She wasn’t sure if learning life lessons from an idol drama was the right thing to do.
So she mulled it over repeatedly, chewing on the scenarios in her mind. During that time, she called Cui He. It took Cui He a few hours to call back, and through the distorted signal, her first words were:
“Cui Qijin? Is something wrong?”
For a moment, Cui Qijin thought she’d already asked everything she wanted to ask—
Mom, how did you and Dad fall in love? Was there love between you? What even is love? Is it a bad thing? It shows up so unnoticeably, so insignificant, but why does it make me suffer like this now, torment me, make me so cowardly?
But in reality, she hadn’t.
In her daze, she remembered that graduation season was approaching. Cui He must be busy with her students’ theses and defenses. Yu Hongdong was probably swamped too.
The TV droned on without pause, showing the female lead’s mother cradling her daughter, speaking tenderly about family, warmth, gratitude, and love.
On the phone, Cui He heard the silence and pressed: “I have a few students defending tonight; they still have a ton of issues. Cui Qijin? Are you listening? I can give you five minutes.”
Cui Qijin didn’t know how many questions she could squeeze into five minutes.
In those five minutes, she asked none.
For ten seconds, she stayed silent. Then, for five seconds: “Chenxing had an episode at school a while back.”
Cui He went quiet for about ten seconds. Then, for two: “Did she? She didn’t tell me.”
After three seconds: “You’re telling me now, so you’ve handled it, right?”
After eight seconds, Cui Qijin replied: “Yes.”
The call ended in under a minute.
Afterward, Cui Qijin kept watching the drama. On screen, the mother pressed her cheek to her daughter’s, hugging her close and saying affectionately: “Then I should thank you too. I didn’t ask your opinion before bringing you into this world.”
She held a can of ice beer in one hand and a mango in the other.
In perfect calm, she thought—
She’d come so close to telling Cui He about eating that plate of unripe blue-hand fruit and ending up in the hospital a few days ago.
Luckily, she hadn’t.
Because saying it would create expectations.
How could she have expectations of someone? That was far too dangerous.
So she reminded herself: Don’t have expectations of Chi Buyu either.
Maybe after tidying up, Chi Buyu wouldn’t want to see her. Maybe Chi Buyu was still angry with her—angrier than ever before. Maybe Chi Buyu even hated her for staying silent all these years, watching her suffer over the past without a word…
Cui Qijin knew she had to prepare for the worst, just like every time before.
Yet she still waited.
She couldn’t help it. She was beside herself, positioning herself squarely in a place of waiting. And yet, she didn’t want to sink to “waiting.”
Waiting turned out to be such exquisite torment.
“So, you knew all along that Shuishui had been waiting for you that day?”
After a long pause, Chen Wenran finally spoke up.
Chen Wenran had finally asked.
Cui Qijin felt a weight lift off her shoulders.
Yes, on a rainy day in 2015, Chi Buyu had waited for her a long time too—until the rain stopped, until deep into the night.
“Yes.”
Exhausted, Cui Qijin looked at Chen Wenran, who seemed on the verge of saying more.
“Do you want to yell at me?”
“Not really.” Chen Wenran sighed again, her whole demeanor turning melancholic. “I just feel sorry for Shuishui.”
“I know.”
“But I feel sorry for you too.”
Cui Qijin shook her head. “There’s nothing to feel sorry for me about. I messed up on this one.”
“Yeah, you did. You didn’t just stand her up back then—you vanished from the internet entirely. Then in college, the four of us met, hung out so many times, talked so much. You heard her go on about that first love of hers maybe a dozen, twenty times. She seemed over the heartbreak, like she’d processed it, but you never said a word, no reaction at all, just listened. And now, when it finally looks like you two have a spark after all these years, you drop on everyone that you’re the one who dumped Shuishui back then…”
From her perspective, Cui Qijin sounded that awful, that hate-worthy.
“But.” Chen Wenran paused, gazing at her. “I still feel sorry for you.”
Cui Qijin said nothing.
Chen Wenran murmured:
“I think about how you always torment yourself like this. Over the years, I’ve seen you go through so much back-and-forth…
“We talked about it so many times together, cursed out that so-called first love over and over, and you stayed silent, listening, watching, sticking by Shuishui’s side. I don’t know—if you had some reason—
“I didn’t have a reason.”
Cui Qijin cut her off. As Chen Wenran looked over, she repeated softly:
“I had no reason at all.”
Chen Wenran fell silent.
She grabbed a beer from the TV stand, cracked it open, and took a sip. It had lost all its chill. Chen Wenran stayed quiet for a long stretch, as if letting the alcohol digest the truth. Then she met her eyes.
“Then it wasn’t that you didn’t go.”
Cui Qijin didn’t argue.
“But that you did go, realized it was Shuishui, and ran away after, right?”
Chen Wenran had summed up that hazy memory with perfect accuracy.
Cui Qijin tacitly agreed. After a moment, she smiled faintly and said softly:
“Then would Chi Buyu think the same?”
“Think what?”
“That…”
Cui Qijin closed her eyes, gripping the mango tightly in her hand.
“That I ran because I saw it was her—because I hated her, didn’t like her, couldn’t accept that the person I was close to online was her, couldn’t accept that my love was her?”
“Wasn’t that basically it?”
“It was pretty close to the truth.”
“Then what’s the part that’s different?”
“The… perspective.”
It was because of herself.
She couldn’t accept her uncontrolled self being discovered, her abnormal self entering the normal world, her abnormal inner world being seen through by a real person.
If it hadn’t been Chi Buyu, she wouldn’t have been so terrified right then. But it was Chi Buyu—the Chi Buyu who knew her, who knew Cui Qijin was always sharp-tongued and cold toward people.
In fact…
Even before knowing who SpongeBob Afraid of Water really was, Cui Qijin had already started resisting this relationship she couldn’t control.
Forming an overly close bond with another person was incredibly dangerous.
That person would have so many expectations of her.
She would get upset, heartbroken, if Cui Qijin didn’t reply right away because she was tending to her plants in her free time.
In school, if she didn’t have sanitary pads on hand and came to her first, Cui Qijin wouldn’t know what to say. She’d suggest preparing ahead next time. But SpongeBob Afraid of Water wouldn’t be happy hearing that. Cui Qijin couldn’t understand why she’d be unhappy, and sometimes she’d feel frustrated, like there was no right answer.
She’d sulk if Cui Qijin didn’t give glowing feedback after watching that romance movie.
She’d bring her phone to school every day to chat, even during class. So during that period, whenever Cui Qijin got home from school and logged on, there’d be hundreds of unread messages. She’d have to scroll way back, replying like it was a chore. There were no message quotes back then, so she’d send one, and new ones would pour in, bumping it down, forcing her to scroll up again…
It all baffled her.
Most times, she could barely handle the weight of so many expectations. Before she knew it, this person had crowded out her entire life.
Cui He and Yu Hongdong had taught her to live independently, and she’d been used to it for years.
Sometimes she felt like one extra person was exhausting. Then she’d recall a line she’d read: Every child eventually grows into their parents’ image.
She didn’t know if that was true.
But the further time pushed on, the more it rang true. She started understanding Cui He and Yu Hongdong’s feelings. One day, laid up in bed with a stomach bug, Cui He rushed out the door and said:
“You have five minutes. If there’s anything you need help with, say it now.”
She was used to it.
And shook her head no.
Later, drifting off, eyelids too heavy to hold open, SpongeBob Afraid of Water bombarded her with QQ messages—one after another—saying her teacher had confiscated her phone, so she couldn’t reach her. What had she done today? Had she thought of her? Why hadn’t she messaged? Why hadn’t she either…
In that instant, propping her eyes open, Cui Qijin almost wanted to say, like Cui He: “You have five minutes. Can you get it all out?”
She didn’t.
But she didn’t understand why she’d become like this, why such thoughts crossed her mind.
Maybe she’d always been this way.
Maybe she took after Cui He and Yu Hongdong.
Like them, always friendly and patient with passing strangers in life, but short on patience with her and Chenxing.
Maybe that was just blood ties.
Once Cui Qijin bonded closely with someone, her innate nature would shine through unmasked.
What was even harder for her to bear was that she had started looking forward to someone.
She hoped SpongeBob Afraid of Water would never discover these wicked thoughts of hers. She hoped that after hearing her out, SpongeBob Afraid of Water would understand them. After sending every single message, she hoped for whatever reply SpongeBob Afraid of Water might give her. She hoped SpongeBob Afraid of Water would grant her a long, long time to change this stubborn nature of hers. She hoped she wouldn’t make SpongeBob Afraid of Water angry, sad, or heartbroken. She hoped SpongeBob Afraid of Water would stand by her side unconditionally. She hoped that when SpongeBob Afraid of Water took the college entrance exam, they could go to the same city—even the same university. One day, she even hoped that SpongeBob Afraid of Water…
Would never disappear.
How could she dare to hope? How could she have so many unreasonable hopes? How could she pin all those hopes on a single person?
“Forever.” That word felt so dangerous.
These hopes grew stronger with each passing day, until they reached the point where she could no longer control them.
And that was when SpongeBob Afraid of Water messaged her to meet up.
That message filled her with panic and pressure. It kept her staring wide-eyed through sleepless nights. Her palms grew slick with sweat every time she typed a reply on QQ. She had dream after dream of the meeting going awry. Every new QQ notification made her heart race…
And yet it also filled her with anticipation—
She imagined what SpongeBob Afraid of Water might look like. She scoured forum posts for others’ meetup stories. She watched romance movies to see what love really looked like. Starting a month ago, she’d been picking out the perfect colorful leaf taro plant. If SpongeBob Afraid of Water’s had died, maybe she could give her a new one. She even asked a female classmate what to say first when meeting an online friend…
