When I Meet the Moon - Chapter 34

Chapter 34

Outside the cafe, Yun Li easily recognized Yin Yunyi sitting at an outdoor dining table. Yin Yunyi wore a light green floral dress, her almond-shaped eyes and red lips striking, with long hair cascading past her waist as she bowed her head to write something in a notebook.

Standing right beside her was a tall, slender man whose facial features leaned toward a Western look. His hair and eye colors were both quite light, and he was dressed in a black casual jacket. He had just pulled out a chair to sit down and was smiling as he said something to Yin Yunyi when he suddenly looked up and noticed Yun Li's gaze.

The man stood back up and took the initiative to walk over to Yun Li.

Noticing his movement, Yin Yunyi also stood up and followed along behind him.

The man smiled and asked, "Are you Yun Ye's older sister?"

Yun Li nodded.

"Hello, I'm Yunyi's older brother, my name is Yin Yucheng." Yin Yucheng pulled out a chair for Yun Li, while Yin Yunyi followed closely beside him and shyly called out, "Hello, Sister."

It had been a while since Yun Li had made friends with any strangers. She flashed a timid smile, gave a brief self-introduction, and then placed Yun Ye's gift onto the table.

"This is what Yun Ye asked me to bring over," Yun Li said.

"Sorry to trouble you to make a special trip," Yin Yucheng replied.

"It's nothing, it's right next to my company."

Yin Yunyi stared at the box for a good long while before breaking into a genuine, unpretentious smile. "Yun Ye said his classmates spent a really long time making this gift, and he was afraid it would get damaged, so he asked you to help bring it over, Sister. Thank you so much."

Yun Li suspected she had misheard: "Oh... your classmates made it together?"

Without reading too much into it, Yin Yunyi nodded.

"Is something wrong?" Yin Yucheng asked perceptively.

Concealing the awkwardness on her face, Yun Li shook her head.

She had truly overestimated Yun Ye; to think he would send a gift and not even dare admit he prepared it himself.

Yin Yucheng didn't pressure Yun Li to stay for dinner, but he insisted on driving her back.

It was only a matter of walking a few steps.

Not being one who excelled at refusing people, Yun Li nodded.

"Should I put it in the car for you, Brother?" Yin Yucheng picked up the gift box and patted the top of Yin Yunyi's head. "You wait here with my sister for a second."

With that, he offered Yun Li a gentle smile.

The car was parked in the mall's parking lot. Yin Yucheng drove it right over to where they were standing, and after Yun Li got in, mere minutes brought them right down to her apartment building.

Before getting out of the car, Yin Yucheng asked her, "I heard from Yunyi that you go to Nanjing University of Science and Technology?"

Yun Li nodded.

"I went there too, graduated the year before last."

Yun Ye had mentioned this previously, so Yun Li wasn't all that surprised.

Yin Yucheng stepped out of the car and walked around to the passenger side to open the door for Yun Li.

"Thanks for bringing the gift over, get some rest early," Yin Yucheng said warmly.

As Yun Li stood in place, the passenger-side window slowly rolled down. Yin Yucheng nodded at her, his gaze lingering on her for a good several seconds before he drove out of the residential complex.

The matter was finally resolved.

A heavy stone in her heart was lifted. Ever since yesterday, Yun Li had been anxious that this meeting might ruin Yun Ye's first stirring of young love, but thankfully everything had gone smoothly.

The evening breeze carried a faint scent of tobacco. Snapping to attention, Yun Li looked back to see sparse tree shadows where a thin, wispy glow of fire flickered intermittently in a sheltered spot, with a tall, slender figure leaning against the wall.

That figure shifted, and Yun Li heard the sound of shoes crunching against a fallen tree branch as a streetlamp illuminated his facial features.

Yun Li couldn't believe her own eyes: "Why are you at my apartment building?"

Without answering directly, Fu Shize calmly stated, "I called you."

Yun Li glanced at her phone; Fu Shize had indeed called her twice over half an hour ago, but she hadn't answered.

The unfamiliar number displayed on the screen was a proactive call from him, which Yun Li found rather unusual.

She curved her eyebrows into a smile: "I was busy with something just now, so I missed it. Have you been waiting here the whole time?"

Fu Shize didn't answer. Glancing downward, Yun Li saw that he had her cashmere scarf tied around his neck, obscuring the lower half of his jaw, and in his hand, he carried a hollow-patterned gift bag containing several miniature cakes.

Yun Li's heart stirred as she raised her eyes to look at Fu Shize: "That scarf..."

"Returning it to you."

Before she could even process it, Fu Shize yanked the scarf from his neck and tossed it at Yun Li. She caught it clumsily, and a wave of tobacco scent washed over her face.

Yun Li could sense his displeasure.

She had originally thought he might have had a change of heart, and that those small cakes were meant for her, but seeing his indifferent face, Yun Li's brief fantasy shattered.

He was eager to return it to her.

It seemed he wanted nothing to do with her.

She felt a bit nervous: "You can keep wearing it..."

"No need," Fu Shize said. "Thanks for your scarf."

With that, he turned and walked away.

Yun Li stood in place in a daze, her heart feeling heavy. When she pulled open her apartment door, there was a loud thud, as though something had been thrown into a metal trash can.

After returning to her apartment, it took Yun Li quite a while to calm herself down.

Anxiety spread through her heart, and trying to distract herself, she washed a sweet potato and tossed it into the oven. As the orange-yellow light flickered on, she stared blankly at the indentations on the sweet potato's reddish-purple skin.

He had sought her out proactively, yet it wasn't because he liked her.

He returned the scarf to her, and whether it was her imagination or not, his actions carried a trace of impatience.

Coupled with his cold attitude moments ago, Yun Li's mood plummeted to rock bottom.

She couldn't help but think that he had probably always considered her a nuisance.

Coming to find her just now was likely just his way of rejecting her all over again.

The oven wasn't shut tightly, and its beeping alarm pulled Yun Li back to reality.

Desperate to break free from these negative emotions, she turned on her computer and resumed editing the dynamic publicity video. Not paying attention earlier, the footage she recorded at EAW had captured the entire process of Fu Shize rejecting her, and she found herself rewatching it over and over.

The room was dead silent.

Yun Li closed out that specific clip, the depression in her heart making her decide against using any of the footage from that sequence.

Powing through until three in the morning, Yun Li finally finished editing the promotional short film for EAW. Over the next few days, she would only need to polish up the minute details and get He Jiameng's approval before finalizing it.

Having long passed her bedtime, Yun Li felt no trace of sleepiness. Glancing out the window, she saw a thin layer of frost caked onto the tree trunks due to the cold wave. She sat back down at her desk and dug out her old crafting materials.

Following an online tutorial, she spent the rest of the night piecing together a cardboard drone, painting it simply with watercolors, and casually cutting the video down so that it only featured a voiceover at the very beginning and end.

——"...I plan to give this handmade drone to someone very important."

With that, she uploaded this crafting-style video to Bilibili.

Her last meeting with Fu Shize was arguably the least smooth encounter they'd had in quite a while. Over the next few days, Yun Li consciously avoided reaching out to him.

Though the drone-making video had been published for a few days, its reception was lukewarm. Chen Lirong forwarded the video to her anyway, which didn't surprise Yun Li; she was now a somewhat well-known up-and-coming creator on Bilibili, and most people she knew were aware of it.

Ever since the two of them added each other as friends, Chen Lirong had practically vanished from the surface of the earth, never talking to Yun Li or posting anything to his Moments.

Yun Li: [?]

Chen Lirong: [Are you planning to give this thing to FSZ? [Smirk] [Smirk]]

Finding the way this person spoke rather slimy, Yun Li decided against replying. An hour or two later, another message came from Chen Lirong: [You can't give him this. FSZ had to take a leave of absence from school precisely because of this.]

Yun Li: [What do you mean?]

Chen Lirong: [Let's talk in person [Smirk] [Smirk]]

At the same time, Chen Lirong sent her a bunch of photos of Fu Shize, almost all of them stolen shots of his back, with another male present in every single one of them without exception.

Chen Lirong: [He really is gay, little sister don't get fooled [Smirk] [Smirk]. I can tell you in person what happened to him.]

Yun Li: [Please stop spreading rumors.]

Yun Li: [No thanks.]

Yun Li felt that the things Chen Lirong said made her skin crawl. After she fired back his refusal, the other person didn't reply again.

Several days went by without seeing Fu Shize. Once Yun Li stopped taking the initiative, their contact truly dropped down to absolute zero.

Yun Li felt a bit dejected.

Fu Zhengchu sent out another basketball invitation in the small group chat he had created previously. This time, before Yun Li could even reply, Fu Shize answered directly: [Not going.]

He didn't even offer a reason.

Fu Zhengchu: [???]

Fu Zhengchu: [Little Uncle, if you're going to be this unsociable, I'm kicking you out.]

An hour later, when Yun Li looked again, only she and Fu Zhengchu were left in the group.

Yun Li hadn't expected Fu Zhengchu to be so decisive.

Upon arriving at the company, Yun Li made multiple trips to the breakroom to fetch water, yet failed to spot the figure she had been longing for. After hesitating at her desk for a long while, Yun Li still ended up going to the breakroom to make a cup of coffee.

Fu Shize had told her before that she didn't need to knock.

Lacking that kind of daring, Yun Li knocked on the door anyway, but received no response. Pushing the door open, she found the room unlit and the air carrying a damp, musty odor—it was obvious nobody had been here for a few days.

Taking the coffee back to her desk, Yun Li took a sip; it tasted bitter, prompting her to hurriedly toss in several packets of sugar.

A sudden thought struck her: could he be avoiding her?

Over WeChat, He Jiameng invited her to view the finished promotional short. Yun Li copied the video onto a portable hard drive beforehand and played it through on He Jiameng's computer.

This short video of just over a minute consisted of seven scenes, all utilizing VR equipment to experiment with different behaviors. Yun Li had assigned significance to each scene, building them together into the overarching theme of the piece.

He Jiameng praised it repeatedly as she watched, but Yun Li remained somewhat distracted.

"This theme is just too good! I should try launching an offensive against the boss too, nothing is impossible in this world!" He Jiameng made a victory sign. "What's more, even Fu Shize's iron tree has blossomed."

Yun Li's hand froze on the play button as she raised her head to look at He Jiameng: "An iron tree blossomed?"

"Yesterday the boss showed me a bunch of different places, asking me what kind of locations girls generally like. I thought he had his eyes on someone special, my heart shattered into pieces right then and there," He Jiameng laughed. "Later on I badgered the boss for ages until he admitted that Fu Shize was the one asking him about dating spots. Up until then I always thought he was asexual. But hey, if even he's figured it out, how come the boss still hasn't..."

Yun Li didn't catch the second half of He Jiameng's words. Her thumb rubbed across her index finger, and suppressing her trembling, she asked carefully, "With how cold he is, what kind of girl would he even like?"

"Hey, I have no idea either. The boss just said it's a girl he's known for many years."

He Jiameng said plenty more, but Yun Li felt as though she had instantly gone deaf, losing even the hearing in her right ear.

She stood frozen in place.

No... could it be?

"Xianyun-laoshi, Xianyun-laoshi?"

He Jiameng's features swam back into focus within her unfocused vision, her voice seeming to arrive from another dimension: "Let's just publish this version of the video."

"Oh, okay." Walking back to her desk like a walking corpse, Yun Li felt as though all the strength in her body had been drained away, leaving only He Jiameng's earlier words echoing on a loop in her ears.

Her nose stung, and her vision gradually blurred.

Rationality told her she should verify this matter first; she couldn't just give up in defeat without knowing the truth.

Yun Li opened their chat window. Greeting her eyes were still those very same instances of [No]. She scrolled all the way up to the top, finding almost nothing besides her own one-sided invitations, while his responses had been cold enough to chill the screen itself.

Clinging to a shred of hope, she typed out letter by letter: [I heard you asked a girl out?]

Before she could tap send, her finger froze right there.

What kind of answer did she want?

Once she confirmed it, then what?

Could she at least leave herself a shred of dignity?

Yeah, so this was what a prolonged pursuit amounted to.

It had long since exhausted her courage.

Before today, she could still fantasize that one day Fu Shize's heart would flutter. Even up until just a moment ago, she still harbored hope, believing she had caught sight of a ray of dawn.

The instant those fantasies were crushed and she faced reality, she finally realized—

From beginning to end, it had all been her own wishful thinking.

[You're a really good person, thanks for taking care of me all this time.]

[Maybe I have no right to say this, but I hope you can treat yourself a bit better. You're the best person I've ever met, and you deserve the best.]

[I heard you met someone you like.]

[Thanks for showing up in my life.]

[I won't bother you anymore.]

With burning eyes, Yun Li typed these sentences out, only to delete them line by line.

What would be the point of saying all this in the end?

Everything had become absurd and laughable.

He probably didn't want to see it at all.

He didn't want her intruding on his life.

Yun Li slumped over her desk, her tears pelting the phone screen so heavily that she could no longer make out his profile picture, nor the nickname she had set for him. Stifling her sobs, she tapped the three dots in the top right corner.

Then, she tapped delete.

This was the bravest attempt she had ever made.

She was clearly someone who struggled to speak fluently with strangers, someone who didn't dare make phone calls to unfamiliar people, someone too afraid to chat with friends in a car simply because a driver was present. Someone like her had done so many impossible things for his sake.

Yet no matter how much she did, she was merely a passing stranger to him.

She had no way of continuing to be friends with him.

And even less did she wish to shameless disrupt someone else's relationship while knowing he already had his heart set on another.

Then farewell.

The person I loved the most.

After lingering in that state for a long while, Yun Li raised her head.

As she drafted the caption for this video recorded alongside Fu Shize, Yun Li realized—

This video themed around "trying things out" carried all her contests and unrealistic fantasies from this period of time. The moment it was published, her bravest attempt had also come to an end.