Fading Love
Ruby Lee
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Words in Oxford 3000 = [93%]
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Content
About the author ................................. 3 Character list ....................................... 5 Prologue .............................................. 7 Chapter 1 ............................................. 8 Chapter 2 ............................................. 11 Chapter 3 ............................................. 15 Chapter 4 ............................................. 18 Chapter 5 ............................................. 26 Resources ............................................ 30
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About the author
Ruby Lee was born in Taoyuan, Taiwan, in 1990. She currently studies at Wenzao Ursuline
College
of
Languages
in
Kaohsiung, Taiwan, where she majors in
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English and minors in French. She shows her language talents by knowing how to speak six languages and she says she wants to learn more in the future. This book was an assignment in her 4th year writing class and she hopes the readers like it.
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Character list
Rebecca A 17-year-old girl who lives in Taiwan. Kelvin An 18-year-old boy who lives in Paris. Cathy Rebecca’s friend. 17 years old and lives in Taiwan. Alan Kelvin’s friend. 18 years old and lives in Paris.
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Dedicated to K
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Prologue
In Rebecca’s life, she shall never forget the day March 16th. It was at that night that she met Kelvin. Their acquaintance influenced Rebecca’s life with a certain quantity, which was something she never could have imagined.
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Chapter 1 The Acquaintance
Cathy and Rebecca were good friends and classmates, and they lived in the school dorm. At the time, Cathy was seeing a French guy named Alan. One day, Cathy rushed to Rebecca’s room. ‘Hey, my computer broke down, but I want to chat with Alan. Do you think you can do me a favor by lending me your computer?’
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‘Sure. Why not?’
So, they went to Rebecca’s room. Rebecca logged onto MSN and added Alan into her friend list. Cathy and Alan chatted happily and suddenly Alan mentioned that his best friend, Kelvin, was at his place. ‘Do you want to meet him?’ Alan asked Rebecca. ‘I don’t know…’ ‘Yes or no? Just one word.’ ‘Okay.’
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‘There you go. Kelvin123@hotmail.fr’ Alan
gave
Rebecca
Kelvin’s
MSN
address. ‘Do you have a picture? I don’t even know what you look like,’ asked Rebecca. ‘Yeah. Wait a second, I’ll send it to you.’
By the time Rebecca opened the file, she couldn’t believe what she saw. Kelvin was totally the type Rebecca was looking for. Cupid’s golden arrow has shot Rebecca. It was love at first sight.
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Chapter 2 When love was there
Ever since Rebecca and Kelvin met, they got along quite well. They had so much in common as they shared the same music taste and the same hobbies. They had endless topics to talk about and they both thought each other was their soul mate.
Rebecca was crazy in love and she would
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do anything for him. She stayed up late on weekends in order to talk with Kelvin since they couldn’t do anything about the fact that there was a 7-hour difference in time zones. Kelvin used to introduce the songs he liked to Rebecca. ‘Listen to the same song as I do.’ He would say. Kelvin was totally into a German band and he often recommended their songs to her. During summer vacation she learned German because she
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wanted to know what the lyrics were about. She even sent packages from Taiwan to France on Kelvin’s birthday and Christmas. Kelvin did the same thing as well. He would play guitar and sang for Rebecca, calling it a ‘private concert’. Like everyone in love, he would say those sweet words that girls like to hear. He showed that he loved her in every single way. However, the 7-hour time difference and 10,000-kilometer distance were there.
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Always. They could do nothing about it. ‘Hey, look out the window. Do you see the moon?’ asked Kelvin. ‘Yeah. Why?’ Rebecca responded. ‘I’m looking at the same thing, too. See? We’re actually not that far away from one another. I see what you see.’ ‘But I wish you were here with me…’ ‘They say that a wall between preserves loves. We will see each other one day. I promise.’ It never came true.
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Chapter 3 When love starts to fade
They were very, very close for months. However, things started to change once Kelvin went to college and he no longer had so much time to talk with Rebecca. Rebecca noticed that they didn’t talk as often as they did before, as if a gap grew between them. She thought maybe he met somebody new or lost interest in their long distance relationship.
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She tried to fix the crisis by discussing this matter with Kelvin, but his reaction was more like Rebecca was bothering him. She came up with an idea. She decided to organize a big surprise months ahead on Kelvin’s birthday, hoping that the package might help solve the crisis. However, he didn’t say anything more than ‘Thanks’. Rebecca felt brokenhearted. She didn’t understand if she had done something wrong that caused this sudden ‘cold war’ between them. On her 19th birthday, which
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was about two weeks after Kelvin’s, she was so excited that she might get some blessings from him. However, by the end of the day, she got nothing. Not even a word. She was so disappointed that she finally came to her senses that she couldn’t count on him anymore. She had to disconnect from him.
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Chapter 4 Struggle
‘I can’t do this anymore. I’m suffering in great pain and he doesn’t even care. I’m so done with this. This relationship eventually will lead us nowhere anyway.’ Rebecca made up her mind that she would not contact him anymore, but she couldn’t help glimpsing. She followed what Kelvin posted on his Facebook page or browsed his photos. She became nervous when she
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saw Kelvin online. She was anticipating the possibility that Kelvin would actively say hello to her. It didn’t happen. She tried to speak with him. She double-clicked his name and the conversation window popped out. She typed some greetings, but she just couldn’t tap the ‘enter’ key. Sadly, she tapped ‘esc’ as the window would disappear within a second. For a long time, she did this over and over and over again every day. She tried not to think of him by focusing on her studies or hanging out
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with friends. However, fate just wouldn’t let go. Everything around her still reminded her of what used to be, and she was just stuck in this huge pain. She cried when
she
heard
the
songs
Kelvin
recommended or played on his guitar. She cried even harder when she viewed all those screenshots taken back when they were still fine. Some of her friends said that she was stewing in her own juice since she shouldn’t have fallen in love with someone she knew so far away.
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Sometimes she would just sit down on a bench and think about the good old times, and she always ended up bursting into tears. She even started to hurt herself, deciding this way a way to vent her emotions and helplessness. She would punch walls, so her fists got bruises. She would even cut herself with a tiny knife, and that left scars. Cathy noticed that things were not okay, so one afternoon Cathy asked Rebecca to
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go for a walk with her in the park. ‘How could he come and go in my life in the way he liked? He stays and leaves whenever he wants to. What am I to him?’ asked Rebecca. ‘Just give up. I don’t want to see you feeling bad all the time. You’ve been crying a lot recently. You don’t smile anymore, you know. You weren’t like this before. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but have you thought about this: Your relationship with Kelvin is based on the
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webcam and microphone.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘The connection between Kelvin and you is just an instant messenger program and sometimes expensive international text messages. If one of you is determined to be ‘out of signal’, nothing is left, you know. You can’t to anything about it.’ ‘……….’ Rebecca was speechless. ‘You can’t drop out of school and go to France, so this won’t work between you two. Come to your senses. Let go when
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it’s time.’ What Cathy said was 100% reasonable, but Rebecca was still waiting for a change, another chance. ‘Rebecca, do you read poems?’ asked Cathy. ‘Sometimes. Why?’ ‘I think you should read some Pablo Neruda.’ ‘Uh-huh,’ Rebecca responded
in
an
absent-minded way. ‘Seriously, read it. He wrote, ‘Love is so
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short, forgetting is so long.’’ ‘Love is so short, forgetting is so long’ repeated Rebecca.
On her way home, she repeated this line thousands of times because it seemed to make sense in a way.
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Chapter 5: Death
Rebecca became pale and sad as she suffered from her relationship with Kelvin. One afternoon she was listening to music. She let the songs play on random mode. Perhaps Fate was playing a trick on Rebecca. The songs she listened to were all stimulating her sorrow, such as ‘All by Myself’ by Celine Dion, ‘Lonely Day’ by System of a Down, and many others.
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When she listened to ‘My Immortal’, she knew it was the end. Ironically, that song was originally introduced to her by Kelvin. She knew she couldn’t hold onto this anymore. She took out a postcard from the drawer, filled in Kelvin’s address and wrote…
‘Even if love dies, it remains forever in memory. What we had was beautiful. Adieu.’
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Tears rolled down her cheeks. When she finished writing, she went straight to the kitchen and took out a knife. Along with the melody of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, she cut her wrists. It was painful, but she kept on doing this. One cut and another, blood rolled down her wrists to the floor. She started to lose consciousness. Finally, she lay on the floor in a pool of blood, and the postcard was beside her. At dinnertime Rebecca’s mother went to Rebecca’s room to check on her as she
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hadn’t come to dinner. Rebecca’s mother screamed as she saw the bloody scene once she opened the door. The family rushed to Rebecca’s room as they heard the scream. They were standing by the door, shocked. They didn’t understand Why Rebecca would have done this to herself. Little by little, everyone knew about Rebecca’s suicide. The funeral was held the following week. People cried in grief. Nobody sent the postcard to Kelvin, and he would never know about her death.
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Resources
www.deviantart.com/
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Do you believe in long-distance relationship
based
on
the
Internet?
Rebecca met a French boy named Kelvin via some friends, and they were in love. However, things never really turned out the way we wanted. Read the story and you will know what happened to Rebecca and Kelvin
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