Christmas had always been my favorite feast of all. Decorating, being with family, drinking hot chocolate, being creative. I love all that stuff.
Since I was young, I had always celebrated Christmas with my whole family. My parents, my grandparents, my cousins, my aunt and uncle, my big sister and her boyfriend.
But this Christmas was different. Since my father’s book became famous, he had been very busy – and my mother was his manager, so she was just as busy. They went to Mainland China on the 29th November and wouldn’t be back before after Christmas Eve. How typical.
So, this meant that I was going to celebrate this Christmas alone. My parents told me that I could freely choose if I wanted to celebrate with the rest of the family or with my friends. I didn’t choose at first. I wanted to see what the time brought before I decided.

I walked up the stairs at the school, taking two steps in every pace. I now had to live on my own, because my big sister, Stella, already moved together with her boyfriend. I didn’t really know him that well, but he seemed pretty nice - and most important, he treated my sister well.
My sister always asked me when I was going to find a boyfriend. To ‘find’ a boyfriend – is it something you should dig after in the ground to find? Or maybe search in the forest? I just wanted to take it easy. No reason to rush.
When I reached the landing at 1st floor, I heard someone call my name.
“Hey! Gui! Wait for me!” I could recognize Rainie’s voice. My absolutely best friend, but hopeless romantic. Never thought of anything else than boys.
I turned around and waited for Rainie to reach me, before I started walking again.
“Phew! I really have to get in better shape, can’t even take running such a short distance,” she said laughing. I smiled.
“Well, we’re both seriously lousy in P.E. class, but as we don’t get grades in that, it doesn’t matter,” I said. I and Rainie had written ourselves into the school’s history by being the first persons to use a whole P.E. lesson to warm up. The teachers had gradually lost their patience, but angel smiles could do a lot. And whatever – we were the number ones in every single other subject.
“Yes, but we’re gonna die on the exercise-day – do you know we have to run at least three times around the park?” she asked, and made a dramatic voice.
“No way! Let’s be sick that day,” I laughed.
“Nah, our zero-absence statistic would be ruined. How about asking some strong guys to carry us?” Rainie asked with a dreamy voice. We had now reached 3rd floor. Only one floor to go.
“You would like to, huh? Thinking of a certain person?” I .
“No,” she said and blushed.
“You always are. Well, let’s hurry up to get in class; it’s the day for returning the math assignment, so our classmates probably have a lot of questions.” We ran the last piece of distance, even though there were ten minutes to the first lesson started.
As I had expected, at least ten people surrounded us with questions when we stepped in to the class. I still didn’t get why they all made it in the last minute.
But we never felt used. People didn’t like us because of our brains, but because of our friendliness. That was why they wanted help from us and not the all-nerdy-fanatic boy Steven. It was ‘do you have time to help me?’ and not ‘do this piece for me’. They could always talk to us if they wanted, which they did often – I think I and Rainie knew the most secrets in the class. Who Cyndi liked, why David broke up with Bianca and Sam’s whole family situation. They knew they could trust us, and we just loved to be involved in everything. We were nosy by nature, haha.
The teacher, Mr. Huang, came in and told us to sit down. I and Rainie sat next to each other.
Rainie leaned over the table and whispering asked:
“Do you think Marlene ever got the courage to confess to Robert?”
I shook my head.
“Of course not, you know how she is. Always talking, never take action,” I whispered back, right before Mr. Huang told us to be quiet.
“Then that means he is still free,” Rainie whispered and smirked, while she took out her books. I also took out mine, and sighed over her. She would never change.

Rainie and I walked through the beginning rain towards the homework-café. It was held in the library in the corner of the school, but only in the afternoon. We actually only came there because of the cake and snacks, but as a lot of students wanted to ask us questions, it had become a habit just to be there. Then we could also make our own homework together.
“There’s chocolate cake today!” Rainie pointed out when we came in.
“I just want a cup of tea,” I said. I wasn’t really hungry that day.
When we finally sat down at a table, we took out our homework. We had quite a lot.
“Should we start with the Chinese essay or the math homework?” Rainie asked, and sharpened her pencil.
“Math homework first, I have no inspiration for my essay yet...” I opened my book and started calculating. Rainie followed my example, but not more than three minutes later, a boy came to ask us a question. He was tall and handsome, which was enough for Rainie to make big eyes. She nearly drooled when he smiled.
“Hey, I’m new here, but I heard from some classmates that you two could help me,” he said.
“Of course,” I said, and pushed a bit to Rainie so she could wake up.
“Thanks. My name is Show, and I’m from the parallel class – my friend and I started in this school yesterday.” His voice was charming, and Rainie miming repeated every word he said.
“Show? Isn’t that a pretty unusual name?” I asked.
“And that should come from you, Gui,” Rainie smiled.
“Well, not as unusual as Gui,” the new guy said.
“My real name is Wu Ying Jie, but my friends just call me Gui Gui. Nice to meet you.”
“My name is Rainie Yang, and I and Gui are in the same class,” Rainie happily said.
He nodded smiling at them as a greeting.
It only took a few moments to explain his homework to him. He walked back to a table where another guy also sat. It was probably his friend.
“Sooooo handsome...” Rainie drooled.
“Don’t you say that about every guy you see?”
“Only the handsome ones.”
She sat and stared at him for some time while I made my math homework. Suddenly, she started talking to me again.
“What about you, Gui? Never thinking of getting a boyfriend?” Not her too.
“One of us should stay sensible,” I said with a smile.
“No, like, seriously. You always laugh at me, but you’ve never told what kind of guys you like,” Rainie continued, and started working on her homework again.
“I’m not in a hurry to get a boyfriend...” I’ve discussed this topic so many times with my sister. But it seemed different to talk with Rainie about it. Maybe because she was more like; ‘do you want a boyfriend?’ and not; ‘when are you going to find one?’.
“But look at Show’s friend over there, what do you think about him?”
I looked where she pointed to. Show was a bit taller than his friend, but I had to admit that the friend was more than normally handsome. He was actually really good looking.
“He’s okay,” I said, and shrugged my shoulders. “Hey, what are you doing?”
Rainie was packing her books and pencils into her bag.
“Come on, let’s move over to their table!” she said happily. I sighed, and followed her.
The two boys looked up when we came over. Show smiled and welcomed us, but his friend was more taciturn and just looked at us one time before he continued to make his homework.
“Let me present you to my friend, Aaron Yan. Aaron, this is Rainie and Wu Ying Jie a.k.a. Gui Gui,” he said happily. Rainie sat down next to him and looked dreamy at him.
“Nice to meet you,” I said to Aaron. He just threw a short glance at me before he worked on. He annoyed me. He could at least say hello, but he just ignored us. It made me wonder how he and Show, who was so outgoing, had become friends.
Suddenly he started talking, but not to us.
“I can see you achieved what you wanted by asking them for help instead of just asking me,” he said to Show. Show smiled shameless.
“You know me too well.”
Rainie looked confused from the one to the other, before she decided to forget about it.
“What kind of homework do you have?” she asked, and took out her stuff again.
“English essay, Chinese homework, and then we have to read something for History class,” Show said, and looked unhappy. “I could find so many other things to do than reading about the history of cheese.”
They continued chatting while Aaron and I made our homework in silence.
When I had made my math homework and was going to start writing my essay, I used the opportunity to try to talk to him.
“Hey, Aaron. Do you have any ideas for my Chinese essay?” I asked, and tried to sound happy. Maybe he was just shy.
“No.” Or maybe not.
“Sure? I really have no inspiration.” I still tried to sound less irritated than I was. But I still wanted to give him a chance – maybe he was just unsecure because he was new in the school.
“Sure.”
“Uh... will you then help me make a brainstorm?”
“Can you please stop annoying me? I’m trying to concentrate on this.” It wasn’t the cold way he said it that made me angry, but the way he didn’t even look at me while talking.
“Well, if it’s in that way. Rainie, I’m going home, I don’t feel welcome here,” I said, got on my feet and put my books into my bag.
“Ey, wait for me!” She grabbed her bag and ran after me, while Show looked confused after us. Rainie shouted over her shoulder that she would text him. I looked shortly back, and saw Show talking to Aaron. He looked annoyed.
“What happened?” Rainie asked me, when we had left the library.
“Nothing, I just can’t get why a happy guy like Show would befriend an annoying guy like Aaron,” I sighed.
“But he is handsome.”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t.”
“Come on, get a little happier – it’s the 1st December, shouldn’t we go celebrate it? We could go to Quadric’s.” ‘Quadric’s’ was our favorite and permanent café. Partly because Rainie was totally lost in one of the waiters.
“Okay, that sounds like a good idea.”

***
The 1st December :D
And the 1st chapter. The other chaps are probably going to be shorter, but at least you get one every day (:
Hope you like it so far, please please please leave a comment :]
- Blitz