You Are Still Here

Chapter 1

That summer was indelibly imprinted in Cheng Zheng's memory. It had been swelteringly hot and seemed to go on forever. Standing on the cusp of senior high graduation and preparing for the starting of university, it felt like metamorphosis. But to Su Yun Jin, what left the deepest impression was the struggles and confusion preceding the transformation; she did not know if the caterpillar fresh out of the cocoon would turn into a colorful butterfly or if a dark and gloomy journey awaited.

Su Yun Jin was born and raised in a county near the provincial capital. Her father was a biology teacher while her mother was originally an accountant in a textile factory who was eventually forced to step down during the "enterprising revolution" and become a homemaker instead. Due to her father's poor health and constant admissions to the hospital, the family was not rich. However, her parents were extremely doting on their only child so Yun Jin never had to experience what it felt like to lack something. After completing her junior year in the high school her father taught at, her parents lamented the fact that the local schools' standard was behind. For their beloved daughter to stand a good chance of attending a quality university, they utilized whatever savings and connections they had and transferred her to a better school in the provincial capital.

Yun Jin felt uncomfortable with her parent's arrangements. Firstly, this would require her to be independent and live apart from her parents for the first time in her life. Secondly, the expensive school fees caused her much heartache every night. Of course, she could not battle her parent's desires nor did she want to disappoint them so for her sophomore year, she became a transfer student at a school in the provincial capital.

Yun Jin had already expected that she would require some adjusting to a new environment but she did not foresee how emotional she would get when she met challenges and setbacks. Her grades were not shabby. In her previous school, she was always among the top ten in her cohort. However, in her first examinations in the new school, she felt the distinct difference in standards and was fifth from the bottom in her batch. That night, she hid under her blanket and cried for a long time, despairing at the prospect of telling her parents about her grades. Shocked, with a greater dose of embarrassment, Yun Jin felt that she had frittered away her parents' hard earned money. In the subsequent days, she felt burdened by her identity as "fifth from the bottom" and could not bear to face her classmates.

Eventually, she grew out of her embarrassment and strove towards excellence. However, reality being the cold damper it usually is, meant that no matter how diligent she was, Yun Jin was never able to have that one outstanding moment to reverse the shame of that first examinations. Although she was never again ranked from the bottom, when her sophomore year ended, in a class of sixty odd students, Yun Jin never broke into the top half in standing. Slowly, she came to believe that her parent's expectations of her and this school transfer were a complete mistake. Perhaps, she had never been an intelligent child.

With the completion of their sophomore year, the students were to be allocated into either the Sciences or Arts stream. Yun Jin did well in Languages, was terrible in History and her favourite subject was Physics. Her Mathematics and Chemistry left much to be desired, and she was middling in English and Politics. Understandably, she took a long time to decide on her major.

One day after school, she was passing the doorway of the class which was chocked full of boys and was heading towards the ladies at the end of the corridor when she heard "... What rubbish! I'm obviously choosing the Sciences! Who doesn't know that only nerdy girls and those terrible in their studies would enrol in Arts...". This was followed by the raucous laughter of quite a few boys.

Yun Jin felt all the blood in her body rush to her face. Actually, she was aware that those boys were unlikely to be targeting her, but, to a young sensitive girl with low self-esteem, she felt that she was the exact "geeky and academically poor student" they were laughing over. She turned her head back and glared hatefully but was unable to identify the boy who had passed the comment. She felt out of place since it was all boys and hurried off in the direction of the ladies.