Aren't love and hate ultimately the same thing?
It was Valentine's Day. She sat with her friends, and I sat with my friends. Actually, I didn't care about them at all; I didn't concern myself with them whatsoever. All they talked about was the preferences of the girls in our class—which girls messaged them first, which girls dated around, which girls were considered "conservative" or "prude" because they were too focused on their studies.
Her name was eventually mentioned. They said she was annoying and too uptight because she never responded to boys' advances and ignored all the boys in the class. But for some reason, it made me feel much better. Even though she didn't talk to me, she didn't talk to the other boys either, which made me feel good.
She spent the whole day passing around cards to her friends, she seemed to like the American concept of valentine's day. during every free period, she go to her friends cards to each of them. Everyone who opened the card smiled and said she was thoughtful and remembered so many details about them. My schedule was the same as theirs, so I followed them around secretly. For some reason, that day I was constantly afraid she would confess her feelings to some random boy. but the day passed mostly without incident, she hadn't been to school in a few days due to being sick the week before, during the lunch period she even sat near my side of her table, she was complaining about having been sick the other day and not having getting a card delivered to her "crush, 暗恋".
Just hearing that word was enough to make my heart race. I felt like she was mocking me. She spent the whole lunch break talking to her friends about how smart, talented, and gentle he was, saying that although he was at the top of his class in foreign language class, he deliberately let her beat him and even let her brag about it to everyone, even praising her.
I remember how brightly she smiled that day. She was happy all day long, and even being seated next to me didn't diminish her excitement. But I had no idea who she was because we had chosen different foreign languages. She was studying German and English, while I was studying Russian and Japanese. the knowledge burrowed into my head and became very itchy.