An Unsettled Evening

With a restless heart, the time quickly arrived at Saturday evening.

After dinner and a shower, I was again shooed by Chen Si Yi back to my room. I lay alone on the large bed covered with a bamboo mat, resting against the pillow, staring into space.

Half of May had already passed, and the scorching June was about to arrive. Fortunately, this year’s heatwave seemed to come a little later than before.

I remembered that in previous years, by this time I would have already turned on the air conditioner, lazily sitting at my computer desk and tapping on the keyboard.

But now, with the cicadas chirping outside the window, I didn’t feel the slightest bit of heat lying on the bamboo mat. The thin white silk nightgown fluttered slightly under the breeze, and my thoughts, for once, found a moment of peace.

Yes, starting from Monday, my heart had been in turmoil.

Even though I had made up my mind, the unpredictability of the future still made me uneasy.

“Why not invite Sister Xiao Yu to our house as a guest?”

That’s what Chen Si Yi said last weekend. And it was under her coercion and supervision that I completed the task of passing this message on to Xiao Yu.

But in truth, I knew it in my heart: my sister’s coercion was just an excuse I gave myself.

Deep down, I still wanted to see Xiao Yu.

Yes, I wanted to put an end to this feeling that others had imposed on me.

It’s strange to say: when Xiao Yu rejected me, I wasn’t actually very sad. I just felt a hollow emptiness, as if something was missing, but I couldn’t find the right person to fill the void.

Since childhood, I had always been chasing something. But that something was right in front of me, within reach, yet I never had the courage to pluck it.

Since childhood, everyone thought Su Xiao Yu and I were a match made in heaven. Not to brag—thanks to our parents—we both had pleasing features. She was a cute little sister, and I was an adorable little boy.

Our personalities were also extremely similar. When we were young, we both disliked wandering outside. While other boys loved rolling in mud puddles and sweating on the soccer field, Xiao Yu and I would quietly stay at home, playing games that belonged only to us. Sometimes at her place, but most of the time at mine.

Thus, because we grew up together, even attending elementary, middle, and high school together, in everyone’s eyes, Xiao Yu and I were destined to be together.

Even my dad, whenever he saw Xiao Yu come to our house for dinner when we were little, would grin and ask, ‘Xiao Yu, when are you going to marry into our family?’ That would always make Xiao Yu and me, who were eating, blush furiously.

Friends in elementary school would ask, ‘Are you and Su Xiao Yu related?’

Friends in middle school would say, ‘Why haven’t you done Su Xiao Yu yet? Are you still a virgin?’

Friends in high school would exclaim, ‘What? You and Su Xiao Yu aren’t dating yet?’

So, over time, the notion that Su Xiao Yu was my lover became deeply ingrained in my subconscious, never wavering.

It wasn’t until Xiao Yu rejected me that I began to doubt this conviction I had once held so firmly.

After a breakup, it’s natural to feel heartbroken.

A close buddy from middle school often muttered beside me, ‘Women, what’s the big deal? Just for fun.’ But when he himself broke up, he suddenly changed. Not only did he stop skipping class, but he even bought a pile of past exam papers and started studying diligently.

‘I don’t want to mess around anymore. I need to reflect on myself.’

Young people love to act foolish. One late night, after finishing his last can of beer, as if making a declaration, my middle school buddy threw his newly bought phone into the river. With a splash, the water sprayed up and disappeared before I could blink. Then he turned around and walked away without looking back.

Since we went to different schools, the next time I heard about him was in my first year of high school.

One day, on a whim, I watched the local news on TV. And then I was so shocked I couldn’t close my jaw.

That middle school buddy of mine had skipped a grade and been admitted to Tokyo University in Japan! Damn, was this guy really that smart? To think I had been hanging out with him all the time—I really held back a genius.

Before confessing, I had rehearsed the scene of Xiao Yu rejecting me no less than a hundred times. I even prepared the money for a new phone.

But when the anxiety actually became reality, I suddenly realized—

—being rejected by Xiao Yu wasn’t really that painful. It was completely different from what I had imagined…