When I Meet the Moon - Chapter 59

Chapter 59

The scent of green-orange laundry detergent.

It was clearly a harbor that should have been the most comforting, the one providing the ultimate sense of security.

Yun Li felt a sting in her nose, and her vision gradually blurred.

She could not understand why Yun Yongchang had to be so overbearing and tyrannical, giving Fu Shize attitude right to his face without even showing the most basic respect.

Neither could she understand why Fu Shize had so bluntly brought up his leave of absence from school, when simply glossing over it would have sufficed.

By saying it like that, it was as though he completely disregarded Yun Yongchang's perspective.

As though he didn't care about his opposition at all.

Fu Shize's voice was hoarse: "Lili..."

"My dad has a rather bad temper and is quite conservative; he's always wanted me to stay in Xifu." Yun Li didn't intend to make excuses for Yun Yongchang, and she sniffled. "My dad shouldn't have acted like that. He doesn't understand you, and it was terribly rude of him."

She hesitated and said, "You actually didn't have to mention taking a leave of absence..." Unwilling to let him feel like she was blaming him, Yun Li forced a light tone. "Because a lot of people don't understand you, but I think you're amazing."

Fu Shize looked at her and nodded.

"I watched a video of you when I was in my freshman year of high school; it was when you won an award at a competition. After the college entrance examination, I even made a special trip to Xike University to find you." Bringing up her own embarrassing past made Yun Li feel rather shy. "But I didn't get to see you."

He was clearly in the prime of his youth.

He had carried her through the most grueling times of high school, and he had once been the future she dreamed of.

"Hold on a second." Feeling much better, Yun Li fetched her laptop and played the video she had bookmarked for so long.

After they reunited, she had rewatched this clip over and over again.

The video had been filmed many years ago, so the resolution wasn't high, but picking out his past teammates wasn't difficult.

Fu Shize watched these images, feeling as though he had been instantly hollowed out.

He was transported back to that lecture podium; the crowd below was a surging sea of humanity, the noise deafening, the lights blinding, and in the blink of an eye, those scenes shattered into fragments.

He saw the person who had wrapped her arms around him from behind, and he abruptly averted his eyes.

"Stop watching."

Yun Li paused and closed the video.

She figured he might be in a bad mood because of Yun Yongchang's opposition.

At a loss, she said, "I idolized you for such a long time. Back then, I hung your picture on my wall and stared at it every day while doing my homework..."

She stubbornly wanted to tell him that they had shared a connection from long ago.

She had looked up to him seven years ago, and she had fallen in love with him seven years later.

She didn't want the two of them, having finally gotten together, to break apart simply because of Yun Yongchang's disapproval.

Fu Shize lowered his chin, showing no sign of being touched, and listened to her recount these things with a distracted air.

He acted as though he completely didn't care.

He wouldn't be moved just because she had idolized him seven years ago.

It was the exact demeanor someone who didn't love her would have.

Yun Li's enthusiasm fizzled out, and after a long silence, she said, "Let's go back to Jiangnan Garden."

The two of them remained silent all the way back.

Long-term suppression bred anger. Upon returning to Jiangnan Garden, with a very deliberate sense of purpose, Yun Li walked straight into his room, picked up that photo album, and began flipping through it again.

She didn't take in a single image all the way to the final page.

He was so smart; he always maintained control over everything, and he clearly knew what she wanted to understand. Yun Li weakly tightened her grip into a fist and asked softly, "Don't you plan to say anything to me?"

Fu Shize tilted his head and asked her, "Say what?"

"..."

Fu Shize's tone was entirely devoid of emotion: "You want me to go back to school and become the person I used to be?"

Admittedly, Yun Li did want him to return to school. She didn't want him sinking into boundless darkness, his once brilliant radiance growing utterly dim and obscure. But that clearly wasn't what she wanted to ask about right now.

Yun Li's voice stiffened: "Yes."

Fu Shize crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall as he silently watched her. For a long while, he neither confirmed nor denied it, simply saying flatly, "I know."

His tone and gaze were identical to when they first met, brimming with alienation.

Yun Li waited for him to continue, waiting for him to tell her what had happened.

Yet he remained leaning against the wall, making no move to come closer and no intention of speaking further.

The time bomb buried deep within finally detonated.

Yun Li's sense of helplessness grew stronger and stronger, and the chasm between them seemed destined to remain unbridled forever.

Why was she always kept shut out by him? No matter how many times she tried, she couldn't walk into his inner world, as though she were utterly dispensable.

He didn't need her to participate and share the burden.

She couldn't feel that he attached any importance to their relationship.

Yun Li slammed the photo album shut with force, violently shoving it back to its original spot.

She had never known she could be so rough in front of Fu Shize. Without a single trace of hesitation, she strode away with reddened eyes.

Fu Shize caught her wrist.

Yun Li was in the heat of her anger and refused to speak, directly prying his fingers apart.

Returning to her room, it took Yun Li a long time to calm down. She sat miserably on the edge of the bed, staring at her bedroom door.

...

The sound of running water ceased. Inside the steamy bathroom, Fu Shize placed a towel over his head, water droplets sliding down as he very slowly wiped his hair dry.

Yun Li was already asleep.

He took a taxi to a nearby bar, where Xu Qingsong had already been waiting for quite a while. Catching sight of him, Xu Qingsong let out a scoff: "How come you didn't bring Yun Li along?"

Ever since Fu Shize started dating, Xu Qingsong had lost count of how many times his invitations to hang out had ended in failure.

Fu Shize stayed silent, stripping off his black trench coat and tossing it aside to reveal only a white shirt, its sleeves rolled halfway up.

Xu Qingsong raised his eyes: "Did you two fight?"

Seeing that he didn't reply, Xu Qingsong tried to mentally reconstruct a scene of two blocks of wood arguing, and couldn't help remarking, "Truly hard to imagine."

"..."

Fu Shize lowered his gaze to stare at the whiskey in his glass, downing several drinks in a row without uttering a word.

It wasn't until he joined EAW that Xu Qingsong had begun interacting with him more frequently. He knew about the leave of absence, having heard others mention more than once how much his personality had changed.

In his impression, Fu Shize had never cared what others thought of him.

It seemed living his life however he pleased was entirely his own affair.

The man beside him stared down at his empty glass, his voice laced with bitterness: "The me from back then was probably better."

"The person she likes is also the past me."

Based on those two sentences alone, Xu Qingsong could already guess the gist of it.

Xu Qingsong wasn't close with Yun Li, but he felt that this kind of reaction was only human nature.

Anyone who had ever witnessed his prime would only find his current shadow jarring and mismatched.

Xu Qingsong fell silent for a moment: "Are you feeling disappointed right now?"

"..."

"I wouldn't call it disappointment, I just feel like I'm letting her down," Fu Shize said with self-deprecating mockery, swirling his glass. "I'm not the person she loves."

It wasn't as if Fu Shize hadn't considered this possibility.

After all, looking at who he was right now, what was there left to like?

...

When Yun Li woke up, it was only six or seven in the morning. She rolled out of bed and slipped her feet into her slippers.

They were the couple's slippers Fu Shize had bought.

After struggling with her thoughts for a moment, she walked outside to wash up.

Previously, her greatest anticipation upon waking every morning was knowing she would get to see Fu Shize.

Catching sight of his figure in the living room.

He would be standing by the kitchen doorway, holding a breakfast plate and asking her, "You're awake?"

As she washed up in the bathroom, she noticed two messages from Fu Shize sent past four in the morning.

[Breakfast is keeping warm in the microwave. Reheat it for a minute before eating.]

[Grandma's condition has worsened. I've gone back to stay by her bedside.]

Could it really be such a coincidence?

From Yun Li's perspective, the two of them had quarreled just last night, leaving their relationship hanging by a thread.

She couldn't tell whether this was an excuse Fu Shize was using to avoid her, nor did she have any way to investigate further.

Perhaps he hadn't liked her all that much to begin with, and after witnessing Yun Yongchang's behavior yesterday, he likely didn't have any strong desire to keep walking down this path with her either.

The wound that had just barely knitted together tore open once more.

Feeling deeply dejected, she set the microwave for one minute. The sharp ding echoed through the empty apartment.

Her heart felt hollow. Yun Li sat at the dining table, staring blankly at the breakfast.

Eggs, toast, and a glass of milk.

Accustomed to there being two people in this house, as she chewed on the toast, a boundless wave of loneliness washed over her.

Without notifying Fu Shize, Yun Li hailed a taxi herself and returned to Qixiangdu.

It wasn't until the afternoon that she remembered to reply to Fu Shize: [Okay. Take care of yourself.]

She defensively chose to avoid thinking about the issues between them.

It was as though burying her head in the sand meant the situation wouldn't get any worse.

The drone footage and audio recordings were still saved on her laptop. Yun Li spent a few days editing them before uploading the final product to E-site.

Fu Shize would still send her WeChat messages, mostly detailing the events of his day.

He sent a line; she replied with a line.

Sometimes, when her emotions flared up in the dead of night, Yun Li desperately wanted to throw caution to the wind and pour out her inner struggles to Fu Shize, along with her doubts about this relationship. But more often than not, after typing out a massive paragraph, she would end up deleting every single word.

She didn't want to go through it again—having to repeatedly confirm that he didn't actually like or care about her all that much.

Y

When Fu Shize called her, the two of them would fall into long stretches of silence.

Both of them wanted to say something, yet neither spoke.

Romance wasn't solely filled with sweetness.

A relationship came with plenty of friction, heartbreak, suspicion, and apprehension.

Nor could everyone seamlessly master the art of loving someone simply by entering a relationship.

...

Only the occasional beep of medical instruments broke the silence of the room.

Fu Shize gazed down at the elderly woman on the bed. Her temples were frosted white, the wrinkles on her face bore the stark traces of time, and her spotted, frail hand gripped his with zero strength.

He sat motionless in his chair, right until the monitor flatlined into a single straight line.

Fu Shize gently pulled the blanket up over the old woman.

"I don't want to attend the funeral."

Leaving behind those words, he walked straight out the door. The outdoor temperature sat at three degrees Celsius, yet Fu Shize had forgotten to throw on a coat. The people passing by him moved like walking corpses, and he was no different.

His grandmother's passing was something that had long been anticipated, her life merely prolonged artificially through machines.

Yet, of the people who had watched him grow up from childhood, not a single one remained.

Fu Shize had possessed no impression of his parents ever since birth. By the time he was old enough to retain memories, he knew his parents taught at Xike University, holing up in campus laboratories for practically every waking hour outside of sleep.

Unable to offer any companionship, they had left him in the care of his maternal grandparents since he was little.

Jiang Yuan and Chen Jinping had been born on the very same day—a twist of fate that led Chen Jinping to believe the two families shared a profound bond.

His earliest memory dated back to when he was three years old, and Jiang Yuan was seven. Fearing that the toddler couldn't walk steadily, Jiang Yuan had taken him by the hand to buy pomegranates from a roadside stall.

He had bought two and handed one of them to him.

Fu Shize had never been an obedient child; he carried a rebellious, abrasive streak, and having been dragged through too many cram schools, he would drag Jiang Yuan along to roam around and stir up trouble whenever he had free time.

Whenever their grandparents discovered their exploits, the older Jiang Yuan would take the blame entirely upon himself.

Jiang Yuan possessed a gentle disposition, using sweet words to coax their grandparents, often smilingly telling Fu Shize that he should learn a thing or two from him.

He and Jiang Yuan had attended the same elementary and middle schools. Four years younger than Jiang Yuan, he had skipped grades into the middle school division, making him much younger than his peers—and lagging behind them in height as well.

The two of them had always moved together as a duo. On a day Jiang Yuan had family matters to attend to, Fu Shize walked home alone, only to be taunted by older students whose families compared them unfavorably to a ten-year-old grade skipper like him.

Fu Shize had never been afraid of trouble since he was little. Ignoring the fact that he was facing four opponents, he grabbed his schoolbag and marched straight forward.

The group of boys beat him up, emptied everything out of his bag, and tossed his belongings into the drainage ditch nearby.

Actually, he hadn't cared all that much.

Once Jiang Yuan came back, a two-versus-four fight would surely be safer odds than one-versus-four anyway.

That was the only time Fu Shize had ever been bullied by others, and he hadn't immediately told Jiang Yuan.

When someone else texted Jiang Yuan about the incident, Jiang Yuan had bolted straight back to school from home and shoved those boys into the ditch.

That was also one of the rare instances Jiang Yuan had lost his temper, coldly rebuking him: "Aze, you're getting older now, are you going to stop telling me when things happen?"

Ever since then, Fu Shize had never kept a single secret from him.

When his parents wanted to transfer him to the Xifu Experimental Middle School in high school, he refused.

The sole reason for staying in Nanwu was his desire to attend the same high school as Jiang Yuan.

Later on, the two of them went to the same university and majored in the same field.

He had grown up entirely under Jiang Yuan's protection.

Jiang Yuan had taught him how to get along with others, how to love, and what it felt like to be loved.

Over time, he and Jiang Yuan grew increasingly alike; the other boy was his older brother, his playmate, and his best friend.

Before the college entrance exam, his grandfather passed away.

Two years ago, Jiang Yuan had said goodbye to him.

In the two years since Jiang Yuan left, that span of time felt as though it had never existed.

Fu Shize wished it truly hadn't existed.

Today, his grandmother had left as well.

Whenever the people he loved departed, it always rained.

Nanwu—why did it always have to rain so much?

He numbly started the car. Amidst the sea of traffic and rushing crowds, the surrounding details dissolved into a heavy blur as the rain lashed violently against the windshield.

He could not, and did not want to, lose anything else.

He wanted to be by her side.

He didn't want to offer empty, groundless promises.

He only wanted Yun Li to give him a little time, and he would transform back into the Fu Shize of the past.

Parking the car, Fu Shize panted for breath, drenched to the skin as he walked up to the entrance of Qixiangdu. The moment he raised his hand, for a fleeting second, a memory flashed through his mind.

Ah, right. She didn't like him looking like this.

He shouldn't show up before her in such a disheveled state.

After leaving Qixiangdu, Fu Shize drove to the Nanwu Municipal Cemetery. Heavy clouds blanketed the sky, making three o'clock in the afternoon look like the dead of night.

On the pitch-black pathway, Fu Shize was the only soul in sight.

Following the familiar route, he walked to his usual spot. The face in the photograph smiled just as it always had.

"Grandma's gone."

Jiang Yuan offered no reply.

"I still have Lili."

He recalled the day he went to Xifu—after a year and a half, he had returned to the experimental building of the School of Control, heading straight to Jiang Yuan's office only to find that his workstation had already been reassigned.

Someone else's computer, pen holder, notebook, and jacket were neatly arranged across the desk.

Yet there had been countless times in the past when he walked in and saw Jiang Yuan's jacket hanging right there.

Nobody remembered him anymore.

The void inside his chest widened.

He walked downstairs in a daze, unable to see the path ahead clearly, feeling only an endless stretch of darkness until a ray of light materialized at the very end.

Her face was frozen red, her eyes shining with light as she handed the card holder to him.

The void in his heart was patched over.

Fu Shize repeated it once more: "I still have Lili."

With that, he let out another self-deprecating chuckle: "Lili saw me seven years ago."

He lowered his gaze, his back pressed against the gravestone as he curled into himself: "What she wants, what she loves, is that Fu Shize."

"I don't dare tell her."

"That Fu Shize can't come back."

"I don't dare tell her."

He muttered to himself as rainwater leaked into his eyes. In the unawakening depths of the night, wrapped in the shroud of darkness, he lost all track of time.