I have been reading a lot of romance lightnovels until now. In this genre, you can easily come across a romance story that start as a childhood friend relationship. But to be clear, not only in lightnovel, you might already hear a lot of stories about it in real life.
When we were kids, making friends was simple, we didn't care about any complicated details. If we somehow found it comfortable, or just simply fun, to talk with someone, then somewhere in our hearts, they had already become our friend. Compared to how we make friends now, it was much simpler. As we grow up, we experience more and more things in life. Therefore, when talking about starting a new relationship, we have to consider a lot of things. We tend to think about the advantages and disadvantages that this new relationship might bring. By the time we realize it, our relationships have already become a relationship of convenience.
Maybe that's what makes love stories of childhood friends so pure and beautiful. Two people - come to each other by the help of the string of destiny, begin as a friend, without any hidden motives. As they grow up, they slowly start to consider more about the other. And when that moment finally arrived, one of them came to realize their true feelings for the other. This is when the story starting to be complicating and more interesting. So after a lot of events, usually there are only two endings. The happy one is they successfully become a couple and start feeding you a lot of sugar. And another one is the bad one, where they never become a couple, meaning their friendship is also ruined or they will stay at that friendship forever.
Now, I'll tell you about my own story, which is also a childhood friend story.
Originally, I was born in Saigon - which is Ho Chi Minh City now. But before long, my dad's company transferred him to the Dong Nai branch, so he decided to bring the whole family with him. I've lived in that place for about 8 years before I moved back to Saigon with my mom, so you can say most of my childhood time was there. But to be honest, I don't want to remember that old time, the reason why I've moved back after 8 years living there is because family violence. My dad cheated on my mom and he didn't even try to admit it even though the evidences are very clear, he used to beat my mom several times before, and there was even a time he said he want to take her life. At that time, I was really shocked as a kid, I have heard a lot of things about family violence but never once thought that I would be in that situation one day. After that, my mom and dad separated in practice, but not legally. Since our family is Catholic, once you're married, there's no way to break the marriage contract. Until now, I'm still haunted by those memories. There was even a time I can't stop myself from thinking that I'll never try to get married in future because I don't want to be someone like my dad. Therefore, I was starting to be afraid of making friends with girls.
At the time I came back to Saigon, I was already in 4th grade. My mom knows a relative who's currently teaching in an elementary school. Because of that, my school transfer went really smoothly. At this school, I've met my very first childhood friend - Phương Nhi. We were assigned seats beside each other. Because I said before that I'm trying to avoid making friends with girls, I also tried my best not to get involved with Nhi. But the effort is useless. Phuong Nhi was somewhat a super ultra extrovert girl at that time. She keep talking with me and try to poke my arm many times during class. Honestly, up until now I still can't understand why she did that. But somehow I didn't feel annoyed at all with her behaviors. Before I knew it, we had already become friends. And besides being a talkative person, Nhi was also good at studies. Sitting next to her was a big help for me during my elementary school life.
Now that I think about it, what actually connected our friendship was Thỏ Bảy Màu - a popular artist on Facebook who draws funny comics featuring a rabbit as the main character. I was really into drawing at that time. Since I was born with eight whorls, I felt quite confident in my drawings. And Thỏ Bảy Màu is the one I admired the most. Their artstyle is adorable and their short stories never failed in making me laugh. So I tried to draw some copies of their arts, and show my works to Nhi. She really like it and after that I've got to know that she was also into drawing as well. In the end, our talking topics mostly filled with Thỏ Bảy Màu and drawing stuffs.
The flow of time keeps going forward, regardless of anything. Our two years of elementary school have come to an end in the blink of an eye. Because Nhi's family have moved to another place, she didn't go to the same middle school with me. But we still keep in touch on Messenger, although the number of times we've talked on there is so little that, if I had to compare, all those messages would probably make up less than 1% of what I've written so far. And the conversation topics are just simply about asking the other if they're doing well or sending some funny Thỏ Bảy Màu comics. Well this is a pretty normal thing for an elementary school friendship. As the time I'm writing this, most of my elementary school friends have already unfriended me on Facebook. Except for her.
This is the end of chapter 1.