Chapter 13 — Coke and Fanta
1368 Words
Four years had passed since the summer afternoon with the chocolate and the screaming and the thank you at the door.
Li-Mei and Wei Chen were sixteen now.
And the neighborhood had long since stopped being surprised by anything they did.
Wei Chen had changed.
Not in the ways that were immediately obvious — not in height or face or the easy athletic confidence that four years of basketball had built into his shoulders. Those changes had happened gradually and everyone had simply adjusted to them the way you adjust to a tree that has been growing in the same place for years.
The real change was quieter than that.
The boy who had walked close to walls at twelve — who had needed to be pushed out of his own front door, who had sat alone on a bench hoping nobody would see him — that boy still existed somewhere inside Wei Chen. He had not disappeared.
But he had been joined by someone else.
Someone who could stand at a school podcast microphone and speak clearly and steadily about something that mattered to him. Someone who could walk into any social situation as long as Li-Mei was standing next to him. Someone whose silence no longer read as shyness but as the particular calm of a person who had decided which things deserved his words and which things did not.
He still had his quiet nature.
It simply carried differently now.
Like a river that had found its banks.
He was one of the best players on the school basketball team.
This was not a surprise to anyone who had watched him play — the natural certainty he had always shown on the court had simply continued growing, season after season, until it became something that other schools noticed and opposing teams prepared for specifically.
His teammates treated him with the easy respect of people who understood that playing alongside someone genuinely talented made everyone better.
He was not arrogant about it.
He was not arrogant about anything.
That was possibly the most infuriating thing about Wei Chen — that he carried everything he had become with the same quiet unbothered composure he had always had. As if none of it was particularly surprising to him. As if he had simply been waiting for the world to catch up to what he already knew about himself.
Li-Mei found this deeply annoying.
She also found it deeply admirable.
She would never tell him either of those things.
Li-Mei had changed too.
She was radiant at sixteen in a way that was entirely different from the careful healing radiance of her twelve year old self. That had been the light of someone who had survived something and was choosing joy anyway.
This was different.
This was the light of someone who had arrived.
She moved through the school and the neighborhood and the restaurant with the easy confident warmth of a person completely at home in her own life — laughing loudly, standing her ground without apology, noticing the people on the edges of rooms the way she always had and walking toward them the way she always had.
She won every mathematics competition her teacher entered her in.
Every single one.
Her mathematics teacher — a small serious woman who had been teaching for thirty years and had learned not to get excited about students because excitement led to disappointment — had stopped trying not to get excited about Li-Mei approximately two years ago.
She put Li-Mei in every competition available.
Li-Mei did not disappoint.
After the third consecutive regional win the teacher had pulled her aside after class and said with the particular directness of someone who had been waiting for the right moment —
"You should study accounting. Or finance. Something that uses this."
She tapped Li-Mei's notebook.
"This kind of mind is rare. Do not waste it."
Li-Mei had looked at the notebook.
Then at her teacher.
"I know," she said simply.
Her teacher had looked at her for a long moment.
Then nodded once.
And that was that.
The new student arrived on a Tuesday in October.
Her name was Mei Xiu and she had transferred from a school across the city — confident, pretty, with the particular alert observant energy of someone assessing a new environment and deciding quickly where they fit into it.
She sat two rows behind Li-Mei.
By the end of the first day she had identified the social landscape of the classroom with impressive accuracy.
By the end of the second day she had identified Wei Chen.
This was not unusual. Most new students identified Wei Chen within forty eight hours. It was simply the order of things.
What was slightly unusual was that Mei Xiu — rather than doing what most girls did, which was find increasingly creative reasons to walk past his desk — walked directly up to Li-Mei after class on the third day.
Li-Mei was packing her bag.
"You are Li-Mei," Mei Xiu said. Not a question.
"Yes," Li-Mei said.
"You and Wei Chen — you are close."
"Yes," Li-Mei said again. Still packing.
Mei Xiu looked at her for a moment with the careful assessing expression of someone who has decided to ask a direct question and is committing to it fully.
"Is he taken?" she asked.
Li-Mei's hands stilled on her bag.
Just for a moment.
Half a second. Maybe less.
Then she looked up.
"No," she said.
Her voice was completely even.
Mei Xiu nodded. Satisfied. "Good to know."
She picked up her own bag and walked out of the classroom.
Li-Mei stood very still for a moment after she had gone.
Then she finished packing her bag.
Picked it up.
And walked out into the corridor where Wei Chen was waiting for her at their usual spot by the water fountain the way he always waited — leaning against the wall, looking at his phone, completely unbothered by the steady stream of students moving around him.
He looked up when she appeared.
"Ready?" he said.
"Yes," she said.
And they walked home.
Side by side.
The way they always did.
Li-Mei did not mention Mei Xiu.
Wei Chen did not mention anything.
The afternoon was warm and ordinary and full of the comfortable familiar sounds of their neighborhood settling into evening.
But somewhere between the school gate and their street Li-Mei found herself thinking about half a second.
About the pause before no.
About why it had been there at all.
She did not find a satisfying answer.
So she filed it away in the same quiet place she kept other things that did not yet have names.
And kept walking.Wei Chen glanced at her once during the walk.
She was looking straight ahead with the particular focused expression she wore when she was thinking about something she had not decided to share yet.
He did not ask.
He had learned over four years that Li-Mei would share things when she was ready and not a moment before. Pushing never helped. Presence always did.
So he walked beside her.
Quietly.
The way he always had.
And if something in the afternoon felt slightly different from every other afternoon they had walked this same road together —
He filed it away.
Without a name.
Without a reason.
And kept walking beside her.
That evening Mr. Huang arrived at his usual time and sat at his usual table and ordered his usual food.
He looked at Li-Mei behind the counter.
Then at Wei Chen who had appeared at the back door at his usual time with his sleeves already rolled up.
Then back at Li-Mei.
"Coke and Fanta," he said to nobody in particular.
Li-Mei looked at him.
"Always together," he said contentedly. "Very natural."
He picked up his chopsticks.
Li-Mei went back to the accounts.
But her pen was slightly slower than usual.
And Mr. Huang — who noticed most things from his Tuesday and Thursday seat — noticed that too.
He said nothing.
He simply smiled at his food.
And waited.
The way people wait when they already know how something ends and are simply enjoying watching it get there.
- Writer
