Chapter 2            

Kris had met Kim in his second year of high school.

Kris had never been popular despite his more than average good looks, but seeing as he refrained from belonging to a group of stereotypes, he chose to be his own. He only had a few good friends, well one best friend, but said best friend had made it clear that he couldn't be seen talking to him at school in fear it would ruin his image. He never understood why Mark, his childhood best friend, hung out with all those mean kids. He was better than that. Mark was indefinitely better than the jocks who bullied the weak and listened to the superficial teenage queens, ing their way through life, just to get in their pants. But Kris never questioned his friend out loud because he trusted him to tell the wrong from right and also, he may have been  a tiny bit scared that Mark would stop talking to him. When they were younger Mark had taught Kris how to play basketball and Kris was actually pretty good but he never took Mark up on his offer to join his team. He definitely didn't want to become a jock.

But then high school happened and so did Kim.

The bell had just rung out to signal recess and Kris slowly started packing up his things, silently thanking the gods that French class was over, before cursing himself for taking the subject. 'Seriously French? When did I become so pretentious?' Slightly annoyed with himself for choosing French as his elective just because he spent his summer vacation watching sappy old French movies, while lamenting over the fact that he was 15 and had never been in love. Sighing to himself he would down a few pints.

Of ice cream. Not beer. What were you thinking? He's under-aged and a good boy, sheesh.

Anyway, that resulted in a few extra kilos attached to his un-toned, 'whiteasasheet' stomach. So French and him weren't exactly the best of friends at the moment but pretentious or not, Kris just wanted to learn how to pronounce French love quotes without sounding like a total douche. He sighed one last time before heading out the door where the noisy corridors of the school greeted him. He slowly made his way through the crowd towards his locker. He squeezed his bag into the locker with much difficulty, before grapping his lunch and his sketch book in the process. If French wasn't enough to make him seem pretentious, his poems of love and "masterpieces" of art (Mostly doodles of animals in the shape of a freak accident), certainly tipped the scale. Had he been good at any of the before-mentioned, it wouldn't have been so bad. But seeing as his poems for the most part went something like this:

"To like.

Is like opening the container to a half-eaten jar of Ben and Jerry's.

It's never quite enough.

To love.

Is like discovering a full cup in the freezer, without having looked for it.

Or wait. Is that happiness?

...

Oh who cares.

It was delicious."

While contemplating which kind of food to compare love with today,  he walked with determinate strides  until he was finally outside. He let the sun absorb into his skin and a small smile played on his lips, before he slowly let his arms rise from his sides as he closed his eyes. The next moment he was on the ground, hands scratched from bracing himself. He turned his head towards the culprits who had pushed him and his spirit fell slightly at the sight of six guys in letterman jackets high-fiving and laughing. Oh and none other than Mark was on the receiving end of a happy-tappy bump-fist, before sending Kris a small apologetic smile.

'Did you see that? So ing weird man.'

'Maybe it's because he's Chinese or what not'

'Yeah. Go home rice queen!'

Kris wants to say that their words don't hurt him, but they do. But hey, at least they got his Asian nationality right, even though Kris was pretty sure that to them all Asian people were... Chinese.
"Kwaenchana-yo?" Kris was pulled out of his thoughts as a female voice was slurring Latin at him. "What?" He had half a mind to ask as he rolled onto his back. "Aah... err yu ohkai?" A petite looking girl was crouching beside him, her head hiding the sun, leaving sunlight to beam around her like a halo. Kris was pretty sure he could hear Edith Piaf singing in the background and so he voiced out in broken French.

"Aujourd'hui, ça commence avec toi."