Sweet Romance11 min read
The Blue Phoenix Kite and the Week I Lost My "Little Wife"
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"I carried it like a secret," I say, because I always tell stories in the first person — the only honest way I know. "You will laugh," I add, because my grandfather taught me to meet people calmly.
"Joanna, that kite is enormous," Findlay says, and his laugh makes the noise of the campus feel friendlier.
I hug the blue phoenix kite close. It feels like a bulk of my childhood folded into paper and bamboo. "It always fits," I answer. "It just needs the right sky."
The sky that morning at Z University was a slow, indifferent blue. I remember thinking of the river back home, of cobblestones warmed by sun. I remember the way my grandfather used to say, "A kite is a promise that two hands can still understand each other."
"Where is he?" I ask. My voice is steady. My heart, less so.
"Which one?" Findlay blinks at me, and he looks around like a boy mapping stars.
"Flavian." I lift my chin. "Flavian Cherry."
People start to point before Findlay does. "West building, classroom three. Financial elective," someone says, grinning like everything is a small play. A few follow. A few more. A parade forms behind me and my kite.
"I shouldn't have come," I tell myself, but then I am standing at the doorway. I look at the rows of students, the professor, the chalk dust in the sunlight. I look for him the way a child looks for the one familiar face at a fair.
"Flavian," I call, slow and clear.
He freezes like a photograph. He isn't very tall when he stands shocked. He looks—how should I say—off-balance, but he recovers. He walks over as if toward a sentence he has to swallow.
"Joanna," he says, softer than I expect. His lips tremble. "You—why are you here?"
"I couldn't make him come home," I say. "Grandpa said I should find you. He said we had to—"
"Stop," he whispers, and his eyes are dark. "You shouldn't—this isn't—"
"I came because my grandfather wants you to come home with me," I say, and then I say the words everyone had imagined as if they were a relic: "Marry me. Come home and marry me."
The classroom explodes into a roar. Laughter. Phones out. Someone shouts, "Vintage wedding! Get popcorn!" People record. A boy behind me mutters, "Is this art?"
Flavian's face goes pale. I have seen him laugh at the river, run with me, call me "little wife" when we were six and sticky with sweets. I have his childhood in the hollows of my hands. He looks at me and his jaw works.
"Joanna," he says. "You can't come here. You can't—"
"Why not?" I ask. "Do you think I'm a joke?"
He looks away, embarrassed. I can see a girl in the background, dancing lightly, being fussed over by boys. Her face is like polished porcelain.
Flavian's voice is small. "I—I'm sorry. I have... someone. Qin—Emma. I like her."
I swallow. A small heat of something raw rises. I press my lips shut. The world keeps making sounds.
Later, when Findlay finds me under a lamppost and offers a warm hand and a place to stay at the small hotel he knows, I accept with the calm of a person who has learned how to stitch themselves up.
"Don't be stubborn in the wrong way," he says, carrying my kite like a standard. "Let me help."
He pays. He says, "I'm Findlay Peng. I think you look like the kind of person who takes the sky seriously." He laughs, and it is easy, and things get better.
"I came as if to steal back my day," I tell him once we sit on a bench late and stitch a torn rib back into the phoenix. "I thought Flavian would laugh and pull me home. He didn't."
"Some people change," Findlay says. "Some people can't see what is in front of them until it is gone."
"Maybe," I say. "But I'll fix this kite. I'll fix my life."
Findlay watches me with an expression like a question unfolding. "Why are you the one who keeps fixing things?"
My voice drops. "Because someone has to keep them alive."
Days pass. Findlay becomes my steady ally. He reads little phone-scribed instructions I send to the kite shop. He searches for strange glue and thread in alleys. He sits with me in the small dark of early morning while I repair the phoenix to look pristine again.
"You're always calm," he tells me once. "I don't know why."
"Maybe I'm a fool," I say. "Maybe I'm just stubborn."
"But it is not foolish," he argues. "It is courage."
He uses words I had never heard applied to me.
I become, for a time I didn't expect, the strange campus story. I walk with a kite strapped to my back like a piece of memory. I find ways to sell the kites: small stalls, corners by lecture halls. I make news without meaning to. People come because my kites look like tiny civilization—paper birds with old names.
"You're really doing it," Findlay says, when my first dozen sell out. He pats my shoulder as if I am a friend he has known since childhood.
"Do you think a thousand is impossible?" I ask when Flavian, who has been watching us from the side-lines, comes back into our orbit with a storm of emotion.
"You said one week," he says. "One week to sell a thousand kites? You think you can do it?" His voice is something between a dare and an accusation.
"I can and I will," I say. "But I'm not doing it for you."
He looks at me like he has been told the wrong moon is rising. "Then why—"
"Because it's my craft," I answer. "Because the shop needs it. Because I can."
Findlay smiles at me, quietly proud. "I'll make a plan."
The plan is not pretty at first. We sit up into nights drafting leaflets, filming little videos, and laughing as if the world were ours. Findlay takes a camera and shoots me against columns and bridges, says "Look natural," and I let go of my edges and run. We make a short film he calls "Kite Dream." We put it on the campus screen two days before the date he chooses to aim for: May twentieth.
"I want people to remember why," Findlay says. "Not because of you or Flavian. Because of the kites."
The film spreads like oil on water. Students cry, some because of the music, some because of a line Findlay insists I say alone into the wind: "Even broken, a kite knows how to fly again."
One by one, kites sell. A group of freshmen tie names to tails and take pictures. Lovers write promises and let the kites go. Teachers ask for old techniques for a class. The thousand goal becomes something of a fever dream and then, astonishingly, reality.
The festival the morning we sell the last kite is like a sky made of colored wings. My own large blue phoenix is unstrapped for the first time. I hold onto the spool and run with the others until the wind lifts the kite with a small, magnificent tug.
"Joanna!" someone shouts from the crowd. People I have known all my life — friends from one lecture, students from far corners, even my grandfather on the phone sounding like a proud bell — call my name.
Findlay jumps and laughs. "You did it," he says, breathless.
I stop running and look across the field. Flavian stands under an oak with Emma Gauthier at his side. His face is slightly pale. Her face is the same lacquered style, perfectly put together. Her smile is brittle when I look at her.
He crosses the field before I realize he intends to. "You made them," he says, and his voice trembles. "You did it."
"I made them," I say. "For the shop. For my life."
"Come back with me," he says, nearly a plea now. "Marry me. Be my wife like we were supposed to—"
"I am not your child's prop," I tell him, and my voice is steadier than I expect. "You already told me you didn't want the life we had. You left."
He blinks. "No. I changed my mind."
Findlay's hand tightens hard on my wrist. "Don't," he says. "Joanna, don't let him buy your certainty back."
"Flavian," I say, meeting his eyes, "you had years to decide. You didn't. That is your choice."
He falters. Around us, the crowd murmurs. Phones are raised like witnesses. People crowd in. Someone whispers, "Is he going to propose back?"
He doesn't. Instead, he looks at Emma and realizes, perhaps too late, that the table he set is overturned.
Emma steps forward then. "He's making a fool of himself," she says, too loudly. She looks at me with an expression that resembles triumph. "He's always had indecision."
"Emma," I say, because I need to name it. "Did you make him choose? Did you twist things? Did you lie?"
She laughs. "What do you mean?" She is so smooth. "I did what any woman would do. I protected what I had."
"Protected by lies?" Findlay asks. "By making people injured to gain sympathy? By making false accusations?"
A hush falls. The breeze takes the kite songs and muffles them.
"No one said you could go inside people's lives and set fires," Findlay continues. "If you did what you did—"
"Don't you dare—" Emma snaps.
"Tell us," someone from the crowd says.
So she tells part of the truth, then lies. She says she wanted Flavian; she says she made choices. Her hands are steady at first. The crowd leans in like a tide.
Then someone from the audience—a girl who had seen her on a phone recording—steps forward and says, "She told my roommate to say things about Joanna. She coached lies. She went into the medical room and told them untrue stories."
Another student posts a voice message. Another shows the photo of the medicinal box. A dozen lines fall into place like a trap.
Flavian's face changes in a way I watch as if I could read a play: first flush of anger, then realization, then the slow collapsing of a pretense.
"Is this true?" he asks Emma, his voice no longer a shield, but a splinter.
Emma's eyes flicker. For a breath she is proud. Then she blinks. "No, it's not like that," she says.
"Explain," Findlay says.
Emma's voice cracks. "I—" She wants the role of victim back. She wants a narrative where she is battered by the world and justified. "I did what I had to because I was afraid."
"Ashamed of what?" someone demands.
"Of losing him," she says, raw. "Of being nothing to him. I thought—"
"What did you do to the medicine?" a young woman shouts, that same voice that spoke before. "Who gave you the box? Which pharmacy?"
Caught in a net of small proofs and a swelling crowd, Emma tries to reel the story back. "It was a mistake," she says. "I meant to influence, not to harm."
Men and women around us exchange looks. Phones are up now not for fun but for proof. "She told me to lie," another student says. "She paid my roommate." A photo of a text appears. "She told her to tell lies."
Emma's posture collapses like a paper figure in water. Her face loses certainty. She looks from Flavian to me to Findlay. "I didn't mean—" she starts.
"You did," Flavian says, quietly. The quiet of his voice becomes the loudest sound. "You didn't mean—then why did you do it?"
She presses her hands to her mouth and makes a sound like someone who is losing breath. "I was afraid you'll go away."
"Then you made sure I would stay by pushing someone else away," I say. My voice is small but cut. "You used a lie to earn him."
"I—" She shakes her head. People around us begin to murmur louder. "I will—I'll explain to everyone. I'll say sorry. I'll—I'll apologize."
"There's a difference," Findlay says, standing forward. "Between saying sorry and undoing things. Between being accountable and just performing contrition."
The crowd waits. Emma begins to cry. Her wet mascara traces perfect lines down her face. She falls to her knees because that is what drama demands. Phones record the scene from angles like vultures.
"Please, Flavian, please," she sobs. "You must forgive me. You must."
He looks at her, at the fallen mask. He looks like a boy who has learned to weigh the bones of things before acting. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asks. "Why didn't you come and tell me the truth if you were so afraid?"
Her plea breaks into a scramble of denials. "I thought you would leave me," she whispers. "I thought you'd hate me."
"Then you cheated her life," Findlay says. "You cheated him."
"You don't have to forgive me," Emma says, her voice thin. She looks at the crowd. People are not silent witnesses; they are participants. A hundred different faces reflect combinations of anger, disappointment, and hunger.
A man near the front snaps a photo and posts it. "Emma's true face," he types, and the feed begins to shout.
The punishment is not a legal one, it is a social exposure. It is what our story wanted—her public dismantling. The audience watches as her composure unravels.
First reaction: shock. People step back as if someone has set a small fire; their eyes widen. Some whisper. Some record. Some clap in a sharp, surprised way. Some walk away slowly, the moral weight of seeing a lie-born humiliation heavy in their bodies.
Second reaction: anger. A girl who studied under my grandfather says aloud, "This is cruel," but then another voice says, "She did something cruel first."
Third reaction: a sick pleasure — but also an uneasy conscience. A few students shout, "She deserved it!" A few others say, "Don't let her make this into a martyr's story."
Emma goes through a sequence of faces: arrogance, then blinked surprise when phones are shown, then denial, then the slow tremor of someone who realizes they cannot pull the story back. Her breath quickens. She grabs for Flavian. "I can make it up to you," she pleads. "I'll leave. I'll go."
"Go," someone says quietly. A man near the oak tree says, "Leave her."
She tries to stand; her legs wobble. The crowd closes in exactly enough to show everyone and keep her contained. Someone spits a sharp word. Another records the stumble. A chorus of "shame" starts, whispered like a tide.
"Please," she says, and now the voice is small enough to be genuine.
Flavian turns to the crowd. "This is between us," he says. "But she lied. She manipulated people's health and feelings and trust. I won't be with someone who does that."
The crowd makes a small, collective sound: the social sentence has fallen.
Emma's reaction changes then — from pleading to defiant, to bargaining, to collapsing into self-hatred, to begging. "Flavian, please," she says. "Don't do this. I can explain. I can—"
"Explain to them," Findlay says. "Explain to everyone who she hurt. Fix it."
Her face rearranges through humiliation into something like resignation. People who had recorded the event smile thinly; some upload videos with captions: "Campus scandal: truth surfaces." Within an hour the story has a thousand comments.
She is surrounded, watched, judged, and she bows her head. A hundred hands of technology make a net out of a small lie.
She begs. Her voice goes from "you are wrong" to "I'm sorry" to "please." People step forward and some turn away. A few who admired her before feel betrayed. A couple of bystanders weep at the shear cruelty of a moment. Someone snatches her phone and shows the texts on screen. She screams that the posting is unfair, and the posters argue that the original wrong was worse.
Time stretches. Her apology becomes mea culpa after mea culpa. Her expression is a map of regret. Still, the crowd does not soften. She cannot unring the bell. Her social standing fractures.
Later, in the quelling sun, I hear someone say, "Justice isn't revenge. But sometimes, exposure is the only way to stop a pattern."
I do not go to her. I do not need to. Findlay puts an arm around my shoulder; it’s an instinctive protection and something more.
"You were brave," he says. "You didn't deserve this."
"I did not come for revenge," I tell him. "I came for truth."
Flavian stands a little apart. When he looks at me, I see regret, yes, but also a clarity that he had never had before.
"Joanna," he says, quiet as a bell. "I... I'm sorry."
"My life is not here to be fixed by you," I say. "I asked once. You refused. You made your choice."
He swallows. Around us the sky is full of small kites, and the blue phoenix sails higher than any other. I let go of the reel for a beat and see the tail write our last traces in the sky.
We are not a scene in a film. We are a thousand small actions that add up into a life.
Later, Emma leaves campus in a cab with mascara tracks and a small bag. Her reaction sequences become case studies — from petulant schemer to a hollowed person who realizes before the crowd she has burned the bridges. Students talk about her for weeks, some with pity, some with disgust. The social wound is open and raw.
Findlay and I go back to the kite stall and sit with a cup of tea. He plucks the string from my fingers.
"You did the right thing," he says.
"Did I?" I ask.
"You kept your craft alive. You kept your dignity," he says. "And you have more than that — you have a sky full of people who want to keep your kites flying."
I smile. "Thank you for being my star."
"You are the star," he replies. "I just borrowed light."
Months pass; the kite shop survives. Flavian visits the town sometimes. He calls once, apologizes and says, "Are you okay?" I say, "I am." He asks if I will ever come back. I tell him, "My life is not a bargain." He is quiet, and then he says, "I was blind."
I know this story is not melodrama. It is ordinary people making ordinary choices women and men have made for centuries. It is small, and yet it defined me. The blue phoenix kite still hangs above the shop's door, tail fluttering like a memory.
The most important part is not that Emma was punished in public — it was that truth came to light, that people watched and judged, that she had to answer for her actions where everyone could see.
And the last thing I know, when I round the corner of the courtyard carrying a repaired kit, is this: "Findlay, let's fly one more time."
"Always," he says, though his voice is different now. He says, "Let's make a new sky."
I let the kite go.
The blue phoenix climbs high, and as it writes our story across that clean morning, I whisper, "This is my promise to the kite, to the shop, to myself." Then I pull the reel a little tighter, smiling at the place where memory and future meet.
The End
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