When I Meet the Moon - Chapter 28

Chapter 28

Everything came too suddenly.

So suddenly that her newly hatched emotions, her indulged solitude, her fleeting courage, and her self-perceived concealment all faded into paleness within a fraction of a millimeter.

From shyness, astonishment, helplessness, embarrassment, sadness, to resentment, Yun Li learned that a person could experience so many kinds of emotions in just a single minute.

That gaze which usually made her heart race felt, at this moment, like a deep-sea tide crashing against a hidden reef—intense and icy.

With reddened eyes, Yun Li took a step back: "I'll think about it and decide later whether to give up."

She feigned composure, but every movement betrayed her wretchedness.

Without him needing to say it, she knew he had figured it out all along.

He had figured it out. He didn't want to continue. He didn't even have the slightest intention of developing anything further.

He was simply taking the opportunity of being alone to tell her.

After packing up her camera, she caught sight of that crepe roll; the bubble wrap was covered in droplets of water, reflecting a silent mockery.

She bit her lower lip, lowered her head to place the crepe roll on the desk, and fought to control the tremor in her voice: "This is for you. I'm leaving first."

At that moment, she didn't even have the courage to meet his eyes.

Perhaps she should have been a bit bolder, choosing to fight for it rather than concede, choosing bravery instead of cowardice.

Forgive her—the courage she had for today had already been completely exhausted the moment she confessed.

Fu Shize remained silent the entire time, standing right where he was, looking down at the VR goggles in his hand until the heavy bang of the door echoed through the secluded, damp, and chilly night.

Tossing and turning all night without sleep, the pattering sound of the rain failed to provide any hypnotic effect. Fu Shize flipped back the quilt, got up, and picked up a cup to take a sip of water.

Drip, drop.

He lowered his head; a streak of deep red blood was trickling down his palm.

The glass cup, which he had used for over a decade, had a chipped corner, but he hadn't thrown it away. For more than a year now, unless he was drunk, he had consciously avoided the chipped spot, but today, lost in an inexplicable trance, he had forgotten about it.

Ever since he was a child, whenever something broke, the word "throw away" did not exist in Fu Shize's dictionary; instead, he chose to repair it.

In the eyes of others, it was an infuriating level of sentimentality.

Casually wrapping a piece of tissue around his palm, Fu Shize pulled a chair over to the balcony. Looking outward as he always did, the intersecting vertical and horizontal structures were the scenery he had grown accustomed to over the past year and a half.

Fu Shize pulled out a cigarette and lit it. A tiny orange dot of fire flickered in the darkness, and a hazy, grayish smoke drifted in the gentle breeze, enveloping him.

As if locking him inside a safe zone.

Fu Shize smoked in a daze. Only when he felt a chill did he realize that the cigarette pack in his hand was already completely empty.

He tilted his head, letting his thoughts drift back to what had happened that evening.

He opened his phone, downloaded the ACG app, and typed in Xianyun Dida-jiang. Soon, her two most recent viral updates popped up. One was the nine-grid photo collage that had climbed the trending lists a while ago. Fu Shize swiped through them one by one; every single photo showed Yun Li stealing glances at him.

His fingertip lingered over the comment section.

The top-liked comment was Yun Li's reply from the night the post went live.

Xianyun Dida-jiang: [Wives, stop spreading rumors!! Don't taint her innocence!!]

The second most liked comment was hers as well.

Xianyun Dida-jiang: [Autocorrect messed up, I meant HIM!!!]

Anyone who saw this would think she was a cute girl.

The other update was a robot repair video that she herself labeled under the handmade tech category. Fu Shize opened it again and watched it carefully from start to finish.

The girl earnestly explained the process of repairing the robot to the camera, looking completely out of place against the clumsy, shuffling little robot and a full screen of "hahahaha" scrolling bullet comments.

The corners of his lips lifted; he found it somewhat amusing, yet inexplicably bitter.

When the video skipped back to the 37-second mark, a blue hot-stamped envelope appeared in a corner of the frame.

That was the one Jiang Yuan had left behind.

Tracing it back, it must have been right when Yun Li finished the gaokao. For those few weeks, he and Jiang Yuan saw Yun Li ride a little bicycle over to West Science and Technology University every single day, parking it at the university's Nanxi Plaza.

On two occasions, she had even been carrying a little boy on the back.

Recognizing Yun Li wasn't difficult; over the span of a year or two, her appearance hadn't changed at all, looking exactly as she did on the red running track.

She most likely didn't know. On the day of the robot soccer match, the two of them had secretly gone to watch her game as well.

Back then, the young girl was intently hunched over the miniature soccer field, operating the controller with rapt concentration, completely unaware that the two of them were standing right behind her.

When she won, Jiang Yuan had attributed her victory to that training soccer ball he had let her bring along.

Nanxi Plaza was right next to the college.

During those few weeks in June, perhaps driven by curiosity, he and Jiang Yuan would go over to take a peek every day, finding it quite strange why this young girl, having just finished her high school entrance exams, would run all the way to West Science and Technology University every single day.

Surely she couldn't have been coming just to find a tree to sit under at West Science and Technology University.

The two of them had even placed several bets because of it.

At the time, Yun Li sat beneath an evergreen tree in front of the plaza, her hair tied in a ponytail, obediently sitting under the tree with two books in hand for the entire day. They felt as though they were looking at that same young girl who had spent the whole day training robots on the athletic field.

Until that day when Unique held a drone exhibition at Nanxi Plaza.

He and Jiang Yuan had originally been leaning against the railing of the second-floor open-air balcony, operating drones from upstairs, when they saw Yun Li suddenly jump up, run over to the Unique tent to line up for souvenirs, and look around anxiously as if searching for someone.

When her turn came to collect a souvenir, the student running the tent asked her to show her campus ID.

She wasn't a student at West Science and Technology University, so by the rules, she couldn't receive a souvenir. She probably tried to plead her case in front of the tent for a moment, but the student handing out the items refused, prompting her to turn around, walk two steps away, and then begin wiping away her tears as she returned to the tree.

Jiang Yuan asked him: "Looks like our little fan, want to go drop one off for her?"

He nudged Jiang Yuan: "You go."

"You go."

"You go."

"You go."

Later, Jiang Yuan lost a game of rock-paper-scissors, so he waved his hand at him and, taking advantage of the moment Yun Li wasn't looking, slipped a Unique souvenir into her bicycle basket.

When the two of them went out for dinner that evening, they found out she still hadn't left, her slender figure standing guard by her bicycle with the souvenir in her hand.

Jiang Yuan laughed: "She probably thinks it belongs to someone else and doesn't dare take it."

That was a pretty high probability.

At the time, both of them thought the young girl was very well-behaved, with features and expressions that were completely immature, and her stance while holding the souvenir was full of apprehension.

Jiang Yuan nudged him and said: "A-Ze, I placed the souvenir, now it's your turn to go."

"Alright." He laughed and gave Jiang Yuan a gentle shove in return, intending to go downstairs and talk to her, but then he saw her wrap that souvenir up in a paper tissue as if it were a treasured artifact, and carefully tuck it into the inner compartment of her backpack.

After that, neither of them saw her again.

It was easy to deduce that for over half a month, she had been waiting for the appearance of "Unique". It was just that she never got to see the person she wanted to see.

Fu Shize had naturally assumed she was looking for Jiang Yuan, seeing as he himself had always stayed seated in the spectator stands on the athletic field and hadn't crossed paths with Yun Li.

He had teased Jiang Yuan: "Saw you guys in your team uniforms on the field, she came looking for you."

Jiang Yuan: "Cut it out, you were the one who made me go give it to her."

Neither of them had taken the matter to heart.

A sudden spasm in his abdomen reminded Fu Shize that it had been a very long time since he last ate; he couldn't even remember the exact time. Returning to his room and remembering the matcha crepe roll sitting in the fridge, he took it out; the moisture on the packaging hadn't even completely dried yet.

He could tell the maker had put real thought into it, wrapping the outside of the box in multiple tight layers of plastic wrap for fear of liquid seeping in. The wrinkled satin ribbon also showed signs of her having tied and retied that blue butterfly knot over and over again.

He scooped up a bite with a spoon.

It tasted sweet upon entry, yet carried a lingering bitterness.

He remembered her reddened eyes from that night.

Eating did nothing to stop the cramping in his abdomen. Fu Shize randomly shook out a couple of pills and swallowed them.

He took a fresh pack of cigarettes from the drawer, fingered his lighter for a moment, but didn't light one.

He stared at the balcony littered with cigarette butts and liquor bottles, utter chaos. Lowering his gaze to look at his lean wrist, he saw that the bloodstains on his palm had already dried.

Forget it.

Inside her apartment, Yun Li unwrapped a package of frozen dumplings and tossed a few into a pot of boiling water. Honeycomb-like white foam billowed outward, and she stared at it blankly for a long while.

Slowly, she felt around for her phone on the side, opened her chat history with Fu Shize, and looked at the nickname she had altered in a moment of emotional impulse.

From that night until now, they hadn't exchanged a single word.

She wanted to ask him when he had found out.

She wanted to ask him if he had questioned her only to reject her because he didn't want any further contact with her.

Unaware that the two of them had already torn through this layer of paper, Fu Zhengchu had even set up a small group chat, asking her and Fu Shize if they wanted to go play badminton.

She originally wanted to wait for Fu Shize to reply first.

Yet the other person seemed to share the exact same thought.

An entire afternoon passed, and there were still no new messages in the group. Yun Li stared at Fu Zhengchu's two lonely messages and sighed: [I've been quite busy lately, don't have time to go.]

Less than fifteen minutes later, Fu Shize also replied: [Caught a cold. Not going.]

Seeing that message, Yun Li wanted to ask him if he had really caught a cold and whether she should bring him some medicine.

The bridge of her nose ached with a familiar sourness.

He would definitely refuse. He was such a well-bred person; from the moment he found out, his instinctive urge must have been to nip her feelings in the bud.

She had finally made it this far, trembling every step of the way, forging bravely ahead.

She didn't want to give up.

She didn't want to.

She couldn't possibly maintain the mindset of someone in love with Fu Shize while acting as his friend for the rest of her life.

Yun Li opened her WeChat friend list and started counting.

This relationship is alright.

This one is okay too.

This person should probably count as a friend.

She didn't seem to be all that lacking in friends.

She knew that as long as Fu Shize appeared again, no matter when or where, she would fall in love with him all over again.

She simply couldn't fathom any relationship with him other than being lovers.

Feeling stifled, Yun Li opened the ACG app and checked her fan comments.

Maybe she should just chat with her fans.

Without any prior warning, Yun Li started a livestream.

Perhaps because it was close to eleven o'clock at night, the viewer count surged rapidly, crossing ten thousand in no time.

Yun Li arranged her camera and greeted the viewers. She didn't look at the bullet comments, speaking entirely on her own accord: "Long time no see."

"Good evening everyone. Today, let's start by reading a few fan letters."

"No, no, we're not doing Mandarin practice today."

"Let's read a few letters praising me first." Yun Li skimmed the scrolling comments. "Huh? Why am I cherry-picking? ——I'm not picking and choosing; out of ten letters, at least nine of them are praising me."

"Alright, time for the host to toot her own horn."

After reading two of them, Yun Li started feeling a bit embarrassed and closed her email inbox. "That's reading done. What does everyone think?"

The comment section was filled with sighs of disbelief.

"Why haven't you updated in so long? ——The host is still a student and has to review for exams."

The comments scrolled past at blinding speed, with a vast majority asking about the candid photos from earlier in the day. Yun Li originally wanted to ignore them, but the questions kept piling up, with some even asking why Yun Li was deliberately giving them the cold shoulder.

"Who is the handsome guy in the cafe? ——Not very familiar, you'll have to ask him yourselves."

"Why were you staring so intently at the handsome guy? ——How is that staring intently..." She paused. "I was—looking openly."

"Is wife about to become someone else's wife? ——Only others are allowed to become the host's wife, remember that."

"Xianyu's eyes look a bit red today, is she in a bad mood? ——They aren't red, my mood is great."

The bullet comments abruptly shifted direction.

[Feels like they really are pretty red.]

[Did you get into a fight with the cafe guy?]

"..."

"When are the little brother and the handsome guy going to appear? ——Does handsome guy mean the one from the cafe?" Yun Li glossed over it unnaturally. "He probably won't be appearing anymore."

"As for the little brother, though—" Yun Li pulled out her phone and dialed Yun Ye's number directly.

Meanwhile, having gotten home not too long ago, Yun Ye saw the notification alert that Yun Li had started a livestream, so he opened the webpage and happened to catch this exact moment.

"..."

Yun Ye's voice rang out through the phone, asking with feigned ignorance: "What?" His tone carried the distinct, bright clarity unique to a youth.

"The family in the livestream room wants to hear your voice."

"..."

The comment section was overwhelmingly enthusiastic, the content suddenly turning entirely uniform as waves upon waves of viewers confessed their love to Yun Ye.

[I love little brother!!!!!]

[Keep the host, little brother belongs to me!]

[Little brother show your face please wuwuwuwu!]

Yun Li was momentarily at a loss for words: "So do I have more fans or does my little brother have more fans?"

"No wonder my account has mostly female fans?"

Another massive wave of comments refreshed, and Yun Li read them out word for word.

"Don't limit gender so strictly."

"I'm a guy, but I like little brother too."

"..."

"Make him start his own livestream room, I'm logging off."

With that, Yun Li severed the stream without a shred of hesitation.

Her call with Yun Ye, however, kept going.

Seeing that Yun Li had ended the broadcast, Yun Ye didn't close the webpage either; he left his computer idling off to the side, pushed off the floor with one foot, and spun his computer chair in a circle. With one leg casually crossed over the other, the young man leaned back against the chair: "Sis."

Yun Li: "What?"

"When are you coming home?"

"..."

Remembering that she had the option of going home, Yun Li paused for a long time: "Thursday, I guess."

With the thought of returning home in mind, coupled with the upcoming exam week and the adjustment to her winter internship schedule, Yun Li simply coordinated with Fang Yuning to rearrange her work shifts for the following week, squeezing out a full week's vacation. After letting He Jiameng know, she booked a flight back to Xifu for Thursday.

Having yet to recover from this emotional wound, Yun Li desperately wanted to return to a place filled with a sense of security.

Her undergraduate university wasn't far from home, and this was the first time she had been away for so long.

The feeling of homesickness suddenly welled up inside her.

Yun Li stared blankly at her suitcase for a moment and sniffled.

The next day, Yun Li was woken up by a phone call from Yun Ye. Dizzily answering it, she heard Yun Ye's rowdy voice shouting through the line: "Sis! If you don't get up now, you're going to be late!"

Yun Li jolted awake in absolute shock.

She scrambled out of bed in a panic, stumbling as she ran to wash up. In the span of five minutes, she frantically completed the entire routine from brushing her teeth to getting dressed.

Grabbing her phone and charger, Yun Li hauled her suitcase and bolted out the door.

Stepping out of the elevator, Yun Li looked up at the navy-blue sky and belatedly decided to check the time.

6:16 AM.

Fantastic.

Yun Li stood frozen in place and dialed Yun Ye's number. After two ringing tones, Yun Ye picked up.

"Are you out of your mind, Yun Ye?"

"You told me first thing in the morning that I was going to be late."

On the other end of the line, Yun Ye paused for a good long while before replying with utter bewilderment: "What?" Then he continued, "Sis, hurry up and get up and pack your things."

"Pack what—" Yun Li felt like she had just punched a pillow, sighing, "Whatever."

"I'll deal with you when I get back."

Yun Li trudged right back up to her apartment, exactly as she had left it.

She opened her chat interface with Fu Shize, staring blankly at the two words 'Wife'.

Yun Li deliberated over her phrasing, typing out a sentence over and over again only to delete it word by word.

[I'm back in Xifu, should I bring you some local specialties?]

She would definitely be rejected.

[I'm back in Xifu, I'll be back next week.]

He probably didn't want to know.

[I won't give up.]

Nightmare.

After pondering for a long time, having just been rejected, she was terrified that pestering him shamelessly would land her in the exact same fate as Lin Mainin, so Yun Li closed her phone. She would just wait for an opportunity to send something he was bound to reply to—

When Yun Li stepped off the plane, Yun Yongchang was already waiting outside the airport.

Tacitly avoiding their previous conflict, Yun Yongchang wore a stern expression as he took her luggage, his voice rigid: "Always trying to look pretty dressing so thinly. If you freeze your knees, you'll end up with rheumatism just like your old man later in life."

Normally Yun Li would have bickered with him a couple of times, but right now her heart ached with a deep longing for Yun Yongchang's voice.

Sitting in the family car, Yun Li finally felt a genuine sense of having returned home.

Leaning against the window, Yun Li watched the buildings passing by along the road.

Xianfu had fewer pedestrians than Nanwu, rarely bustling with a lively atmosphere, but the buildings were newer, standing row upon row, and the roads were smooth and spacious.

The silhouette of the main building of Xifu University of Science and Technology gradually came into view.

"Hey, Dad." Yun Li instinctively straightened her posture, "I remember the way home doesn't pass by West Science and Technology University, right?"

"They started road construction during the summer vacation." Driving with one hand, Yun Yongchang glanced toward the right side, "It was finished last month."

"Should have been fixed ages ago," Yun Yongchang complained with dissatisfaction. "Every time we passed through we had to make a huge detour, but now it's done."

"Just in time for your little brother to come home when he starts university.”