Heartbreak Club | s.yx ✓

Chapter 18

The next afternoon around 3 pm, I kept on thinking about Junlin's words. If it was all some kind of joke, why would he go that far to talk to me? Perhaps I had to consider it, it wasn't as if I was a fan of what Roy was doing anyway.

Busy with my thoughts, I didn't notice Yaxuan walk into our lecture theatre. He walked over to me and stood just next to the chair I was sitting on.

I looked up from my desk after I saw the shadow that had been casted on my notebooks. I was surprised when I saw him. 'Oh hey Yaxuan, how'd you know I was here?'

'Last time when we met on a day like this, you had your last class in this room. So I assumed the same thing would happen today.' He answered.

I nodded slowly, now more surprised with the fact that he remembered that. 'Wow, I kinda didn't think you'd remember that.'

'Yeah I do remember when something is important to me.'

I found it a bit sweet, so I gave him a genuine smile. 'Ok so what's up?'

'Wanna hang out?'

I couldn't say no. It wasn't as if I had anything else to do anyway, and it was probably important to hang out with Yaxuan anyway. I nodded.

Once I packed up my books, Yaxuan and I left the lecture theatre. He suggested we go for a walk since the afternoon was particularly warm and clear. Getting to know Yaxuan, I noticed that he seemed to enjoy the sunset – this would have been the second time I heard him talking about it.

Yaxuan and I were currently waking on the sidewalk of a street I had been on so many times, but it was a different experience being there with Yaxuan.

'So, did you listen to your brother's interview?' Yaxuan asked me as he kicked a stone.

I was hoping he wouldn't bring this up, but it was too everywhere for him not to. 'No I didn't,' I answered, hoping that Roy hadn't said something that made it seem obvious that he knew the details of Yaxuan's story.

'Well I did,' he sounded more serious than he did when we were having a casual conversation.

'Did it make you mad?' I asked him cautiously.

'No it didn't make me mad, I gave me something to think about.' He looked into the distance. 'He talked about "holes" and I guess I knew there were holes, but I just didn't want to confront myself over these "holes". I didn't want to overthink anything.'

I gritted my teeth nervously as I tried to figure out what to say. 'So my brother reopened old wounds didn't he?'

Yaxuan chuckled slightly. 'Not reopened, probably the wounds never healed in the first place. I just have a number of questions right now,' he ran his hands through his hair and sighed.

'Hey! You know what will cheer you up? Ice cream!' I punched his shoulder and changed the subject. I didn't want to talk about it because I hardly found what to say and I still felt guilty about it when he brought it up because I had told Roy.

'Oh yeah, that always solves everything.' Yaxuan agreed without much excitement, but at least I knew it would probably cheer him up.

...

I couldn't lie, I genuinely had fun with Yaxuan at the Ice Cream Bar. I couldn't say we had much in common, but we were able to hold a conversation and I liked how stories flowed from one to another.

Before Yaxuan could order his third ice cream, I stopped him and said we needed to go. It was getting late anyway, so I had to get going. With what Junlin had done to me last night, I wasn't very comfortable walking around after dark just yet.

So Yaxuan and I left the Ice Cream Bar, and once again, I still couldn't understand how Yaxuan was a playboy. Every moment I spent with him was making him seem like an ordinary boy, much more normal and kinder than he was described by the girls at the Heartbreak Club.

Currently, Yaxuan and I were walking back to campus when I decided to ask him about what was on my mind, since he seemed a bit more open with me now than he was before.

'Yaxuan, how many girls have you dated since your first year?' I asked Yaxuan as he walked next to me.

He gave me a nervous look. 'Why'd you ask that? You like me don't you?'

'No!' I face palmed. 'I just want to know.'

'Maybe 6.' He looked down at the ground as he continued to walk. 'It's just that...' he stopped his sentence midway. 'Anyway, there's no way to justify that.'

'What? You dated them then realized they're not your type? Then you moved on?' I asked with feigned innocence.

'No, not like that,' Yaxuan shook his head.

'You know...I didn't mean to. But it makes me feel better when I break girls' hearts.' He shrugged as if his statement wasn't weird.

'What?' I turned to him.

'Look I always felt a bit better about losing Vivi when I broke a girls' heart, it almost feels like some kinds of revenge for what happened to me. Vivi was a girl, and I break girls' hearts...I sort of make them experience what I went through.'

'What? So now you're revenging on people who didn't do anything to you? And why would you want to revenge on Vivi as if she made a choice to hurt you? She didn't.'

'I don't know that...I don't care,' I could hear the emotion in Yaxuan's voice as he spoke. 'Fact is she left and it hurt me, it doesn't matter what happened. So I feel a bit better whenever a female goes through the same thing, it's like a little revenge.'

'That's messed up. Hurting other people won't ever make you feel better. Now everyone thinks you're a bad guy.'

'Well it makes me feel a bit better so it doesn't matter what people think,' he put his hands in his pocket.

'No, look, we all choose what to take out of painful experiences. Either we become better people or we become terrible people, depends on the decision you make.'

'No,' Yaxuan stopped in his tracks, and I could tell that he was feeling quite triggered. It seemed once again I had managed to push him. 'You know what? It's pretty rich for you to tell me that when you don't even know how I feel. I'll do what makes me feel better and you can't tell me whether it's helpful or not, you're not me.'

'Come on Yaxuan, we've all had our fair share of pain. We can't do whatever we want to do to people simply because it makes us "feel better"'

'Have you ever lost a sibling who was your best friend?'

'No but...'

'Then you can't understand...and we won't talk about this.'

With that, it was almost like Yaxuan silenced me. I guess I really didn't know how he felt, so my advice will probably not be appropriate. I wasn't on his side, but his explanation made more sense than what people actually believed that he was just a heartbreaker.

I could tell that Yaxuan was too angry to talk to me right now, and it made me feel awkward that we were going the same direction. I would have wanted to walk ahead of him or behind, but I just didn't want it to seem dramatic.

I was getting used to Yaxuan's outbursts by now, but it was hard to know whether he would overreact to something or not. One moment he seemed okay with me talking about his personal life, the next he was very irritated.

Yaxuan quickened his pace, leaving me behind. Iwas kind of relieved, and at the same time I was kind of glad I found out thetruth about Yaxuan's playboy nature: Yaxuan wasn't a real playboy, he was justsomeone who was hiding behind the playboy persona to make himself feel betterover his sister's disappearance.