A Real Life Love Triangle (Flash Fiction Part 1)

Image by Erik Karits from Pixabay

Flash Fiction #162

We all watched movies like “Runaway Bride” or read stories with a similar theme, which is someone, having cold feet before the wedding, fleeing the scene and leaving the intended partner at the altar. Well, in real life, I only witnessed it once. It happened in the Asian immigrant community around here. Since it is a true story, I’ve obscured the location, the profession, the name etc. so that I cannot be accused of infringing on anybody’s privacy.

It is a simple story: a boy meets a girl and starts to date the girl; the boy meets another girl and the two start to date too. Let’s say the boy’s name is Adu, the first girl’s name is Weni and the second girl’s name is Shasha. I think the Asian immigrant community and its traditional values played a big role in this story. Without it, the story would not have happened.

Also I have to throw in some good words for Adu so that people can judge him “tenderly” rather than harshly. I really like Adu very much and it was not entirely his fault that he left his fiancee at the altar, although many in the community criticized him as a moral degenerate or hopeless philanderer.

Weni immigrated to America with her parents when Weni was in college. They had an old relative on Weni’s father’s side, who had some property but without an heir. So the old relative helped Weni’s family come to America, and Weni’s little brother was the old relative’s favorite. Anyway, Weni soon graduated from college and went to the local dental school. The old relative was so generous that he helped Weni secure a loan so that she could fund her study of dentistry.

Adu was a graduate student at a building next to the dental school. And soon at the school gym, the two were acquainted. This was not a big city as New York and there were not so many Asian immigrants to choose from. The two hit it off. However when Weni brought Adu back home to meet her family, she faced a big problem: the old relative and her parents warned the young lovers that they could not live together before they got married. Weni had to come home every night and Adu had to live his life in the dorm like house that he shared with three other students. They were to be engaged for one year before they could get married. I suspect that Weni’s relatives really wanted to put Adu to the test (for a year) to see if he’s good enough for their Weni.

Adu is a very attractive young man. He was from a village at the border of Russia, Mongolia, and China. Every year, many of his relatives would cross the border to the Russian side, which is the southern part of Siberia, to help grow corn or wheat. Adu is academically gifted and exempt from farm labor. He got scholarships to attend high school and college far away from home. When he graduated, he came to America for graduate school.

Adu’s attractiveness lies in the fact that he is very active, very curious and is never shy about talking with women–he would go skiing, which none of us would go; he likes to cook, which he learned to do himself when his parents were away in Siberia busying with crops. If he was not studying, he would attend all the parties he could find. He never waits for women to draw him out, or to praise him out of his social inertia. With his village upbringing, he is unschooled in the modern ways of the modern world in certain aspects. For example, he would gladly jump into a conversation when a group of women were chatting; he would come to the kitchen to cook with women when all the rest of the men were staying in the living room watching TV; he would discuss women’s problems and complains with women as if that’s the most natural thing in the world.

Adu is very rare and distinct in the Asian immigrant community. As you know, most people around him are engineers, scientists, businessmen, who tend to be formal, analytical, reserved and less lively. Needless to say, at the time, Adu was the most popular guy.

Since his official fiancee Weni was busy with her dental school study, Adu would sometimes attend parties by himself. At one of the parties, he met Shasha.

(To Be Continued Here)