Love, unlovable, l'amour de l'impossible, l'amour du possible

I saw Nghia again in a summer morning. It was late May: the air was cool with chilling wind, now and then, moving, making the country almond branches shiver. The sky was painted with a transparent blue, littered with white clouds as thin and delicate as pieces of lace embroidered on a big, wide tapestry. On the ground shimmered a bright and immaculate light of early-summer sunshine.

Normally, I would caught sight of him being accompanied by a boy, who was his classmate and taller than him by a head. They would walk together to school every morning and back to the dormitory after classes end. But that morning, I saw Nghia stood still on the school ground, alone, staring at me with a manifestation of rumination in his eyes. Every time I ran into him before, I would be overwhelmed with an avalanche of frantic and hysterical feelings, as if I were a bug got electrified by a laboratory scientist. But this time, a mysterious force persuaded me to stand still and retort his lingering stare. Han, my best girlfriend, who was sitting next to me, got a chance to tease me:

"Look! Who has just been frozen up in this cool just by catching sight of that boy?"

I was so embarrassed by the mockery coming out from my girlfriend's mouth but was altogether captivated by the existence of Nghia that I couldn't counter her back. Nghia saw me staring back at him, and a childlike and naïve grin lighted up on his countenance. He waved his hand at me and essayed to approach where I was standing. My girlfriend, on beholding his rushing to me, threw a not-so-modest smirk at me.

"I'm going. Good luck, babe." She said her good-bye and disappeared. I spared little attention to her that I didn't know which direction she was heading for.

"Long time no see, Linh." cried Nghia as he reached my place.

Actually, we saw each other really often; but it was merely seeing, not a word was exchanged between us. I don't know why I always tried to shun him, as if he had done something really horrible and dreadful to me; but in fact, I was the one who torn us apart. I was a tad confounded by his daring to talk to me again. Did he not expect that I would one more time run away and leave him in profound perplexity and embarrassment? I was unable to reply to his greeting as I was swamped with apprehension as to the inquiries that he might shout to my face, such as "Why are you always acting like a shit when you see my face, hah?".

On the contrary to my thought, he did not ask anything like that. Instead, "How are you doing?" was his next sentence. As he spoke, he panted quickly as if he had just finished a marathon.

"I'm doing good. How are you doing?" I said my first words to him for a long time.

"As good as usual."

"Hey, you are on your way back to the dorm right? So am I. Can I walk with you?" He was silent for a moment and continued.

"That's OK. My friend just left and there is no one here to give me a ride."

As we were walking back to the dormitory, we continued our conversation. He was mostly the speaker and I was, in contrast, mostly the listener. This situation was totally different back then as I would forever be the one to be prattling and all he would do was giving all ears to my saying and smiling, or now and then, expressing agreement by nodding his head. I was rather surprised at his outgoingness and extroversion and wondered whether he changed after roughly a year.

After a while, he stopped talking and we both grew silent. Was that because he was at a loss for things to say or he started to question about my unusual reticence? The silence between us was so intense that I could hear our respiration when we made a move. I humored myself by the lovely pleasure of stepping on the dry leaves that fell on the ground - a crispy sound was produced when my shoes crushed those leaves into broken pieces. My nostril was engulfed by the scent of blackboard trees' flowers. Some people said that smell was extremely unpleasant. I don't think so: that smell gave me a sense of peacefulness and stirred up romance and poetry in my soul.