Do You Know I Like You?
Like pretending to sweep the stairwell, hoping to “accidentally” run into him, I don’t know how many times I’ve played this old trick.
Because I had a crush on him, an upperclassman, I suddenly became unusually active. I used to hold it in until I got back to the dorm, but now I cherished every opportunity to go out – P.E. class, lab class, campus clean-up time. Even during the ten-minute breaks between classes, I would rush out of the classroom, dragging my best friend along, pretending to play around with her.
But my attention was always on the building across from us, just hoping to catch a glimpse of him. If he happened to look my way, my heart would race uncontrollably for the next ten minutes.
I first saw him at a school social event – he was holding a guitar, singing “White Birch Forest” with more charm than Pu Shu himself, captivating a large group of girls, including me.
While they screamed and waved at him, I stayed silent, pretending not to care. In private, when they excitedly showed off the slips of paper with his phone number and QQ number, I was already chatting with him online and often exchanging text messages. (Feeling quite proud, haha)
Because I paid so much attention to him, even though we had no real connection, it felt like he was always appearing in my life. I suspected I knew his whereabouts better than he did – his favorite snack shop, when he played basketball, his preference for the first cafeteria at noon and the second one at night, even his favorite dishes and the location of his dorm room.
Despite knowing all his movements, I chose to observe secretly, trying not to let him notice. If I had to pass by the playground when he usually played basketball, I would be extra careful not to glance around, walking upright and confidently past him. If he did call out to me, I would pretend to be very surprised, “Oh, you’re here!” and then hurriedly say a few words before rushing off, afraid my nervousness would make me tremble.
Every encounter with him was enough to keep me reminiscing for a long, long time. Those memories were almost like my sustenance – every night, I would review his messages from the past week before I could fall asleep contentedly.
Because I focused on him so much, I even knew that he had 7 T-shirts, 4 jackets, 3 down coats, and 6 pairs of jeans… I knew how often he changed his clothes and could even predict what he would wear that day.
If he didn’t change his jeans for two weeks… he surely didn’t know that a girl like me, who was so boring, knew better than he did how long he had been wearing those jeans. If he knew, would he feel embarrassed?
Because my mind was entirely on him, many coincidences happened – like going to the same dessert shop on the same day, getting a haircut on the same day, or finding out he liked a celebrity who looked a lot like me. These little sweet thoughts rolled around my taste buds like candies, making me incredibly happy, so how could I bear to break that illusion?
Because I longed for his attention, I hoped he would notice even my smallest achievements. I worked hard in his class, hoping his teacher would mention me and praise me in his class; even when I painted my nails with a new color, I believed he would notice – though how would he get that close to notice my nails?
Even though I knew he had a girlfriend, even though I saw them in matching outfits, I also heard they argued in front of the dormitory, and I heard him complain to his friends that he was tired of her…
Besides, she wasn’t pretty at all, with her terrible makeup, sallow face, short stature, and thick neck.
I believed he didn’t like her, and that leaving her was only a matter of time.
Oh, and I bought many little “Naruto” keychains that he liked – I saw them in a magazine ad, and despite the high price, I immediately sent the money to buy them, knowing I might never have a chance to give them to him, but still kept them, fantasizing about a day…
Wearing less on purpose, hoping he would lend me his jacket
I always firmly believed he was the smartest boy in our class. “That one, always showing off his cleverness!” Even our class teacher said that about him, but always with a smile. I thought he must be the teacher’s favorite student.
He often answered the teacher’s questions in class, even when he knew the right answer, he liked to give unusual responses. His remarks always made the class burst into laughter, leaving the teacher at a loss. Once, the teacher accidentally printed the answers along with the homework sheets.
The next day, everyone’s homework was filled with the standard answers, including the English essay. Only he boldly wrote on his paper: “See the answers.”
His grades were so good that the teacher couldn’t do anything about it.
He once sat next to me, and while I was busy with my homework, he reached into my drawer and took my notebook without me noticing. Seeing my surprise, he proudly demonstrated, “Look, when you sit like this, there’s a blind spot, so if I reach in from this angle, you won’t see it…”
He also wrote poetry. It was abstract but rhymed. Stories about him circulated throughout the grade, and one thing we all knew: he would go abroad.
Every time I watched him scribbling rapidly in his notebook, I felt both sad and envious. Envious of his intelligence, which made schoolwork so easy for him, and sad that I would soon not see him anymore.
Without realizing it, after becoming desk mates, I started getting sick easily. When summer ended and the weather cooled, I insisted on wearing thin sweaters to class, ignoring my mother’s advice, hoping he would ask during evening study: “Are you cold?”
Sometimes he would mockingly say I was a fool who didn’t know hot from cold but would turn around and loudly order the student by the fan to turn it off.
Once, he casually took off his jacket and left it on the table, and only when evening study was about to end did he remember and ask me: “Hey, do you want to wear another layer?” I blushed and refused, though I desperately wanted to wear his jacket! I was shivering, and so was he.
The next day, I caught a cold. Getting sick was fine, I thought, as it gave me a reason to ask him for help! Finally, a chance to be taken care of by him!
The duty roster was based on seating arrangements, two people per shift, cleaning the classroom before leaving. On the day we were on duty, I forgot why, but as we were sweeping, we started chasing each other. He accidentally broke my backpack zipper with the broom handle.
He decided to carry my bag on his bike’s back seat while I held onto it as we walked home. Halfway, I realized the zipper was fixed and felt so annoyed, thinking how it fixed itself at the wrong time! Fearing he would notice, I held onto the fixed spot the entire way…
Back then, my biggest fear was classmates joking about me liking another boy. Every time I heard such teasing, I wanted to sew their mouths shut, afraid he would misunderstand, yet I couldn’t help but secretly watch his reaction, feeling delighted at his disappointed and awkward expression.
Near graduation, he secretly told me he liked a girl. I pretended to be calm and lied, saying I knew who she was. I asked, “Is her name twenty-one strokes?” He paused, counting on his fingers on the desk… I glimpsed the strokes he counted, clearly my name.
When he triumphantly said, “You’re wrong, her name is seventeen strokes!” I couldn’t hold back my tears and turned away… Looking back, someone as smart as him must have known my feelings. When he drew my name on the desk, he was courageously confessing to me, but I realized it too late.
Thank you for reading! ” Sitestorys “
