She was beautiful, even in her plain school uniform that was always zipped all the way up even in the burning summer. There was just something different about how she wore it though I didn't know what. I think I fell in love with her at that moment, enraptured by her, and I realized it too late.
I hated her, I hated her so much. I wanted to hate her so bad.
but she was so beautiful it made me selfish, dirty, and disgusting. Because affection bled through the hatred, it made me want to kill myself. Because I had realized I loved her but didn't want to believe it.
We were from two completely different social classes. While I could lay around in a blessedly air conditioned room—thinking of her, she worked odd jobs outside of school. I knew because I saw her, sometimes for the failing stationary business just around the corner across from the tea shop she liked but never bought from, or sometimes vegetables for the aunties and uncles in the market for what would merely be some pocket change to me. Or in that restaurant, running around nearly falling to get the dishes to the customers. She worked in so many random places it was hard to know where she would be next. But I always found her in the end. Like fate was guiding me towards her.
She came to school bruised sometimes. I was wrong for looking but I couldn't help myself when the disgusting thoughts filled my head, i looked and saw bruises, all sizes and in various stages of healing on gently sun kissed skin, i saw small cuts i knew could be her cats or that small blade from her pencil sharpener, she thinks no one sees but i saw her take it out, unscrewed the screws and took out the blade in an empty classroom, lips pressed in a bloodless line as she cut shallow lines into her arms.
She had looked so fragile and small at that moment.
But when she was with others, she glowed so brightly and beautifully, like a star in the sky, the biggest and brightest one of them all, so expressive and joyful in that moment. I could hear her screaming, laughing, talking about the crazy things she liked. And I was watching her like a creep from the table beside hers. She sat the farthest away from me. I knew she knew, I knew she was uncomfortable around me.
I knew she saw me staring, she would get tense around me, shutting down. None of that loud infectious laughter. She just stared blankly at the ground, avoiding my gaze.
She would push me back. I knew I was a creep, I could acknowledge that what I was doing was inherently wrong, that I was targeting a defensively and emotionally weak girl, that there was a power imbalance between us.
I touched her shoulder and she flinched violently, slapping my hand away. I had asked the teachers to be moved next to her, they didn't see anything wrong.
To everyone around us, I was a top student, a bit of a trouble maker perhaps but there was nothing money couldn't fix, my parents were the top donors, the only ones keeping that shabby school from completely shutting down. Any request I had was fulfilled without question.
Besides, I knew I was attractive, when the abuser was conventionally attractive, they would never be truly punished, two top students seated together, even if they were male and female there was no problem. They knew someone like her wouldn't engage with me much.
The girls around us got jealous of her, but they probably didn't know how much she hated it, how much she was scared of the person shitting right beside her that had all the money and influence, the boy every girl swooned over, the boy who hadn't done anything truly bad yet.
But I liked how uncomfortable she was around me, maybe because I was actually sick in the head, but the thrill it gave me felt so good, being near her, smelling the scent of peach oolong on her skin and the clean scent of her shampoo.
Even her own friends downplayed her feelings, it made me laugh how they called her delusional for thinking i liked her—how, why I would choose to stalk her out of all the other girls in the school.
I knew almost everything about her, even if she didn't know much about me, I knew the most intimate details of her life because i was a creep and a disgusting perverted bastard, but she was the first time I had been rejected, the first time had felt such intense feelings of love and i felt that i just couldn't help myself.
I often fantasized about how I would have felt if she were my girlfriend, if i could just hold her hand in mine, soon thinking of her had become my favorite hobby, i would feel blood rush to my head when i saw her, im sure i looked foolish but i felt as if i were going through puberty again with how childish i was acting with her.
I sometimes would follow her home, because controlling all these new feelings is just too hard, i noticed when she started to walk just a little bit faster, she didn't want me to catch up.
We were in a rural village area afterall, the way to her house had no one else, just me and her walking together.
I could have grabbed her those times, I wouldn't have faced a punishment, my parents would have just paid everything off to keep it quiet, her parents probably would have given her up to me gladly if I just asked, but how could I do that to someone I loved so much?
How could I dare taint her?
As long as I had her attention, I didn't care about anything else.