OS - 55

If it wasn’t for Qing Hang’s grandfather passing away, and him having just received the old man’s ashes, Cheng Yanqing would have chased after him.

“Wanyue, it’s okay, Qing Hang isn’t mad at you. He’s just too busy with medical school; these two weeks of final exams, he has to budget his time even for eating and sleeping,” Cheng Yanqing didn’t want his sister to be sad, so he comforted her, “I’ll come back to see you immediately next week after my last exam.”

The words ‘No’ were in response to Cheng Yanqing’s ‘Wanyue’s call, do you want to say a few words to her?’ Qing Hang wasn’t even willing to say a single word to her.

Cheng Wanyue thought, this is better than being completely forgotten.

“Brother, I want to go home for Chinese New Year, but Mom and Dad don’t agree.”

She didn’t mention Qing Hang, and Cheng Yanqing didn’t either, “We’ll still spend Chinese New Year at Uncle and Auntie’s place this year. I’ll talk to them in a couple of days. Who’s with you at the hospital today?”

“It’s Grandma. She’s knitting me a hat. You and Cheng Yuzhou don’t have one; Grandma only knits for me.”

“That’s not fair, I want one too,” Cheng Yanqing deliberately threw a tantrum over the phone.

Cheng Wanyue watched the old lady put on her reading glasses, recalling the knitted hat Zhou Yu gave her last year.

Those were truly good times.

With an 8 PM flight, Cheng Yuzhou barely had time for a quick meal after washing up.

It had snowed all day, and everything outside was a blanket of white.

Zhou Yu saw him off at the airport. The bustling hall was filled with people, all eager to return home.

“We’re separating again,” Cheng Yuzhou’s hands were empty. He was leaving the same way he arrived. “Why did I fall asleep for those few hours? I can sleep anytime I want. I finally got to see you, and half the day was spent sleeping.”

“In the future... there might be other chances,” even her own tone was uncertain.

The snow wasn’t heavy, otherwise the flight might be delayed.

Cheng Yuzhou looked down at the exposed part of her wrist, “Why aren’t you wearing the red string anymore?”

“It broke,” Zhou Yu’s lips curved into a smile, “You should go in now. Goodbye.”

Cheng Yuzhou knew the meaning of her ‘goodbye’. “I won’t say ‘goodbye’ to you.”

She had tried to remove him from her life, so he would re-enter her life.

“Before, I thought too simply, Zhou Yu, just wait for me a little longer.”

After Liu Fen passed away, Zhou Yu kept blaming herself, feeling it was all her fault. She couldn’t remember when she started losing things, but at some point, she suddenly desired something very much. That thing was within reach, seemingly graspable, so much so that she forgot her responsibilities and didn’t even notice Liu Fen’s abnormality before she drank the pesticide. Only after the irreversible outcome did she realize how unattainable Cheng Yuzhou was.

Liu Fen had given her freedom, but she had trapped herself in that small county.

Grandma was Zhou Yu’s closest relative in this world.

After exams, Zhou Yu and Yan Ci took the same car back to Baicheng. He went to Changchun Road, she went to Zhoujiatun. After cleaning the house inside and out, she went to the old courtyard to bring Grandma back.

Grandma was always alone in the nursing home, and she was very happy to be home.

Baicheng had a custom: on Lunar New Year’s Eve, juniors would visit their deceased relatives’ graves.

Yan Ci’s parents and Zhou Yu’s parents were buried on the same mountain. After Grandma fell asleep, Zhou Yu took a flashlight and went out. She used to be very afraid of this mountain, even scared to pass by the road at the foot of the mountain at night. Now, she dared to climb up and down alone, and even when she heard strange noises, she felt no terrifying illusions in her heart.

She walked in front, Yan Ci walked behind. Since they came late, they were the only two people on the way down the mountain.

From a distance, two beams of light were very, very close, one in front and one behind, but they were actually quite far apart.

Yan Ci still couldn’t make dumplings. Someone posted a nine-grid photo on their Moments, every picture was of dumplings, and they even photoshopped cute expressions onto each plump, white dumpling.

The Spring Festival Gala was playing on TV, the hosts began the countdown, and outside, firecrackers and fireworks started to go off. Yan Ci sat on the sofa, turning his head to look out the window. Fireworks of various colors exploded in the night sky, sparks flying, sounding incredibly festive.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles away in Nanjing, Cheng Wanyue was once again in the emergency room.

The dumplings left for her, containing coins, she couldn’t even take a bite of.

________________________________________

After Chinese New Year, the weather slowly warmed up, and the scent of spring became more noticeable day by day.

Zhou Yu was about to return to school. As she packed her luggage, she saw Grandma sewing a button onto one of her middle school clothes, which she hadn’t worn in ages.

A neighbor sighed, saying, “Grandma is too old to travel, she can’t even leave the county. Otherwise, she could be taken to live in the city, and you wouldn’t have to work so hard.”

Zhou Yu came back to reality and smiled, “I’m not working hard. It’s nice to be able to come back and see Grandma during the holidays.”

After taking Grandma back to the nursing home, on her last night at home, she had a dream.

In the dream, Cheng Yuzhou asked her a second time: “Do you want to reconcile with me?”

She nodded.

But Cheng Yuzhou stepped back, “It’s too late, I’ve already fallen in love with someone else.”

Unable to speak, she was anxious. She opened her arms, wanting to hug him, but his body suddenly dispersed into a mist, taking that light away.

If not for the ringing of Wanyue’s call waking her up, she would still be in that dream.

But after answering the call, she wished even more that the call had been a dream.

Why was Cheng Wanyue, whom all her classmates thought had gone abroad, in the hospital?

Twenty minutes later, Yan Ci also received a call from Cheng Wanyue. They hadn’t been in touch for a long time. Cheng Wanyue had always been bothered by that love letter he had never seen from beginning to end. Even on the day she graduated from high school and moved out of Baicheng, she had threatened him not to tell anyone.

“Yan Ci, you and A-Yu come and see me too,” she said, still smiling, “Because I think I’m about to die.”

Yan Ci accidentally knocked over the glass on the table. The sound of shattering glass was piercing.

Zhou Yu’s original plan was to return to school in the afternoon. Yan Ci was scheduled to leave a day later than her, but Cheng Wanyue’s call made both of them cancel their tickets and go to Nanjing.

Spring in Nanjing was so cold.

Before coming, Zhou Yu always thought Nanjing was far away, but in reality, it was just the distance of a train ticket.

Cheng Wanyue was staying at the Provincial People’s Hospital. She told Zhou Yu not to bring anything, not even flowers, because flowers could easily breed bacteria and shouldn’t be kept in the ward for too long.

She had been eagerly waiting since she woke up that morning; even the IV drip didn’t seem as painful as usual.

At the ward entrance, Zhou Yu saw the sickly Cheng Wanyue, completely bald, and couldn’t hold back her tears. She covered her eyes and squatted outside the door, her shoulders shaking. Yan Ci went in first.

Cheng Wanyue happily sat up from the hospital bed.

The nurse sister smiled teasingly, “Little sister, your brother is very handsome too!”

Cheng Yuzhou and Cheng Yanqing came so frequently that the nurse mistook Yan Ci for Cheng Wanyue’s brother too.

“He’s not my brother, he’s my buddy. I even wrote him a love letter once. That was the first time I ever wrote one, and the only time. I wrote it so seriously, but he didn’t receive it. It made me so angry! Otherwise, we might be more than just buddies now,” Cheng Wanyue joked. She looked behind Yan Ci, “Come in quickly. Where’s A-Yu?”

“I’m here,” Zhou Yu wiped her eyes and quickly stood up, walking into the ward.

How much Cheng Wanyue cherished her beauty.

“I’ve become an ugly monster; I don’t want you to see me like this,” she wasn’t even wearing a hat, just a hospital gown, “But I’m afraid that if I die someday, I won’t have seen you two.”

“Wanyue...” As Zhou Yu spoke, her choked voice couldn’t be hidden.

Cheng Wanyue watched her cry and felt a little sad too.

Zhou Yu went to the restroom. Yan Ci moved his stiff legs to the bedside and sat down, “When was this discovered?”

“Last summer, not long after we moved,” Cheng Wanyue had always thought of doing many things after the exams, but she didn’t even get to do the simplest thing like dyeing her hair. “I originally only wanted to tell A-Yu, but since you’re someone I had a crush on, you also have privileges. Don’t tell Qing Hang. If you don’t listen to me, I’ll haunt your dreams after I die.”

When Qing Hang left Baicheng, he didn’t even say goodbye to her. Now that she was sick, she only kept it a secret from him.

“Is it incurable?”

“I don’t know. They all say I’ll definitely get better, but look, all my hair has fallen out,” she touched her bald head, “I really wanted to dye my hair in senior high. I wish I had done it then. At least I would have just gotten scolded.”

Yan Ci looked away. Cheng Wanyue watched him and smiled.

“You all seem sadder than me. My dad is not even fifty, and he already has white hair. My mom can’t sleep all night, and she has many wrinkles on her face. Grandma too, her eyes are ruined from crying. Uncle and Auntie don’t argue anymore because they want to make me happy; they hold hands sweetly every time they come to the hospital. Cheng Yanqing, that idiot, wasn’t smart to begin with, and he still tries to lie to trick me. Cheng Yuzhou is also an idiot; one night my heart stopped, and he was scared to death. Look at A-Yu, she’s so sad. You’re the same; first, you lost your parents, and now even your friend is sick.”

She was the one who was sick, yet she was comforting Yan Ci.

“If I die, I’ll donate my body to the school or a research institute so my name can still be left in some places.”

Qing Hang was in the medical school at Tsinghua.

“Yan Ci, your eyes are red. If you cry too, I definitely won’t be able to hold back,” Cheng Wanyue leaned closer and teased him, “Yan Ci, I think you’ll be amazing in the future, a big boss, a CEO! It’s a bit of a pity I won’t get to see your handsome look as a business elite.”

She had a lot to say. Yan Ci looked at her, and the long-standing gloom in his heart seemed to dissipate like wind. She was on an IV drip, occasionally wincing in pain, but still telling him that someone would surely love him very much in the future.

Zhou Yu washed her face four times in the restroom, but the tear marks at the corners of her eyes were still very obvious. Cheng Wanyue took out two knitted hats Qian Shu had woven from under her pillow. “A-Yu, do you like the white one or the orange one?”

Cheng Wanyue had loved bright colors since she was little.

“White.”

“Then I want orange.”

Zhou Yu put one on her first, then put one on herself.

Cheng Wanyue asked Yan Ci, “Who looks better, me or her?”

Yan Ci said, “You look better.”

“Hmph, liar. Men are deceptive, just like ghosts. That saying is really true.”

Cheng Wanyue feigned anger, but her stomach rumbled, making Zhou Yu finally laugh.

They couldn’t stay in the ward for too long. The nurse came to remind them, so Zhou Yu and Yan Ci had to go downstairs first, but they didn’t leave the hospital. They just sat on chairs on the ground floor of the inpatient building.

Zhou Yu lowered her head, “I’m so stupid. I didn’t realize Wanyue was sick earlier. I only found out when she told me.”

“I’m not much better than you,” Yan Ci wanted to smoke but didn’t, “And I really regret hurting you before.”

The barrier between them no longer seemed so important.

Yan Ci looked up, seeing Cheng Yuzhou hurrying towards the inpatient building not far away.

“Guess which foot he’ll step up the stairs with first?”

Cheng Yuzhou hadn’t seen them yet.

Zhou Yu remembered the two years before Yan Ci’s parents’ car accident, when she and Yan Ci played cards on the roof of the family building. He could say that, and she knew he had let go.

“What’s the benefit of guessing correctly?”

“Didn’t Cheng Wanyue just say she wanted roasted sweet potatoes? If you guess correctly, I’ll run the errand.”

“What if you guess correctly?”

Yan Ci had scored perfect marks in both math and physics. From the rooftop, he could see the alley outside the Cheng family’s gate, and by judging the distance, he could roughly determine which foot Cheng Yuzhou would step with when passing the gate. Every time, he deliberately guessed wrong to let Zhou Yu win; he was the one who poured water, and he was the one who washed fruit.

“If I guess correctly,” Yan Ci paused for a few seconds, a faint smile playing on his lips, “Give me a friend’s hug.”