Edwin Zhou loved women. The why was never particularly interesting to him. Why did any man love any woman? The reasons were innumerable–most for her beauty, a few for her personality, others for her wealth or status. No, the why never concerned him; he was mainly concerned with the love part.

Edwin had an insatiable penchant towards physical beauty (though if questioned, he would deny it). Yes, men typically were visual creatures, but Edwin was a creature of his own. In particular, he liked women who matched Chinese beauty standards–thin girls with long legs, pale faces, and large eyes. Edwin himself was tall, with dark-framed glasses and a round face, accentuated by a slightly receding hairline.

When Edwin turned twenty-two, he discovered he had been given a gift: a pair of Baddie eyes. Passing through the streets of Toronto, he would see numbers hovering right in front of the girl’s forehead ranging from one to ten. Zero. Five. Zero. Seven. Four. Is that even a girl?

The number corresponded to her physical beauty, calculated from all the women he had seen in the past. His brain would index and map-reduce the data points until the Machine Learning model hosted in his neurons outputs the score–an algorithm more efficient than any modern ML algorithm known to man.

Today, however, in his computer engineering class at the University of Toronto, he met the first girl to change everything.

The class had a quiz and as she turned around to pass him the test sheet, Edwin was caught completely by surprise. He nearly dropped the stack of papers he was supposed to pass back. The strange, quiet girl in front of him had dark hair and brown almond eyes. She had nice, light eyebrows and a strong nose ridge with perfect pale skin. Confused, Edwin glared intently at her forehead, but no number appeared. His algorithm was completely broken; all the neuron processors in his mind whirring in overdrive and confusion.

This quiz was particularly painful. Every time he tried to focus on the laws of thermodynamics, he could only think of that girl. He only had to close his eyes to see that pretty face with her long, dark hair flowing to her shoulders. As he scribbled away at the quiz, he glanced at her perfectly shaped shoulders. Beautiful, oh so beautiful.

But there was no number.

He glanced around the room, seeing a range of numbers from two to eight–a number for all the girls in the room except that girl in front of him.

After the quiz, as Edwin left the lecture room, he caught a glimpse of the back of her perfect figure leaving. She wore a dark green sweater that cut off above her midriff and black pants, both pieces perfectly accentuating her figure. He considered following her just to enjoy her sheer beauty for a bit longer but decided against it. Edwin leaned against a wall, exhausted. She was so damn beautiful–the type of beauty that made him desire her with every fibre of his being. In that moment, Edwin understood why men fought wars over women, why they wrote love poems, toiled endlessly, and sacrificed their lives.

Before seeing that girl, his life was an empty, meaningless void. A repeat of motions and patterns that led nowhere. Before that girl, he was just an average man at an average school studying an average major. But seeing her gave him hope that life could be something more, something greater.

Sighing, he headed to his next class.

* * *

The lecture room was crowded, and the professor droned on and on, but Edwin’s mind was focused on more important matters.

“Who was that girl? The one that sat in front of me in ECE 237,” he asked his friend, Jenny, trying to keep his voice casual. Jenny was a short girl with tanned skin and small eyes. A four hovered on her forehead.

“I think her name is Rainee Li,” Jenny said.

Rainee Li. How fitting, Edwin thought. A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.

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Jenny looked at him curiously. “Why do you ask?”

Edwin shrugged. “Oh, I suppose I’ve just never seen her before, and I thought I knew most people in our program.”

That night, he dreamt of Rainee. He dreamt of her face, her body, and her voice (though at this point, he had never heard her speak). When he woke up, he felt refreshed, as if his entire brain had upgraded.

As he took the train to school, he noticed the numbers had shifted. Girls that used to be fives or sixes were lowered to ones and twos. Strange. Though he already knew the explanation.

In ECE 237, he sat next to Rainee this time and introduced himself. He did not even have to look to know that there was a golden ten hovering in front of her forehead. He had seen tens online but never in real life before.

So this is what a ten is like, he thought.

Just sitting next to her drained him. His breathing was heavy, heart beating too fast, and palms sweaty. How else should a man feel beside such great beauty? Edwin felt himself spiraling deeper and deeper. He took a cautious glance at her, careful to avoid staring, and he realized now that he was in love.

In the class after, he saw Jenny again. She now dropped to a zero.

Incredible, a complete paradigm shift. He decided to call the new numbers the Rainee scale. There were even a few girls who had previously been zero or one but now were classified as undefined.

For months, Edwin kept his distance. He watched her from behind, almost like a predator stalking their prey. The timing was never right. Even though they were now on a first name basis now, they had nothing in common, and Edwin never had the chance to be with her outside of class. He would get a wave or a quick ‘hi’ from her but nothing more. Edwin did not mind; love requires patience after all.

However, weeks turned into months, months turned into a year, and an entire global pandemic came and went. He was not patient enough to wait the rest of his life but given the current pace, it seemed that may very well be how long it might take.

Alone from his apartment balcony, Edwin watched the soft lights of the Toronto skyscrapers draped in darkness. Amidst the plain rectangle buildings, a single tower–the CN Tower–triumphed above them all. It had a sharp purple glow, and it was skinny, like an arrow piercing the sky. He thought of Rainee, perhaps one day, perhaps someday, he could take her out to dinner on the CN Tower, but the very thought of her caused his heart to ache. Right now, that foolish, fragile hope seemed so far away.

“Rainee,” he whispered to no one, just to feel the sound of her name on his lips.

Edwin wept. He cursed the Gods for not granting him his only wish, and he cursed his meagre place in the world. What good were his Baddie eyes if they could not allow him to possess the baddies themselves? He was a man dying of thirst watching the finest wine bottles passing by him.

“Rainee,” he said again, louder, as if saying her name could conjure her love.

Too much time had passed now, and he had dedicated the past year to a pointless endeavour, an unrealizable dream. Despite the joy that her beauty had once brought him, Edwin could no longer deny the truth in front of him. They would always be separated by a wave and a “hi.” Nothing more, nothing less.

“Rainee. Rainee. Rainee,” he said louder and louder. He shouted and shouted until his voice was hoarse and torn, and he lied down to watch the stars dissolve into the sunrise. Deep down, Edwin still had hope. Not for Rainee necessarily but with other girls perhaps. Even though that hope had been reduced to specks of ash, he still had hope. Even though he had fallen now, he would find another great beauty eventually.

If I do not… No, I will, Edwin assured himself. If there was one Rainee, surely there must be more. Surely. Surely.

Edwin had fallen asleep sometime, and when he woke, his face was covered with dried tears. His heart ached a little less now. The sun shined through the balcony door, which he had left open. Edwin walked outside and breathed the morning air, the sun warm on his face. Beautiful, how beautiful.

“Rainee is the one losing out here,” he told himself with a smile.

Edwin looked down at the passing cars and pedestrians, and he spotted the silhouette of a cute girl wearing a fitted black shirt and white skirt. Though he was hundreds of metres above, he could almost see her features so clearly. The ML algorithm in his brain filled out the rest. A seven hovered above her. Not bad. Another girl passed by, that girl with an eight.

Edwin watched the street below him for what felt like hours. Four. Undefined. Nine. Six. Seven. Zero. Undefined. Two. Eight.

He blinked his tear-stained eyes. Now the hunt begins.

To be continued…