When we once believe

Out of nowhere, some images suddenly struck me to my surprise when I was concentrating on my laptop screen.

***

I remember us sitting in a small room, each took a corner, and three of us were working on our speech.
Li Jun took the table; Yi Hui sat on the floor with the bed as her table; and me lying on the bed.
It was 3am in the morning.
We could barely hear the voices downstairs, I guess the others were preparing the questions for the questioning session.
I couldn't recall whose room was that.
Because this scene occurred so many times, so it might be in my house, or Li Jun's place, or Yi Hui's room, but definitely somewhere I am very familiar with.

***

I remember three of us were holding in our tears in the lift.
The lift stopped, and the door opened.
God damn it our competitor just joined us in the lift.
We put our heads down a little to avoid any eye contact.
It's our floor now. We walked to our hotel room.

Great! We forgot the key.
So we called someone to bring up the key and sat at the stairs while waiting.
Finally we talked about the competition.
What the hell were we doing? We were so lengthy that we lost so much time, and yet we couldn't believe it until we watched our tape again.

Finally someone brought us the key.
We went into the room.
Three of us burst into tears, not sobbing, but crying, crying real hard.
I guess it was the stress throughout six tough months.

***

Regardless of whether it was the right thing to believe, the strength of our belief itself amazed me.
The commitment we put in, the sacrifice we made, the way we insisted on one thing for so many years, no, not years, to be exact, it's days, days and days of hardwork.

I once doubt our friendship.
Just like what Lyssa said, 'we are friends not because we have matching characters, it's debate that brought us together'.
We tried betrayal. We tried backstabbing. We tried silence and moving on with our lives. We tried the dramas.
I once believe that we weren't friends at all; we were simply a bunch of people tied together by fate.

But on second thought,
you both were there when I had my first time on stage;
you both were there when I lost my confidence;
you both were there when we won our champion;
you both were there when I told you about how sad I was when I walked out from my house;
you both were there when discipline teachers caused us trouble, when we were forced to come out with a performance idea overnight, when we almost gave up;
you both were there, sitting right beside me, for almost hundred competitions.

And of course you were there to pick up the phone when Danny came into my life; and there in the same living room when I had my first period, and for god's sake you both came out with that theme song to laugh at me.

Because we shared the same experience, same fate, same memories; and that is why you both understand that part of me when the others don't.

If that is fate, I will say we must have a really strong fate.

***

Now, life is back on track for me.
But if you ask me if I could put that effort into one thing ever again, I will say no.
I doubt I have such courage and bravery to do it again now.
Now, I feel tired, all the time.

Even though people called that stupidity and naiveness; but I kinda miss that period of time when we stupidly believed in dreams, and naively put in our best in everything we do.
That period of time when we shared that unbelievable strength to hold us throughout.
That period of time when there was no realistic calculation and no such thing called 'doubts'.

Because now I kinda lost it.
Come to think about it, maybe it's you both who gave me that strength.

If you ask me again, is there real friendship between us, I will say yes, a pretty special one - we make mistakes, we forgive, we understand.