Fading Love

Ruby Lee

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Words checked = [1698]

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