Chapter 5: My Dearest Hao Wu Yi Part 1-6
001
Hao Wu Yi is my best friend, my High School classmate. She was born on May (Wu) 1st(Yi); those who knew about the origin of her name always said that her parents were too easygoing about her name. Hao Wu Yi would sigh, before giving thanks that she wasn’t born on March (San) 3rd (Ba).
(T/N: This was because san ba in Chinese translated into ‘bitch’ in English.)
According to various rumours, when Hao Wu Yi was young, she suffered from a huge bout of illness, and hovered near the brink of death. As a result, her parents didn’t impose any expectations on her in relation to her studies – they were satisfied as long as long as she could run and jump about like a healthy kid. Hao Wu Yi lived up to her parents’ expectations, never ever falling out of the bottom three places in all the big exams and small tests she sat for.
Her father wasn’t anxious, and always assured her that everything would be alright. He promised her that when the time came, he would pay ‘school fees’ that enabled her to enter X High School. During our era, all the children would have heard of the following saying: ‘Entering into X High School is equivalent to having one foot into the huge universities.’ Despite that saying, we subsequently found out that our admission into the universities had not much relation with this ‘foot’ we had by virtue of being in X High School.
Hao Wu Yi thus let loose and daringly played for the three entire years in Junior High. However, during the year when we were due to take our graduating exams, there was a sudden amendment in the policies made by the Ministry of Education – ‘school fees’ were no longer allowed, and admission into schools would be purely based on the grades that we scored. Her entire family was stupefied – her dad was unable to discover any solution despite asking all his friends and networking acquaintances. It was only when our Principal changed the name of the funds from ‘school fees’ to ‘construction fees’ that Hao Wu Yi managed to enter into X High School.
002
I was extremely stressed when I first entered school. When I was in Junior High, I could still manage to squeeze into the Top 10 – however, when I came to High School, I realized that there would always be people better than me. A simple glance around the school compound yielded geniuses everywhere. I couldn’t even bear to compare my trashy results with theirs.
Thus, I was extremely good to Hao Wu Yi. I helped her buy her breakfast, accompanied her when she did her cleanup duty, and when we ate together I always gave her my meat so that she would be able to feel the love between classmates. Till today, whenever she reminisces about these incidents, tears would always fill her eyes. I simply don’t have the heart to tell her that all my actions were motivated by my fear of her transferring out of school – with her around, I would never be at the bottom of the class.
Once, when we were taking our Mathematics exam, I had absolutely no confidence. Hao Wu Yi was seated right behind me, and when she handed in her paper, I was extremely shocked – she had answered the difficult questions with an entire page of scribbles! My vision turned black momentarily and I thought in my heart that I was dead – I’m going to be the top from the bottom this time round!
After class, Mr. F helped the teacher to mark the Mathematics Paper. When he returned he comforted me, “Don’t worry, you scored slightly better than her.”
I told him not to comfort me – I saw that her answer sheet was full of her scribbles.
Mr. F was at a loss for words, “She didn’t even answer a single question – she simply copied each question five times.”
003
Hao Wu Yi and I each have a strange hobby – I liked to collect pretty wrapping papers whilst she liked to collect beautiful notebooks. Every term when school reopened, she would prepare 5 or 6 new notebooks and carefully write on each notebook “Language Notes”, “Mathematics Notes”, “English Notes” and so on. However, after diligently taking notes for five pages, she would inevitably give up and use the remaining pages to play backgammon.
We used to pass notes around whilst we were in class and exchange all sorts of gossip. Generally, people often used scrap paper to write down these notes. Only Hao Wu Yi would specially prepare a “Gossip Notebook” specifically used to pass notes around.
Thus, this notebook became a compilation of all the gossip in our class, and contains meticulous records on who was in a relationship with who, who broke up with who, and who was the third party in whose relationship…
Subsequently, this notebook was unfortunately confiscated by our form teacher. All the secrets in our class thus lay exposed to our form teacher, and everybody wanted to strangle Hao Wu Yi to death.
004
There was a period of time when it was very trendy to wear Nike sneakers to class, especially the Nike Air Force One Model, which costs about 400 dollars. It was during these periods of time when I’d be especially regretful of the fact that I wasn’t an only child, and that my mum’s budget was limited. I knew that my mum had a very difficult time trying to earn money – and since Guan Chao had managed to sweet-talk my mum into buying him a pair, I couldn’t bear to ask for another pair.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t mind. Youths aged sixteen to seventeen have an extremely strong sense of vanity – when I saw that other people were wearing branded shoes whilst I was only wearing random shoes that cost ten dollars, I felt a sense of embarrassment when I was talking to others.
One day, when we were having physical education lessons, the female students gathered around to chat during free time. Gradually, the topic shifted to the recent Nike shoes that had just been released, and they discovered that almost the entire class was wearing Nike or Adidas shoes. Just then, a female student suddenly spoke up, saying that no, Joey isn’t wearing Nike or Adidas.
Another person that pointed to my shoes and asked, “What brand are those?”
At that moment, I felt as though I had been caught red-handed when trying to commit a bad act. My entire face flushed red and I was at a loss for words.
Hao Wu Yi, who was standing by my side, had just returned from purchasing a popsicle. She broke off half of it and handed it to me, then sat herself down and said loudly, “My mum said that Nike shoes are crazily expensive for its lousy quality, and is specifically marketed to cheat people like me with no concept of money.”
Her speech left everyone feeing awkward.
After that, Hao Wu Yi rarely wore Nike shoes, instead choosing to wear random shoes like me.
One year, when Hao Wu Yi was celebrating her birthday, I gifted her with a pair of shoes. I drank too much that night, and confessed to her that I always remembered that she had helped me to resolve the awkward situation that year.
She opened her eyes widely, clearly having forgotten what happened then, “Did such a thing really happen? How come I don’t recall even the slightest bit of it? Oh right! My mum did scold me before for having no concept of money – this is something that I remember extremely clearly.”
There are people in the world who are filled with evil intentions and hostility; this is only because they have never ever been treated gently by people in their lives. I believe that I am able to retain my gentle nature only because I met kind and beautiful people when I was young.
005
Our school had two sets of uniform – a blue set and a red set. Once, a high ranking official from the Ministry of Education was due for a visit. Thus, the form teacher thus kept stressing that everybody had to don the red uniform. I’m not terribly clear on whether Hao Wu Yi simply hadn’t listened or she had merely forgotten – but when Monday rolled around, the whole school was dressed in the bright red uniform. Only she alone donned the blue uniform, looking terribly conspicuous in the queue.
Our form teacher was so angry that she rebuked Hao Wu Yi loudly in the corridor, “It’s all because of you that our school is unable to obtain an excellent grade! You’re just like mouse shit, spoiling the whole bowl of soup! This is going to be recorded as a big fault…”
No matter how open and carefree Hao Wu Yi was, she was still a girl. After getting scolded in front of so many people, she could only lower her head in an attempt to repress her tears. I wanted to comfort her, but I hesitated as we had a huge fight a few days ago. Although I don’t recall what we fought about, I remember that the sorrow that I felt when I ended my friendship with my best friend – it was as though I had broke up with my boyfriend.
That day, after we finished our first lesson, we received a sudden notice to assemble below the block. Everybody guessed that we were going to receive a lecture from the principle because of the school uniform. Hao Wu Yi was so scared that her face turned white. The form teacher starting rushing everyone to assemble below the block, leaving me alone in the classroom. At that moment, I made a decision – for my friend, I’m going to suffer the punishment together with her.
I changed into the blue school uniform and walked into the queue. Mr. F was terribly surprised, because the uniform I was wearing was his. He frequently left his blue school uniform under his desk as he was too lazy to bring it home.
When Hao Wu Yi saw me, she was momentarily stunned before bursting into tears, her cries ringing out extremely loudly. The moment I saw her cry, I too, burst into tears. Perhaps I was scared that my actions would really be recorded as a big fault. If this was a movie, and the camera was capturing the scene from above, one would be able to see two small blue dots facing each other and crying aloud in a sea of red, as though the two blue dots were crazy. Even the principal who had stepped onto the podium stopped his lecture, and stared at us in surprise.
Of course, neither of us really received a big fault. Both of us were simply assigned to do clean up duty for a month. Hao Wu Yi told me that having grown so old, that was the single most embarrassing incident in her entire life – but because of me, her memory of that incident became an extremely warm one. At that time, she felt that we would always remain friends forever.
006
Hao Wu Yi was extremely gifted in certain subjects but terrible at others. Her combined scores for Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics could not even exceed the score she received for a single subject – Language. When we about to promote to Year 2 of high school, the school wanted to stream us into different classes in accordance with our varying standards, so Hao Wu Yi started becoming anxious.
Mr. F was a obedient child, and had to return home before his curfew. Thus, I had no choice but to drag Guan Chao to help tutor Hao Wu Y, and that’s when my nightmare began…
Usually, tuition went like this:
Guan Chao threw out a single question.
Hao Wu Yi would still be trying to process the question, when Guan Chao had already scribbled down the answer in a few quick strokes.
Hao Wu Yi: “What are you writing? I don’t understand your solution a single bit.”
Guan Chao: “What? You can’t even understand this?! I already wrote it out in great detail.”
I stretched my head over to glimpse at the answer sheet – Kao, even though one would require five steps to arrive at the answer, the great Guan Chao went directly from the first step to the last, happily skipping all the intermediate steps in between. As such, it was impossible to understand how he arrived at his answer.
Subsequently, we concluded that Guan Chao had his own unique train of thought: one that only he could understand, and one that we are unable to critique – because if we made even the slightest comment about his train of thought, he would angrily slam the table and leave, but not before scolding us for being extremely stupid. Usually, when I encountered such a situation I’d just shut up. According to my previous experience, quarrelling with him was a waste of energy and time, and the chances of winning is abysmally low. But Hao Wu Yi was different. Hao Wu Yi would never admit defeat. Instead, she would jump up like a raging bull. The two of them would then proceed to quarrel ferociously and sling personal insults at each other. Just when I thought they’d sever all relations with each other, the two of them would return to their seats, with one person focused on copying and the other focused on explaining how he arrived at the answer from the first step.
I suppose this is a rather unique manner of getting along with each other.
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