PAPER HEARTS

HEATHERS

who are heathers ?

what it likes to be one?

I've always wondered what it feels like to be loved.

But love was as foreign to me as the warmth of a home. My parents' marriage was teetering on the brink, barely holding together like a thread ready to snap. They were always busy, drifting further apart from each other, and from me. At school, I blended into the background, my grades subpar, my face just another in the crowd of girls far more radiant than me.

I had convinced myself long ago that love wasn't something I would ever find. I wasn't special. How could someone love someone like me?

That was until Minghao came along. He was popular, effortlessly cool, and an upperclassman, admired by everyone. I didn't expect anything from him—he was so far out of my league, it was laughable. But the day he sat beside me during lunch and asked about my weekend, my world shifted.

It wasn't love. He never said it was. But the smallest bit of his attention took me somewhere else, somewhere warm and full of possibility. Maybe... just maybe, he could be my knight. My soulmate.

One afternoon, we were alone under the cherry blossom trees. Minghao asked, "Have you ever kissed anyone, Xinyi?" His question sent my heart racing, my mind spinning, and before I could answer, he kissed me. Just a brief, soft kiss.

To him, it might have meant nothing. But to me? It was everything.

I fell in love with the idea that someone like him could see me—me, with all my flaws and insecurities. In my mind, Minghao became everything. He was the one who could fill the void in my heart, the one who could rescue me from the loneliness I had always known.

But then it all came crashing down.

I saw him with Lili, the school beauty. She was everything I wasn't—beautiful, confident, and perfect in every way. They were laughing together, his arm casually draped over her shoulder. And just like that, my fragile dream shattered into a thousand pieces.

I was angry, hurt, betrayed. I wanted to confront him, to demand why he kissed me when he already had someone like Lili. But as I stood there, watching them, I realized... I had no right.

How could I, of all people, compete with her? I wasn't deserving of someone like Minghao. He was always meant for someone like Lili. I was just... someone in the background.

As I turned away, tears stung my eyes. The bitterness of it all overwhelmed me. I thought I had finally found something real, something that would fill the emptiness inside me. But maybe, I was never meant to have that.

Maybe love was always meant to be just out of reach.

but deep down i cant stop thinking then why did you even kissed me  when i am not even half pretty as her . why????.......