It must have been autumn—or maybe winter? She couldn’t recall. She only remembered Chengdu’s streets back then scattered with the scent of crushed ginkgo fruits, a weird stench. Overall, the city in that season smelled like steamed shrubbery. The online world, by contrast, had no smells. Its sun didn’t burn, its moon didn’t glow, its stars shed no light. This world wouldn’t emit a rotten odor just because of changing seasons or someone’s departure.
She didn’t remember how much longer it had been—though it didn’t feel like long. Chengdu’s roads were still carpeted in golden ginkgo leaves.
That’s when she realized it had been autumn. SpongeBob Afraid of Water’s avatar lit up with color again. The sun below her profile was still cool, the moon dim, the stars lightless. And she messaged:
[“My aunt passed away. We’re preparing her funeral. She had no biological daughter—or wait, I feel like I was her daughter—so I’m the one wearing mourning clothes for her. Sorry, I haven’t been online for a while. Has it been several days?”]
Turned out it had been less than three.
[“I forgot. It’s the same aunt who gave me that colorful leaf taro. During the funeral, seeing my avatar or yours made me think of the plant, and then of her, and I was scared I’d tear up chatting nonsense with you and make you sad too.”]
[“So I changed my avatar and came back to talk.”]
[“Oh, and sorry.”]
[“I still managed to kill that pot of colorful leaf taro. I’m really sorry for wasting your good intentions.”]
Not a single Penguin Spin in those four messages. Cui Qijin was good at reading emotions through symbols.
She sat down under a ginkgo tree—somewhere, she didn’t know where. The world was awash in gold, fan-shaped leaves drifting down onto her head, her shoulders, into her eyes. Were these ginkgo leaves real, or was that pot of colorful leaf taro she’d never seen in person?
Surrounded by the world’s ginkgo leaves, she sent SpongeBob Afraid of Water a link to Coco.
She remembered Cui He telling her—Cui Qijin, everything you say needs evidence to back it up, or else it’s just a lie. So she found the perfect material to comfort SpongeBob Afraid of Water without revealing her own clumsiness.
After watching the movie, SpongeBob Afraid of Water sent crying emojis, shared her thoughts on the film, thanked her for the comfort, and added: [“Mine, I’ve always thought you seem like Octopus Bro.”]
wkeinauadqtqb: [“Why would I be like an octopus?”]
SpongeBob Afraid of Water: [“Haha, just a metaphor.”]
wkeinauadqtqb: [“I don’t have eight legs. And isn’t Octopus Bro super annoying?”]
SpongeBob Afraid of Water: [“Who says?”]
wkeinauadqtqb: [“Everyone does. Plus, Octopus Bro always bullies SpongeBob.”]
SpongeBob Afraid of Water: [“Aw, don’t listen to others. Octopus Bro isn’t as bad as people say. Maybe he’s just… not great at expressing himself. /Penguin Spin”]
That was a fresh perspective.
wkeinauadqtqb: [“Why do you think I seem like him?”]
SpongeBob Afraid of Water: [“What I mean is…”]
SpongeBob Afraid of Water: [“Mine, you’re real. /Penguin Spin”]
SpongeBob Afraid of Water: [“At least to SpongeBob.”]
SpongeBob Afraid of Water: [“You’re real.”]
Cui Qijin didn’t feel real herself.
In fact, she’d always been wary of SpongeBob Afraid of Water, never casually revealing true personal details.
But.
She never imagined she’d one day use “but” in a situation like this.
But…
The opposite of real didn’t have to be fake. It could be hidden, secret, or an unconventional truth. She didn’t know how much of her presented self—this unconventional truth—was authentic. Sometimes, rereading their chat logs, she wondered if that person was Cui Qijin or someone else entirely.
She didn’t understand—and never fully would—why SpongeBob Afraid of Water kept bouncing around in her space. Nor why she allowed it.
All she knew was that when she snapped out of it,
SpongeBob Afraid of Water—this human behind the foolish pseudonym—had barged in with everything she resisted, fully invading a realm she couldn’t categorize.
The other girl started acting spoiled around her, evolving from a faceless QQ account into a real person who loved pineapple ice drinks, spammed Penguin Spin emojis with red scarves, chimed in with Didi notification sounds, and called her “Mine” message after message. A human she disliked and couldn’t tolerate. She didn’t even like herself as a human.
Some time after that, SpongeBob Afraid of Water began affectionately calling her “Mine Mine” after a Jay Chou song, then inexplicably switched to “Mai Mai.” Across both worlds, only one person called her that.
In the end, she felt just as confused about their relationship’s category. But her approach to it was the polar opposite.
Gradually, SpongeBob Afraid of Water kept sharing her troubles, coyly asking if they should switch to SpongeBob and Octopus Bro avatars, wondering if she’d ever liked anyone before, what “liking” even meant, if she had time after midterms to video call and watch a romance movie together. She endlessly drew emotional support Cui Qijin didn’t even possess…
And yet Cui Qijin allowed it all. She tolerated the unreasonable whining, the silly red-scarfed penguin spinning in her world. Seeing Yu Chenxing sip pineapple ice made her recall SpongeBob Afraid of Water’s claim that pineapple was the world’s best, so she tried it herself, even though it stung her mouth.
She turned off silent mode for long stretches. During feverish illnesses, barricaded in her lonely room, she willingly waited for the Didi-like pings that filled the darkness. The room was pitch black, door sealed tight without a crack—no widening triangle of light creeping in. Only the small screen glowed. She immersed herself, unaware her nearsightedness was worsening.
Sometimes she’d listen to Jay Chou’s “Mine Mine,” yanking out her earbuds the instant Yu Chenxing burst in, pretending to study.
She heard out the girl’s troubles, puzzled why she came to her first but still trying to help. She didn’t like Octopus Bro but changed her avatar anyway—it was just a side account, with SpongeBob Afraid of Water as its sole friend. Only she could see wkeinauadqtqb’s profile pic.
She said she’d never liked anyone else. She agreed to a video movie night but with audio off, typing only—she wasn’t ready to reveal her voice.
In her barren life, she scraped together whatever emotional scraps she could offer, doling them out hesitantly like a miser, terrified of giving too much only for it all to be squandered.
Was this love?
She didn’t know how to make sense of it. No one had ever taught her how to interpret something like this.
Maybe at that age, in the early teens amid the humid haze of adolescence shrouded in misty rain, love was just too hard to grasp. It wasn’t like solving a math problem where you could write down the answer and flip to the back to find a neat explanation: “Don’t hesitate—this is your love.”
For a time, she looked back at that period of her life through the cold lens of a third person, almost convincing herself… that she was no longer Cui Qijin.
She thought so. She merely thought she wasn’t Cui Qijin anymore.
It wasn’t until much later, in the winter of 2023, when Yu Chenxing had another episode and lay dying on her hospital bed. When she woke, she tore out the oxygen tube binding her with a hoarse scream, mustering every last bit of strength to tell her:
“Cui Qijin, you always say one thing but mean another. You keep piercing the hearts of those who want to love you, leaving them bleeding and broken.”
By then, Cui Qijin had long accepted it—a fact she could do nothing about.
She, the twenty-six-year-old Cui Qijin, looked down imperiously at her not-so-close blood sister Yu Chenxing and said coolly, “Yu Chenxing, don’t talk anymore. You’ll interfere with your treatment.”
Yu Chenxing just gazed at her and smiled. The smile was faint, almost inaudible, like self-mockery, self-deprecation, or some indescribable sorrow. Then she said:
“It’s a pity we’re both the same in this way, too.”
It was a pity, but she was still Cui Qijin.
That glitchy mess from 2014 had vanished completely by 2015. So Cui Qijin finally understood: there had never been two worlds. It had always been the same one—her world of “behave yourself and go it alone,” of “don’t always crave everything from others,” of “every word needs evidence to back it up.”
To this world, so many things from that other one were out of control, incorrect. But here, boundaries were drawn, confining her firmly within the limits of what Cui Qijin could reach.
Ending that indefinable romance hadn’t changed a thing for Cui Qijin.
She still hated anyone invading her inner world. To her, love was an utterly rotten thing—it made people lose control, made them not themselves. She couldn’t comprehend it, rejected the change it brought. Her only response to love was to struggle. She hated being seen through completely by another person, resented having her emotions tugged entirely by someone else. Her feelings held no softness, only dry hardness.
Or perhaps she had never changed at all. Not even during that blurry, chaotic romance.
Cui Qijin often dreamed in pitch-black rooms. In the dreams, she was trapped in a blue aquarium. She huddled in the corner, her feet icy cold, her chest and lungs drowned in water. She hugged her knees like a prisoner caught inside, while lights swept relentlessly outside the tank, searching for her.
She tried to hide, shielding herself from the blinding blue glare. A red dot zeroed in on her forehead between her brows, and a echoing voice interrogated her harshly: Cui Qijin, what kind of person are you, exactly?
Trapped with no escape, Cui Qijin slumped wearily against the wall. She looked up in profound sorrow, clutching her heart drowned in icy water, and rasped out the words one by one into the sealed glass around her:
“Cui Qijin always says one thing but means another.”
“The love Cui Qijin has given has left more bloodshed and wounds than warmth and affection.”
“Cui Qijin is a stubborn pessimist when it comes to love.”
No echo came back.
–
“Cui Qijin?”
“Cui Qijin!”
A blinding light flashed into her vision. Cui Qijin blinked dazedly—
The gray-blue sky, the little electric donkey spinning back around, Chen Wenran and Ran Yan waving at her from the blurry glow of its headlight.
All the outlines around her swam indistinctly.
Cui Qijin closed her eyes once, then opened them to see Chi Buyu looking at her in the rearview mirror, her expression etched with deep worry. “Cui Qijin, what’s wrong?”
She wasn’t calling her Cui Muhuo anymore. She was calling her Cui Qijin. She had said her name three times. In that moment, Cui Qijin felt as if a red dot had lanced right between her brows.
So she forced out a clumsy sound:
“Chi Buyu, Chi Buyu.”
Just saying the name Chi Buyu felt like love itself. Buyu, Buyu—lingering on her lips, curling in her throat, wrapping around her bones.
But am I real? Chi Buyu. Will you always be real? Chi Buyu.
The scooter had pulled to a stop, but the river wind kept blowing relentlessly. It carried the scent of gardenia nectar, pineapple sparkling water, and the fading black opium on Chi Buyu’s skin.
Right now, in 2024, Chi Buyu sat behind her, arms around her waist. She hesitated, then reached out, her fingers brushing Cui Qijin’s chilled eyelids and sliding gently over them.
“Cui Qijin? What’s wrong?”
Finally, she pressed her lips together, removed her helmet, and let her hair fly wildly. Even dyed, it still looked just like the Lion King from the cartoons.
The Lion King herself probably didn’t notice. She simply plopped the helmet on Cui Qijin’s head, fastening it earnestly over her ears. Then she cupped her palm to her cheek, forcing her face around.
She examined her seriously for a good long moment.
She buckled the strap under her chin, then flicked the strap like she was scolding her. “Riding up front with the wind blowing your eyes all red… and you still had to play tough and make me wear the helmet…”
Her fingers poked gently at the corner of Cui Qijin’s eye.
“Such a little doll.”
In that instant, Cui Qijin thought that perhaps she had never truly escaped that aquarium.
