Fragments

For Him....

For him, it all started with tears.

Not her tears of course. That would be ridiculous. The Dong Shancai he knew and admired had never been prone to waterworks. She was tough. She was kind. She was everything. Not even as a tiny, adorably chubby toddler had the object of his childhood affections been much of a whiner. The same couldn't be said for him, unfortunately. If he was perfectly candid, their first encounter would have been completely mortifying if he hadn't immediately fallen head over heels for her; he had been too enraptured to remember to bawl his eyes out. He could remember it like it was yesterday...

He had always been a somewhat fragile little boy, a wiry scrap of a child with typically knobbly knees and an unfortunately runny nose. He had been less than sixty pounds soaking wet, all sharp elbows and a shock of spiky hair. A baby calf in the midst of the hyenas, entirely at their juvenile mercy. It didn't help that he had the reputation of "new money", and had been labelled as a trust fund kid who ironically could not be trusted. It wasn't his fault he was the first born son of a family of farmers transformed into entrepreneurs; it was no wonder he had been sheltered as a young one, shielded from the hardships he knew his elders had suffered in their youth. However, it hadn't endeared him to his classmates in the slightest; in a neighbourhood that wasn't particularly affluent, his designer clothes and the sleek car that dropped him at the school gates, it had simply painted a bullseye on his forehead. He was different and they hated him for it. It didn't help that he was prone to allergies and had a delicate disposition - he had always been the kid who had been forced to wear thick glasses to correct his vision, the kid who hadn't often dared to venture outdoors for fear the summer may take him. What a cliche. He had never stood a chance, he was a lamb amongst wolves.

It was on one of his rare excursions into the playground when he first met Shancai, cowering in the dirt with tears streaming down his face. For the first time in a long time, he had decided he would brave the elements, to see if he would be allowed to join in any of the schoolyard games, only to come face to face with the older boys who often taunted him and made fun of his hayfever. "Sissy", they would call him, their voices loud and mocking, their laughs an accursed venom coursing into his bloodstream and making his teeth clench. It really ground on his pre-school nerves; against his better judgement, against all the carefully worded warnings from his Mama, he had unwisely locked horns with the three older boys. The result had been utter decimation; not only had they stolen his lunch money and hidden his glasses, the bullies had also knocked him flying, causing him to lose both the skin on his knees and the last modicum of his pride. He had promptly burst into tears, left alone to scrabble in the dirt, blurry eyed and sans his eyewear. He had felt like dirt. That was until he felt a light tap on his shoulder and found himself gazing (albeit blearily) into the prettiest pair of brown eyes he had ever seen in his young life. The sun had been framing her dark hair like a halo, and he could almost swear she was an angel; he had never noticed how pretty girls could be before, and he had certainly never noticed her before. He would most defiantly have remembered, of that he was sure.

"Hi," she had chirped, her voice every bit as sparkling as her wide eyes, "I'm Shancai. Why are you crying?" His words had failed him, but her appearance did manage to dry the tears on his cheeks; it was only her question that reminded him of his shame, of his bitter, bitter defeat. "Nothing!" He had muttered ashamedly, his rounded cheeks glowing scarlet under her scrutiny. His breath had caught in his throat when the girl (Shancai, the most beautiful name he had ever heard) had plopped gracelessly beside him, her tiny twin ponytails bobbing as cheerfully as her pearly white smile. Even at the tender age of five, the small boy had known intrinsically that this girl, the wondrous Shancai, was something special. Someone unique and pure. He wanted to be her friend. No, that wasn't quite right... he had wanted to be her best friend.