The sweltering heat of the Secondary One orientation camp, the oversized school PE t-shirts, and the awkward ice-breaker games set the stage for what I thought would be an ordinary week. We were scrambling to form a five-person team for a camp activity when my friend impulsively waved two girls over to join our group of three guys. The moment she walked over, nervously adjusting her name tag and offering a shy smile, the chaotic noise of the school hall completely faded away. That was my true 一见钟情. At thirteen years old, I never expected that a fleeting introduction would carve out such a permanent space in my mind.
But as all tragic coming-of-age stories go, we fell comfortably into the friend zone. We survived O-Levels together, spent countless late nights talking on MSN Messenger, and shared everything about our lives. Yet, whenever the topic of romance came up, she would laugh and explicitly tell me that she could never, ever imagine the two of us being together. I took the hint and buried my feelings. It was only years later, long after I had moved on and gotten attached, that the other girl from our camp group dropped a crushing secret: she had actually been waiting the entire time for me to make the first move, but her pride and my absolute teenage blindness kept us apart.
Fast forward many years into adulthood. The school uniforms were replaced by office lanyards, and though we occasionally kept in touch, our lives had largely diverged. She was still fiercely single, while I was in a stable, long-term relationship. Out of the blue, she called me one evening and asked me out for dinner. I assumed it was just a casual catch-up to complain about work, but the moment she sat down, the atmosphere shifted. Her eyes were hollow, red, and exhausted. Across a quiet table in a dimly lit restaurant, her voice broke as she told me she had just been diagnosed with late-stage cancer. Tears streamed down her face as she reached across the table, confessing that her absolute biggest regret in life was letting her stubbornness win, and never getting the chance to be mine.
The air in the restaurant felt incredibly heavy, and my heart pounded against my ribs. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone, the screen instantly lighting up to show the smiling wallpaper of my current girlfriend. I took a deep breath, looked her dead in the eye, and told her... sorry to waste your time reading this massive WOT, because this entire drama is pure CSB nonsense =)
. But amazingly, Green House finished as champion when I was in P6. I won the 100m and 4x100m relay during school sports day that year. 
