Chapter 48: Confession

“So…” Chen Yi’s voice was hoarse, “the person you mentioned before—the one you had a crush on—is that me?”

Xu Yan lowered her gaze slightly and let out a soft hum of affirmation.

Then she added, “Maybe it wasn’t exactly a crush.”

“Chen Yi, I can’t even tell anymore.”

“Do you know that feeling? When you pour all your attention, every last bit of it, onto one person, one thing. By the time you snap out of it, everything’s beyond saving. That’s when you realize you’ve fallen deep without even noticing.”

A person’s time reveals where their heart truly lies.

For the past three years, Xu Yan had devoted most of her non-work hours to following Chen Yi’s whereabouts—through the internet, and from real-life distances she never dared to cross.

“But why?” Chen Yi couldn’t comprehend it. Bewilderment filled her eyes. “I’ve never even met you.”

Xu Yan had known she would say that.

A mocking curve tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“We have met.” The four words came out softly, slowly, like a feather drifting to the ground. “Chen Yi, we have met.”

“Pas-de-Calais 913.”

“Calais Strait. Do you remember?”

Chen Yi leaned back against the desk, half-sitting on its edge. These revelations were too astonishing; she was afraid her legs might give out.

“I remember the Calais Strait, but—”

Had she known Xu Yan back then?

“You booked a cake for a stranger.”

The moment those words left Xu Yan’s mouth, it all came flooding back to Chen Yi.

“It was you?” She stared at Xu Yan in disbelief. “Eh??”

It wasn’t her fault for forgetting everything.

The Xu Yan she’d encountered back then had been a complete mess, nothing like the poised and glamorous editor she was now. Their first meeting had been at a hotel near the Calais Strait.

Chen Yi had been on vacation at the time. Su Dai had come to France to visit her, and the two had planned a trip together.

Xu Yan had been at the front desk, struggling to communicate with the staff—one speaking English, the other French. The phone translator wasn’t helping much, and the exchange looked painfully awkward. Assuming Xu Yan was a fellow compatriot, Chen Yi had stepped in to help translate.

Xu Yan had wanted to know if she could cancel her room.

She’d booked it for the next three days but now didn’t want to stay even one.

The front desk apologized, explaining that cancellations required twenty-four hours’ notice.

“All right, thank you.” Xu Yan gave up, thanked the staff, then thanked Chen Yi as well. Head bowed, looking utterly dejected, she left without checking in. She dragged her suitcase toward the exit, and Chen Yi noticed a large coffee stain blooming on her clothes.

She had no idea what had happened to her.

After Xu Yan left, Chen Yi and Su Dai checked in. It was Su Dai who pointed out that Xu Yan had dropped her passport.

They handed it over to the front desk for safekeeping. Chen Yi even suggested they call the woman to come back for it.

The front desk attendant, swamped, asked Chen Yi to handle the call in English instead.

Chen Yi agreed. Using the desk phone, she started with a “hey,” then tentatively switched to Chinese. Once she got a response, she explained the situation in their native tongue.

The woman said she understood and thanked her.

She hung up without mentioning when she’d come by.

“That’s one strange person,” Chen Yi had remarked to Su Dai at the time.

After settling in, they changed into swimsuits and headed out for cliff jumping near the strait when Chen Yi spotted the odd woman again.

She was sitting alone on the cliff’s edge by the Calais Strait, suitcase in hand, staring blankly into the distance.

Su Dai recognized her too.

“Isn’t that the one from earlier?”

“Damn, what’s she doing?” Su Dai wondered aloud. “She wouldn’t jump, would she?”

That spot was remote—Chen Yi had learned about it from local French friends as a prime cliff-jumping location. Few people came by, and Asian faces were even rarer. Just the three of them.

Su Dai’s guess stemmed entirely from Xu Yan’s demeanor. She wasn’t dressed for swimming, and her state was off. Sitting there, the wind tousling her hair, she seemed soulless—a hollow shell, unmoving.

“What do we do?” Su Dai asked.

Chen Yi wasn’t sure.

It was her first time dealing with something like this.

After some thought, she called the local suicide prevention hotline. Rather than approaching with Su Dai, she positioned herself on another part of the cliff, urging Su Dai to start jumping without disturbing the woman.

But Su Dai’s mind was still on her.

“Chen Yi, we’re really just going to leave her?”

“We don’t know the situation. Charging in might make it worse. We’re close enough that if she really tries something, we can jump in and save her.”

Su Dai supposed that made sense.

She rubbed her face, let out a whoop, spent ages psyching herself up on the cliff edge, and finally leaped into the water.

Splash—

After the massive splash, Su Dai surfaced, yelling up to the cliff ten meters above: “Chen Yi! It’s freezing! Ahh! But so fun! Hurry down!”

Chen Yi laughed and said okay, stripping off her hoodie. She glanced back and saw the woman still frozen in the same position.

“Chen Yi! Come on!”

She plunged in, water erupting alongside her radiant smile. After splashing around with Su Dai, she looked up again—the woman was gone. Chen Yi swam toward that stretch of sea. No one there.

She breathed a sigh of relief.

“Probably left,” Su Dai said. “Phew, good—”

Later, the intervention team arrived to an empty scene. Feeling bad, Chen Yi covered their cab fare.

Back at the hotel, she checked on the guest.

Still no check-in, passport unclaimed.

After a moment’s thought, Chen Yi ordered a cake from the front desk.

“If she comes for her passport, give her this.”

“Oh, and I’ll leave a note.”

She couldn’t recall exactly what she’d written anymore.

She’d done it purely out of kindness, concern for a fellow traveler.

The next day, she and Su Dai moved on to other spots.

She never saw that stranger again. The memory faded into the back of her mind. The woman’s face blurred, leaving only impressions of despair, loneliness, vulnerability—and that coffee-stained, bedraggled outfit.

Only now, with Xu Yan telling her, did it all come back.

She ventured a guess: “So that was the day you mentioned in the game—the one where you went to find your ex-girlfriend and found her with someone else?”

“Something like that,” Xu Yan replied.

Chen Yi sensed Xu Yan’s reluctance to elaborate and didn’t press.

“So you fell in love with me at first sight?”

Xu Yan laughed. “Not quite.”

“But later, I picked up my passport and decided to stay at that hotel for three days to recover. I kept wanting to thank you properly, so I tried tracking you down via blogs geotagged around the Calais Strait those days. But I had no idea how to reach out.”

“Your friend loves posting about her life. Thanks to her, I found your account.”

“I always wanted to thank you in person, so every business trip to France, I’d check your updates instinctively. Hoping for a casual run-in where I could finally say it. Otherwise… you know how creepy all that sounds.”

“If I’d messaged you online out of the blue, you’d have thought I was some lunatic.”

Chen Yi couldn’t help but chuckle at that.

“Fair point,” she said. “It does sound pretty terrifying.”

“And… there must’ve been tons of posts geotagged at the Calais Strait. You still found me?”

Xu Yan gave a self-deprecating smile. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“But even after seeing me later, you never said thanks.” Chen Yi picked up a photo from the desk—one she’d grabbed earlier—and flicked her wrist, making it rustle in the air. “You got close enough to take shots like this. Must’ve seen me plenty of times.”

“Mm.”

Xu Yan didn’t deny it.

“Many times.”

But why hadn’t she ever approached?

Xu Yan bowed her head, reflecting. Reasons flashed through her mind. Sometimes Chen Yi had friends with her; other times, she looked unapproachable. Excuses aplenty—she could fill a basket with them if needed. Then it hit her: they were all just that, excuses. Not real reasons.

She simply hadn’t dared.

Hadn’t wanted to.

The safe distance felt better than the uncertainty of contact.

She feared Chen Yi remembering her—and equally feared she wouldn’t.

Over time, the photos piled up, online stalking never ceased. Xu Yan dimly knew it was wrong but couldn’t stop. Until one day, her sister Xu Qing brought Xu Yixiao over. The photo album got flipped open accidentally, and Xu Qing saw.

“Xu Yan.” Xu Qing pulled her aside, out of Xu Yixiao’s earshot. “Do you realize what you’re doing?”

“This is straight-up stalking!”

“Have you lost your mind?”

Xu Qing dragged her to a therapist.

That period wasn’t outright painful for Xu Yan, but recalling it meant reliving, under the counselor’s guidance, the hurts she’d endured—dissecting their roots, confronting the darkness within.

Controlling tendencies.

Avoidant tendencies.

Even as Xu Yan fabricated her answers on the questionnaire again and again, she knew exactly how dangerous her scores were on certain metrics.

She considered herself clever, but intimate relationships were the one puzzle she’d never been able to solve in her lifetime—with her parents, with her lovers, with herself.

And so, when Chen Yi stepped out of her camera frame and into her real world, tossing out those playful words like jokes, Xu Yan’s first instinct had been to run.

She pushed Chen Yi away with harsh words, never once baring her inner self. She hadn’t anticipated that the game would throw them together like this. Helpless, she’d watched Chen Yi fall for her, and countless times she’d ached to ask, Do you even know what kind of person I am?

Until today. Today, Xu Yan could finally confess—in a way she never could have imagined. She’d never dreamed there would come a day when she’d share her dark, deranged, twisted past with anyone. Not even Chen Yi.

She placed the dagger right into Chen Yi’s hands herself.

“Chen Yi, you get it now, don’t you? I’m not the person you thought I was,” Xu Yan said. “I’m not as good as you imagined.”

“I’m not worth it.”