End of time

What’s on my face?

One nice day, Argon Halley appeared in front of him with a beautiful rainbow candy bar. My eyes gleamed. Wasn’t this the candy you’ve always wanted to try, but you’re afraid your mother won’t let you buy it? My hand wavered a little, but his eyes looked suspiciously at the person in front of him.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.” Argon Halley said.

“Why did you give it to me?”

“Then do you eat it?”

“What if you put poison in it?”

“Huht.”

Argon Halley put the candy down in the desk drawer and cut a corner of its wrapper with a scissor. (Look at how different the meticulous person is! Even tearing candy had to go through a process starting from finding a scissor, using it, lining up the scissor and its wrapper on the table.). He took out a brightly colored one and put it in his mouth first, chewed it while looking at me.

“Trust me yet?”

I smiled. I realized that Halley, my friend, was kind though.

“Teacher, Argon Halley eats candy in class!”

Haha, I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long!

Argon Halley’s face turned a brilliant red from anger, speechless to say anything. 

“You... You’re an...!”  

“An what?” I was happy when he was in trouble.                 

“Everything gets a return.”                          

Besides digging at each other like that, we two made no secret of our dislike for each other. Everyone in the class knew this. It was not right to say we were close friends because we played tricks on each other all the time. But the enemy was kind of far for us because apart from fighting, we were a well-matched team.   

In middle school, studying in the same class happened to us again. This time, we came to an agreement that we would sit at the same table to make it convenient to “settle” old scores. At first, we were still bickering, but our spirit became weaker as we got closer and we became soulmates before we realized it. Once, I had a stomachache and asked Argon Halley if he had some toilet paper. He scornfully said: 

“How many times a day do you go to the toilet? Aren’t you afraid of hemorrhoids?”

At that time, I still did not know what Hemorrhoids was, so I innocently asked: “What is Hemorrhoids?”

“You take the book to the toilet and read it and you’ll know.” Argon Halley said.

I thought Argon Halley was sharing a new learning method, so a thought came up in my mind: Did Halley usually bring books to the toilet to study? Was this more effective? Probably. WC was quite quiet inside, which was an ideal place to study without distraction. 

‘I had to learn this.’ I thought to myself.

This was also the reason I was going to do hemorrhoid surgery in 2018.

I said: “Forget the study. Now give me the paper.” 

“No.” Argon Halley coldly refused. “Take it from your notebook.”

“But my mom said that I would be stupid if I tore my notebook!”

“So you want me to be stupid?”

“Yeah.”

Argon Halley had blue veins on his forehead. He put down the book and glared at me.

“Use leaves to wipe your ass.”

“Heh heh.”

I was kidding, but Argon Halley’s achievement was indeed not a joke. From elementary to middle school, he never dropped a rank. The person in first place with an almost perfect score always was the name Argon Halley. Unlike me, I’m struggling with grades at the bottom of the list. I was not even good at talking with other friends. 

The awkward age always had unusual anger and resentment. I didn’t have that courage to shout out but keep it in my mind. I know I was not smart, so I tried to compensate for it by doing lots of homework and assignments, having good attitudes, hence my teacher would not grade me so hard.

My bunch of efforts were almost nothing to Halley’s brainstorming. At break time, I bit my pen as my face stuck on the desk, falling onto the unfinished homework.

 “Get up.”

 I was annoyed: “You finish your job and don’t let others study as you finish, do you?”

“But you’re not studying.”

“I’ll study later.”

 Argon Halley pulled a chair and sat down in front of me, taking out my blackened-corrected homework. I said nothing, just let Halley correct it.

 So one sat for corrections, the other looked at this with my chin propped up in my hands. It was not until this time that I realized that the teacher’s compliment on Halley in the past was right. The older he grew, the more handsome he became. Black eyes with long eyelashes, high straight nose and perfect angle. Argon Halley’s attentive look also made others wonder if this boy didn’t know what ugly was since childhood!

 I couldn’t help looking at myself through the window glass. My shadow appeared in the glass, which had a great difference with Halley’s appearance. No beautiful facial angle, no lovely protruding teeth. I was just an ordinary boy with terrible academic achievements. If there was anything to be proud of, it was definitely my big smiling eyes. My eyes always looked so joyful even when I didn’t smile, and that made others feel at ease when looking at me. But when they got closer to me, what they left behind was only a comment: I was so colorless or awkward, and completely uninteresting.

There were ones who were born to be a smooth talker, and easy to keep others sweet just by a few sentences. There were also the other ones possessing an aura that overwhelmed the opponent. With just a brief glance, they would leave others impressed. Most of those people had a very natural confidence and took it for granted. Many times, I wished to be the same and encouraged myself to make a move, but in the end, it turned out that my boldness became embarrassment, confusion, or even a joke. I breathed a sigh, accepting that I could never catch up with Halley. Right then, I noticed Halley was staring at me.

 “What’s on my face?” I ask him.

 Argon Halley bursted into laughter: “I’m watching a cat examine its whiskers.”