Chapter 1

Adam...

"HEY, can you move over, you're so ugly!" shouted a very beautiful girl as she pushed my arm aside.

She's the star, the queen, it's her, and no one else.

Me, I'm just ordinary in the eyes of most people, an ordinary student, an ordinary citizen, an ordinary person, everything just ordinary. When will I become the star?

When will it be my turn to be admired and looked up to? When will I be the popular one and loved by people, even just here at school? It's tiring to always be ordinary. I know everything is possible, but it seems unlikely to happen.

Have you ever felt like this at some point? Like you're just a nobody, no one cares about you, I don't have any friends at this school because I am always trying to stay out of trouble, but sometimes, you just want a person you can talk to, I feel invisible most of the time, no one tried to approach me or be friends with me, every time I try to talk to people, they'd be weirded out by me or they already have their own set of friends and they just don't want to include me in their circle. It gets tiring always trying so in the end I just stopped trying.

"Didn't I tell you to move!" she moved her face closer to mine and lifted my shirt with one hand.

"You better follow, or you won't like what's going to happen," she raised an eyebrow at me. I grabbed her face and kissed her on the lips, her eyes widened, I stepped back, and she stood there like a statue, so I did it again. She caught her breath.

This is wrong, very wrong. You shouldn't do this to a girl no matter if you like her or not, no matter who she is, no matter if she's at fault too, it's still wrong because it's so disrespectful. I disrespected her, so I should stop, I stepped back and looked at her,

"I-I'm s-sor-" before I could finish what I was saying, her hand slapped my face.

"You had the audacity to kiss me!" she shouted and spat on my clothes.

"You'll regret this day," she said angrily. A fellow student walked by, she took the juice from their glass and tray, then poured it all over my face. I hung my head down, many students witnessed it.

I guess maybe that's fair for me because I disrespected her too.

The next day, as I entered school, someone called my name from the top of our school building. When I looked up, I saw her and her friend holding a bucket, pouring its contents over me: a mixture of mud, water, trash, and rotting fruit peels. I clenched my fist, I couldn't enter any more because of the shame.

In the following days, I thought everything was okay, that it was over, that she had forgotten what I did. But while I was eating, someone suddenly approached and covered my sisig (a Filipino dish) with mustard, emptying an entire bottle onto my food. I turned to see who did it, and it was her.

I was about to leave, thinking that's all she would do, but she suddenly grabbed my shoulder, and her two companions pulled my shirt and pushed my face into the food.

After that, they left, laughing. All eyes were on me, some whispered, some laughed, some seemed to pity me and wanted to help, but couldn't.

I got angry, I chased her and surprised them with what I could do. I even caught up with her friends, who were laughing. I grabbed her arm and pulled her towards me, then I kissed her on the lips. It was the only retaliation I could think of. She tried to push me away and slap me, but she couldn't escape.

Then, another guy pulled me away from her and punched my face. I fell down, and some others approached and started hitting me, kicks here, punches there, to my face, my stomach, I didn't know where. I saw her wiping her face because of the mustard when I kissed her. If the guards hadn't arrived, I might have been dead.

I can endure this, my body can endure this, I told myself. But I could hardly stand, struggling to breathe. A guard helped me and told me to go to the clinic. I laughed, not because of what the guard said, but because of what I went through.

I passed by her and looked at her face. "What? Are you going to say again that I had the audacity to kiss you, that who am I to do that and what right do I have? That I'll regret it because you're Chrisanya Evangelista, right? But me, what am I? Who am I?" I gave her a crazy smile.

The guards dragged me to the clinic. After that, I was sent home and rested for a few days. I didn't want to go to the doctor because I was fine. I didn't go to school for three days and locked myself in my room.

On Sunday, after taking a shower, I looked in a mirror. My face was still covered in bruises. I sighed and went out of my room, went down to the kitchen, cooked eggs, a sausage, made French toast, and brewed coffee.

I ate quietly, indifferent to the world, to anyone looking at me, to the girl in front of me staring silently. The girl whose gaze could have killed me earlier. She sighed and threw a spoon at me. I glared at her. She's the unlucky one in my life.

She's the one making my life difficult, disturbing my quiet world.

She's Chrisanya Evangelista-Zhymian.

She's my wife.