Chapter 5

~ You Made Me Stronger ~

“Xiao you called and she means urgent. She’ll be coming over in a few minutes” Sancai's mom told her smiling.

With years of experience separating her from the girl she had been then and the woman she was now, she waited patiently with a calmly and peaceful face for Xiao you to unload her burden of news, allowing only the merest flicker of response to cross her face when Xiao you told her importantly, "Hua Za Lei is back. I thought I'd better warn you..."

"Warn me?" Sancai enquired politely, allowing her voice to express a faint puzzlement with her friend's intensity.

"Warn me for what?”

“You heard me, It’s Lei I’m talking about here, about the fact that he's back," Xiao you told her, splashing a little.

"I mean, I can remember how devastated you were when he dropped you-well, we all can. I was talking to Ah Mei only the other day that we all thought that you and Lei would be a perfect couple, you know”

“Have you thought about Dao Ming Si in the picture here?” coldly suppressing her real feelings and trying to tell Xiao You that it’s Dao Ming Si she loves now not Hua Za lei.

Sancai forced herself to appear relaxed about her news. But Xiao You isn't the least convinced of her cold reaction.

"Good heavens, Xiao you, that was more than 5 years ago. You don't surely still think that silly teenage crush on Hua Za Lei has any bearing on my life today, do you? Heavens, I can barely even remember what the man looks like.”

“Really? From what I see on TV he is, oh my God the handsome creature I’ve ever seen on earth”

She managed to make it sound as though Lei were merely one step away from drawing his pension, her smile and shrug implying that the woman she was today could only derive amusement and disregard at the thought of her childish foolishness in loving such a man.

Xiao you's mouth dropped open a little.

"You mean you aren't bothered?"

"About what?" Sancai enquired.

"I mean I thought he'd left for good. From what I've read in the papers he's so high-powered and everything now that I never thought he'd want to come back here to live. Every time you read about him, he seems to be jetting off to a different part of the world closing all multimillion deals. Hua Za lei had made breakthrough events in all business sections.

Her voice expressed her dissatisfaction that someone who could choose to live somewhere so glamorous world. Personally Sancai couldn't think of anything worse than living in a large impersonal city. But then she was not Xiao you.

She wasn't Hua Za Lei either, and although she wasn't going to say as much she too was surprised that he should base himself here in the country.

Xiao you was wrong about one thing, though. Far from jetting all over the world to see his clients, his eminence and reputation these days was such that they were the ones jetting in to see him--and he was no longer the old Hua Za Lei she knows. Hua Za Lei who seems to have all his time available for her.

"So you're not bothered about it, then?"

Xiao you sounded quite disappointed. For the first time a glimmer of amusement broke through the icy apprehension which had frozen the normally warm core of her life since she had learned that Lei was coming back.

"I'm bothered about all manner of things but not him," she corrected Xiao you with a faint smile.

Oh, yes. I know about that," Xiao you interrupted pettishly.

"But that wasn't what I meant and you know it. I meant were you bothered about Lei coming back?"

Sancai stood up. As she reached for her bag, the soft swing of her hair skilfully hid her face.

"No, I'm not. Why should I be?" she questioned, adding wryly, "As I've just said, all manner of things do " bother me", as you put it.Xiao you. things which are far, far more important to me than Hua Za Lei could ever be. "

When Xiao you left, Sancai burst into tears. She had been hiding her emotions and it's painful to know that Lei is really coming back

And Lei up to now didn’t even bother to call her. Why in the world, had he been so cold to her?

Lei said that he had to work late again; and the third time he offered the same excuses. Sancai always left a carefully word message to Lei but no return calls had been made. Although calling him in Japan cost her money, she seemed don’t mind. All she cares is talk to Lei. His secretary refused to give her Lei’s celphone number and said that it was Lei’s instruction.

Still not satisfied with the obvious reason, she even wrote her a letter, several one and one content was “I know how much of his time your business is taking up now that it's expanding so much and I want you to know that I’m proud of you, I just hope you will have the time to call back, I wanted to tell you something pls. Lei talk to me call me pls.”

After several long years of waiting of his phone call and letters, not even one had come. And worst part of waiting is she had finally heard from Lei, she saw Lei in the newspaper attending different functions in Japan, he was shot in paparazzi dating several sophisticated woman.

Sancai was shattered, devastated. She was heart broken. Sancai looked again in the newspaper, and dreamt of having him back again in Taiwan. But the picture in the newspaper says everything - Lei is not the same old Lei, he have forgotten about her. And why could he not? She is sure as hell that Lei doesnt really love her that much. And Sancai was determined to painfully forget about him at all cost.

But she knew it wasn’t easy, she sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and find herself crying. She missed Lei terribly; she thought she couldn’t bear it.