Where Winter is Warm Where Summer is Cool

In the afternoon, Piao Zheng came over to help me with the discharge formalities. Lin Xiaodi and Mo Jiazhen had come over earlier and made a fuss for half the day, but I had gotten so annoyed that I was forced to send them away. 

As I sat in Piao Zheng’s car, I was finally able to have some mung bean and honey porridge to drink.

“It’s not sweet enough.” 

“Four spoons of sugar, miss!” Park Zheng, who was supposed to be concentrating on the road, couldn’t help but look at me incredulously. 

“I like it sweet.” 

Thinking about it, I added, “The sweeter, the better.”

“Strange. I didn’t see you as someone with such a sweet tooth when you were a kid, did I?” 

“I’ve started to like it in the last few years.” I laughed, “French desserts are really good.”

“You heh! By the way,” Park Zheng handed me a stack of papers from his suit pocket, “plane tickets to Shanghai tomorrow afternoon, and the morning after, to France…must we be in such a hurry? It hasn’t even been four days since you’ve been back.” 

“Four days is enough.”

When we arrived at Piao Zheng’s flat, it had already gone dark. I got out of the car while Piao Zheng went to park in the underground garage. I put my hat on and headed for the front door, but before I could take a step a pair of arms pulled me back from behind with such force that the hat slipped off as I turned around.

A dashing handsome face came into view – Ye Lin!

The dim light of the streetlamp reflected on his face and I saw his usual dashing swagger was gone. He looked a bit downcast and haggard, and his usual flirtatious eyes were bloodshot. After the initial shock wore off, I tried to break free of the wrist he was pulling, only to be gripped in more pain.

“Ye Lin?” 

In the next second my lips were blocked by a fierce kiss, the tip of a supple tongue invading, stirring, and tossing. I felt his body heat invade me, frantic, reckless, extremely repressed and determined and with a fierce demand, as if he wanted to pour all his emotions into this kiss. My mind went blank.

A moment later he rested his head on my slightly shaking shoulder and murmured with a helpless sigh, “Don’t you want me?” 

His voice sounded forlorn. As if under compulsion, I lifted my hand and couldn’t help but stroke his soft black hair with a touch of fondness and indulgence. Slowly he lowered his head and approached my lips once more, teasing them gently with a touch of temptation, from shallow to deep.

The cold winter air seeped in through a button that had come undone at some point, and my body shuddered, waking up with a start. Realizing that I had lost control, I pushed him away. Ye Lin was taken a bit by surprise and took a big step back. His clothes were disheveled and he stared at me. 

“Jian Anjie, do you still want me?” His voice was devilishly sweet, trying to dismantle all my resistance. This cunning man!

Finally, I said, “Ye Lin, stop playing, just say what you want to say.” 

I was incapable of speculating on his motives. His mind had always been more meticulous than mine. 

His expression looked a little hurt as he stared at me with deep, impenetrable eyes. 

“Jian Anjie, I love you.” 

My heart skipped a beat – words like that really shouldn’t be said now.

“I love you, you hear me! I love you!” 

My calmness, at least on the surface, caused him to unconsciously raise his tone.

“We broke up, Ye Lin. Six years ago.” I heard myself sounding surprisingly calm. 

“I love you!!!” His raised voice was fondly familiar. 

I looked straight at him. “Yelin, we’ve broken up,” I repeated.

“I don’t want to break up with you!” 

He grabbed my arms and his voice bordered on mania as he yelled, “I regret it, I don’t want to break up with you! I repeat, I regret it and I don’t want to break up with you!”

“Ye Lin,” I fought back the pain in my arms, “You were the one who said you wanted to break up with me.”

“You made me say it! You don’t care about me, you don’t care about me at all! You said you were going to France and I was scared! I was angry! I said I wanted to break up! I wanted you to be nervous, I wanted you to stay! But, but…” His voice turned low and surprisingly sad, “but you went anyway!” He looked up at me, “You could always act so decisively, so it made me think you never loved me!”

It’s impossible to allow someone to stay by one’s side for six years without caring and without loving.

So that was what he had thought all along. It was still a little hard to hear such words, even after six years of separation.

“Ye Lin,” I said slowly and softly, but every word was clear and bitter. “I loved you, once. When you said you were breaking up with me, I was sad, really sad. I had been kicked out of Jian’s house. I went to look for you.

“I said I was going to France, that I was forced to go to a place where I couldn’t even communicate in my own language. All I wanted was to find you and you said ‘Let’s break up, Jian Anjie’. Till now, I don’t remember how I walked away.” 

“Jian Anjie, you bastard, if you want to go to France you go, what are you talking to me about, who am I to you, I’m nothing after all!”

“Though you said we’d broken up, I still missed you. I still wanted to find you when I first arrived in France, even though I thought it was strange, but I really wanted…to have you by my side. At one point, I finally got the courage to call you. It was not you who answered. She said you do not want to answer my call.

“At that time I had been standing in the street. When I tried to walk back home, even though I had walked that road no less than ten times, I had to ask someone for help, but then I found myself unable to understand a word.

“Yelin, we were together for six years, not sixty days. In the first few months, I dreamed about you almost every day. For a long time I hadn’t even wanted to wake up, but the most absurd thing was that at night I had to take sleeping pills again to get to sleep.”

“The second and last time I called you, I really shouldn’t have. It was scary and I was scared. My friend was dead. The only friend I had there was dead. I just needed to find you. That last time made me really decide not to look for you anymore.”

“Yelin, it’s me. Is something wrong?” 

The voice that had come after the long silence had been harsh and heartless.

“I…miss you, Yelin, I really, really do. Can we meet?” 

People are the only animals with mental feelings, especially when they are vulnerable and only want to be emotionally dependent on someone extremely important to them. 

“Really, you miss me?” 

His voice had been laced with noticeable sarcasm. 

“If that’s all you’re calling to tell me, then, excuse me.”

“Ye Lin, I want to see you!” 

I had thrown away all self-respect and pride, the only time in my life I had humbled myself like that. 

“But I don’t want to see you, not at all! If I could, I’d like to forget everything that happened with you!” 

I looked up at him now, and his expression was one of total shock. He let go of my hand, staggered back a few steps, and then laughed. “Jian Anjie, you’re so cruel. You’ll always be crueler than me!” 

He turned and ran into the darkness, his sloppy steps looking unusually wretched and sluggish down the silent road.

Am I cruel? 

If this was called cruel, then I was cruel. This was a kind of obsession and also a kind of morbid prejudice –a  prejudice that hurt people and hurt oneself, but it was deep-rooted and difficult to change.

As I looked at the figure eventually fading into the night, my heart could not deceive itself enough to stop a small prick. 

The best thing to do if you knew something was no longer possible was to not begin anything new.

When I turned around, I was surprised to see Xi Xichen standing under a street lamp not far away.