When I Meet the Moon - Chapter 68

Chapter 68

A few seconds later—

F: [Downstairs.]

It had been half an hour since Yun Li went upstairs. Without replying to his message, she slipped her feet into her slippers and hurried back down to the ground floor.

Fu Shize was still standing right where he had been. Hearing footsteps, he lifted his gaze, and their eyes met.

She slowly shuffled over to stand in front of him.

As they stood beneath the tree, she lowered her gaze and noticed that Fu Shize was holding two bottles of chocolate milk—the brand she drank most frequently.

With a completely natural expression, he peeled open the straw for her: "I stopped by the convenience store earlier."

Yun Li took it on reflex, only to realize that the milk was warm and the packaging was soaked, though she had no idea where he had managed to find hot water to soak it in.

"How did you heat this up?" Yun Li cradled the milk. Drinking things warm was always better, but every single time, she was far too lazy to heat it up herself.

Yet Fu Shize remembered it every single time.

"Found a restaurant across the street and ordered a bowl of soup." Fu Shize glanced toward the entrance of the residential complex. "Asked them for some boiling water."

It was that familiar sweet taste; she hadn't drank it in an entire year.

"About that..."

Yun Li leaned close to his side, clenched her palms, and mustered the courage to ask, "Were you waiting for me at the gymnasium today?"

Fu Shize: "Mhm."

He turned his head, deep in thought for a long moment. When he had dropped Yun Li off downstairs earlier, he had already intended to head back to the dormitory. But passing by the shop and seeing the chocolate milk displayed at the entrance—

Just like how everything in the world seemed connected to her, he found himself walking inside without even realizing it.

Fiddling with those two cartons of milk in his hands, he had spent the entire time wondering when he should bring it up. Prior to tonight, he had harbored all sorts of hesitation, but when the two of them sat quietly on the terrace keeping each other company for so long—

He simply felt that not a single moment of hesitation should remain, nor was he willing to waste even a single second longer.

Just as Yun Li opened her mouth to speak again, Fu Shize shifted his gaze back to her face. Pausing for several long seconds as if making up his mind, he said, "Lili."

Slowly, carefully, word by word, he asked, "Can we be together again?"

Before Yun Li could voice the words she had spent so long brewing, she hadn't expected Fu Shize to be so direct.

Dazedly staring at him for a good while, Yun Li was finally pulled back to reality by the chorus of cicadas droning overhead.

In the darkness, Yun Li could hear the sound of each other's breathing. Unable to control herself, she squeezed her palms together and asked him, "Can I ask you something?"

Before clearing the air, there was one thing she needed to figure out.

In her memory, every single detail pointed to the fact that Fu Shize truly loved her. During her lonely days wandering around Cambridge, she had sought proof of that in her memories countless times.

This was the only matter she had never been able to wrap her head around.

Yun Li brought up what happened at the time of their breakup: "When Yunye was sick, you didn't reply to my messages for two or three days."

"I didn't tell the truth last time." Fu Shize paused for a moment, his dark eyes shadowed. "I had just undergone surgery for a perforated stomach that day. I'd been running a high fever right before that, and when I woke up, I was already in the hospital."

"I didn't want you to worry, so I planned to wait until I was discharged before coming to Xifu."

She had never once suspected that was the reason. Yun Li had even wondered if Fu Shize had fallen so terribly ill out of grief because they had broken up.

Yun Li still vividly remembered being in the hospital under the glaring, blinding white lights. Ignoring the dozen or so phone calls he had made, completely emotionally shattered and driven past her breaking point, she had blurted out those words of separation.

She remembered thinking that because Fu Shize hadn't come to Xifu, it meant he didn't care about her all that much.

She had never once considered that he might have been going through absolute hell himself.

A tightness seized Yun Li's throat: "Then when I asked to break up, why didn't you tell me..."

"You gave this to me." From his wallet, Fu Shize pulled out that folded paper moon. He took it out and looked at it so often that the edges and corners were already starting to fray.

—The moment I see you, it's as if I've seen the moon.

Under the dim lighting, his face looked gaunt and desolate, his eye sockets bruised with exhausted gray shadows.

"But by the time you saw me, I was no longer the moon."

"At that time, I had no qualifications to ask you to stay."

And so he returned to graduate school, determined to transform back into the version of himself she had once loved.

It was the one thing he could do for her, and the one thing he was willing to do.

As far as Fu Shize was concerned, before those two years entered his life, he never knew his own existence could plunge into such an aimless, muddled mess.

Fu Shize didn't care about academic degrees or credentials for his own sake, but he had no right to demand that Yun Li chain herself to someone as decadent as he had become.

Yun Yongchang's objections hadn't been entirely unreasonable; his daughter was striving hard in her studies, and he hoped she would find an equal match—or at the very least, someone who lived life with earnest purpose.

Reaching into his pocket, Fu Shize pulled out the moon-shaped badge from the Unique esports team and handed it to her. In the darkness, Yun Li could feel the nervous anxiety radiating off him.

"I've changed back to how I used to be."

Dazedly staring at the badge, Yun Li felt a sharp sting behind her eyes.

She hadn't forgotten how white-hot the tension between the two of them had become after Yun Yongchang arrived in Nanwu. She hadn't forgotten how his very first instinct upon arriving at Qixiangdu was to pull her tightly into his embrace. And then the memories would plunge into a painful phase where the two of them stood stiffly staring at one another, the heavy atmosphere suffocatingly dense.

—"You want me to go back to school and change back to how I used to be?"

—"Yes."

—"I understand."

And so he agreed to the breakup, returning to school entirely on his own to fulfill the promise he had made.

This was a reason Yun Li had never once anticipated.

She hadn't thought that things would be fine simply if Fu Shize reverted to his old self. Nor had she ever imagined that the heavy insecurities and self-doubt she harbored within herself could exist just as powerfully inside Fu Shize.

"Did you think I asked to break up with you because of what my dad said? Is that why you agreed to the breakup?" Yun Li murmured, lowering her gaze and parting her lips.

"I never told you this before, but whenever I was with you, I always felt deeply insecure. That's why I was constantly terrified of losing you. If you didn't do something, or if you didn't say something, I immediately convinced myself that you didn't care about me that much."

For the longest time, those words had felt agonizingly difficult for Yun Li to speak aloud.

"Back then, when I couldn't get in touch with you at all, I genuinely thought you didn't want to be with me anymore because of my dad." Yun Li spoke in a soft whisper: "And right around then, when Yun Ye got sick, I desperately wanted you by my side."

"Yin Yunyi flew over at that time and sat in the hospital hallway waiting for Yunye's surgery to finish. Seeing that just made me completely break down."

"I had no idea you were sick. In that moment, I just thought... you didn't really love me."

"After we broke up, you didn't look for me, which made me think you probably wanted to break up all along." Her thoughts drifted back to those countless nights before going abroad, when she would stare endlessly at her phone, thinking that maybe—just maybe—Fu Shize would come looking for her.

"Later on when I went abroad for exchange, it wasn't actually like what I told you last time—things didn't go all that well for me over there. I'm bad at socializing, my spoken English wasn't good, and the very first place I rented, the landlord tried to scam me out of money."

"I called the police, but my English wasn't fluent, so I couldn't argue my case properly. In the end I didn't have to pay much, but the things the landlord said were vile. At the time, I had no idea who I could even talk to."

"Living all by myself over there is what made me remember all those little details of our time together, and made me realize that you actually loved me a lot."

"I originally wanted to reach out to you, but... I felt like I wasn't good enough."

Up until this point, Yun Li had managed to keep her tone steady.

After a year and a half of stubborn silence, she finally forced herself to utter those words right then and there—"I didn't want to break up."

"I was only saying angry things back then, but I never, ever truly wanted to part ways with you." Yun Li's throat tightened with a sob.

"I regretted it for so long."

"Yet I was also so terrified that with a personality like mine, even if I tracked you down and we got back together, my flaws would just tear us apart all over again."

Her voice dropped to a mere whisper on the final sentence: "This past year, I've worked hard to change. I've pushed myself to socialize, to blend in with others, to learn how to communicate—I've gotten better."

"I've already tried so hard. I don't want us to break up anymore."

Fu Shize closed his eyes, pulling her tightly into his embrace.

"Lili."

Fu Shize had assumed that because she was the one who initiated the breakup, the pain wouldn't cut all that deep for her. He had assumed she wouldn't grieve quite so much.

Yet she had spent this past year and more struggling entirely on her own in a foreign land. He had watched her live streams, but even when she wasn't happy, she had forced a smile just to chat with her fans.

He didn't dare imagine how hard it must have been for someone as naturally introverted as her to be pushed to the point of calling the police in a foreign country, only to be left swallowing insults from strangers afterward.

He didn't dare imagine how, even though it was never her fault, she had forced herself through all kinds of trials just to lighten her own sense of guilt.

If only he had asked one more question.

Yet back then, he hadn't even possessed the courage to ask a single extra question.

"I'm sorry. If back then I had just proactively told you about all those things... instead of driving myself crazy with wild imagination..." Yun Li hadn't shed a single tear over the past year and a half, forcing herself to be strong no matter what came her way.

Yet at this very moment, an endless wave of remorse swallowed her whole. Her eyes burned red as her voice trembled.

"—We wouldn't have broken up."

They wouldn't have spent a year and a half apart, each nursing their wounds in isolation.

If she hadn't been so impulsive and spoken against her own heart back then; if she had actually taken Xu Qingsong's words to heart; if she had asked around about Fu Shize's situation instead of stubbornly clinging to the belief that he didn't love her, the two of them wouldn't have been hurt this badly.

Fu Shize wouldn't have had to weather that entire month of freezing, solitary nights during his illness; he wouldn't have had to return to Xifu all by himself simply because she said she hoped he would change back to how he used to be.

She never imagined that her own headstrong actions would cause both of them to spend the past year and a half in misery.

"Lili." Fu Shize gently wiped away the tears at the corners of her eyes. "I don't blame you."

Through countless dark, trembling nights, he had never once held a grievance against her.

During the time they spent together, his feelings for Yun Li were simple and fervent, and Yun Li's affection for him had been equally sincere and pure.

That beauty was too profound for Fu Shize to ever harbor blame toward this relationship, or toward her within it.

Fu Shize pressed a light kiss to the corner of her lips.

Just like countless times in the past, Fu Shize leaned in close to her right ear, telling her every single word with solemn, unshakable certainty.

"Lili."

"We aren't ever separating again."

Yun Li heard the ceaseless chirping of the cicadas echoing through the night, alongside his words. She heard the promise woven into his voice, washing over her like a gentle wave carrying her safely to shore. And when she raised her head, looking into the familiar gaze right before her eyes, all she saw was the profound affection dwelling deep within his pupils.

That gloomy year and a half finally vanished into thin air.