Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Ever since I was little, my aunt said I was cold-blooded, that my heart was as cold as my father’s.

I couldn’t deny it. She was right.

Before I was born, my parents had gone through a clingy, passionately in-love phase. That was why they named me Qingqing, from the phrase qingqing wu ai-my beloved-an expression of the love between them.

But love came quickly, and it left just as quickly. Within a few years, my father began cheating constantly, staying out all night. My mother fought with him and made scenes, but none of it changed anything.

When I was seven, my father became completely infatuated with a woman. She showed up at our door with her pregnant belly on display, deliberately flaunting herself in front of my mother.

My mother’s heart turned to ash. One late night, she swallowed poison and killed herself.

At the funeral, my father didn’t shed a single tear. Then he couldn’t wait to run off with his mistress, leaving his young daughter with my uncle’s family.

For the first two years, he still sent back a little money for my living expenses. After that, there was no news of him at all.

My uncle and aunt didn’t exactly mistreat me, but living under someone else’s roof was never easy. I became more and more silent.

When it was time for the college entrance exam, I chose a teachers’ college close to home because it offered tuition subsidies. I didn’t want to hold out my hand and ask my aunt and the others for money.

After I started working, I usually kept to myself after hours, too. My colleagues often tried to introduce me to potential partners, but I turned them all down. Behind my back, they said I was too withdrawn, but I didn’t care.

I knew that a relationship with no future had to be strangled in its cradle.

So I stopped replying to anything Gu Shi’an wrote.

New handwriting still appeared in the diary every day. Out of habit, I would open it and take a look. Most of it was about his daily life.

[Qingqing, why won’t you reply to me? Have you been very busy lately? The teachers at my school are all very busy too.]

[Shen Qingqing, I didn’t mean anything else by that line of poetry. Don’t feel burdened by it.]

[Year Seventeen of the Republic of China, July. My middle school days are about to end. Looking at that nagging old man I see every day, I actually feel a little reluctant to part with him.]

[My father says the uprisings everywhere have made things too chaotic, and he wants me to go abroad to study. But I don’t want to go. I want to take Tongji’s entrance exam.]

[Qingqing! I have wonderful news to tell you. I passed Tongji’s entrance exam! When my father heard, he could hardly believe it. He said our ancestors’ graves must be smoking with good fortune.]

[Qingqing, university life really is different. This place is full of new ideas, and I’ve made a group of new friends too.]

[Qingqing, have you forgotten me?]

…

I only looked on. So many times, I wanted to reply, but I held myself back.

The tone between his lines grew more and more mature. He was no longer the same spoiled young dandy as before.

I was relieved to see Gu Shi’an becoming better and better. Once he got to university and met more people his own age, once he encountered outstanding female classmates, he would realize that this vague, budding feeling was nothing much.

At first, the handwriting appeared frequently. Later, it showed up less and less often.

Maybe it was just as I had thought. Once his real life became full, he had already started to forget me.

Several days had passed without any new words appearing. In the past, even when I didn’t reply, he would keep recording things in the diary as usual.

I started to panic a little, afraid something had happened to him. After all, his side was living through a time of chaos.

I turned to a new page, torn over whether I should put pen to paper.

As I hesitated, the tip of the pen accidentally dragged a mark across the page.

I quickly lifted my hand. But it was such a tiny stroke. Gu Shi’an probably wouldn’t notice.

Just as I was thinking that, a sentence suddenly surfaced on the page.

[Shen Qingqing, you really have a cruel heart. You’re finally willing to pay attention to me.]

Me: [?]