The Blue Lotus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqF3t5gKK10 (the name of the song is in the title) 

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Li Ya bit her lip and squeezed the straps of her backpack as she walked, nowhere near in a hurry to return home.  She was about as sick of that place as she was of the school she had just left.  Another evening spent bent over math problems, desperately trying to salvage her grade in that class - that one class, regardless of the top performance she exhibited in all others - rather than using that evening to develop her passion.  

What that passion might be?  She could hardly say anymore.  There had been a time when she had longed to be a writer, or an artist, or a zoology researcher, among other future professions in a long list of forgotten hopes.  These days her time was spent trying to turn a passing grade into the missing link for an Honors With Excellence award.  Li Ya clenched her jaw even harder at the thought of her parents - and, at this point, her teacher as well - relentlessly pushing her towards their idea of success, constantly reminding her that anything below a top mark was unacceptable.  

She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, kicking at the concrete with her toe.  Nearby, the light wind shook the petals of a blue lotus flower that sat in the decorative pond on the school front lawn.  Well, she thought, looking angrily up to the sky.  It was a sunsetting sky streaked entirely with red and orange, as if to reflect her anger for everyone to see.  Of one thing I am thoroughly positive; they can never put an end to my determination to be exactly what I want to be in life.  Nobody can.  

Li Ya began to think seriously, once more, of running away.  She had considered this option a thousand times if she had once, despite her knowing perfectly well that she was not the least bit street smart.  Still, it wasn't as if anyone would miss her much.  She had no friends - at least none that treated her as a friend - and her parents, she felt, were more likely to miss her potential rather than her.  She had no one, she concluded; she was a free spirit, tethered by nothing. 

What a dark thought, she told herself.  But she could not help those thoughts that tip-toed their way through her mind, one after the other, seemingly contradicting each other more than the last.  The fact remained that, despite her will to fight for the opportunity to achieve her own idea of success, Li Ya was not happy.  She trudged through each day of classes and extra practices, her thoughts and emotions both in varying degrees of negativity.  Sometimes, when self-pity arose into anger, she found herself able to see a light at the end of the tunnel, but that end was a long way off, and Li Ya felt helpless in her attempt to reach it.  

She closed her eyes.  She wanted so desperately for everything to be over, immediately.  She wanted to open her eyes again and find herself at the end of the tunnel, all the way to where she could choose what she wanted to do, where she was rid of all the unnecessary pressures life was giving her, where she had already passed that entire portion of the road.  

The road.  Li Ya opened her eyes and looked down at the sidewalk.  She gently stamped her feet on the pavement, feeling its solidity through the soles of her shoes.  This was a road, a literal road, and in that moment it served a metaphorical purpose.  Her struggles, everything she hated about her life, were like this road, paving the way from one key point to the next.  Her road, her metaphorical road, paved the way from a prolonged series of endurance tests - for that is what those unmerciful pressures would eventually serve to create, Li Ya realized - to an unknown destination of new opportunity.  

And that was when she had the epiphany.  She discovered, at that moment, what she was missing.  Li Ya needed a goal.  A solid goal, a dream she was bound and determined to achieve regardless of what obstacles might appear.  She needed it to become her world, to make everything she had to contend with at present worth it.  It may be far down the road, the source of the light at the end of the tunnel she so badly wanted to exit, but it would be enough to boost her heart through what remained of the road.  

Li Ya breathed deeply.  She promised herself then and there that she would never, ever give up the fight.  She would remain fixed on her new world, and neither distractions nor naysayers would destroy or even soil that end goal.  With this vow solidified in her mind, Li Ya steeled herself for what was to come and began her walk home with a new gusto.  

The sky had turned pink, and in the school's pond - now reflecting the brilliant sky and appearing like a jewel in the ground - the blue lotus quivered again, by the wind in Li Ya's wake.