Chapter 34

I didn’t know Yan Yang had made friends, and I didn’t know what kind of people these friends were either.

He used to tell me everything, telling me he was very lonely there and didn’t like talking to others. Wherever he went, he went alone. He said he would only wait for me.

But now, after a month of no contact, he was practising the piano with his friend.

I replied: It’s nothing.

Then I flung my phone at the wall.

When I was younger, I could perfectly control my emotions, but the older I grew, the less I could suppress my rage and anxiety.

The phone hit the wall with a smack and fell to the ground.

I didn’t know where to direct my overwhelming rage, so I once again pointed the spear at my unshielded self.

That day, I cleaned the place as though I had gone mad. For the things I couldn’t use anymore, I wrecked them first before throwing them away.

I snapped my pens in half with my bare hands. I even thought one of the legs of a chair was crooked and tried to bend it back.

But in my heart, I was well aware; the trash wasn’t what was being thrown away, and the crooked one was not the steel chair leg either. It was myself.

The sky had darkened. My housemates called for me to have dinner with them. I tossed out some shabby excuse and declined their invite through the door. I couldn’t walk out, because my hands were covered in wounds.

I even used the broken plastic pens to slice open the skin on my arms. Only after calming down did I realise I was self-harming.

At that moment, I realised that perhaps, other than Yan Yang, what I needed to see most was also a doctor. Something was definitely wrong with me, but I was choosing to run away, to remain silent, to wait.

I had broken my phone from throwing it. The next day, after class, I had it repaired at a small shop.

The day before, after I had replied to Yan Yang with those two short words, he didn’t send me any other message. I suddenly felt like even though my phone had been repaired, it was all meaningless.

On the way home, it began to rain again. At the tail-end of September, the temperature in London was already starting to drop.

I didn’t have an umbrella with me. Carrying my backpack, I walked home in the rain, and even found it rather satisfying.

When I got back to the apartment, I had a lot of assignments to complete, but at my desk, I only wanted to sit and stare at my phone and space out.

I was very aware that I had to be rid of this spell as soon as possible, or my effort all these years would go to waste. And not just that; even my trickery of Yan Yang would become all the more laughable.

But I was also very aware that as long as my relationship with Yan Yang did not recover, I would never be able to go back to normal. I stared at the English words before me. Each one of them seemed to be laughing, laughing at me, their laughter terribly ear-piercing.

There was nothing else I could do. I could only call Yan Yang again.

This time, he didn’t wait for the tens of seconds it took for the call to automatically hang up. Instead, he declined the call after a few rings.

At that instant, my spirits plummeted, but the next moment, I saw the words ‘They are typing…’ at the top of the chat screen, bringing me back to life.

He sent me a message: Ge, I can’t talk on the phone right now.

This was the first time I had cried since arriving in London. It was so satisfying.

This word ‘Ge’ already felt like a lifetime ago.

What in the world was I doing?

All those years in the past; what had I been doing?

And now, what did I want to do?

Step by step, the two of us had walked to this point. Wasn’t it all because of me?

What right did I have to cry?

I scolded myself internally. As I cried, I hid under the table, curled up, my knees hugged to my chest with the phone in my hand. It was just like how I used to hide inside the closet as a child, when I was frightened to death by my mother’s bouts of insanity.

In that position, I cried for more than an hour. Yan Yang sent me a total of three messages.

Other than the first one where he said he couldn’t call right now, he asked me what the matter was.

Nothing was the matter.

I just fucking missed him.

No matter how much I didn’t want to admit it, I couldn’t refuse to bow my head anymore.

I loved him, I missed him, I had wronged him.

This time, I had truly come to terms with it.

When I typed out my reply, my hands were trembling, so much so that it took me ages to get the words right.

I sent him: It’s all my fault. I miss you so much I’m going to die.

Yan Yang’s call quickly connected. His voice was shaking too.

“Ge,” Yan Yang said, “You miss me?”

Once he said that, he started to cry. I was all too familiar with how he sounded when he cried; even if he denied it, it was useless.

But this was probably the first time I had cried in front of him. No, not quite. I wasn’t so lucky to be standing in front of him.

The two of us held our phones. I did my best to suppress my emotions, but a sob still escaped me. I said, “I’m the biggest fucking idiot in the world. How could I have left you alone in America?”

Yan Yang was crying so hard he couldn’t speak. I heard someone ask him what was wrong. He stuttered out, “My boyfriend, he said he misses me.”