Sometimes Yuqi wished that she had never met her neighbor. She wished that he could’ve just been a handsome stranger she had seen in the huge city or a celebrity that she would never meet. That way, she would never have  hoped that she had a chance with him.

Instead, he lived right beside the house that she had moved into when she was 10. Maybe there was something about the proximity. Maybe it was the shared memories they had together. Whatever the reason was, Yuqi always held a small hope in her heart that maybe someday, he would like her in the way that she always did (although she would never admit that out loud).

She wasn’t aware that she even harbored those feelings until one fateful afternoon when the two biked their way home from school. Yukhei was talking excitedly about the car he had been mentioning to his parents and being so sure that he would get one on his birthday. She could do nothing but laugh and shake her head at his enthusiasm and efforts. Before they parted, he suddenly fell silent and stopped biking.

“Yuqi,” he said in a voice so serious. “I need to confess something.”

She remembered each detail as clearly as day. His usually bright face became serious. He stared at her intently, his expression unreadable. She remembered how her heartbeat increased and how all her suppressed hopes suddenly came alive.

“I like Minnie.”

But the thing she could remember the most was the sound of her own heart breaking as she put on a smile and . The memory kept replaying every single time she saw them together, every time he looked at Minnie in the way that she wished her looked at her, everytime she knew that with each moment they spent together, they were falling deeper and deeper every time. The worst part was she could do nothing but what she had done that fateful afternoon: smile and laugh it off.

Since then, she had vowed never to let her heart get involved with Wong Yukhei ever again.

So she didn’t understand why she had let him into her house when he knocked on her door, drunk and sobbing.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered.

He sniffled. “I...I just needed to be with someone right now. Can I come over?”

She went to go get him a glass of water as he laid himself on the couch. He was sniffling loudly and when she turned to look at him, she could see streams of tears on his face.

“What happened to you?” she asked as she passed him his water.

“Minnie...she…” he muttered before he started to cry softly. Her heart broke as she watched him. She had never seen him this way before. He only ever let out his feelings like this when he was drunk. She leaned in to realize that he completely reeked of alcohol.

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