| Fan Fiction |
by Hibiscus
Chun had chosen a house by the beach, a private beach. There were two stories, seven rooms and a large backyard that opened up the beach. The rooms were large, spacious and airy. And mostly empty and undecorated. The house was waiting for its mistress.
Chun sat on the verandah steps shirtless and he knew the neighbor’s wife was peeking at him. He had always been attractive to women. Of all ages and from all stations of life. It was easy to win them over with a smile and some charm.
Getting up from his seat and shrugging on a shirt, Chun got into his Porsche and drove to the local supermarket. As he parked, he noticed a few curious looks sent his way but it was an upscale neighborhood so nobody approached him. People here were too high class to behave like the common mob.
A mother and her child caught his attention as her maneuvered his buggy through the gleaming aisles of fruit. This in turn sparked a memory from his childhood…
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“A lot of people don’t have mothers, son. Not just you.” His grandfather had told Chun the day he had complained about his lack of one. He had been eight at that time.
“Don’t we have enough money to buy one?” He had asked his grandfather, full of righteousness at this point. Money bought everything, according to his eight year old mentality. Even mothers.
His grandfather had smiled, rather bitterly. “Women can always be bought, child. But mothers? No. Not mothers.”
“What happened to my mother? Where is she? Why won’t Dad ever speak about her?” He had been dangerously close to a temper tantrum by then.
“She ran away.” His grandfather had been blunt. “She couldn’t face or endure living with you and your father. So she ran away.”
Chun remembered crying. He had cried an entire day but it was the time he had ever cried again for his mother.
He grimaced now as he passed the fish section in the supermarket. He disliked sardines with a vengeance. When he had been ten years old, his grandfather had given him a bag five canned sardines, two bottles of water, a flash light and a small pocket knife. Then he had driven him to the edge of the forest in a mountainous region.
“What am I supposed to do here?” Chun had yelled as his grandfather had started to drive away.
“Survive.” He had been told simply. “Tomorrow, I’ll wait for you at the other side of the forest.”
Chun had stood by the side of the road for a second, bewildered. It was occurred to him that he could just follow the road back to the highway and hitch a ride home. He could do that. But his grandfather would drive him back again. And again. Chun had taken a deep breath and cautiously entered the forest. The forest had been singing a mid-afternoon song. Wild creatures, the ones of the day sang along with the wind rustling in the dense leaves and the night ones were snug in their holes and dens waiting for the night to bring them a deeper and a darker song. The kind of song whose melody sinks deep into your skin and through your pores so your blood moves to the rhythm of the song.
He had looked up to see monkeys looking down at him; their eyes alight with bright curiousity. A myriad of snakes were coiled around branches so carefully concealed that the only way you knew they were snakes and not just wooden branches would be by the random swish of their tails or a slight movement. There was no trail. Thorny bushes grew in wild abandonment all over. Chun had stood there for a while, breathing. Wondering. Asking himself if he could do this.
Then somewhere a lion had growled and the age old survival instinct had kicked in, hard and ready. A determination to prove himself. To his grandfather, to his father and to the world he lived in. He had hiked through the night, branches had reached from his as lovers do to their loved ones. He had been both prey and predator. He had run and walked and once when he had had enough, he had stood in the faint sliver of moonlight streaming from a gap in the canopy overhead, he had screamed. His roars matching, surpassing the roars of the other deadlier creatures that stalked the forest at night.
But he had made it. Through to the other side, bruised, broken and hungry. He made it.
This had been the first of many of his grandfather’s survival trials.
Once when he was thirteen he had rounded on his grandfather whom he loved and hated in equal parts and burst out, “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m trying to turn you into a man, boy.” His grandfather had replied abruptly. His father couldn’t, wouldn’t be bothered to take time out of his endless affairs and notice his only son and Chun had too much pride to go begging for affection. As the only grandson of the great Goh Kiat San, he had been enclosed in a castle carefully constructed of glass and brick. His grandfather’s power was absolute in Brunei. Even the members of his extended family, his uncles, cousins and aunts had limited contact with him. His grandfather provided for everything. When he was fourteen, he had been sent his first woman. A woman trained in the art of desire, instructed to teach him everything and anything he needed to know.
“The only thing I require of you is that you don’t fall in love. But how can you, since such a thing does not exist.” His grandfather had once smiled thinly at him and said.
Of course Chun had rebelled. He was only human. He had applied to go to school in Australia, had been accepted and was gone before the next day dawned. He hadn’t left a word. But somehow his grandpa knew. And accepted. And perhaps he had expected Chun to return after his three years of school was over but Chun had other ideas. He had detoured to Taiwan and entered the entertainment industry. On his own. Without using his grandfather’s name or influence.
But he couldn’t escape forever and the phone call from his grandfather simply reiterated that little fact.
As Chun brought his basket of groceries over to the cashier to pay, a magazine cover caught his eye. It was Ariel Lin, snuggled into the crook of Mike He’s arm, looking as though she belonged there. Repressing the growl that would have scared the cashier, he tosses the magazine with the rest of his groceries, helpless to do otherwise.
Back at the house, he took the magazine and stalked to the hammock he had strung up in the backyard. Settling in it, he flipped open the magazine to the part which contained the interview. Ariel and Mike’s interviews had been separately done though they had taken all the pictures together.
Before the interview, there was a profile page for each actor. Chun ignored Mike’s.
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Ariel Lin’s Profile
Name: I figured you’d know…
Date of Birth: October 29th/1988
Place of Birth: Vancouver, Canada
Weight: None of yo damned business.
Height: See above.
Favourite Food: Pineapple. Spicy food. Hate celery.
Least Favourite Food: I already answered that.
Favourite Colour: Changes with the seasons. Right now, orange.
Favourite Person(s): Rosa, only because she’d kill me if I didn’t say so and Arron cuz otherwise he’d sulk like nobody’s business.
Mike: J.J. <3 *smooch*
Favourite Memory: Jiro and the Cows. Mwahahah!
Least Favourite Memory: Breaking my first tooth via a headlong collision with an annoying boy.*
Favourite Music: Depends on my mood. Nickelback. <3
Rainie: Why no, it’s quite sunny!
Worst thing to do every day: Wake up.
Ideal Guy: Doesn’t exist.
First Kiss: He ran away right after. We were six.
Pet Peeve: Chemistry Labs. Why won’t my solutions crystallize? Why God why?!
Hated Personality Trait: Indecisiveness. Ugh.
Joe: Coconut Tree. <3
Favourite Quote: As if killing time wouldn’t injure eternity – Thoreau
Message to Fans: Avoid men who choose strawberry when there’s chocolate available. =D
Last words: Thank God this is over. Can I have my ice cream NOW?
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Chun closed the magazine abruptly, annoyed. She had presented yet another face to the public. One designed to be irresistible; everyone would fall in love with her smart mouth, earnest demeanor and effortless sensuality.
The sun was setting. Gold orange rays defiantly light up the world brilliant one last time before night spoke ownership on it. His grandfather had called him to inform him that it was time to honor the betrothal that had been made when Chun had been born. His days as a single man were numbered. Chun cast one last look at Ariel smiling at him from the cover, snarled and flung the magazine away.
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Author's Note: It's been a while, right? It seems like it's been a while. Whoosh. I still don't feel like writing all that much but I'm determined to finish section two before school starts and Happy, I can tell you for sure now that there are 4 more chapters to the end of Section 2. Fun times, yea? Yeah. *runs away*