Ren Sanliu’s heart ached at those words, but she felt no urge to blame Xiang Yu. After all, she was the one who started it.
“And later…?”
“Later…”
Xiang Yu leaned down, rubbing her forehead against Ren Sanliu’s, and continued—
“Later… I didn’t have time to think about you. After getting into the Police Academy, I secretly went to enroll. My aunt didn’t know until I’d already started military training. You haven’t seen her angry? She stormed the school, dragged me out of formation, demanded I drop out and leave with her to go abroad. Of course I refused, but I didn’t dare fight her. The sun was brutal that day—the hottest on record. She pointed at me and asked if I’d go. I said no… and she slapped me.”
Xiang Yu’s voice grew heavier here, but she quirked her lips into a smile—
“She said she’d cut ties, pretend I didn’t exist. Honestly, I wasn’t even that scared when I came out to her.”
“How did you two make up?” Ren Sanliu knew, of course, that Qin Yuan’s threats were just words—she’d never truly let go.
“It was Zhao Yu. She kept persuading my little aunt. Although my little aunt accepted it, she was forced into it. For a full half year, she didn’t say a single word to me.”
Ren Sanliu lifted her hand and cupped Xiang Yu’s cheek—
“Do you regret it?”
“No regrets. It’s just… seeing her cry made me so sad.”
Xiang Yu turned her head and pressed her eyes into Ren Sanliu’s palm—
“From now on, once I join the police bureau and start working, I’ll have even less time to think about you. I’ll be so busy my feet won’t touch the ground. The moment I close my eyes, I’ll fall asleep.”
“Because your life will have a pillar to lean on. With that pillar, your core will stabilize.”
“Yeah, but… I often dream about you…”
“What do you dream about me doing?”
“You… you…” Xiang Yu trailed off on the rest. She licked her lips and steered the conversation back to the beginning. “Don’t dodge… You still haven’t answered my question.”
Ren Sanliu was already enveloped in Xiang Yu’s tenderness. She couldn’t tear herself away from the thick affection in the way this woman looked at her. She felt as if she had detached from that past, viewing those scenes as an outsider, with the moments from back then slowly surfacing in her mind across the barriers of time and space.
She didn’t know why tears suddenly streamed from her eyes. She hadn’t felt like crying, but the tears poured out uncontrollably, like a torrent from the mountains, falling freely in large drops.
A long time passed before she heard her own hoarse throat produce a raspy voice. Ren Sanliu answered the question about changing her name—“Is it because you wanted to forget the past and start over?”
“No, I can’t forget the past.”
“As for starting over, I’ve been trying all along.”
“Changing my name… it’s because ‘San’ is a grass that can survive anywhere. I wanted to live on.”
“But ‘Dong’ was the name my mom gave me. I miss her so much…”
Her final truth finally came out.
This time, it was Xiang Yu who leaned in to kiss Ren Sanliu’s tears, but Ren Sanliu refused. She pressed her hand against Xiang Yu’s shoulder, turned her head aside, and struggled to dodge her face.
“Don’t you think it’s weird how we’re acting? You made me spill all my truths, but you won’t say yours…”
“Afraid I won’t own up…?”
“Xiang Yu—”
“Ren Sanliu, I love you.”
Neither spoke. They gazed at each other, and in this game of mutual confession where both knew the truth, there were no winners or losers. They were both immersed in it.
“Ren Sanliu, I love you… I loved you even when I was so young. The first time I saw you at seventeen, I didn’t even know your name, but I remembered your face. All my first stirrings of emotion, all my budding feelings—they were all because of you. Even when you broke up with me and insisted on leaving, I resented you, blamed you, even thought about revenge. And later… when we met again, I kept telling myself I couldn’t be so spineless, that I couldn’t let you crook your finger and pull me back in. I had to hold my ground, make you see I’d changed. Even if you bowed your head, even if you took the initiative, I wouldn’t fall for it again.”
“But it was no use… The harder I tried to suppress myself, the more I missed you… I had so many reasons to make you suffer, so many chances to walk away, but I couldn’t do it. It’s like you planted a gu in my body. No matter how much it tore me apart inside, I just couldn’t leave you. I had the courage to cut out the rotten flesh from my body, but not the courage to forget you.”
“What I dreamed about you…?”
Xiang Yu lowered her head and kissed Ren Sanliu’s lips. After gently grinding against them, she pulled back but caught her lower lip with her teeth, murmuring vaguely—
“I dreamed of you… just like now, like when we just made love in bed…”
“Many times, countless times…”
“You shouldn’t have confessed first… I should be the one doing that…”
Xiang Yu released her teeth and slipped her tongue into Ren Sanliu’s mouth, intertwining with hers again. Ren Sanliu’s lips were already swollen, and now they felt hot to the touch.
“When I saw you in the hospital room, if it hadn’t been my leg that was injured, I would’ve rushed over and hugged you right then…”
“You’re lying. Back then, you didn’t want to see me at all…”
“I was pretending.”
Xiang Yu left Ren Sanliu’s lips and kissed her chin, following the upward curve of her jawline with nibbling kisses all the way to her ear root—
“You asked if I wanted to sleep with you. I did…”
“You didn’t… You shut the door… You locked me out…”
“I was bluffing you.”
Xiang Yu whispered softly, her hot breath scorching Ren Sanliu’s ear. It was like two little people wrestling in water. Ren Sanliu was teased until her whole body ached with need, but Xiang Yu had already crawled from behind her ear to her neck.
Her hand wrapped around Ren Sanliu’s waist. Ren Sanliu felt herself lifted off the ground for a moment before she was flipped over onto her stomach on the pillow.
“You were drunk. I brought you home, and taking advantage of the alcohol, you sat on top of me and told me not to leave… Ren Sanliu… You should’ve turned off your phone. If it weren’t for that sudden ringtone, that night… we probably would’ve done it long ago. We wouldn’t have had to wait until now…”
Xiang Yu kneaded the dip in Ren Sanliu’s waist with one hand while grabbing a pillow with the other to tuck it under her belly.
“You were the one who stopped that day…”
“You said you wanted to eat fish, so I went to buy it…”
Xiang Yu quibbled unreasonably, then simply grabbed the phone and tossed it toward the foot of the bed, not giving Ren Sanliu a chance to argue.
Then… the first knuckle, the second knuckle… until the base…
“Why didn’t you ask me to stay sooner if you wanted me to? Do you know… I was on pins and needles for a whole week? You said nothing, forcing me to have no choice…”
Ren Sanliu tried to speak, but as soon as her lips parted, the words shattered like fragments, incoherent.
“That luggage bag on the bed… it was empty. I deliberately left it there for you to see. I just wanted to know… if I really left, would you panic like I did?”
Xiang Yu drew in a breath.
The tightening sensation squeezed her fingers.
“You kidnapped my cat and took it home… You ate my Ham Sausage and turned the study into a cat room…”
“You said my bedroom had a leak and was unlivable… You told me to sleep in the master bedroom with you…”
“You rubbed essential oil on my temples, blindfolded me, and said let’s forget the bad stuff for now…”
“Then you said my quilt was wet… and made me share yours…”
As Xiang Yu spoke, she flipped Ren Sanliu back over. She gripped her waist and pulled her to sit astride her lap.
“I know. I know all of it…”
“It’s my fault. I made us wait too long…”
Ren Sanliu didn’t know why her tears flowed now—whether from Xiang Yu’s near-mad confession or from the frantic fingers wreaking havoc behind it.
Her body lost balance, forcing her to brace her hands on the headboard for support.
“Ren Sanliu… Let’s start over, okay? Two people who lost contact for so long—how many chances do we get to reunite?”
The sudden confession made them overlap like light and shadow. They had once veered off course, but now, cooled down, they returned to each other’s side. Xiang Yu sat up, pulled out a tissue, and gently wiped Ren Sanliu’s falling tears. She pulled her into her arms, stroked her hair with the other hand, and patted the back of her head soothingly, easing her from the sudden downpour. Then she continued—
“It’s okay if we can’t forget. If we can’t, then don’t. The world doesn’t mandate forgetting to be reborn. You chose to step out… but not delete it. That’s the same as my choice to face it.”
“We’re both restarting ourselves in our own ways.”
Xiang Yu turned her head and kissed Ren Sanliu’s temple—
“From now on, we have a home.”
“I have only one request for you: Don’t hate your name. Don’t hate your face.”
“Xiang Yu…”
“None of that was your fault… Really, it wasn’t…”
“And I love you.”
“I love you so much… so very much…”
