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Qingdan stared in dismay at the classmate standing right before her. He was… a guy. Mortification swept over her in relentless waves. Had she written anything too friendly in the note?
It was the first day of junior college and the teacher had gotten them to write introductory notes to each other. She had produced a bag containing 34 slips of paper bearing each of their names, and one by one they had gone to draw a slip from the bag. Qingdan’s slip read “Xiyu” – a nice girl’s name, she’d thought with relief; entering a co-ed junior college from her all-girls’ secondary school had been a major change and she wasn’t yet ready to interact with guys much. And then the students had been told to seek out the person they had written to – and here she was, in front of a guy called Xiyu. It must have been a horrible mistake. Which guy had that sort of a name? she wondered in a mixture of despair and bewilderment. It was like calling a girl Peter. Or Leonard. Or… Bryan…
The guy – she couldn’t get over it – grinned widely at her. Qingdan felt like sinking through the floor or throwing herself off the top storey of the school; anything to avoid talking to him. Then she looked out the window – they were on the fourth floor – and abruptly changed her mind. No, she was not going to let her brains become drop-impact-squished watermelon mess. Pull yourself together, she admonished herself sternly. Just look at what a pathetic person four years of being in an all-girls’ school has reduced you to being. Tsk. And with every ounce of decorum and bravery she possessed she forced her back straight and looked directly at the guy-Xiyu for the first time. After all, entering junior college had shuffled all the students about and she didn’t know a single person in her class, not even any of the girls who had come from the same secondary school as she had. She might as well start off making friends with someone with both X and Y chromosomes.
But she didn’t know what to say. Automatically she smiled awkwardly at him and went, “Er, hi. I’m Qingdan.” He didn’t respond immediately, and she realized with a flash of insight that she’d literally rendered him speechless, because obviously she knew his name and he knew it. Cursing inwardly at her stupidity, she continued, saying the first thing that came to her head. “So, what common interests do you think we might share?”
Xiyu grinned at her straightforward tack. “Sports? Not soccer I suppose. Badminton? Table-tennis? Music? Classi –“
Qingdan’s heart gave a great leap of joy. Music! Suddenly her tongue seemed to come alive and she burst into speech. “Music; yes! I especially love classical music. What genre do you like? Do you play any musical instruments? I play the piano, and I once learnt the flute… though my favourite hobby has to be singing! Don’t laugh, but all those Walt Disney cartoon theme songs? They’re really quite lovely to sing!”
They had found kindred spirits in each other through their common love of music, and the half hour of free interaction the teacher allowed them flew by. It transpired that Xiyu played the violin, and he too liked to play some of the Walt Disney songs Qingdan so loved to sing. They agreed to try out the arrangement of having Qingdan’s voice in accompaniment to Xiyu’s violin.
“I’ll bring my violin tomorrow,” he promised.
