The world’s joys and sorrows are always like this; the you I think of is not you, and the me you think of is not me.
Xu Shijin hugged Classmate Zhou, crying and laughing, losing her composure for a long while before belatedly realizing her disheveled appearance and unpleasant smell, with other strangers watching. A girl’s natural shyness, two beats late, finally arrived.
A blush rose on her cheeks, and she flusteredly let go of Classmate Zhou, almost jumping to hide behind a police officer.
The officer unlocked her chains. Like a little bird let out of its cage, she stumbled and fluttered onto the police car.
The car’s window was against the light, the light obscuring the girl’s face behind the glass.
For a moment, in the light, she rolled down the window, a strand of hair peeking out, facing Classmate Zhou’s direction, as if saying something to him. Even at this moment, she was still thinking of Classmate Zhou, and only Classmate Zhou.
Then the car left. Xu Shijin left, Yu Xiaoyu left, and the story left with them.
The police officers who followed this story still had to wrap it up, but that no longer had anything to do with Ji Xun—he was an outsider to the story from the beginning.
Now, he should hurry back to his own life.
Classmate Zhou accompanied Ji Xun to the hotel to pick up his bag and check out, silently seeing him off to the train station.
At the station, no matter the day or time, there were always crowds of people coming and going. Men, women, old, and young, each carrying their luggage. Most were in a hurry, but some lingered, laughing here, crying there, attracting a few curious glances, their silhouettes lingering on the polished tile floor for a few more seconds before finally dissipating, like fallen leaves returning to the earth, like ripples disappearing into a lake.
Classmate Zhou walked Ji Xun to the boarding gate inside the station and stopped.
“I noticed earlier,” Ji Xun said, “it seems like you’ve had something to say to me this whole time?”
“Why did Xu Shijin curse at Yu Xiaoyu?”
“I’m speculating… just speculating. But I think the results of the police interrogation might be similar to my speculation,” Ji Xun said softly. He paused for a moment, as if unsure how to continue, but finally spoke.
This was a cruel beginning.
A cruel beginning for anyone.
“The person who saw Zhen Huan by the river that day wasn’t Xu Shijin, it was Yu Xiaoyu.”
Chen Ya only said she saw someone in a red hat; she didn’t name anyone, she was even just guessing. It was a very unfortunate coincidence.
Compared to Ji Xun’s hesitation, Classmate Zhou was much calmer. After hearing Ji Xun’s speculation, he just nodded: “I see… that should be it. Yu Xiaoyu saw Zhen Huan drown and was very scared, so she went crying to Xu Shijin. I can more or less guess why Xu Shijin stood up for her. It probably wasn’t entirely out of sisterly loyalty, but also because she didn’t think there was anything to be afraid of in the first place.”
“Of course, a person’s death itself is not a happy event.”
“But Yu Xiaoyu didn’t push Zhen Huan, nor did she mock Zhen Huan. Zhen Huan’s death couldn’t be blamed on Yu Xiaoyu—and of course, it couldn’t be blamed on her, who took Yu Xiaoyu’s place.”
Speaking to this point, Classmate Zhou fell silent for a moment. When he spoke again, there was a faint trace of mockery in his words.
“Xu Shijin has never experienced malice, so she never thought that malice from all directions was a big deal. So she thought she could handle it—no problem at all. After all, a small trick was enough to easily crush Jiang Jie. She might have even used this to prove to Yu Xiaoyu, see, fighting back is that simple.”
“But the events that followed told her she couldn’t. People are always prone to misjudging themselves. When the malice crushed her, she broke down and started cursing Yu Xiaoyu, pushing all the blame onto her… ‘It’s all your fault, it’s all your fault’.”
“But it’s not Yu Xiaoyu’s fault,” Ji Xun said, a little sadly.
“No,” Classmate Zhou said. “It is Yu Xiaoyu’s fault. And Yu Xiaoyu thinks so too. She’s probably still thinking… why did I go to the reservoir that day? Why did I have to see Zhen Huan die? Why did I let my best friend take my place? It’s my fault, it’s all my fault.”
“So, the usually timid her started to seek revenge, for Xu Shijin, and for herself.”
“But there’s one thing I still don’t understand…” Classmate Zhou paused. “I don’t understand why Xu Shijin likes me.”
“Did you hear what Xu Shijin said to you just now?”
“?”
“She said ‘see you tomorrow’.”
“I didn’t notice at all,” said Classmate Zhou.
“You don’t care about her,” Ji Xun stated an objective, cliché fact, and then immediately elaborated, “Think about it from another angle. What if she doesn’t care about you either?”
Classmate Zhou frowned.
“She doesn’t care about the real you, but the silent, melancholic you. People are complex emotional animals. They want to like people, and they want to be liked; they want to save people, and even more, they want to be saved. You said Xu Shijin is an ordinary girl, and an ordinary person always yearns for the extraordinary. She read about the extraordinary in poetry, she yearned for it, she yearned for the melancholic you, became infatuated with the melancholic you, and wanted to save the melancholic you.”
“I’m not like what she imagines,” Classmate Zhou said. “She’s barely even spoken to me.”
“Right, you’re not like what she imagines.”
“A young girl’s heart is always full of poetry. Her shyness made her hesitate on how to approach you, but that act of erasing the blackboard allowed her to easily approach a girl, Yu Xiaoyu,” Ji Xun added. “On the surface, you and Yu Xiaoyu have many similarities. You’re both quiet, both silent, both bullied. Maybe by getting along well with the melancholic Yu Xiaoyu, she could understand the heart of the melancholic you?”
“But for Yu Xiaoyu, no matter what purpose Xu Shijin had for approaching her, she was her salvation, her lifeline. So when Xu Shijin couldn’t bear the malice from all sides because of her, she tried everything she could to comfort her. She tried to empathize with Xu Shijin, she wanted to share Xu Shijin’s pain.”
“But the fragile Xu Shijin had the easiest excuse to shift her pain onto Yu Xiaoyu. She would only vent her pain onto Yu Xiaoyu, instead of wanting to get revenge on others. She would use every complaint she could think of to take back the little bit of kindness she had casually given, in order to balance the gap in her heart,” Ji Xun shook his head. “Yu Xiaoyu was hurt. She decided to get revenge, perhaps thinking that if she got revenge on others, Xu Shijin wouldn’t hate her, but this was also her own wishful thinking. She was releasing her own pain, not Xu Shijin’s. From beginning to end, she was only empathizing with herself.”
“Xu Shijin wanted to understand you, and Yu Xiaoyu wanted to understand Xu Shijin, but what they saw was always just what they wanted to see,” Ji Xun smiled. “The world’s joys and sorrows are always like this; the you I think of is not you, and the me you think of is not me. An imagined melancholy is, in the end, just a delusion in the mind.”
The queuing crowd suddenly stirred. The gate opened; the train to the capital was about to depart.
The stream of people squeezed and jostled forward.
“It’s time,” Classmate Zhou spoke.
“Yeah, it’s time to part…” Ji Xun felt a little wistful, but all meetings, no matter how happy or intimate, must come to the moment of parting. Without parting, there can be no meeting. He glanced forward, raised his hand, and patted Classmate Zhou’s shoulder. “Then I’ll head back first.”
“Mm.”
He heard Classmate Zhou’s faint response. Just from the sound, it seemed as if Classmate Zhou didn’t care at all about his coming or going. But if you looked into Classmate Zhou’s eyes, you would find that he was watching him very intently, so intently it was as if he wanted to convey something with those eyes.
Ji Xun met those eyes, which seemed to hold a thousand words, for a moment, then suddenly opened his backpack and found a notebook and pen. He flipped the notebook to a blank page, scribbled his phone number on it, then tore the page off and handed it to Classmate Zhou:
“My phone number. Even though I’m leaving, our connection won’t be broken. When you miss me, or have something you want to tell me, call this number anytime. When you get a phone in the future, remember to tell me your number too!”
“…” Classmate Zhou took the piece of paper.
The line had moved to where Ji Xun was standing. He wanted to say a few more words, but the people behind him were eager to move forward. The crowd was like a tide, and he was just an insignificant pebble in the tide, being pushed forward.
He could only wave at Classmate Zhou: “I’ll wait for your call.”
However, even until he entered the passageway and could no longer see Classmate Zhou, he didn’t get a response.
More and more people entered the passageway. When the flow of people ended, when the passageway closed, when the train at the platform started and moved far away, Classmate Zhou still stood in the same spot.
He held the note Ji Xun had given him in his hand, thinking to himself:
You don’t know.
My name isn’t Zhou Zhaonan. My name is Huo Ranyin.
I want to tell you my secret.
I killed my parents.
A light piece of paper, a heavy heart.
The paper clutched in his hand seemed to still hold the warmth of Ji Xun’s palm.
The imprint of the numbers felt from the back of the paper was Ji Xun’s strength.
His fingers traced over the paper, finally reaching the edge. With a gentle force, he tore the paper. Then he slowly tore it again, into snowflakes, into shreds, into something that could never be held or pieced back together—
It wasn’t what he wanted.
