A Love Like Hail

Chapter 5

IT WAS A long time until I ever thought about Yang Yinuo again. The last I heard was that she also got accepted into Harvard a year later. My parents moved us thirty minutes away from the city center and so I never heard about her again. They made up an excuse to say it was to save money because my sister's funeral used up most of our savings. In actuality, we moved to get away from everything and everyone that knew my sister.

Her photos were stored away, and everything that reminded them of her was gone. Suddenly, it was like she never existed.

Although the remnants her death left us were scattered everywhere, and that could not be removed as easily. My parents' cease to hold any expectations for me, and so I also quit modeLin and all other extracurriculars that I started in school. My brother began to learn to talk, and when he called me 姐姐 (Jiejie) I turned around, expecting to see my sister. I assumed to see her standing behind me and smiling, proud about Muchen's first few words. I soon realized Muchen will probably never know we had another sibLin, and that left me to cry inside my room.

I decided to go through life as if I were viewing a movie instead, the way I sometimes did as a young child. When I imagined myself as only an audience, not the actors on screen, it became easier to be alive. I could stop the persisting guilt that trailed behind my every breath and action, or the inanimate expression my sister had before all life and energy sucked out of her.

Without my sister or Yinuo in my life, and my parents not caring about anything other than my brother, I slowly lost purpose. The main leads in my movie are gone, and what's left are silent background characters and Lin Xiawei.

I grew to dislike Lin Xiawei those first few years after my sister's death, even though she had not known of my existence and I did not know her personally. I watched her closely whenever she became the topic of conversation or in my viewpoint. She and my sister resembled different kinds of beauty, but it was perfection in its various forms at play. I was confused by the rising emotion I felt whenever I saw Lin Xiawei, not knowing I could feel many emotions after my sister passed. I burned my eyes into her back, sometimes surprised she does not feel my intense gaze. I questioned and questioned the sky, wondering why Lin Xiawei could live a good life but my sister couldn't.

Of course, eventually these feelings for Lin Xiawei disappeared as time also brushed over the wounds my sister left me. Soon, I continued to watch my movie alone without any emotions passing through me.

That was until Lin Xiawei stepped out of the screen from where she belongs, and seized my hands. Before I can resist, she pulls me into the screen with her. My head surfaces out of the mud that belonged to the audiences, as if I had been holding my breath for six years. The world is so alive around me, so much sound and action, I shut my eyes, afraid to feel and step out of the silent mud I hid inside for so long.

"Let's be friends, Song Huiqiao."

And just like that, I am yanked violently out of the mud. My chest heaves up and down as I gasp for breaths of air. It was like learning the steps to breathe, which should have been a natural survival instinct. It seemed that I suppressed it for so long, a cowardly attempt to slowly kill myself. But still, the cruelty of life allowed me to somehow survive. Lin Xiawei dug through the muddy water to find me, even if I was a rock, she did not mind because I had already taken hold of her interest. Rock or pearl, it did not matter to her.

I never felt so alive looking into her blue eyes that sprinkled glitter of life onto me.

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"Want to study some time together after school?"

Lin Xiawei's question caught me off guard, as she never asked to meet me outside of our secret mornings where she tags onto me. I try to control the weird feeLin of slowly forming excitement, the way Lin Xiawei made me feel special. I so desperately needed that feeLin, perhaps why I am letting her into my life. I became scared that one day I will lose this feeLin once I achieve this.