#105: On Both Sides of the Ice Horizon, She Floats Among the Clouds While I Sink Into the Deep Sea

Why? She hadn’t done anything wrong. Just because a lovesick woman leapt off a cliff toward death, did that mean she lost everything? She had worked so hard to love someone, only for others to ascend to the sacred clouds through death while she was nailed to the cross of sin?

When Ou Jinghe walked in, her makeup was still heavy. Zheng Zeyan sat slumped on the sofa, staring blankly at the floor, not even acknowledging her presence. Ou Jinghe had circled around outside and even gone to the nearest hospital to search for answers. When she approached Zheng Zeyan, she felt a chill run through her body. She finally asked, “What exactly happened? How could she have died…?”

“When I got there, her body was already cold. I took a taxi to the hospital, contacted her parents for her, and filed a police report. She left a suicide note saying the pressure of life was too much, that no one liked her, treated her like trash, and that maybe she didn’t deserve to live.”

“Depression.”

Zheng Zeyan’s hands shook—he was crying. Ou Jinghe moved closer, wanting to comfort him, but she didn’t know what to say or where to begin. The unlit floor glowed with a blue light, like a lake about to freeze over in the depths of winter. As she knelt down, she saw the white bedspread, as if she had just climbed up from the ice horizon. Suddenly, she remembered the eyes of her first love, who once stood swaying by the roadside. In this world, besides the horizon and the sea level, thick layers of ice can also divide heaven and earth. She watched as her first love sank into the hole in the thick ice layer.

She suddenly recalled You Jiang from the Japanese novel Ice Horizon . You Jiang lived in a tin-roofed house at the mouth of the Okhotsk Bay, selling her body to survive, known as a “public toilet” kind of woman. Cheng Yilang couldn’t forget her and wanted to take her away from that tin-roofed house, but he wavered under the criticism of those around him, and You Jiang ended up sinking into an ice hole shaped like a full moon. The extreme cold of Hokkaido made survival difficult; people were insignificant, and gender roles were trivial. Women who couldn’t find an outlet made decisions as if the ice cracked beneath them. At just the thought of it, Ou Jinghe’s body went cold, and she instinctively tightened her coat. Zheng Zeyan’s sobs sounded like fear, or perhaps self-blame—she couldn’t tell which—but time seemed to stretch endlessly as she stayed by his side.

Life continued its steady downward flow. They never spoke of the matter again. Ou Jinghe only observed Zheng Zeyan’s movements from afar: after that day, he visited the police station twice and even wore a black suit one day, likely attending the funeral. When he returned, Ou Jinghe immediately packed his clothes in a bag and sent them to be washed. Without stopping, she sprayed disinfectant throughout the room—not because she was superstitious, absolutely not—but she couldn’t help but busy herself to fill her spare time, erasing any trace of her first love. After returning from the funeral home, cleaning naturally had to be done quickly. When Zheng Zeyan emerged from the shower and faced the empty sofa, he asked, “Where’s my suit?”

“I put it away for you.” Ou Jinghe was skilled at lying about small details, and Zheng Zeyan, whose mind had been wandering lately, wouldn’t notice anyway. He nodded, turned toward the bedroom, and fell asleep with his face buried in the pillow. Ou Jinghe pulled a thick blanket and slept in the living room. Only when the kitten curled up next to her did she feel a bit of drowsiness—she couldn’t bring herself to enter the bedroom and endure that oppressive atmosphere.

Ou Jinghe took her team colleagues on a team-building outing. The girls chatted about skincare and work, eventually steering the conversation toward Ou Jinghe. One bold intern timidly asked, “Sis Ou, is the man in that news report from a few days ago your boyfriend?”

On Weibo, they could find Zheng Zeyan being interviewed in the news. Wearing a mask, Zheng Zeyan expressed regret over his friend’s depression-driven suicide. Once, they had all gone drinking together at Wanti Stadium, and the interns couldn’t forget his striking features and physique. Everyone knew her first love worked at a famous foreign company, and gossip had spread through WeChat, merging and forwarding to young people’s phones. Ou Jinghe had also seen the rumors about Zheng Zeyan and her first love, fabricated into a tragic romance between star-crossed lovers. The intern pressed further: “Was she… your ex-girlfriend?”

“No, just a regular friend.”

“Oh, thank goodness. If she was your ex, it would’ve been troublesome. A suicide like that would leave psychological scars, and dating you would have been hard to process.” At that moment, Ou Jinghe suddenly remembered that her first love had posted in the help section.

When the group returned, Ou Jinghe was the fastest walker among them. Her heart raced as she searched the help section, hoping against hope that she might confuse dreams with reality—perhaps it was all a dream. But soon enough, she found her first love’s cry for help again, along with a post from a month earlier: “Can’t get mental health help, matching requires answering 100 questions… Life is so hard.”

Ou Jinghe knew how complicated mental health matching could be: each question felt familiar, designed to precisely match users while filtering out malicious ones. Questions repeated with altered options, making it difficult for a depressed mind to navigate. No one could withstand a hundred probing questions during a low point of suicidal ideation. By the end, over a hundred potential matches might appear on the interface—anonymously chosen, opening up about one’s secrets felt like stabbing oneself repeatedly.

Just thinking about it made her close the app hastily when Jian Zhaowen appeared behind her, nearly shutting the phone off entirely. Jian Zhaowen called her for routine work. There were countless posts like her first love’s in the help section, and he was too busy handling internal company affairs to pay attention to the news. He summoned Ou Jinghe to the office to ask about major events in the weekly report and issue new directives: “We’re launching a public account recently, dedicated to creating a 24/7 help window. Relying solely on the Day & Night app isn’t enough. After the previous attack, I’ve been a bit worried. Besides, more people are on WeChat, and those without the app should still be able to seek help when needed.”

“Alright. Should I register using my ID number?”

“Yeah, thanks for taking care of it.”

“It’s no big deal. I want to help others too. Karma balances out.” Ou Jinghe stood up, as if excusing herself: “About you and Lei Zheng’s situation, don’t worry—I won’t tell Yu Zhimei.”

Jian Zhaowen, wearing glasses, was focused on reading documents on his desk, his face as calm as a blank sheet of paper. “I was drunk; I don’t remember anything. And Lei Zheng is no longer a partner. Don’t bring up personal matters at the company.”

Caught off guard for three seconds, Ou Jinghe said nothing further and quietly closed the door behind her.

The following week, as soon as Zheng Zeyan entered the office, he was called into the boss’s room. The head of private equity from the Singapore headquarters specifically requested Zheng Zeyan for a project in Singapore. Each project was tempting and impossible to refuse—the boss knew he was strong in work capability but weak in personal conduct, which was reason enough. During his first two years on the job, he frequently traveled between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, working with a Hong Kong leader in his fifties who jokingly referred to Singaporean cuisine as “Nanyang dishes”—such an old-fashioned term. In six months in Singapore, he worked on projects involving subways, telecommunications, banking, electricity—all vital to Singapore’s lifeline. Upon returning, he would be promoted and could avoid the whispers behind his back after his first love’s death. WeChat messages spread too fast, and controversies surrounding him were constant, especially now that he was in the spotlight. Without an overseas assignment and proof of competence, many were waiting to see him fail.

He sat in the office for a long time, wanting to call Ou Jinghe and suggest they register for marriage again. This time, they wouldn’t bother with makeup or photos, skipping formalities and simply signing the marriage certificate. But as he held his phone, the call wouldn’t dial out, until the next meeting began. At 8 p.m., Ou Jinghe was still working overtime at the company. Zheng Zeyan lay in bed, feeling like a prisoner released from a heavy sentence, scrolling through his phone. He stumbled upon a recent interview with his favorite band after their Shanghai tour and realized he hadn’t paid attention to it during his passionate relationship with Ou Jinghe. The concert had taken place the day before his first love’s death, and the guitarist and drummer shared a story in the interview.

“We always interact with the audience during our performances. This time, there was a girl standing in the last row, dressed and behaving like a character straight out of Junji Ito’s manga. She stood there, looking at us—or maybe not, she was quite detached. That night, I couldn’t see any other audience members; I kept looking at her. Afterward, I asked Guan Pan (the drummer), and he said he saw her too—she really stood out. The next day, we saw the news about her death. We recognized her instantly from the photo—it was her, standing near the bar area. We thought, ‘This is life.’ Life is fragile. And we understood—no one has the right to accuse others of being irresponsible, not even parents, who only accompany us for part of the journey. Still, it felt so sudden. It was like God played a joke on us during our performance.”

The concert they mentioned was the one his first love attended. The next day, Zheng Zeyan saw her face covered with a white cloth. He loved that band too. Even though his first love and he led parallel lives, this was something they had both enjoyed discussing—bands and songs they both loved. Zheng Zeyan noticed tears dripping onto his phone, and suddenly, he couldn’t stop crying.

When Ou Jinghe came home, exhausted, she found Zheng Zeyan sobbing on the bed. She went over and hugged him tightly. The night was quiet, the room facing north, and aside from the sound of crying, there seemed to be the faint rustling of damp air flowing.

“She committed suicide because of depression… and it’s partially my fault.” Zheng Zeyan covered his face with his hands. “I should have sent her away when I knew her mental state was unstable. After her divorce, she was alone in Shanghai while her ex-husband cheated on her in Japan and divorced her. I should have at least tried to contact her parents.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“How can it not be my fault? I was the only person who saw her regularly.” Seeing Ou Jinghe’s unsurprised eyes, he rested his elbows on his knees and cradled his forehead in his hands. “She said I was the only one she had left, and every time I saw her, I told her to stay away and see a doctor. A few days ago, we were drinking at Wanti Stadium, and she came to me, saying she’d kill herself if I ignored her again. I told her firmly that I had a woman I loved and was going to marry, and that my responsibility was to my partner. If she really wanted to die, she shouldn’t drag me into it anymore—the last thing I said to her was telling her to go ahead and die.”

Ou Jinghe knelt beside him. “In the help section, we encounter many people, but we can’t save everyone. Counseling depends on matching, and many can’t make it through the hundred questions or wait in line for a psychologist. If we let guilt consume us over this, we wouldn’t be able to do this work. Putting ourselves in their shoes, this isn’t something you could control.”

“I should have at least done what I could.” Zheng Zeyan slowly pounded his chest. “I’m scum. I caused a woman’s death.”

“Stop blaming yourself.” His words about responsibility stirred something in Ou Jinghe. “I saw her too in the Day & Night help section. In her posts, she shared many stories about you. I know everything about your relationship. I know she had many male friends, but each treated her like a bus stop. After reading it, I closed the page—I guessed it was her, even though it was anonymous.”

“You closed the page?” Zheng Zeyan suddenly looked up, his fierce gaze startling Ou Jinghe. He demanded, “You stood by and did nothing?”

“At the time, she wasn’t thinking about dying. I had to prioritize cases based on urgency, and hers seemed like just a relationship issue.” Amidst her panic, Ou Jinghe reflexively smiled. “Help requests due to breakups are the lowest priority. I couldn’t bump her up.”

“That’s wrong.” Her smile seemed to give Zheng Zeyan ammunition. “Not everyone is as devoid of conscience as you.”

“Zheng Zeyan, are you insane? How can you assume I didn’t help her because I saw her as a rival? Every user is treated equally—I wouldn’t manipulate help based on personal grudges.”

“Of course you could. You had access to her data and chose not to help after seeing her directly. That’s no different from standing by and doing nothing.” Zheng Zeyan’s eyes were bloodshot. “You have such a venomous heart. Do you think I don’t know you by now?”

Perhaps she should have stifled her laugh in time or never brought up the topic, but she was provoked too. “This is ridiculous. You claim to love me, yet you drag me to the judgment stand over another woman? Zheng Zeyan, her death is related to you, but absolutely not to me. You cling to tiny details in the help section, accusing me of harming her. What about her husband? Her parents? Her colleagues? Everyone contributes to these kinds of situations, but you focus solely on me. Are you out of your mind?”

Before she could finish, Zheng Zeyan raised his hand, hesitating for a moment before gripping Ou Jinghe’s shoulder. But that gesture ignited Ou Jinghe’s pride—she saw the face of her first love sinking into the ocean, smiling as her hair spread out like seaweed pulling her down, drowning her. The feeling of suffocation came rushing back, and in front of her was the dead woman, but it was herself being executed.

With all her strength, she shoved Zheng Zeyan and knocked the books and teacups beside her onto the floor. “Are you insane? What I said wasn’t wrong! She kept clinging to you like a madwoman, already unhappy with her life, yet dragging you down with her. I’ve pretended not to know all this time, endured it until now, and now I have to take a slap for her? I must be blind to even consider marrying you. You should just stay with this bitch forever, grow old together, and go to hell hand in hand. Go die! Die with her!”

Caught up in the chaos were the T-shirt hanging on the TRX, the newly purchased humidifier filled with essential oils, the cat tree, and an antique phonograph worth a small fortune. Ou Jinghe put all her strength into it, her heart collapsing inside. Why? She hadn’t done anything wrong. Just because a lovesick woman leapt off the cliff of death, did that mean she lost everything? She had worked so hard to love someone, only for others to ascend to the sacred clouds through death while she was nailed to the cross of sin?

Exhausted but still defiant, she stared at him. That man stood quietly in the middle of the room, behind him a frightened kitten cowering in the corner. His expression didn’t change. Ou Jinghe thought, No way am I admitting fault—I’m innocent in this mess. Why should I?

Zheng Zeyan remained calm, his emotionless face making her uneasy. She broke the silence: “I haven’t done anything wrong. It’s you who can’t see clearly that you love me. Zheng Zeyan, I’ve suffered too much for you. This isn’t my burden to bear.”

Zheng Zeyan simply said coldly, “Get out.”