A story for Valentine's Day

She was a bookish student who liked keeping to herself. He was a good-natured chap who was always with his friends. It was 1996, when the school year began for a gaggle of Sixth Formers at King George V Secondary School.

It had been a rough start for her. Her class, Class 6 Muzaffar, was a "floater". As class monitor, it was her duty to find a classroom whenever they got booted out of a class they squated in. In the previous year, a kind schoolteacher had advised her to go into the Arts Stream for she fared better in the languages (Malay and English) than Mathematics and the sciences Physics, Chemistry and Biology. She ignored the well-meaning advice, deciding to follow her dream of being a scientist or maybe a doctor (almost every parent's wish). To make matters worse, their class teacher was a deadwood who constantly belittled them. He would say that she and her classmates were wasting his time and that they were better off being hawkers selling fried kuey teow. Now as she wandered along the corridors looking for another classroom, she cursed her decision.

School assemblies were dreary affairs but she looked forward to seeing one person: the tall, quiet guy from the other Form Six science class. He came to KGV from the Anglo-Chinese School to take the A-levels not offered at his alma mater. Noticing the glances she cast his way, a classmate tactfully told her that he has a girlfriend who was in the Arts Stream. At learning this, she stopped looking at and thinking of him.

After a tumultuous one and a half years, the Sixth Formers were ready to spread their wings and fly. Despite the teacher's prediction that they would fail to make it into any university, a timely government policy to increase the number of science graduates saved this hapless class from being fried kuey teow hawkers. All of Class 6 Muzaffar were accepted into local universities except for one student (he flunked most subjects) in spite of their outrageously horrendous A-level results. She got her top choice: a 3-year B.Sc (Honors) Biology program at Universiti Putra Malaysia. He attended the same university as she, where he trained to become a veterinary doctor.

She was grateful for the second chance to further her education. She worked hard and did well. She also broke out of her anti-social shell when she became an activitist seeking to raise awareness of university students on HIV/AIDS. It was an odd choice of extra-curricular activity but she liked the type of people who formed the group Universiti Putra Volunteers for AIDS Club (UPVAC). When other clubs and societies were highly polarized and homogenous, UPVAC members were fun-loving, wacky and were of different ethnic groups and programs.

They would bump into each other every now and then on campus and they would talk and talk. But they never made the effort to connect beyond the opportunistic meetings. They had separate lives, interests, partners and ambitions.

One day, she received a phone call from him. He said he was leaving for America. He had been going around calling and meeting up with friends as he wasn't sure if he would be able to see them much.

Those feelings that she kept buried all these years resurfaced. She realized that she really, really liked him. But it won't work: both of them were still in their respective relationship. Besides, he's going far, far away.

Months later she received an e-mail from him, broken-hearted and alone in a foreign land. His girlfriend had left him. She offered words of comfort and told him to be strong. Little did she know she was headed down the same path. Her boyfriend of 5 years had suggested that they get married but she suspected that he'd only said that to curb her freedom. She had been offered a job in Sarawak. The ugly truth surfaced when she forced the boyfriend to talk to her parents about marriage. The boyfriend said that it was a misunderstanding and that she forced him to get married. Her mother also decided at that moment to give him a piece of her mind. The end result of the meeting: angry parents and irate boyfriend.

After two months of verbal abuse, she decided to end the relationship for real. The ex had given her enough hate fuel to launch herself out of his orbit forever, to her parents' relief. They weren't sure if the ex was the man for her.

She sent an e-mail to him, to share the sad news. The next day he called her from the US, surprising her at work. After 3 months of grieving and bitching about their respective exes, they realized that they love one another.

Two soulmates who finally found one another...