It was on a frostbitten morning that the first thread of me began to fray. Winter, as always, had a way of loosening the seams of my spirit. I was a wilted bloom in a garden gone dry, thirsting for even a drop of meaning. And so, I yearned for new friendships, fresh connections, and memories yet to be made. Lo and behold - something was, in fact, waiting for me. Something real. Something I was always meant to encounter.
I was in a hurry to reach the auditorium amidst the chills that my frail structure had
"Where were you for so long you are one of the anchor right? Mam was calling out for ya", a senior said while setting up the banner for the conference.
"Not yet! Talk to Mam after the Inauguration I just had a conversation with her. We are short in hands on the registration desk. Go and talk to the coordinator there,", another one hurried.
"Yess", I nodded and hurried to the conference room.
"Where the f** is ur event t-shirt?", a classmate intervened on the stairs.
"I want to see you in the official tshirt my handsome", a flirtatious female voice muttered in my ears while a hand sliding on my waist.
"RuYi Senpai..., stop teasing your little XueDi. I am wearing it. Its just beneath my layers."
"Then take those off for me,"RuYi Senpai said with a slight pout and the telltale finger-poking gesture.
"But it's so cold today. The tshirt won't suffice."
"Take it off and you'll make it hot for everyone else" RuYi Senpai said followed with an exaggerated wink.
"Just do whatever your Senpai says" another Senior barged in.
"TaLun Senpai, you too?" I said, lifting a hand in a soft wave, as if welcoming a familiar breeze.
"Feel a bit of shame are you going to wear that while Anchoring? "
"Offcourse no tho I planned to do it."
"Shameless"
I surrendered to the warmth of the conversation, letting the chill slip away as I began to shed my layers in the empty hallway. First, the woolen gloves slipped from my fingers, followed by the muffler that had hugged my neck. My jacket came next, peeling off like autumn leaves, then the inner shirt, then another beneath it-until finally, only the thin fabric of my T-shirt remained, a fragile shield against the fading cold.
With every new piece, TaLun Senpai's puzzled gaze deepened, unraveling like a knot pulled tight.
I tightened my black mask, my eyes widening-an unspoken moment caught between chill and surprise.
"It's so cold," I murmured, voice fragile against the biting air.
"But you," she teased softly, "are the one who burns."
A flush crept over my cheeks, and I whispered back, "Just a mask... without it, nothing about me feels right."
"Shameless" TaLun Senpai repeated. "Go to the help desk they need more hand."
"Wait wasn't it the registration desk...", I was about to finish that the two disappeared in the thin air.
I rushed to the registration desk in front of the auditorium hall, where a cluster of people collectively gazed at me - as if I were a serpent in a garden or a ghost in a den. Their stares pressed against my back like silent daggers. Every step felt as fragile as walking on eggshells. I had to hold my composure - a familiar performance for someone like me.
Yet, I was used to it. I let their eyes slip past and walked toward my classmates, as though I never noticed at all.
"Hope I'm not looking weird," I thought loudly.
"Come sit here. Handover the vouchers to the new guys," A classmate shook of her duty and left from her spot.
I took over the task and quietly sank into the rhythm. Each person I met reacted in their own strange way-a flicker in their eyes, a pause in their tone.It wasn't unfamiliar. I've always carried a kind of quiet difference, a shadow people can't name but feel.
"Hey, are you wearing contacts?" A female classmate asked, eyes locked on mine-like my gaze held something borrowed, something not entirely from here.
Suddenly, my gaze fell upon two figures - so exquisitely composed, it was as if the heavens themselves had labored with divine precision to shape them. Though I saw them for barely four blur seconds, the aura they exuded seemed to permeate the very air, commanding the room, bending it's energy around their presence like an invisible current. My body leaned forward, almost instinctively, drawn by the silent gravity of their silhouettes - as though the simple act of following them might peel back a corner of the universe and reveal a secret it was reluctant to surrender.
"Whatcha looking at?"
I was interrupted, just after the figures disappread. "Ah... nothing. Yes, these are the lenses," I murmured, returning to the conversation, though my mind lingered elsewhere. Beauty whispers in silhouettes, yet often stumbles beneath direct gaze - a truth I've come to know too well in moments like these, chasing figures that dazzle from afar, only to find them hollow up close. After all, don't we all reach for fruits that promise sweetness in scent, yet recoil from those whose fragrance speaks of rot?
"Where did u buy them from they are pretty."
"Online! Wait, I'll send you the link."
"Okay I'll check later. What's that colour anyways? It looks so pretty on u."
"Well it's the envy green of this brand."
"I just wanna keep looking at your eyes. Just take off that mask already."
"While on stage I will for sure. Don't worry haha. And do your work. We are free labourers here. I hope they will be treating us to a grand after party of this event."
"Everyone is requested to please get into the auditorium as soon as possible," a professor called out, guiding the crowd in the hallway.
"Let's go! We need to meet our professor in charge after the inauguration and review our script for changes."
I rose from my seat, nudging my classmate to follow. She lingered, still lost in conversation with another friend, lazily pulling herself up as though time bent only for her. My patience, already fraying at the edges, finally unraveled. Without waiting any longer, I drifted toward the main entrance of the hall.
And then - as if summoned by some quiet magnetism - a figure slipped past me, effortlessly catching my gaze and carrying it along with him. It was one of the boys I had glimpsed earlier. Though I saw only his back, it was enough to ensnare my attention. His outfit was modestly casual, yet it hung upon him with a quiet sophistication, each fold and line seeming almost deliberate. In a room crowded with angels, his mere presence seemed to hush them all - and yet, I had only seen his back.
At that time, I harbored an unrepentant habit of capturing photos of any attractive guy I encountered - a practice shamelessly encouraged by my friends online, who fueled my guilty little tradition. My instincts, like muscle memory, took over. Swiftly, I raised my phone and captured him: a single frame where his teal-framed silhouette stood out against the gentle motion of the crowd, drawing me in like gravity's patient pull.
"I was looking for you! Come quickly," a senior called out, breaking my trance and whisking me into another room - just as I was on the verge of following that magnetic figure into the unknown.
With my heart adrift elsewhere, I followed my senior into a quiet room where our bags lay in scattered clusters. The professors handed down their instructions for the event, assigning soft tasks that gradually dulled the lingering echo of what I'd just seen. Like a dream dissolving with the morning light, that brief encounter slipped quietly into the recesses of my mind.
As the day unfolded, I drifted among volunteers and upperclassmen, capturing fleeting smiles in photographs, exchanging laughter, and weaving through the orchestrated chaos. Now and then, a quiet thought stirred - that perhaps I was only a spectator, applauding others as they labored. Yet, I chose to indulge in the lighter moments, chasing the warmth of laughter and the weightlessness of idle mischief, as though it were a sweeter kind of toil.
RuYi-senpai returned, draped in a black suit that shimmered with elegance and echoed quiet authority.
"Did you see me on stage during the inauguration, my dear cutie?" she teased.
"Nah, I got pulled into some last-minute changes to the script. I was working on it. I'm really sorry, Senpai."
"It hurts. A lot," she pouted, dramatically.
"By the way, you look stunning in that suit," I said, smirking. My face wore a veil of calm, but my eyes gave me away - glinting with the shameless charm of someone born to flirt.
RuYi-senpai playfully crossed her arms over herself, as if guarding her modesty. "Don't flatter me with those pretty eyes."
"Did I just make Senpai blush?"
"Perverts," TaLun-senpai cut in, appearing out of nowhere like a summoned storm cloud.
"Mam wants to see you," he added, nodding toward me.
"Sure," I said with a calm nod. "Then I'll take my leave, Senpai."
I stole a glance at TaLun Senpai - his face, a silent grimace caught mid-cringe, as if beauty itself offended him.
When my gaze lingered too long, he met it with his own - not in greeting, but in return, like answering a blade with a sharper edge.
Heart racing, I clutched the script like a lifeline and made my way toward the professor.
The walk from the back of the hall to the front, skimming along the wall's shadow, felt endless - a corridor of quiet judgement.
Eyes whispered. Fingers pointed. Names passed between lips like secrets fluttering in the wind.
The hum of voices swirled like bees drawn to a single flower - buzzing, circling, watching.
"Is my perfume too strong? Am I walking weirdly? Do I look weirder than I already am? Are my hands too thin? I knew it this t-shirt will look ridiculous on me. Duck, I wanna die or disappear." Each thought stung like nettles on bare skin, feeding the ache of invisibility craved only when far too visible.
Then, suddenly - motion.
Volunteers along the aisles began silencing the crowd, gesturing toward the screens above.
All eyes shifted, and I felt a breath of relief... only to hear a classmate's whisper float to me:
"You are grabbing their attention."
I reached the front - slowly, heavily - my steps a performance I never auditioned for.
With a face stiff as carved wood, I lifted a hand and sliced the air at my throat - a silent wave, the universal sign for 'kill me now.'
I brushed past my classmate, his words left unanswered, and took my place beneath the professor - a quiet seat at the front, where every eye had already been.
"Mam, you called me?"
"Have your lunch fifteen minutes early and report back to me. I've already informed the lunch in-charge to guide you. There might be some last-minute changes in your script, so come to me immediately after you're done. Also, prepare a few questions - or have your friends do it - for the keynote deliverer. I want at least five questions asked from the audience. If no one speaks up, we'll go with yours. Any doubts?"
"No, mam."
"You may leave now. Contact the lunch in-charge within the next hour."
I nodded, the words leaving her lips like heavy stones falling into a still pond - causing ripples in a mind already weary.
All that for this?
I had braved a battlefield of whispers and watchful eyes - a parade of judgment through the aisle - only to hear something that could have been a quick call, a passing instruction.
But rebellion was never written in my stars. Confrontation wasn't carved into my bones.
So I surrendered, as quietly as I had arrived.
"Okay, mam," I said, and turned to leave, the weight of the moment pressing gently at my shoulders.
"Hey-stay at my place for a while. I need to go to the washroom. Don't let them talk or use their phones,"
the same classmate from before asked, half-whispered, half-trusted.
"Sure," I said with a nod, offering a soft wave of direction with my hand. "Take your time. I'm one of the volunteers too, after all."
I took my place - my eagle's post - ready to devour any prey that dared to move. The audience's eyes still clung to me, so I shifted into my siren gaze, casting a look painted in attitude, despair... or perhaps something darker.
Whatever it was, it worked - many turned like crimson tulips, blooming their attention back toward the glowing screen on stage.
My pace was slow, deliberate - each step a silent confrontation. I met every eye in that section with a cold, translucent glare, the kind that shimmered like ice under moonlight. I walked five steps, and then-
I saw him.
The boy whose back had once bewitched me - now facing me, head lowered, unaware of the tremors in the air.
This time, it was his front - and it stole the breath from my body.
My siren gaze softened into something gentler, like doves taking flight. My heart quaked, wave after wave, as if the mere sight of him had pulled the ground from beneath me. I slowed, barely moving now, trying to drink him in - to let his presence etch itself into the glass of my memory.
He was like a god adrift in a green sea, his teal sweatshirt billowing not with wind, but with prophecy. The fabric clung not to a body, but to legend - to the kind of myth that surfaces once in an eternity and leaves the world changed for having witnessed it. His slender frame stirred the air, not with sound, but with something gentler - a pulse of vibrance and solace that reached deeper than breath.
Amidst the blare of loudspeakers and murmurs of motion, the hall fell still - so still it felt the very act of breathing might shatter it, might shatter the fragile veil between the real and whatever realm he belonged to.
His dark mask did not conceal - it ruled.
It crowned him not in hiding, but in command;
a vow wrapped in velvet silence, known to none, yet singing its presence to all. It allowed his divinity to rest behind a mortal guise. But his eyes - his eyes were truth, carved by NuWa's own hand, precious enough to silence gods, fierce enough to shame stars.
And then, he looked up.
His gaze met mine, and in that instant, time forgot how to move.
We were two senses locked - his eyes, a pearl flickering beneath the sea, mine, the worn rocks along the shore, weathered and unworthy to hold such beauty.
He glimmered below, untouched - sacred as breath held in reverence,while I lingered above, still as silence, afraid that even the longing in my gaze might stir the tide and carry him beyond all knowing.
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Vocabulary Guide
Senpai:
• 先輩(Jp)
• (Sen-pie, as in send and apple-pie)
• Senior or upperclamenmen
XueDi:
• 学弟 (Ch)
• (Shweh-Dee, as in shoo-eh and deep)
• Junior male schoolmate
NüWa:
• 女娲 (Ch)
• (Nyü-Wah, as in "new" with rounded lips + "wah" like water)
• Meaning: A goddess in Chinese mythology, often credited with creating humanity and repairing the broken sky with five-colored stones.
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NAME GUIDE
RúYī:
• 如依
•如 = Rú – like, as if
•依 = Yī – to lean on, rely on
•(Roo-Yee, as in "rue" + yee)
•Meaning: "Like support" or "gentle reliance."
•Carries a soft, poetic tone — suggesting someone graceful, dependable, and emotionally warm.
Tǎ Lún:
• 塔倫
• 塔 = Tǎ – tower, pagoda
• 倫 = Lún – ethics, order; commonly found in male names
• (Tah-Loon, as in "tall" without the "l" + loon)
• Meaning: "Towering ethics" or "pillar of order."
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