Chapter 1: Collapse
“Let’s… break up.”
The first snow of winter finally fell. Though a bit late, it seemed fitting.
The girl in front of him shivered. It was a pity she was wrapped in a thick plaid scarf, otherwise, he would have seen her slender, snow-white neck.
Her eyes were downcast, her expression unreadable. She didn’t answer Su Yu’s words, but instead extended her hand, catching a few thin snowflakes as they drifted down with the wind. In her palm, they instantly melted into water.
“Mm… I understand.”
Su Yu opened his mouth, wanting to say something more, but the words caught in his throat, unable to escape. In the end, only a vague sentence remained, “Let’s both cool down.”
The girl raised her head, her watery eyes rippling like smoke, tinged with a slight redness. She blinked, looking as adorable as ever. “Mm… I understand.”
That sentence again… Su Yu’s fist, hidden in his sleeve, clenched unconsciously. They had been dating for a long time. The girl was obedient, often responding like this to his requests.
Su Yu used to enjoy her docility, but later, this phrase gradually became a curse, tightly binding him, preventing him from struggling free.
They broke up just like that, when the first snow of winter arrived.
What was the reason? Su Yu couldn’t say for sure. Maybe it was the pressure of life, maybe they were drifting apart, or maybe… he had changed.
She was an excellent girl, so excellent that it took Su Yu four years to win her over. This unrequited love started in high school and ended at the end of his freshman year of college.
There was never a shortage of admirers around her. Her face, so beautiful that Su Yu found it stunning no matter how many times he looked at it, attracted too many suitors. Su Yu was just one insignificant one among them.
A “simp,” in today’s terms, that’s what Su Yu was back then. Fortunately, the term hadn’t been invented yet when he was pursuing her, so he could still comfort himself by calling it “deep affection.”
On a battlefield of endless yellow sand, Su Yu charged forward among thousands of troops. He stepped on countless corpses and fought desperately. Fortunately… he was the last one alive to storm the city walls and capture the high flag.
They dated for five years, from his sophomore year of college until the second year after they started working. The girl was too outstanding. She always stood in the light, and he stood behind her, watching her, from initial pride to later self-deprecation.
To get closer to her, Su Yu pursued her relentlessly. He had never accomplished anything remarkable in his life, but getting into the same university as her became the eighth wonder among his high school classmates.
Some people, even with all their efforts, their destination is fixed. Su Yu thought that by attending the same university, he had closed the distance between them. But he was wrong. The girl kept moving forward, while he… had been stagnant for a long time.
He relied on his decent university education and found an ordinary job after graduation, earning an ordinary salary, and providing her with an ordinary life.
She often worked late, so he usually cooked dinner. She would come home and eat takeout with him, along with the barely edible meals he made, never complaining.
But Su Yu would rather she complain…
They weren’t parallel lines, but after intersecting, they only grew further apart.
The free meals at the company cafeteria were more upscale than the restaurants Su Yu took her to. The gifts clients gave her out of courtesy were more luxurious than the holiday gifts Su Yu painstakingly chose. She experienced a life that Su Yu couldn’t understand, and they had less and less to talk about…
These things accumulated bit by bit in the corners of their lives, more and more… until Su Yu could no longer ignore them, because if he did, they would soon be over his ankles.
“You’re not good enough for her!”
This was what the girl’s former best friend had said to Su Yu. Back then, Su Yu hated that friend. In his youthful arrogance, he never felt that he wasn’t good enough for her. He could create the eighth wonder of the world for her, so what couldn’t he do?
Until later, Su Yu also hated the girl’s best friend, hating her for not waking him up sooner. That way, he wouldn’t have pursued her. He could have been a good-for-nothing in a dark corner, at least the girl wouldn’t have seen his pathetic side.
If you love a girl, give her the best.
Su Yu liked this saying very much. He felt that it should be this way. The woman who can walk with you through life, accompanying you from youthful years to gray hair, why shouldn’t you give her the best?
But unfortunately, they stopped here, unable to finish this life together.
Su Yu was an ordinary person. He couldn’t escape the sadness of parting. The girl left their small rented apartment, where they had lived for two years, with her suitcase, leaving Su Yu alone in the same place. It wasn’t that Su Yu didn’t want to leave, but there was still half a month left on the rent. Leaving now would cost him a lot of money.
He looked at everything familiar in the apartment, memories flooding into his mind. The more he recalled, the more useless Su Yu felt. She could have lived in a high-end apartment complex long ago, but she insisted on staying with him in this broken house where sunlight couldn’t even penetrate during the day. He had trapped her, trapped her for two whole years!
His heart felt like it had been cut open with a small knife, a burning pain with every breath. The wound grew bigger and bigger, so painful that Su Yu wanted to grit his teeth to pieces.
Finally, he couldn’t bear it anymore. He grabbed his luggage and fled the apartment like a stray dog, finding a smaller place to live. Everything became unfamiliar. He seemed… saved.
Su Yu later discovered that time couldn’t erase the things that truly bothered him, but the ever-growing pile of beer cans on the balcony could.
His life became very calm, the kind of calm where even a boulder wouldn’t cause a ripple. Su Yu thought he could live like this for the rest of his life, which wasn’t bad, at least the wound in his heart wouldn’t grow any bigger.
But fate seemed unwilling to let him go. A sudden invitation to a class reunion arrived on his phone. The location was in the city where he lived, and the time was on the weekend. Su Yu had no reason to refuse.
Perhaps he could have, but Su Yu hadn’t seen the girl for a long time. People are cheap. He suddenly wanted to know how she was doing, whether she had moved into a high-end apartment, eaten at outrageously expensive restaurants, and found someone worthy of her…
Su Yu went to the class reunion.
The reunion was in the evening. Su Yu arrived relatively early, but the girl arrived late. Classmates teased them and arranged for them to sit together.
Actually, none of the classmates who attended the reunion knew about their past relationship. They only knew that they had attended the same university, and… that Su Yu had a crush on the girl throughout high school.
Perhaps because they hadn’t seen each other for so long, Su Yu felt that the girl was dressed very beautifully today, more beautiful than he remembered.
Class reunions usually followed the same pattern. Reconnecting seemed to be just a pretense. The organizers were often the most active at the dinner table, as they had accomplishments to boast about and the capital to speak loudly.
When it was Su Yu’s turn, he just smiled and said, “Nothing much to say,” then took a big gulp of his drink, the rim of the glass hiding the bitterness on his lips. The result was self-evident.
The girl didn’t say anything either. She had always been low-key. Su Yu and the girl were like outsiders at the table. The girl was looking at her phone, and he kept drinking…
Amidst the toasting and drinking, someone dimmed the lights in the private room, and the atmosphere became vaguely ambiguous. Reconnecting… those feelings that were never expressed or accidentally missed.
Whether talkative or not, everyone seemed to have something on their mind, and with the help of alcohol, their words became less guarded.
“Hey, Su Yu, do you have a girlfriend now?”
At some point, the conversation turned to relationships, and finally, the question reached Su Yu.
“I…”
He was silent for a moment, then turned his gaze to the girl beside him. Their eyes met, then quickly parted.
“Yes, I have one.” Su Yu smiled gently, looking like he was deeply in love with the girlfriend he spoke of. “We’re getting married soon…”
“Crash!”
The wine glass in the girl’s hand fell to the floor and shattered, scattering glass shards everywhere. The sharp edges of the glass glinted in the dim light.
Su Yu instinctively reached down to pick up the shards, but his hand touched the girl’s. His body tensed because her hand was ice-cold.
“I’ll do it…” he said with a smile, picking up the glass pieces one by one.
This was just a small interlude. They started asking the girl questions again. Su Yu slowed down his movements, listening intently. He wanted to hear her answer.
But the girl just shook her head, saying nothing.
Some sighed in regret, others were secretly delighted. So the high school goddess still didn’t have a boyfriend.
After that, the girl was urged to drink more frequently. Class reunions, after all, were just a gathering of hidden agendas.
After the reunion ended, Su Yu paid his share of the bill and left first. He walked in the howling winter wind, his head slightly raised, his eyes dry from the wind.
She seemed to be doing well, it was just a pity she hadn’t found a boyfriend yet.
Su Yu didn’t know why he had lied at the table. Maybe he had drunk too much, or maybe it was pride. He didn’t want to leave himself any way back. Rekindling… it was impossible between him and her.
If he could live his life over again, he would rather have never met her.
There weren’t many people on the streets late at night. Scattered pedestrians wandered about, all alone, their backs lonely.
Someone walked towards Su Yu, a black hoodie obscuring their face, only a few strands of long hair escaping from under the hood, fluttering in the cold wind.
A very familiar feeling…
Su Yu passed by the person, but the familiarity grew stronger. It was too much like her.
He wanted to turn around and look, but before he could speak, a sharp pain stabbed his chest, a familiar pain, the pain of the small wound in his heart being torn open.
The paralyzing pain shot through his nerves to his brain, his muscles spasming, losing control in an instant.
Su Yu’s strength gave way. He fell backward, hitting the ground hard. He looked up and saw the face under the hood, that stunningly beautiful face, the face he would never forget in his life.
“Why? Didn’t you say you just needed to cool down? But why are you getting married now, Xiao Yu?”
The wind lifted the girl’s hood, revealing a paranoid and morbid expression in the shadows. The girl’s emotions were agitated, her face filled with madness. A few crystal-clear tears landed on his face, attempting to leave behind the almost completely lost warmth.
“Xiao Yu confessed first, right? So why did Xiao Yu leave first? You promised me, you would marry me… We were supposed to be together forever…” The girl’s grip tightened, the high-powered stun gun jabbing into Su Yu’s chest. The faint sound of electricity coursing through his muscle fibers seemed to be right next to his ear. “Liar!”
“Cough…”
Su Yu opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but his paralyzed vocal cords couldn’t even produce simple syllables.
He looked at the girl’s beautiful face, forcing an ugly smile. He saw the intense hatred and resentment in her clear, black and white eyes.
He reached out, trembling, wanting to touch her cheek, but his strength was fading fast. Just inches away from her, his strength was gone, his consciousness blurring, giving him the illusion of being on the verge of death.
“I’m… sorry… Qian Ge.”
He was unwilling to accept this! This wasn’t how it was supposed to end! But his arm still fell to the ground.
“It’s okay. We’re not over yet.” The girl’s lips gently touched Su Yu’s earlobe, her soft voice carrying an icy finality. “We’ll be together forever, always…”
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