Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Song Qi did not look at me even once when he deleted me from WeChat.
An eerie silence settled over the private dining room.
Everyone wore a complicated expression, glancing at me every now and then.
Ruan Zhiyao’s sobs gradually softened.
“Y-you really don’t like her at all?”
Song Qi wiped her tears and gave a quiet laugh.
“What are you talking about?”
“I told you. It was all an act.”
“Then why did you send her ‘I love you’ so many times?”
“Weren’t you only together for three months?”
Song Qi paused so slightly that almost no one would have noticed.
His voice turned flat.
“I was drunk.”
“I don’t remember much.”
At last, Ruan Zhiyao was placated.
The gathering that night was our class president’s birthday party.
The atmosphere never recovered. Everyone held out until the cake was cut, then fled with hastily invented excuses, visibly relieved to leave.
The restaurant was not far from my apartment, so I walked home.
All the way there, I thought about those 972 messages.
Two had been sent soon after Song Qi and I started dating.
The other 970 had all come on the same day.
The night he got drunk.
Back then, I had not known he was only with me because of a bet.
A bet between him and Ruan Zhiyao.
They had grown up together. Song Qi had always liked her and had confessed to her more than once.
But Ruan Zhiyao thought his face attracted too much attention.
She said dating him would make her feel insecure.
So six months earlier, when Song Qi confessed yet again, she had casually pointed to the least noticeable girl in our class.
Me.
“Would you date someone—anyone—for three months for my sake?” she had asked him. “You’re not allowed to fall for her, and the moment the three months are up, you have to break it off.”
“If you can do that, I’ll say yes to you.”
By the night Song Qi got drunk, he and I had already been together for more than two months.
One of his friends had been scrolling through videos at dinner when he scoffed.
“Who still believes this stuff?”
“Look at this. It says if you text the person you like ‘I love you’ 999 times in fifteen minutes, you’ll end up together.”
Song Qi squeezed my palm and took another drink, looking as though he could not have cared less.
But once we left the restaurant, he crouched alone by the roadside.
His fingers flew across the screen.
No one could drag him to his feet.
One “I love you” after another popped up on my phone.
Exasperated, I crouched beside him and tried to coax him home.
“Can we go now?”
“The temperature’s dropping tonight. You’ll catch a cold if you stay out in this wind.”
“Why do you believe something so childish?”
“We’re already together.”
The bright green glow of the screen washed over his face.
He looked utterly focused. His fingers never stopped.
“Sang Yu, I’ll send all 999 in fifteen minutes.”
“Then the bet is off, and we’ll be together for real. Okay?”
I was about to ask what bet he meant when a voice sounded behind us.
“What are you all doing here?”
For more than ten minutes, no one had managed to stop Song Qi.
Yet the instant that girl spoke, the next “I love you” died in his message box, unsent.
Ruan Zhiyao came closer, her gaze moving between Song Qi and me.
“Qi’s making a drunken scene,” one of the boys said.
“None of us can talk him out of it.”
“Good thing you’re here. You two grew up together—why don’t you try?”
Song Qi erased the words from the text box and turned off his phone.
The light reflected in his eyes went dark with it.
He rose, lowering his lashes.
“I’m sober now.”
Then, without drawing attention to it, he avoided the arm I was about to slip through his.
“Let’s go,” he murmured.
“I’ll take you home.”
After that night, he never mentioned the other 970 declarations.
It was as if they had never happened.
Another two weeks passed.
On my birthday, Song Qi broke up with me and told me the truth about the bet.
I slapped him.
His expression did not change.
With the face of an unrepentant bastard, he said coolly, “Hit me until you’re satisfied. Then we’re even.”