Four-hundred-eighty-ninth Post

I came across this "ChattingCat" thing on Facebook, a site where "Students" can get their English corrected by "Tutors", and Tutors can get to earn money from correcting their English!

In the application for becoming a Tutor, there was a free-response question that asks "Who is the most influential person in your life? Why?"

So...... I thought of, you know.

I wrote this.

The most influential person in my life has to be Steven Yan.

I got to know Steven through an online dancing game called AuditionSEA. He was in my guild. That was back in 2009 when I was 16 and he 14+ (his birthday hadn't passed yet, therefore he was 14+).

I chatted with him through MSN Messenger (which I dearly miss) and got to know more about him. I asked a difficult question once and he went offline early, and his twin sister, Stephanie, revealed to me that Steven didn't really want to answer the question because the answer would have revealed that he was raped by his uncle when he was younger. I was both shocked and furious, and I felt really sorry for him.

Steven was a "hybrid" -- his father was a Singaporean Chinese while his mother was a Filipino. Most Asians would have black hair as their natural hair colour, but Steven inherited his mother's brown hair. Steven also looked very handsome and was 176 centimetres tall. Steven was also very smart and kind. All these attractive attributes and his sad past made me want to care for him. I fell for Steven and endeavoured to make him my boyfriend. I successfully did so one night through MSN... and it was through the deal: if I make you type 100 "LOL"-es, you would become my boyfriend!

I did make him laugh that many times, and from then on, he was mine.

The funny thing about our relationship was that we have not met each other in person before. We almost did, though. He came over to my doorstep and dropped off a letter while I was stuck in school because of after-school co-curricular activities. In the letter, Steven wrote that he loved me (in Korean!) and also "ti penso sempre" among other things. We also almost met at West Coast Park where he was supposed to go. His twin sister did see me there and SMS-ed him "omg omg I saw spike" (my nickname was Spike) to which he laughed. Unfortunately, Steven got into a fight and had to go to hospital and could not come to West Coast Park......

Steven was always reluctant to meet people because in his life, his loved ones were always met with disaster. His father died in a car crash on his 11th birthday because Steven insisted on wanting a particular toy for his birthday, and his father drove in the pouring rain to get it. His mother left the family of six to fend for themselves afterwards, and the whole family was supported by the eldest brother, Daryl. Other than this, Steven once had a girlfriend in the Philippines who mysteriously disappeared one day... Steven went looking for her but could not find her. Perhaps she was kidnapped... Because of these, Steven believed that he would always bring harm to the people he loved.

Some time in April or so, Steven went back to the Philippines. He said he was working undercover with the police at a "casa" where children were being auctioned off. I was worried sick that night he was there because he was to be a mole and would be "auctioned off" too.

The next day when he came online on MSN, I asked him about what happened. Because what he had experienced must have been really unspeakable, he did not want to tell me. Even though I was worried sick the whole 24 hours, I was denied from knowing what happened to the boy I loved. I saw this as rejection, and that his words about loving me in the letter were not true. The stupid, immature and unthinking me proceeded to burn the hand-written letter and post the pictures of the burning on my blog. I also proceeded to ingest tens of Paracetamol and Ibuprofen tablets because there was no point living...

The next morning, I woke up with a turned stomach and was vomiting until I physically couldn't because there was just no more fluid in my stomach for me to vomit out. I was rushed to the hospital and hospitalised.

I SMS-ed Stephanie who was in Singapore that morning and when she read the messages, she was terrified and rushed to buy a prepaid card for his mobile phone so that she could reply me (her phone ran out of credits). When she told Steven in the Philippines, Steven broke down......

In that period of time, my younger sister told Steven to stop talking to me. Steven did listen to her and even though he wanted to fly back down to Singapore to see me in hospital, he did not. He did stop talking to me on MSN that often after I was discharged, but I managed to convince him to stop this act. He admitted he still loved me and our relationship restarted.

I would spend late nights playing AuditionSEA with him. We would play a lot and talk about many things. I enjoyed those times immensely and would do anything to relive that. However, conflict arose between us in around July... we broke up. In that time too, Steven's childhood sweetheart, Ace, reappeared in his life after vanishing for five years. After we broke up, Steven, Ace, Stephanie and Daryl migrated to Paris to start a new life, leaving behind the three other kids in Singapore under the care of their mother.

It was because of Steven that I became mature. I learned the value of apologising to someone not because I was in the wrong, but because I valued the relationship more than my pride. I learned too what it felt like to "wish I could stop thinking about you". It was because of Steven that I started to learn Korean and became more interested in languages. Right now in 2015, I have learned 2 years of Korean formally and finished the Korean language course in my school, the National University of Singapore. I would have been able to understand the written Korean in his letter back in 2009... I am also studying Intermediate Thai and Malay and Beginner Japanese and Vietnamese now. I aspire to become a polyglot and work in an area related to languages and pedagogy of languages.

I still miss Steven. It has been more than five-and-a-half years, even longer than Ace had disappeared from his life...... would he come back and write me another letter?

I thought that was enough, then after I clicked "Next", there were five more editing questions =.= and then I found out that I was able to "earn money" only after becoming an "Experienced Tutor". To become an "Experienced Tutor", one has to get ratings of 3.5/5 from the "Students". This is kinda like lang-8, but I get to get paid, but probably very little too......

sigh. and that i had to answer more stoic questions after the free-response question was kinda a turn-off, no?

..................................................................................................................................

neeway, writing my lab report now. feeling reallie sian about it ~.~

Samuel

Labels: 2015