A Love Like Hail

Chapter 1

I FIRST MET Lin Xiawei (林夏薇) when we were sixteen. On this day, soft rain was forecasted. However, when I entered the classroom, the gray clouds gave way for hails rather than the expected gentle water drops. Due to the unexpected change in weather, the events for our first day back to school were pushed back.

When I say met here, I mean when Lin Xiawei first knew of my mere existence. Because I knew her way before she knew me.

Where we went to school, it was from elementary through high school. Ever since the first day of first grade, everyone had eyes on Lin Xiawei. It was first her looks, those foreign eyes that captured everyones' attention. Her father was a prestigious American CEO of some company in the U.S., and her mother was a renowned Chinese opera singer that also came from a wealthy background. She was like something straight out of another world. She was a quarter mixed blooded, but the only thing that looked European about her are those big blue eyes. Their rounded shape that harbored the color of the ocean pulled everyone in. Her silky black hair that is ever so long when swept past your face carried the feeLin of the breeze in spring. And when she opened her delicate pink lips to speak, it didn't matter what she had to say because you always found yourself listening.

She put everyone at ease, but it was not just her looks or her being the only mixed child in our school. She had the mannerism of someone highly educated even at the age of six, and knew the right words that made you feel pleased.

Maybe because she was so different from everyone at the start, you can never find her alone by herself. She was the teachers' favorite, the model student, and the amount of people she was friends with could not be counted with twenty pairs of hands. When she smiles, the entire room blooms like cherry blossoms in spring. Her role was to make everyone feel bubbly and joyful. She didn't seem human. When I was very young, I thought she was an angel descended from the heavens. It felt like there was a bright white light behind her no matter where she walked. With a respectful and wealthy family, beauty, grades, extracurriculars, and friends, she was the talk no matter where.

I was only one out of the many who admired Lin Xiawei from afar.

I knew my chances of making anything of myself was low the day I entered that classroom. It was the only class I would ever have with her until I was sixteen, and that class was the first graders of 1993 in room 103. Before entering that place where I would come to understand the true definition of perfection, I had high hopes for myself. When I was born, people said I was the cutest baby. When I turned three, my parents dolled me up in clothes and I became a child model for a bit. People showered me with compliments and praises. They sang it like songs that made me feel so smiley I thought I would smile the rest of my life. My perfect older sister would spin me around and tell me I was the prettiest girl in the world, and everyone would love me. So at the time I suppose it didn't seem to matter if I was good at anything, because everyone liked me and life was easy.

I soon began to realize that those praises sung by people I barely knew were just flattering comments for a cute child. At an early age I began to comprehend that I am just one out of the many who hoped to be special. When I joined with many others that had similar looks to me in this prestigious school, I realized I may only be considered good looking if I went to a school where nobody's gone. And so, I become what you'd call an average background student.

I dropped child modeLin a bit after, but that was due to something else which I'll get to later. My grades were average, and I had an average amount of extracurriculars in which none I was particularly good at, and one or two friends, none I held an extreme bond with.

The birth of my younger brother shifted my parents' attention between my older sister and him. I was their background child, the one that happened to be there. I was neither the oldest model daughter or the blessed son. Suddenly life became mediocre, and the once high expectations I had for myself withered away.