I couldn’t help but feel jumpy at all the looks people were giving me. A part of me knew I should be grateful, because dirty looks were all I was getting, but another part of me wanted to grab the nearest collar and say, “What the hell are you staring at? Never seen someone from China before?”

But of course, I didn’t. The kids in this school left me alone most of the time, because even though I was from China, I had lived in Canada nearly my whole life. And that fact seemed to be the only thing saving me from ending up like this boy called Huang Zitao. Everybody knew his name, everybody knew where he was from, and everybody picked on him like he was trash.

Me being me, I couldn’t care less about petty things like bullying, as long as it wasn’t happening to me. I just wanted to get out of high school, finish college and go back to China to get a job. I just wanted to be away from these people. It was my last year in high school, and it was just a few months left to finals and then graduation, I told myself I could do this, just a little bit more. But there was another problem: I didn’t know where to go after high school. My schoolmates had their dream careers to pursue, me? I was just living my days as it came. I had no goal, no dreams, I was the kind of person who just wanted to get life over and done with. I was lost, drifting in and out of reality, and there was nobody to guide me. You could say I was actually looking forward to dying.

“Why don’t you show us?” I heard a voice growl followed by the sound of someone crashing into metal.

“Show us your almighty kung fu. Don’t you come from China? You should be good at it,” there was a another person speaking.

“I don't think you'd really want me to do that,” the victim breathed hoarsely, and I can almost see a smirk on his face.

I couldn’t help but laugh softly to myself as I opened my locker. For someone about to be beat up, he was pretty calm, calm enough to deliver snarky remarks. It was just another day for me to see Huang Zitao being bullied, and it was just another day for Huang Zitao to see me watching him get bullied. The series of events that followed could be summarized by some punches that probably fractured a few bones or something. As I walked away, back facing the scene, I could hear the shouts of a teacher, telling the kids to disperse as he tried with futile efforts to save Huang Zitao.

I don’t remember how many times I had watched that boy get beat up, and I don’t think I want to. For some reason, every time I walk past an episode, his eyes would always linger on me. Of course, I stared right back at him, but there was something in his eyes that bothered me, it disturbed me greatly. I was telling myself to put up with it, until that one day when I was walking out of school. Huang Zitao was being bullied yet again, and that day was going to be no different from the other days I had watched him get beat up without doing anything, or so I thought. I made sure to skitter around the crowd that had formed, but I happened to notice one of them deliver a really nasty punch to the gut, and I couldn’t help but wince and stare at him a little longer. Why wasn’t he retaliating? Why wasn’t he fighting back when he was clearly more than capable of doing that? Why wasn’t he doing something, anything to stand up for himself? As Huang Zitao crumpled onto the floor, his gaze never left me. He fell in front of me, and the only thing separating us were two girls who were watching the scene as if it was a movie. I was about to leave, I figured I had stayed long enough, when I felt a hand grab my ankle. I tried to tug my leg out of his grasp, but Huang Zitao wouldn’t let go. The two girls parted, and the crowd of twenty were now staring at his bruised and bloody hand that was holding onto my ankle with a tenacious grip. I looked at him with eyes that said ‘what are you doing?!’, and I knew he was sending me a mental message back, but I couldn’t decipher it.

“When people laugh at you for who you are, what do you do?” He asked, wincing as he moved his busted lip. I remained silent, I just didn’t know how to reply him, or why I should reply him. “Everyone says to be who you are, don’t change just because some people don’t like you. What other people think of you didn’t matter. Do you… Do you agree with what these people say?”

I peeled my eyes off of him and scanned the crowd who had their attention focused on me. I had to say something.

“Yes, I agree. Just be yourself,” I told him.

“Wrong answer,” he whispered, almost like he was whispering to himself instead of to me. The next thing he did was something I would never expect him to do. He laughed. It was cold, eerie, hollow, hearing him laugh was worse than sitting through a horror movie alone. It made the hairs on my body stand. I frowned, feeling a little unnerved by this reaction, and yanked my ankle away. Almost instantly after I did so, he stopped laughing, and I swore I saw tears streaming down his cheeks. He was seriously scaring me. I noticed him clenching his fist before he broke into full-on sobs. I stepped back as his bullies picked him up by his collar and started delivering hard punches and slaps. Huang Zitao looked so used to it, he looked so used to being in pain, and I was seriously freaking out, so I ran. I ran home, like a coward, like a scared little boy.

He never talked to me the days after that, even when I walked past him getting shoved into lockers, he never once glanced at me. And I didn’t know whether it was a good or bad thing. I had forgotten most of that day, well, I was trying to, and it was just a month left to finals and graduation. I was sitting alone at a table in the cafeteria one day. When I said I was left alone by the kids in school, I meant I was seriously left alone. Nobody talked to me, nobody bothered about me. Looking at Huang Zitao, I knew I had to be grateful. It was either isolation or getting beat up on a daily basis, and I would much prefer the former. I was sipping my soda when he sat across me. I could literally feel the air turn heavy and every single pair of eyes on us. I choked on my drink and coughed it out rather unflatteringly.

“What are you doing?” I spluttered, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“She was ,” Huang Zitao said, his expression was dead. There were new bruises on his face to make up for the ones that were fading.

“W- Who?”

“She was and I was the result of it. I knew I had to protect her, I couldn’t let anybody else hurt her, so I learnt Wushu. You wonder why I don’t fight back, don’t you? You wonder why I don’t beat their asses when you and I both know that I could do it without hesitation. But why am I not doing that, you ask? I learnt Wushu to defend, not to offend,” I stared at him as he told me all that. I couldn’t figure out why he was telling me, when he knew I obviously didn’t care. He stopped talking and gave me a look to say something.

“But you are defending. You’re defending yourself from attacks,” I said, and I could feel the intensity of the gazes of those in the cafeteria rise.

Huang Zitao then smiled at me, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. I felt almost sorry for him. “No, I’m not the one defending. You are.”

“What?” I narrowed my eyes at him. I wondered why he was being so cryptic and all.

Huang Zitao then stood up and turned so that his back was facing me. He was about to go when he stopped, glanced at me over his shoulder and said, “Just thought I’d at least tell someone before I left.”

I didn’t even have time to register his words when he strode out of the cafeteria. I stared at him, then stared at the horrified faces of those around me. The month after that, Huang Zitao never showed up in school. I figured he transferred or went back to China. I didn’t blame him, because honestly, what reason would he have to keep staying here? Why didn’t he just transfer sooner? It would’ve saved him a few trips to the hospital.

Slightly more than a month after he talked to me in the cafeteria, it was the last day of school. Finals were over and our results were given back. I did fairly well, enough to easily secure a spot in a few good colleges. But until the very last day of high school, I had no idea what kind of Kris I wanted to be when I grew up. I was having a hard time trying to convince myself into taking a few of the courses that stood out to me slightly more than the rest. When I stepped into school compounds, I received their stares again. I struggled not to roll my eyes. They just can’t keep their eyes to themselves, not even on the last day of school. But as I walked deeper, I realized something was off. They weren’t giving me their usual looks, there was something more, and the fact that I couldn’t figure out what, unnerved me.

The answer was waiting for me on my locker in the form of a sticky note. I spotted it a distance away, but only when I got close enough to read the contents of the message did I finally understand the meaning behind their stares today. As I read the message, I had this horrible feeling in me. As if someone was watching my every movement. I plucked the note off my locker and felt a shiver down my spine and goosebumps rise on my arms and back.

我把心留给了你，好好照顾它。

The message was written in Chinese, and I knew immediately who it was from. Look after my heart, I have left it with you, it said. I read the message over and over again, focusing on every of each word, until it dawned on me that it wasn’t a red pen he was using, it was his blood. I felt something stir within me and a sting on the back of my eyelid. My vision blurred, and I could no longer make out the sentence. Only when I blinked, and the tears fell onto the note did I regain my sight. I tried my best to cry silently, but I failed at that and ended up sobbing. I crushed the note and spun around to meet the eyes of the other students.

“Are you people happy now?” I snarled, and they exchanged glances with each other.

“What did it say?” One boy asked, interrupting the piercing silence.

“He’s dead,” I spat, and there was an uproar of panicked whispers. “Isn’t it a bit too late to be concerned?”

I stormed out of the school building, heading for anywhere my legs would carry me. I didn’t make it very far before I sank down in front of a random tree and started bawling like a baby. I didn’t know why I was crying, my heart just hurt, and it hurt a lot. When my sobbing had been reduced to occasional sniffles and swollen eyes, I pulled out his yellow sticky note, the red against yellow stung my eyes.

What happened today and the events leading up to it gave me a goal in life. I wanted to be a counsellor. I wanted to help the bullied and the bullies, especially students, because I just couldn’t allow a second person to end up like another Huang Zitao.

I felt disgusted with myself. I had done nothing for that boy, and we were both Chinese, we were both of the same nationality. But somehow, a part of me felt superior to him, because out of the two Chinese, he was the one to get bullied. I was ashamed to say that I was glad it wasn’t me. If I had stood up for him, just once, would things be a little different today? Instead of receiving his death message, would I be receiving a message saying something like he had been accepted into his dream school? Huang Zitao had done me a big favour. To give me a future, Huang Zitao had given up his own. But apart from a future, Huang Zitao had also given me a burden, a burden that I was to carry for the rest of my life, because I failed to stand up for him.

This is not the end yet, guys, there's still an epilogue. Stay tuned!