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Zou Siqi had the nagging sense that ever since the Beijing trip, Du Xiaosu had changed, but couldn’t put a finger on exactly what had changed. In the past, Du Xiaosu was very energetic and active, full of energy. Even after working overtime or pulling all-nighters, she would still appear refreshed and take Zou Siqi to eat cherry-topped cake. Her mouth was even further not idle, able to talk from the newest tea in the entertainment circle to silly things that occurred while the neighborhood auntine took her dog for a walk. Although Xiaosu still smiled, after a while she would slip back into her thoughts, her mind floating far away, like a big invisible hand had suddenly wiped the smile from her face.
Zou Siqi couldn’t help it: “Du Xiaosu, why are you so glum? Did you have a fight with Dr. Shao?”
Du Xiaosu said: “No.”
“Then, is it that his parents dislike you?  Didn’t you say that his parents were nice to you last time?”
Du Xiaosu lowered his eyes. In Zou Siqi’s sight, she could only see the long eyelashes cover over her gaze. The two sat near the window. The sunshine in the early spring was just right. Du Xiaosu’s whole person was in the light that formed a vague halo around her. Zou Siqi had a slight shock because Du Xiaosu’s whole person seemed muted, like she wasn’t even real. The little ruddy baby fat on her face had gone, her face cut down a true oval face. Zou Siqi couldn’t help but squeeze Du Xaiosu’s hand, “Xiaosu, what’s the matter with you? What happened to you? Why don’t you tell me so that we can think of a solution together?”
Du Xiaosu gaped for a long time, before saying: “His father is…” She paused and then said a name.
Zou Siqi didn’t hear too clearly: “Who?” Du Xiaosu didn’t answer either. Zou Siqi picked up the cake and chewed. As she ate, she suddenly choked, a bite of the cake stuck. After a while, she finally caught her breath, “Same name and last name?”
Du Xiaosu remembered that at the airport, she had asked the same question naively. She was really quite stupid. At that time, Shao Zhenrong had been nervous because he cared about her. Her heart twisted and she felt the urge to cry. She gently shook her head.
Zou Siqi couldn’t help grit her teeth: “Bah! What’s the matter! So you were just worried about marrying into a rich family? Even such a rich husband let you catch him, what are you worried about?” Zou Siqi poked her forehead: ” Why do you always meet the best? I am so jealous. Aiyo, I really couldn’t tell. Dr. Shao usually wears such simple clothing. His personality is good too. He’s not like those dandies. You shouldn’t think nonsensically. As long as Dr. Shao is good to you, what are you afraid of?”
Du Xiaosu raised her eyes a little hastily, her expression fell into that kind of trance again. She stuttered, her voice weak: “I really didn’t know he was–in fact, I don’t even really know him…”
Zou Siqi didn’t understand, and shook her hand: “Xiaosu, what are you talking about?”
Du Xiaosu seemed to come back to his senses abruptly, her face extremely pale. The corners of her mouth sank weakly, and she said in a very small voice, “It’s nothing.”
After thinking about it, Zou Siqi still felt uneasy. After she got home, she called Shao Zhenrong. He was currently in the middle of work, and was surprised to received her call. Zou Siqi asked directly: “Doctor Shao, did you quarrel with Xiaosu?”
He was a little confused and a little anxious: “What happened to Xiaosu? After I came back, I had a lot of operations, and she was also very busy. We haven’t seen each other for nearly a week. What’s wrong? Is she sick?”
Zou Siqi heard the concern in his voice, and was immediately relieved. She teased: “Doctor Shao, while career is important, love is also important. Spend more time with your girlfriend.”
Shao Zhenrong smiled in good temperament: “I know, I know.”
In truth, he would call Du Xiaosu every night, but she was always working overtime and he could hear the tiredness in her voice on the phone, so he would always let her go to sleep earlier.
On the weekend, he deliberately changed shifts with one of his colleagues and went to pick up Du Xiaosu from work very early.
At dusk, it was crawling with people. He didn’t wait long to see Du Xiaosu coming down the steps. She lost a little bit of weight. In the sunset, he could see her head bowed down slightly, her pace snail-like. He seldom saw her wearing such proper clothing and rarely saw her like this. He felt a little strange in his heart, because she was always full of spirit. Her current loneliness made her seem like a different person. Perhaps she was too tired.
“Xiaosu.”
She raised her head suddenly, widened her eyes and looked straight at him, as if she had been frightened, but after a few seconds, the corners of her mouth curled, as if she was smiling: “Why are you here?”
“I didn’t have a lot to do today.” He took her bag. It was currently the time when most got off work so many of Du Xiaosu’s colleagues had also come out of the office building. Some people looked over at them. It was not strange, as when Shao Zhenrong and Du Xiaosu stood together, they looked pleasing to the eye and were an eye-catching pair.
“What do you want to eat tonight?”
She thought for a while: “I want to eat noodles, eel noodles.”
She wanted to eat the eel noodles from the small shop near the hospital. But on the weekends, the traffic jam was wild. He randomly chose a CD to play. The melody was very beautiful. A man’s husky voice crooned: “Thank you for loving me……Thank you for loving me……I never knew I had a dream……Until that dream was you……”
The most crowded time in the city, dusk, their car was caught in the middle of the traffic, moving forward slowly but steadily. They continued to drive forward until they encountered a red light.
There were cars on all four sides and they couldn’t move and could only wait for the green light. Du Xiaosu suddenly called him: “Shao Zhenrong!”
She liked to call him by first name and last name, a kind of cheeky intimacy. He couldn’t help but turn his face and smile: “What is it?”
Her voice was pitifully gentle: “Can I kiss you?”
His ears turned red, and he said, “No!” Just as he finished saying that, he suddenly leaned over and kissed her. She hugged him tightly and refused to let go for a long time. The signal light had already changed. The car behind became impatient and started honking the horn. He said, “Xiaosu.”
She just didn’t want to let go, as though if she let go, he would disappear.
He called her again: “Xiaosu.”
She burst into tears, and he was startled: “What’s happened, Xiaosu?”
She did not answer, stubbornly continuing to shed tears.
“Xiaosu… what happened? Don’t cry, tell me, don’t be like this, Xiaosu…”
His voice was close to her ear, calling her name, his hug worried and anxious. The car behind was honking desperately, and there were already traffic policemen approaching them.
“Shao Zhenrong, let’s break up.”
His body shook slightly, and there was still a touch of surprise in his eyes. He couldn’t een react to her words. She repeated it again almost numbly, and he seemed to slowly understand.
This one sentence, the thought of it day and night, like a pot of oil, frying it over and over, boiling it again and again, turning her internal organs to ashes and sludge, until she couldn’t even feel pain. Yet when the words came out, she still felt a pain that pierced her bones and tore apart her heart.
A gaze of incredulity gradually appeared in his eyes: “Xiaosu, what did you say?”
Her tone was calm and decisive, like a suicidal person that had already cut their veins, without even a trace of pain: “I don’t want to say it again.”
He asked: “Why?”
The traffic police outside was knocking on their car windows, making gestures. Shao Zhenrong’s eyes were red. He asked again: “Why?”
“I don’t want to be with you, I don’t love you anymore.”
He grabbed her wrist with such force. She had never seen him like this before. He was gentle and handsome, yet at this moment he was almost hideous, small veins bursting on his forehead and even the back of his hand. His voice was hoarse, “You are talking nonsense!”
The traffic police increased the force of knocking on the roof of the car. He had to look back. She took this opportunity to push at the car door and get out. If she didn’t leave, she was afraid that she would do something more terrible. Without turning her head back, she hurried forward from the narrow passages between the cars, like a fish that had slipped through the net by luck, hurriedly trying to return to the sea. There were cars on all sides, and she stumbled as she ran.
Shao Zhenrong was anxious. He also pushed open the car door to chase, but was stopped by the traffic police. He didn’t care about anything, so he took out his driver’s license wallet and stuffed it into the traffic policeman’s hands. He forgoed even the car and went after Du Xiaosu.
He chased for two intersections before catching up with her. She was wearing high heels but ran fast, like a deer, rushing blindly to escape. When he finally grabbed her hard, both of them were gasping for breath.
Her face was frighteningly pale, sweat glittering on her face. She still wanted to get rid of his hand, but unable to do so, finally calmed down, still weak.
“Xiaosu,” he tried to calm his voice: “What  exactly happened? Did I do something wrong?”
She lowered her eyes: “You are not the wrong that did wrong. I am the one.”
“If there is any problem, just frankly tell me, alright? If I am not doing well, you can bring it up. I can correct anything.”
His forehead was wet with sweat, and several strands of hair stuck to his forehead. His eyes were fixed on her, like the ink-black sea under the starry sky, so pure she felt her heart shattering.
How could she say it?
No matter how she said it, she couldn’t find the courage to reveal such ugliness.
“Xiaosu,” he held her hand tightly: “I don’t know what’s going on, but things of the heart are not about sudden fits of emotion. If you have any problems, you can speak frankly. Let’s find a way together, okay?”
There was pain in his eyes. The further felt her heart cutting to pieces with a knife. If long-term pain was worse than short-term pain, then lopping it all off was better than getting stabbed by a thousand knives.
“Shao Zhenrong, I have done a wrong thing in the past, so wrong that I cannot rectify it.” She was almost begging: “So wrong, that I can’t love you anymore. Let’s break up, okay? I beg you. There’s really no other way.”
She was such a proud person. He had never seen her so humbled. He felt heartache and couldn’t get used to it, ”Xiaosu, no one never makes mistakes. The past is over. I don’t care about your ex-boyfriend. I also had a girlfriend back in the UK. Us meeting and falling in love is the present. I only care about now, the present.”
“It’s not like that,” she was almost exhausted, only mechanically and numbly repeating: “It’s not like that.”
There was still no color on her face. She slowly said: “I really loved Lin Xiangyuan back then. I did not encounter any setbacks at all. My parents loved me, I attended a famous university, and had an excellent bachelor boyfriend. I  always thought that I would marry him after graduation, and I would be happy for a lifetime. But it wasn’t like that. He went to Beijing. I went to Beijing as soon as I graduated, but it didn’t take long for him to marry someone else… “Her voice lowered, as if torn apart: “I can’t forget him. It wasn’t until I saw him again, that I realized I already can’t forget him…. So, let’s break up…”
“Xiaosu, I don’t believe what you said.” He seemed to slowly calm down. Although his fingers were still trembling slightly, there was unquestionable firmness in his voice: “Xiaosu, forget everything. Don’t mention it anymore, just pretend it never happened.”
But she couldn’t.
She spoke with difficulty, with tears in her eyes that could roll down at any second: “I always thought I had forgotten him, but now I can’t help it… Even if you tell me to forget it now, I can’t help it. I can’t face you at all…”
“I don’t believe what you said,” he said calmly and firmly: “I don’t believe you don’t love me.”
If possible, she would rather die in this instant. But she couldn’t help it, her lips trembled: “Zhenrong…I am real, I thought I loved you, but now I know that you are just a driftwood I desperately caught onto, I’m sorry…”
His face turned blue, as if vaguely foreseeing something, he suddenly interrupted her roughly: “Enough! Let’s stop talking about this today. I’ll send you home. Calm down, okay?” He pulled at her with force, as if trying to stop something, but in vain.
“Shao Zhenrong,” She finally squeezed out the sentence between her teeth, “Please don’t escape from the truth. I really never liked you before. Please don’t pester me again.”
The whole world seemed to stand still. The noise of the city, flood-like traffic on the driveway behind him, people coming and going on the sidewalk, the sound of cars and people, all seemed to lose all sound. Only his heartbeat was left, thump… thump… thump…
Slow, heavy, again and again, and then, the pain came. It was very subtle but very clear, winding along the veins until his heart. To think the heartache the ancients had spoken of was truly real pain, pain that couldn’t be stopped, pain that stopped breathing. He looked at her blankly, as if he didn’t recognize her, or as though he had never seen her before. Otherwise, this was just a dream, and once he woke up, everything would be sae and sound. But he couldn’t deceive himself. Her tears gradually dried. Her face was sore and her eyes nearly couldn’t open. The sky around was slowly darkening. The street lights turned on, as did the car lights. The night was stunning, like poison, and she was trapped in the ninth layer of hell, never again to see the day of light.
“Zhenrong,” her voice was nearly completely calm: “Let’s break up, I can’t be with you.”
He finally let go of her hand. His eyes dim. In almost an instant, he looked like a shadow. He did not speak and slowly turned around.
His steps were slow at first, but the more he walked, the more he gained pace. He soon disappeared from the corner of the street and she stood there like a fool, just watching him drift away.
She didn’t know how long she stood there before stopping a taxi to go home.
When she got home, she first released water to take a bath. The water rushed beside her. She was a little dazed. There was a monotonous noise that kept sounding. It took her a long while before she realized it was a phone, like her mind had turned stiff. The phoen continued to ring. She thought, when the phone rings, what should I do? What should I do? She finally realized that she should pick it up so she stumbled to her feet. She tripped over the pig pillow on the floor and slammed onto the coffee table, her tears squeezed out of her eyes. But seeing the caller ID, she couldn’t care less and hurriedly picked it up.
“Xiaosu? Today’s weather forecast says there will be a cold spell. Your thick coat hasn’t been put away yet right? Wear a little more tomorrow. Spring will come soon. Don’t be greedy for beauty and refuse to wear clothes.”
“I know.”
“What’s wrong with your voice?”
“I’m a little sick.”
Mother Du instantly rambled: “How are you so careless? Did you eat medicine yet? If it’s not working, I’ll call Little Shao to see if you need to get a shot.”
“Mom, I’m cooking stew. It’s going to overflow. I’m hanging up.”
“Ai! This child doesn’t know how to do things! Quickly go!”
She hung up the phone, only to realize that she fell on her elbow and rubbed off a piece of her skin, revealing red blood and flesh. It didn’t hurt, she thought nonchalantly. It didn’t hurt.
After taking a shower, she started to feel dazed again. Her hair was moist, what should she do? She thought hard and remembered: drying. She should use a hair dryer. After all the effort to finally find the hair dryer, she had to look for the switch. All the easy subconscious movements in the past had become the most difficult tasks. She turned the hair dryer over, thinking, where is the switch? Why can’t I find it?
When she finally found the switch, the wind sprayed all over her face. The burning heat caught her off guard. Tears instantly gushed out of her eyes.
She didn’t know how long she had been crying in the bathroom, maybe for an hour, maybe for four hours. The wound on her elbow was so painful that she couldn’t help it. To think it hurt like this, hurt like this… She cried like a baby, to think it hurt like this… hurting so much, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She twisted at her skirt, putting her head on the cold basin. It hurt like this… coming from her organs, so painful she felt hopeless. She sobbed and shrunk herself up, curled up beside the basin. It was very cold and she was shivering, but there was nothing she could do but cry. She made a mistake, so wrong, she didn’t know it would hurt so badly. But even though she knew now, there was no other way. She wrapped herself tighter, only hoping she could disappear from this world or forever forget Shao Zhenrong. But once she thought of him, her chest felt tight and she couldn’t breathe. It hurt like so. The moment she thought of him, it hurt like that.