose interest in me after knowing what I asshole I was. But I didn’t do a damn thing, I was a damn motherfucker.

So, when I encountered what I considered a chance of self-redemption, I couldn’t let it go… And fortunately or unfortunately, that girl I met with in the lobby became my assistant in this holy maneuver.

She is an angel that God sent to me, I still believe so. She helped me so much spiritually I feel genuinely grateful to her, to be damn honest, despite whatever harsh treatment she seems to have done on me… and yes, she is Phoebe.

I saw Phoebe as the reincarnation of Chelsea, but their personalities are quite different. Phoebe was very lively and gregarious, but when it came to the matter of love, Phoebe was even dumber. Maybe it is just the nature of girls whose zodiac sign is Cancer.

But still, it was Phoebe that acted first. Normally it is the woman that flirts first, and the man notices it and begins to chase her. Phoebe did her part well, but I failed mine. It wasn’t a legit failure though, I failed it on purpose. Last summer I asked several friends of mine for advice on this (not including those whom Phoebe and I both know though, like Rhea), and almost all of them asked me to act quick and bold. She had an interest in you and she was flirting but she wouldn't wait for too long, that was what most of them said to me. I knew what they said was damn true, but I still remained inactive, why?

Chelsea waited for me throughout the four years, so I thought that if Phoebe was really her reincarnation, she would have faith in love and it wouldn’t be a tough job for her to wait just several months. And when the time matures, I’ll finally make the move… if she accepted it, I would treat her like a real goddess (just to live up to my words), treat her ten times as good as a boyfriend would commonly do, give her whatever I can afford… just as sort of a compensation for Chelsea. I wanted to compensate Phoebe with tens times the effort I should’ve paid Chelsea… But sadly she didn’t give me this chance.

I’m not a loser, nonetheless. It’s a good result to me the other way as well…

The rejection by Phoebe is a fair punishment to me for what I did to Chelsea… no, not a fair one, the punishment I deserve should’ve been 100 times worse. But still it made me feel a bit better about the past crime I committed and got away with four years ago. So I want to thank Phoebe all the same. Honestly speaking, this result is probably even more preferable than the former one. Because… I can’t imagine how I could handle it if I succeeded with Phoebe and while we walked together somewhere, Chelsea appeared right before us… At least now I have the celibate card to play. If I meet with Chelsea, somewhere, I’d tell her that I am a goddamn celibate and I don’t deserve her love. Chelsea shouldn’t feel defeated, because it was a battle she had no business of winning, in the first place. I didn’t accept her love, and I didn’t and would never accept anyone else’s love either, because I’m a lifelong goddamn celibate.

So, no matter whether Phoebe accepted it or not… it is a good result for me, either way.

I don’t know if Phoebe would still see me as a friend after reading all these (if she even bothers to read), but I just don’t want to lie to anyone, especially not to my friends. Phoebe doesn’t need to feel even a lick of guilt about turning me down, I’m actually glad that she turned me down, to be honest, like it is just the result I internally wanted, and waited for. Now I feel how Chelsea felt four years ago, no… what I feel right now isn’t probably even one hundredth of how much she suffered mentally back then. But still it makes me feel much better, in another graduation season four years later I finally had a taste of the medicine I designed, the same medicine that Chelsea swallowed down her throat four years ago. The medicine might taste bitter but it indeed cured me of my sense of guilt about the past, to some extent at least.

And it may be a good result to Phoebe as well. She is a good person and she deserves someone who really loves her, but not someone who “loves” her because of some other girl. She might have doubted the genuineness of my poems and she was right, I mean, my poems were genuine, but they were addressed to Chelsea more than to her. Sometimes when I looked at Phoebe’s pics (I don’t even have any pics of Chelsea’s, to be honest), although I knew this was a different person, I still assumed that this person had the same personality as Chelsea, the same innocence… and I was wrong, and I got punished. But this result is probably just what I want, and what I deserve.

Maybe this result will hurt Phoebe, and maybe it is my mistake to think that my past crime could be redeemed. Phoebe was right… what is past is past, and it can’t be fixed no matter what you do now, no matter how hard you try. Phoebe gave up her teaching career and chose an entirely different profession, but still it was she who taught me the most important life lesson. And I hope Phoebe will learn a lesson from this, too. I may not be so naive and innocent as she thinks I am. The result might look perfect if she accepted me, in other people’s eyes. Our life would be overwhelmed with happiness, but… everything would be so fake, and it would hurt her even more if she found out one day that she had been enjoying someone else’s pension, and that she was just someone’s dub.

This postscript isn’t meant to hurt anyone or change anything. It’s just that I want to tell the whole truth, and no matter how Phoebe thinks after reading it, I will still and always admire and respect her as a friend, and just as a friend.


- Mark Celibate

[m>s]

Dude these are like the ramblings of a mad man

[m>s]

You over analyze all of this stuff buddy. Next time you see a girl that you find attractive just ask her out that's it.

[bigzak25]

You don't pedestal the pussy buddy, especially if you never got it. Sail on!