"How fragile is life? I wondered. Strong enough to keep us alive, yet weak enough to kill us. What the hell, what the bloody hell is life? Why are we always trying to buy that smile from the environment around us, when we know that we are just smiling for a photo?

What’s the use of projecting a photogenic image when the smile will be gone with the memory?"

That’s the way Linda. You talk more, you make more mistakes. You talk less, you make fewer mistakes. The fewer mistakes the better. And you don’t talk, you don’t make mistakes.

And the person that doesn’t make mistakes is perfect.

Right.

Who the hell are you? Why must I listen to you? Why must I listen to you? Why must I be perfect?

You tell me who are you, and I do what you want me to do.

You really what to know?

Yes, please. I’m sick and tired. I’m going out with tons of people tomorrow. I can shut the fuck up, but they wont shut the fuck up.

Okay then, listen well Linda. I am the angel in you. The perfect angel.

Then where’s the devil?

That’s the problem. I don’t know where the devil is.

So there is no balance? I’m only guided by an angel? If there’s no devil…

How the fuck am I suppose to know that you’re the angel?

Then try talking. You’ll regret.

You’re the devil.

"Once upon a time, a kitten, Kitty, sees another cat being killed by a human. Kitty starts to be scared, and closes her eyes. She thinks that if she closes her eyes, she will no longer see the brutal killing scene again. A month later, with her eyes still closed, Kitty hears another cat screaming for help, and then silent. She believes that the cat must have been killed by another human.

So kitty never opens her eyes again for a year. Once in a while, she will hear some cats yelling for help, and then slient. She thinks that if she had opened her eyes, she will see the brutal killing.

Kitty thinks that the best solution is to lose her eyesight. One day, Kitty moves to a sharp edge. She has decided to ram her eyes towards the edge so that she will be blind forever. Before that she has to open her eyes to see the edge. And so, she opens her eyes.

Beside her was a small cat, playing with a ball of wool. The small cat throws the wool, and another cat rushes for the ball. One of the cats yells for help. The two cats then jump onto the ball and play around with it.

Kitty moves away from the sharp edge, and regrets that she had not opened her eyes earlier, because she is now too old to play with the ball of wool."

"It had been my first outing for almost two years, and I finally understood how it felt to talk and listen at the same time: it was not about the voices, or the sounds, but the hearts of the people around me."

“In this world, there’re only the predator and the prey. I’ve been a predator for years; what I get is respect and fear from others. But what is the use of others fearing me? So what if everyone respect me? Will I be happy? Or will I be happy just by going out with a mentally-retarded guy? Isn’t life all about searching for that everlasting smile?”

I frowned when she referred Zinc as “mentally retarded”.

“I have been hiding behind a stupid mask, just like you. My mask is a seventeen-year-old rich girl who gets everything she wants, that money can buy the world and she has everything.”

I tilted up my head slightly.

“I just wanna tell you that the little Ceder shows me that you don’t need to wear a mask to change how the world looks at you. I don’t know about you, but for the past few months, I’ve been looking at my past with opened eyes. My past used to be nameless, shameless and unrecognizable, but now, it’s a shadow. She shows me that it’s not about how the world looks at you, but how you look at the world.”

As I had forgotten how to use the main functions of Photoshop, I called Wilson, a secondary schoolmate. He spent an hour teaching me how to clear the pimples on Chew Ling’s face on the phone. When he said he was tired and wanted to go rest, I thanked him and as I hanged up, something struck me.

Had I ever thank Chew ling for what she had done? For changing Linda Lim from a quiet girl who knows only how to spell perfect into this cheerful girl who smiles almost daily? For turning a photogenic life into a contented life?

Why had we always thank the cashier who passes us our change in the supermarket, the taxi driver who gives us our change, and yet always forgetting to thank the person who is always next to us, waiting for acknowledgement?

Tomorrow, I told myself. Tomorrow.

With that, I turned my eyes back to the screen and saw a pimple-less Chew Ling smiling at me in that black dress.”

But... It is all too late…It will be too late…