Chapter 17 – still
After all, they had been apart for a thousand days. It was perfectly normal for her to have dated someone again.
But there was always something about Meng Ou’s question that made her feel it was not quite right.
If it were an ordinary person, perhaps they would ask, “Have you dated anyone since?” or “Do you have a boyfriend now?”
But in what he had said, the “you two” was far too pointed.
Who exactly did “you two” refer to? And how did he know?
After voicing her doubts, Xiang You looked at him with a burning gaze.
There seemed to be a flicker of panic across Meng Ou’s face, or perhaps there wasn’t.
He was clever about where he sat, choosing a spot with his back to the light. Sunlight slanted in through the window and fell across Xiang You’s face.
Every expression of hers was laid bare in the brightness, but as for him, his eyes were already deep-set enough to conceal some of his emotions, and with them hidden in the shadows, they were even harder to make out.
“Liu Peng told me. He said you dated someone afterward, too.” Meng Ou answered quite calmly.
Liu Peng had been their high school classmate. After graduation, he had also come to Changrui.
Actually, the two of them had not been particularly close in high school, but because they were both in Changrui, they ended up keeping in touch a little more after they started working.
Not that much, though. They would only exchange a few greetings around the holidays. Occasionally, when they could not make it home for a holiday, they would ask other old classmates who were also in Changrui to get together for a meal and celebrate.
It was just that…
Xiang You furrowed her brows in confusion and lowered her head, beginning to search her memory.
Had she told Liu Peng she was dating someone?
She had dated him for less than two months. During that time, the two of them probably had not been in contact, right?
Besides, she had never had the habit of showing off her relationship on her Moments.
Had she posted something? Hadn’t she?
The first time she met Meng Ou was on the first day of school.
He was helping the teacher hand out the tuition and miscellaneous-fee payment slips. When he got to her, someone happened to call out to him.
He casually planted one hand on her desk to support himself, turning his head to speak to the other person.
Xiang You had been doing her homework at the time. With a “smack,” a hand came down right in the middle of her desk.
She looked down at the hand in confusion, then raised her head to look at him.
The boy was chatting happily with someone, with no eyes in the back of his head, completely unaware of her gaze.
Tanned by an entire summer of sun, that hand looked strikingly different beside hers.
One black, one white. One big, one small. Even his knuckles were a whole circle thicker than hers.
His nails were trimmed very neatly, carrying a kind of contrasting pink. A mechanical watch was fastened around his wrist, buckled at the second-to-last hole.
The time on the watch was 14:37. His thumb happened to be pressing down on the total line of the payment slip, which came to 101,268 yuan.
Yes, Xiang You remembered the exact time of that moment, down to the minute, and even remembered the fee down to the last two decimal places.
That had happened many years ago.
Yet the more than one month she had spent with her ex had become very hazy in her mind.
Of course, she remembered their first conversation, the team-building event when they confirmed their relationship, and the light rain that fell on the day they broke up.
But she did not remember what the other person had been wearing, or what dishes the two of them had eaten together.
As for that month or so in between, it was even more thoroughly blurred, as though covered by a filter, indistinct and difficult to make out.
Opening her phone now to check her Moments seemed a little awkward.
Maybe she had casually mentioned it to Liu Peng. Or maybe she had posted some sort of update.
Although she would not go around announcing that she was in a relationship, neither would she deliberately hide it. It was perfectly normal for her friends to know.
Xiang You decided not to get hung up on it here.
She gave an “oh” and asked, “Why did Liu Peng tell you that?”
“It’s because…” Meng Ou paused, his voice dropping an octave. “We dated, after all.”
Oh.
If he hadn’t said it, Xiang You really might have almost forgotten.
How normal they had been this afternoon. They had talked about their former classmates and teachers, talked about their plans for the future, talked about musicals and movies.
They simply did not talk about love.
They did not talk about the things they had experienced together.
And now that he had actually brought it up so bluntly, Xiang You suddenly became flustered.
What did he mean? Why had he suddenly brought this up?
That hallucination just now…
Could it not have been a hallucination?
The person before her gradually began to look hateful.
Xiang You hated playing push-and-pull games. She hated schemes and tactics.
She was not an expert. She did not know how to spar with people.
But she was an ordinary person who hated losing and hated being at a disadvantage.
“He’s so bored. You’ve been apart for so long already. Why did he even tell you?”
There was a hint of petulance in Xiang You’s tone.
“Who knows?” Meng Ou brushed it aside with a single sentence, then asked, “So why did you two break up?”
Xiang You glared at him. “What does it have to do with you?”
“It’s just… I’m bored, so I thought we could chat.” Meng Ou tapped his glass with a crooked finger. There was still more than half a glass left inside. “We can’t just drink without talking, can we?”
He was treating her experiences as a little snack to go with his drink.
Xiang You was displeased. “How many questions have you asked me already? You have to let me ask you a few, too.”
“Sure.” Meng Ou immediately sat up straight, like an interviewee preparing to face an interrogation. “Go ahead.”
What should she ask?
At a moment like this, there were really only those questions to ask.
And, coincidentally, those were exactly the questions she was curious about too.
“Do you have someone now?”
Straight to the point, no beating around the bush.
It was as if all her courage had been used up on the final word. The moment it left her mouth, her heart began pounding wildly.
Good grief, she felt like she needed emergency medical attention.
“If you already have someone, sitting here talking with your ex for this long wouldn’t really be appropriate, would it?”
This careless, flippant answer had completely wasted all the courage she had mustered.
Fortunately, the answer should have been clear enough.
If he were a scumbag, what he meant might be: Although it’s inappropriate, I did it anyway.
But Meng Ou did not seem like that kind of person.
Still, after three days apart, one should look at someone with new eyes. It had already been a thousand days. Who knew what he had become by now, whether man or ghost?
But why did Xiang You always feel that he had hardly changed at all?
She thought for a moment, then asked, “So how many did you date afterward?”
Meng Ou once again started refusing to answer the question properly.
He propped his elbow on the table, circled his index finger and thumb together, and waved it at her.
Xiang You’s eyes gradually widened. “T-ten?!”
It had nothing to do with her anymore, but wasn’t he changing girlfriends a little too often?
Meng Ou looked utterly astonished for a moment. “Your ‘ten’ is how you gesture it?”
Xiang You raised her hand in confusion and made a fist. “Isn’t this ten?”
Meng Ou’s eyes, rarely so wide, went perfectly round. He waved his hand again. “Is the hole I made in the middle not big enough?”
Xiang You slowly loosened her clenched hand, looking at his, then at her own.
“Zero?” she asked hesitantly.
“Otherwise, how many did you think it was?” Meng Ou lowered his hand and leaned back into his chair.
“Impossible.” Xiang You was certain. A thousand days, and not a single one?
Impossible. Absolutely impossible.
Actually, when they had first gotten together, Meng Ou had said he had never dated before, and Xiang You had not believed him.
She had seen with her own eyes how many girls had confessed to him.
If he had rejected those confessions because he liked her, Xiang You could believe that.
But what about before they got together? It was not as if he could have suddenly become popular overnight.
Besides, she had seen photos of him from before.
Cocky and smug, either looking at the camera out of the corner of his eye or grinning with an unmistakably mischievous air.
But no matter how much she disliked him, she had to admit that face was good-looking.
It was just that Xiang You really had never found the slightest trace that he had dated anyone.
Even when the two of them occasionally ran into his former classmates, she could not hear anything suspicious in their conversations.
Later, Xiang You had asked him outright why he had never dated before.
He said that back then, he thought dating was pointless.
Some of his friends were in relationships, running around every day to play servant to their girlfriends, bringing them water and breakfast, helping them run upstairs and downstairs to buy things, even helping them with their homework when they could not finish it themselves.
With that kind of time, he might as well play a few rounds of games with his friends.
“And afterward?” Xiang You asked.
“Afterward…” Meng Ou chuckled. “Afterward, I realized that the first second I saw you, I wanted to play servant for you.”
“What are you talking about…” Xiang You gave him a push.
It was not feudal society. What was this talk about masters and servants?
Besides, she had never treated him like a servant.
He had volunteered to bring her breakfast, run errands for her, carry her bag. She had never asked him to do any of it.
“Don’t fire me.” Xiang You had only given him a light push, but he retreated a long way before shamelessly sticking himself back to her. “I don’t want to be unemployed.”
In the end, though, she still fired him.
What about after that? Had he really never found another place to work?
His face was still good-looking, after all. Especially among the bunch of same-aged people around them who had put on weight, he could more or less be considered a crane among chickens.
His personality was still annoying, too, but surely he was not so unbearable that not a single girl could stand him.
But if she looked at it more realistically…
Right. She would look at him from the perspective of his ex-girlfriend.
His education was good, and his salary was decent, but ultimately, he was not a local of City A. His family might be able to help him buy a house, but it would probably still be many years before that happened.
For the most part, he was probably like her ex, needing a local girl to help him get established, while the local girls would not think much of him.
Thinking about it this way, it was not entirely impossible that he had failed to find someone to be with for a thousand days.
Xiang You suddenly felt a little heartsick.
The person she had once thought was so wonderful, so precious, had apparently been someone other people looked down on too.
Although she had no business feeling heartsick over her ex.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
Meng Ou had no idea what she was thinking. He only saw her brows and eyes suddenly droop, as though she looked very sad.
He had not dated anyone else. What was she sad about?
“Nothing.” Xiang You shook her head and squeezed out a reluctant smile.
Meng Ou stared at her for a while, knowing that she had a whole pile of things she had not said.
“Don’t you have anything else you want to ask me?”
Xiang You’s heart was a little chaotic.
Like boiling water, bubbles kept gurgling up.
Should she say it? Could she say it? Why did she have to say it?
Forget it. Just say it.
He was going back to City A tonight anyway. This time, they had gone a thousand days without seeing each other. Next time, maybe it would be ten thousand days.
So there was nothing left to be embarrassed or afraid of.
“Are you really planning to stay in City A forever?”
You really don’t want to come back?!
No comments:
Post a Comment