(1)
One hour ahead of the farewell dinner, standing in front of the box office of People's Cinema, the movie theater which was just a 15-minute walk from our school, and going through all the movies and their showtimes, I really couldn't make up my mind whose tickets to buy, even though this had been all that I'd been thinking about during the last free period. Kung Fu Panda would work for me, for I really liked pandas. But considering Chenhui might prefer dystopian movies, perhaps WALL-E could be a better choice. This was the moment when I really wished that I'd known more about him, so that I could come up with something better than a movie. Compared with that, what I really wanted was a chance to chat with him without being interrupted by anyone, or simply by the end of the break between two periods, which only lasted for ten minutes, when everything I wanted to talk about with him was merely like an abstract of a whole news report.
But Lili found asking Chenhui out for a movie a good start, especially for someone like me who would even hesitate over asking a Magic 8-Ball whether or not I should take any steps.
"But do you think it'd be better if you ask him first before getting the tickets?" Lili had been a little confused when I'd told her about my plan the day before. "Will it be weird if you just take out the tickets the moment he says OK?"
"No, no, no. The tickets are not refundable in People's Cinema, but I was told I'm allowed to change them." Apparently, she'd misunderstood me. "If he's not OK with the time or the movie I've chosen, I'll just change the tickets. But if I don't buy them first, I'll never convince myself to ask him. You know."
"What if… he says no?"
I wouldn't deny that I'd kept asking myself this question, too. His refusal, however, might not be a totally bad thing for me. If all that had happened was just my fantasy, then it deserved to be broken as early as possible.
"If that happens, I'll eat the tickets in front of him."
"Please… let me be there, too. Who's gonna miss things like that?"
Yes. I was burning my bridges, as Lili had concluded at last. But I wondered if it was too early for me to do this since this was just my first try.
"Hi. How can I help you?" I must've been standing here for too long without saying anything, so the ticket clerk asked me.
What the hell. There must be tons of bridges for me to burn.
"Two tickets for WALL-E at…" The dinner gathering might end no later than 7:30, I thought, or everyone would get really bored like at other dinners we'd had before.
"At what time?"
"At 8:30, please."
"OK. 8:30. Two tickets for WALL-E. Are both of you students?" asked the clerk.
"Oh. Yeah. We are." Crap. Discount. It seemed that I was too busy thinking about some romantic stuff every day to remember I was still a student. When was the last time I reviewed my math class notes?
"Here you are." The clerk handed the tickets to me through the small window between us, with a hint of a smile on her face. "Don't forget to bring your student cards."
"Sure. Thanks."
I fished out the notebook from my backpack and put the tickets in between the pages, the way I'd treated my pocket money when I was younger.
(2)
By the time I hurried back to the gate of our school, where Lili and Yun were supposed to wait for me to go to the restaurant together, I'd only seen Yun there, who was propping herself against the wall with her arms crossed.
"Where's Lili? / What took you so long?" We chorused when I got close enough to her.
"She left with the monitor earlier… to help with the arrangement or something," Yun answered perfunctorily, her eyes on my sweaty forehead. "I didn't see you after class. Where did you go?"
"Didn't Lili tell you anything? – Thanks." I took the tissue Yun gave me and wiped the sweat off.
"Personal affair," Yun air-quoted the words Lili had told her.
"Fine." I patted my backpack and said secretly, "I'm gonna ask him out for a movie tonight."
"Who?" Without thinking for a second, Yun asked, while stuffing the tissue pack back into her pocket.
"Mr. Zhang, our dean." I couldn't even. "Come on, girl. Who else could it be?" I tilted my head, looking at her, waiting for her to wake up.
She looked pretty confused for a second, then, slowly and dramatically, her eyes widened, lips slightly parted. I swore I'd never seen eyes widening in this manner outside of anime.
"FINALLY! What's your plan after the movie? Are you guys gonna kiss? Or get a hotel room?" Then she took out her phone and started dialing. "In that case… I think I may help… I remember my cousin's got the membership in Holiday Inn. Hope it's still valid…"
"Thank you and your cousin very much for the kindness," Before I could catch a moment to tell her none of the things she'd mentioned would happen, I had to snatch the phone from her hand, stopping her from making the call. "But I'm good. Really good. Just a movie. Nothing else."
"Alright, alright." She pouted, then said, "Anyway, thank god you are finally doing something."
"Thank god cell phone numbers are 11-digit long," I murmured, giving the phone back to her.
"Are you guys still gonna call each other by full names? You may have to pick nicknames for each other. Yangyang… That sounds cute." Yun, who was apparently out of control without Lili, didn't so much ask me anything as talk to herself. If I'd known this earlier, I'd have told her my "personal affair" was to… get medicines for… my sick cat, which I didn't have at all, and everybody knew that. Forget it. Listening to her gabbing on our way to the restaurant might be my punishment for sucking at lying my way out. "But Huihui sounds like a puppy's name. You should give him a better nickname…"
"What is the arrangement that Lili is helping with?" I tried to interrupt. "Is anybody gonna perform anything? Or maybe just some balloons?"
"A stage on which you are asking Chenhui out."
"Forget what I said." I shook my head.
It only took us no more than 10 minutes to get to the restaurant, whose name was two ink-blue Japanese kanji I didn't really recognize, engraved on a wooden plank hanging right above the door, by which Lili was waiting for us.
"He's gonna do it! He's gonna do it! He's gonna do it!" Yun trotted towards Lili, rapping.
Lili got it almost immediately and put her finger against her lips to shush Yun. For some reason, Lili didn't seem delighted when she got Yun's message. Instead, she looked a little worried. My heart sank. Something must have happened. For a second, I even hoped Lili was merely fooling us because she was simply so bored with all the waiting. However, I did know Lili would never do things like that.
"He's already there," Lili nodded in the direction across from the restaurant. Yun and I swiveled together, following Lili's gaze.
There he was, Chenhui, sitting on the bench under a golden rain tree on the other side of the road and chatting with the girl sitting next to him, who was wearing a uniform different from ours. With all the cars and buses roaring past in between, it was almost impossible for the three of us to hear what they were saying. Chenhui looked chilled out at least, for I saw a familiar smile, flattered by the afternoon sunlight in some way, on his face. The smile, which I'd always liked, somehow saddened me.
"Who's that?" Looking back at Lili, Yun asked, a look of puzzlement crossing her face.
"Kena, his girlfriend," Lili looked at me and laid her hand on my shoulder, giving me a gentle squeeze. "I didn't know, either. I promise."
"Sure." I dropped my gaze, trying to stop the emotional poem writing before it came to the climax in my head. "Let's get inside. The dinner is about to start, I figure."
(3)
In the bathroom, unconsciously rubbing the paper towel in my hands, I stared at myself in the mirror, trying hard to tell myself to think nothing of it.
I'm fond of Japanese food, ain't I?
Yes, I really am.
So here I was, ready for the cuisine I'd been waiting for.
It's pretty normal for him to have a girlfriend at our age, isn't it?
Yes, it is normal.
Of course. High school students. Come on.
We haven't been close for a very long time, so, understandably, there are still many things we haven't known about each other, isn't it?
Yes, it is understandable.
Maybe he'd told me before, but I just didn't remember.
So I'd better stop daydreaming of anything that I want to happen between us, hadn't I?
…Hadn't I?
I had no idea.
I wished I'd been able to put myself at ease by giving a firm "yes" to every question I asked myself, but it seemed impossible to completely ignore the voice in my head, keeping urging me to give him one of the movie tickets and ask him out as I'd been planning, refusing to acknowledge what Lili had just told me about him. Also, I wished I'd been more experienced in dealing with this kind of crap and fully known what to do next. What had I been doing in the past 18 years? Maybe the school should've taught us this. Compared with the possibility of identical twins getting the same kind of disease that we were supposed to calculate, I thought what knowledge was more relevant was quite evident.
I took a deep breath, pulling myself together.
"Hey. There you are." Before I looked up at Chenhui, who suddenly pushed the door open and got in, I'd already recognized his voice. "I just saw Lili and Yun get seated."
"Yeah. We just got here together." I turned on the faucet and started re-washing my hands. It was funny that I'd never cleaned my hands this carefully even before SARS ended.
"Did you see me?" I wasn't sure if it was he who lowered his voice a bit or simply the running water was too loud.
Me?
"Yeah, we did. We saw both of you guys." I pulled out another piece of paper towel casually from the tissue holder under the mirror, in an attempt to behave as if I'd always known everything. "So, see you around at the table."
Having given him a light smile in the mirror, I turned around and left.
Before the bathroom door shut automatically, I heard him say quietly, "Sure."
The dinner began right after the last classmate had arrived. The monitor made a toast at the beginning of the dinner. I guessed she'd said she felt grateful to us all for our support for her work as the class monitor and also stuff like she hoped we could still keep in touch when she got to Australia. She was a lovely girl indeed, and everybody liked her, I thought. What impressed me most was her sense of humor, intrinsic and incomparable, enabling her to turn every dull matter into her stand-up comedy material. That was why I'd always enjoyed listening to her every time she was giving a presentation on a school project or making a weekly report at the class meeting on Friday afternoon. But that time, what I heard was only the bursts of laughter around me, which interrupted my absent-mindedness a couple of times.
During the meal, I tried my best not to look at Chenhui and his girlfriend, who were sitting on my right side with Lili and Yun in the middle. I thought Lili had sat between the couple and Yun on purpose, in case Yun might say or ask anything inappropriate out of nowhere.
Out of the corner of my eye, I believed I saw Chenhui attempting to catch my eye several times, and I didn't know if my not talking with him made him uneasy. However, I was pretty positive that avoiding eye contact made me look exactly like I had stolen something from him and felt afraid of being disclosed.
When I was fishing around in my bag for my phone, I saw the notebook, between the pages of which were the two tickets. WALL-E, 8:30. I should've listened to Lili and not have done it on impulse.
The dinner ended at 7:30, as I'd expected. Only when everybody got up, getting ready to leave, did I notice that the eel sushi Yun had picked for me was still placed in the center of my plate.
On our way out, I took out the tickets and gave them to Lili while waiting for Yun, who had gone to the bathroom.
"And?" Lili took them and then asked.
"Can you do me a favor? Give them to the couple." I guessed Lili was the only one in front of whom I didn't have to pretend to be OK.
"You sure?" She asked me worriedly.
I shrugged.
When she caught up to them, the couple had already gone out of the restaurant.
After a while, I heard, "See you tomorrow," and then Lili returned.
"I told them we were gonna see it, but I just realized I had to watch my cousin at my aunt's place tonight."
"You have a cousin who is too young to stay home alone?" Had I missed anything?
"That's the part you care about?" My question amused her a little.
"I mean I could never make up a better excuse than that." I returned the smile.
"He said thanks, by the way." Added Lili.
"Then he's welcome."