10 years, to fall in love

Chapter one

10 years ago, I stumbled upon a language exchange chat room called Rosetta Stone while I was preparing for my TOFEL test for studying abroad.

I have always been an adventurous and curious person who is fascinated by the world outside of China. I had never been abroad before, so chatting with people from different countries online was my primary source of getting to know the part of the world that I was not familiar with yet.

There I entered a chat room that's specifically for mandarin and English exchange, my memory has gone rusty of how it went.

However, there I met an American guy who was a few years older than me and doing his bachelor in computer science in university and learning mandarin. He was nice, kind and willing to help me with my terrible English and afterwards we connected beyond the chat room as I added his Skype and later on he became one of my first few Facebook friends. He was actually one of the very few foreigners I knew at that point.

We talked a few times after we connected. It's mostly been text and possibly once or twice voice calls.

My "weird" questions had been giving him a hard time, the questions I asked were like:
"Do you have a girlfriend?/Have you had a girlfriend?"
"Why not? Why don't you date?"
"What kind of girls do you like?"
"Have you had sex? Do you masturbate?"
"Do you find me cute?"

The guy whose name is Arthur sat on the side of the screen had no interests in love and romance at that point and he just found my endless questions around such topics annoying and wondered how the heck I can come up with so many weird questions?!

He found me vain and shallow because most of my questions were about appearance and romance. His reluctance in responding made me think he's uninterested in talking to me.

I was interested in workout, romance, appearance, and fun but shallow things. By contrast, his interests were broad and completely different from mine.

He'd been coding since he was 10 years old because he's always wanted to make games and he's a huge fan of gaming. I'd be surprised if there is a game that he's not aware of. He's super nerdy and owns lots of nerdy collections. We had no shared interests apart from wanting to learn each other's language. Soon we went separate ways and never talked again although we remained friends on Facebook.

In 2018, we both moved to Sweden for different reasons. I moved for family reasons as my boyfriend/cohabitation partner is Chinese-Swedish who I have dated since 2016. Arthur moved to Sweden for his new job as a developer after being a top performer in the game industry for years back home in the US.

I assume we both were surprised that we ended up in the same country. There are more than 200 countries in this world, what are the odds of us moving to the same country?

One of the interactions we had since we moved was when I posted something on Facebook in Swedish and he commented:"Wait, you speak Swedish now?". After that comment, I actually reached out to him for the first time after so many years and he happened to visit the capital city Stockholm where I am super close to that week. I offered to meet up but I changed my mind after. That's his only time visiting Stockholm by far and we didn't meet in person.

Time flies, another 3 years passed, we didn't speak a single word. I was in a stable relationship with my boyfriend, we traveled around Europe and got engaged in HongKong in 2018 and was planning to get married in 2019 when my parents were visiting. I never managed to find a stable job in Sweden yet he's so brilliant getting promoted again and again and remaining as the best employee in consecutive years since he landed his job in Sweden.

Then the 2020 pandemic hit the world, I fell so sharply mentally sick and moved back home to China to live with my parents. He'd been working from home since the pandemic reached Sweden. I didn't reach out to him either when I was at my lowest because we were just online acquaintances and it just never crossed my mind to turn to him either.

I got a puppy back home and my life revolved around raising my "girl" Happy. I was so passive and pessimistic, but the company of my parents, my boyfriend (remotely) and my dog made me wanna survive no matter how hard it is.

I found several ways to kill time and forget about my sufferings. I got a part-time job at a local cram-school for a few months till I got sacked. I signed up with the gym and personal trainer to keep my day schedule packed. I read online Chinese novels. I walked the dog twice a day where I could meet other dog owners to have some social interaction after dinner. I went on vacation to different parts of China with my family.

Until this year (2022) March, I finally felt a bit more stable with my mental state and I decided not to live my life like a walking dead. I actually wanted to start learning some skill set, for the first time, I wanted to live rather than survive. I heard the IT industry is the most in demand in the west. That's when I thought of Arthur for the first time since we spoke last time in 2019, three years have passed.

I wasn't beating around the bush when I turned to him for help with learning coding. He didn't turn me down but gladly decided to help me. I was of course more than grateful.