My name is Wang Xiaodong, I am 14 years old, male and have male hobbies. My estranged best friend is called Cheng Xuefei. She is also 14 years old. She is a girl and her hobbies... She also likes boys like me.
Sounds a bit confusing? But this is our friendship - a special relationship that started on the evening of square dancing on August 26, 2018, and lasted for eight full years, and was misunderstood by countless people as a couple.
We were only in the first grade at that time, wearing the same silly dance costumes and wriggling awkwardly in the square to the rhythm of "Little Apple." Cheng Xuefei stepped on my shoelace and I almost fell over. Logically speaking, this should be the beginning of a feud, but somehow, we became the best of friends - so good that we held hands when going to the toilet (on the road), so good that we bickered more than ten times a day, so good that everyone thought we were having sex.
For six years in primary school, we were each other's best friends. When I entered junior high school and was not assigned to the same class, I thought this inexplicable friendship would fade away. The result was just the opposite—we talked more, bonded tighter, and were misunderstood exponentially.
"Are Wang Xiaodong and Cheng Xuefei in a relationship?"
"No, we are really just best friends!"
"Stop pretending, we all saw it!"
Whenever this happens, I can only roll my eyes helplessly. How can I explain that two people who both like the same sex can be a couple? How do we clarify that there is a kind of friendship that transcends gender, transcends orientation, and even transcends ordinary understanding?
Cheng Xuefei was obsessed with Honor of Kings a while ago, so I gave her her favorite Angela skin; she couldn't do physics questions, so I took the textbook and crossed the class to teach her; after we broke up with Yun Bai, who didn't reply to messages and was a pressure person, our relationship became even stronger.
Now, her 14th birthday is coming. Our friendship is about to cross the 3,000-day mark. I think it's time to write down what happened over the years—from the dusk of that square dance, to the countless days and nights of bickering, to the way we are still closely connected today.
This is a story about "wrongful besties", a story of friendship that has been misunderstood countless times but remains indestructible, and a simple story that just wants to say "Happy birthday, Cheng Xuefei, please give me your guidance for our next eight years."
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Wang Xiaodong X Cheng Xuefei
Met: 2018.08.26
Length of friendship: Nearly 8 years (approximately 3,000 days)
Here's one of those birthday gifts: this book about us
Purpose: True friendship has nothing to do with gender or sexual orientation. It is about witnessing each other's growth over a long period of time, dispelling prejudices, and ultimately allowing the sincere resonance of two souls to overwhelm all external noise.
