I think I am the one who is the problem

In the last chapter, Ai Yue slept and dreamt of her previous love encounters. Well, she now has to wake up and go to school. Ai Yue is a new student at the prestigious School of the Arts, and she is nervous. She doesn't know how to interact with others or, more importantly, how to make friends with boys. She has never had a guy friend before. All the guys she had been friends with were either love interests or simply annoying to Ai Yue.

Ai Yue went to the class and sat down. She sat there and was quiet. Even though her blank face looked confident, she was shivering on the inside. "WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? SHOULD I SAY HI? Should I just ignore them? What do I do? What do I do?", Ai Yue thought.

"Hi."

Ai Yue turned around, and it was a girl who greeted her. Ai Yue immediately greeted her back with a nervous voice. But that girl immediately sat elsewhere instead of with Ai Yue. It was so bizarre, but that's sort of how adult relationships work. They don't work as easily as when we were children.

When it was time to do icebreaker games, she thought she would be able to group up with anyone. But instead, she became an outcast for most of it.

Then, when it was time for lunch, she wanted to join one of the groups for lunch, but to no avail. Ai Yue then went to the toilet, where she felt the safest. Even the safest place had someone she knew from class.

"Did you not see that girl? She is so ugly and quiet, but yet she looks so confident! How pathetic!", one of the girls said.

"Yeah, did you see her face? Did you see how desperate she is?" All the girls in the clique laughed.

Being an outcast was never really the norm for Ai Yue. She used to be friends with loads of people back when she was in her formal schooling years. But, one by one, her friends from her formal schooling years diminished. Only a few stayed, but the rest did not see her as a friend. So, it was hard for her to accept that she wasn't welcome.

"Am I the problem? Will I ever get people to like me for who I am? Why am I so bad at this? Was it how I spoke that made them hate me? This is absurd! You are you! But is it my problem?", Ai Yue cried as she thought to herself. Never once would she have thought people would think of her otherwise. She then spent the next few weeks eating alone and doing the projects alone, without anyone beside her. She thought this would be fine, but she had no one to complain to, which made her suffer even more mentally.

She cried a lot when she was handling these issues, which she wasn't able to handle alone. However, her other friends from high school helped her through the tough weeks.

"Ai Yue, don't worry, you will have friends soon!"

"Yeah, Ai Yue! Your classmates will soon realize how good of a friend you are!"

"So, don't worry about it! We will be by your side no matter what happens!"

And, there again, Ai Yue cried loudly while video-calling her secondary school friends.

"Thank you, dudes! I wish you guys were here with me for this suffering to end! I'm sorry for disturbing you! Let's call each other again! Have a restful night, dudes!", Ai Yue cried with a smile on her face.

"We too wish you good luck for the school year!", one of her friends said.

The next day was school again, and she tried all that she could to make friends. Again, she was outclassed by them. And she sat alone for lunch. She wasn't used to sitting alone. But, luckily, someone from her class came walking by.

"Can I eat with you?", Jiang Fen Yi said.

Jiang Fen Yi is a girl with loads of charm. She is known to be a girl who is kind to everyone and is a people-pleaser. She has loads of friends, is pretty, and, most importantly, comes from a well-to-do family. She was never a person Ai Yue would want to mix with, as she seemed so ethereal to her. Ai Yue, on the other hand, wanted to keep a low profile while studying fashion design.

"Sure, I have no one sitting there...", Ai Yue smiled. This was the first time a classmate decided to eat with her, and Ai Yue was ecstatic.

For the amount of time that they were there together, Ai Yue found it very safe to be there with Fen Yi. They chatted about a lot of things. They chatted about everything. From fashion to the shows that they enjoy, they talked about everything. And she felt that it was a safe space to talk about everything.

Then lunch ended. "It was nice talking to you!", Fen Yi smiled.

"Same here!", said Ai Yue. That day, Ai Yue found someone she could trust and someone she would be able to talk to in school.

After that, they would become closer and closer to one another. They shared everything about one another and were so close that people saw them as best friends. But soon, things would start to fall apart again.