He sat in a secluded spot watching for a while, his mood calm, enjoying this sightseeing trip as a visitor. He leisurely lit a cigarette, and when it was finished, he stood up, his handsome brows slightly furrowed. He tossed the cigarette butt on the ground, crushed it firmly under his foot, then lifted his head to gaze into the distance, exhaling a sharp puff of smoke as he calmly bid farewell: "Miao Jing, I'm leaving."
No one knew that during these two-plus years of darkness, it was her that had kept him going.
Now, completely... neither needed the other anymore.
After striding a few steps away, he turned back, picked up the cigarette butt from the ground, and tossed it into a roadside trash bin. He walked to a quiet corner of the school, stretched out his long arm, and vaulted over the wall to leave the campus.
Chen Yi returned to Tengcheng and began building his new life.
When winter snow fell, Miao Jing had her first boyfriend.
Though he was her first, she struggled to call it her "first love"—her earliest, most innocent affections had been given to someone else.
Her boyfriend was the most perfect among her suitors—gentle and gentlemanly, remembering her menstrual cycle, birthdays, and various anniversaries, occasionally surprising her with little gestures that blended romance and playfulness. He took good care of everything for her, was considerate and attentive to her feelings in bed, and they experienced a hundred heart-fluttering moments typical of romance, making their relationship a model courtship.
Her boyfriend taught Miao Jing what love was, how to love, how to care for and consider the other person. She enjoyed being enveloped in affection, genuinely feeling the warmth of his devotion, as if caught in the throes of passionate love—a feeling both enlightening and clumsily thrilling. She grew fonder of him and increasingly reliant on him.
Everything seemed perfect. Was this how her life was meant to be?
As their relationship grew more intimate, Miao Jing noticed her own peculiarities when they began integrating into each other's lives.
Harmonious families raise well-adjusted children. Her boyfriend came from a very happy home and had a younger sister in middle school. She often heard him share amusing family stories, checking in on and caring for his family, giving small gifts on holidays and anniversaries—a warm, enviable family.
During conversations, it was inevitable that her own family background and life experiences would come up. Though she could be close and open with him, Miao Jing couldn't bring herself to talk about her past—she didn't want anyone to know, to understand, or to intrude into her history, preferring to keep it a secret she alone guarded.
When her boyfriend video-called or phoned his sister and she heard the girl cheerfully calling him "brother," Miao Jing would easily drift into a daze, feeling heartache, irritation, and a desire to escape. When his family indirectly reached out to their son's girlfriend, expressing kindness toward her, she would grow tense and flustered, completely unsure how to convey her emotions.
Miao Jing also disliked frequent dating. Her living expenses and tuition mainly relied on her scholarships and work income. Unless it was an emergency, she was unwilling to touch the money in that bank card, let alone use it for dining out, entertainment, travel, or dates. Every time she saw the balance on the ATM screen, she instinctively wanted to flee.When spending the night with her boyfriend, immersed in intimate moments, she could fully appreciate the tenderness and beauty. Yet occasionally, a vague desire would surface—for him to be more forceful, to hold her from behind while speaking and kissing, for the sharp, intense taste of tobacco to pass between their lips and tongues, for the whirring electric fan to blow as they dripped with sweat and exhaustion.
It had clearly been a long time, and she had never mentioned Chen Yi to anyone.
It wasn’t that she never thought of him. Every time she imagined, she would simulate a scene in her mind—the first moment of their reunion. The timing, setting, and reason could vary endlessly: they might pass by as strangers or pause to speak, the exact words exchanged, their expressions and movements, the people around them—all meticulously detailed, like a freeze-frame from a movie.
After being together for a while, her boyfriend also sensed that beneath her gentle and aloof exterior lay coldness, detachment, and awkwardness—an unwillingness to open up. He simply didn’t understand her.
During the Spring Festival, Miao Jing resolved to accompany her boyfriend to his hometown for the New Year. Confronted with the overwhelming warmth and enviable harmony of his family, and observing the daily interactions between her boyfriend and his younger sister, she suddenly felt the urge to retreat. She disliked the liveliness, the familial closeness, the atmosphere that starkly contrasted with her own life.
Occasionally, she would reminisce about that very quiet home: her cooking in the kitchen, him fixing a chair in the dining room; her standing on a ladder to change a light bulb, him angrily shooing her down; them curled up on the sofa eating cake and watching movies; her cooking him overly salty noodles; her coldly arguing with him, his furious yet helpless expression.
She, too, had once had an older brother—sometimes kind, sometimes harsh. They had relied on each other for survival. He taught her how to earn money, took her riding on his motorcycle, broke his leg doing odd jobs to pay her tuition, picked her up after evening self-study at the school gate, attended parent-teacher meetings for her. On a night of torrential rain, they kissed as she sat in the crook of his arm; he held her by the river, pecking her cheeks. He gave her ambiguous emotions and deep scars. He bullied her, blocked her at the school gate, abandoned her at home to fend for herself, kicked her out, forgot her birthday, neglected her college entrance exams, always shouting at her to get lost—until they completely lost contact.
It was like a delayed bout of malaria, with recurring chills and fevers. She relied on her own immunity to resist the symptoms, but breaking free was difficult. Just as she seemed to be improving, it would suddenly worsen again, with no way to fully recover.
After that Spring Festival, she broke up with her boyfriend.
Deep within, a voice always called to her, summoning her back, urging her to look behind.
Miao Jing attributed her condition to being too young and inexperienced, having encountered too few people and events. Through her senior-year internship, job hunting, and graduation, she truly stepped into the dazzling world. She landed an enviable job with a handsome salary, encountering more outstanding individuals and all sorts of bizarre, complex stories.Perhaps the satisfaction brought by designer fashion and luxury handbags was only equivalent to her casually picking up a dress from a roadside stall, while someone with thick, raised eyebrows lazily remarked that this color suited her best. She would then hop onto his motorcycle in that dress and ride around the city. Perhaps the exquisite dishes and fine wines at glamorous, high-society banquets were only comparable to the boiled noodles she had eaten for half a month, paired with the soy-braised beef and large chicken legs he brought back from the deli. As she retrieved signed documents from impeccably dressed, ambitious corporate elites, she would see the initials "C.Y." and unconsciously read them as Chen Yi.
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