Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The first time I met Lin Wan, I didn’t give her a second thought.

On the day of university registration, the entire lecture hall was a chaotic mess. Guys were busy joining clubs, girls were busy exchanging WeChat contacts, and I was sitting by the window playing games when someone lightly tapped the corner of my desk.

I looked up and saw a girl with her hair in a low ponytail.

She wasn’t stunning, but she was fair-skinned, slender, and had quiet eyes. She was holding a stack of textbooks in her arms.

“Excuse me, you dropped your student ID.”

I took it from her and muttered a quick thanks.

She nodded and walked away.

Chen Xubai, who was sitting next to me, craned his neck to take a look. “That girl’s not bad. Very clean and elegant.”

I let out a short laugh. “If you like her, go for it.”

I later learned that her name was Lin Wan. We shared the same major. She had good grades and was well-liked, but she never sought the spotlight. She always appeared in just the right place-never loud, yet never retreating.

When I didn’t do my homework, she would lend me her notes.

When I skipped too many classes and got called out by the professor, she would send me a private copy of the key points in our WeChat group.

Once, I sprained my ankle playing basketball. She shoved some medicine from the campus clinic and an ice pack into my arms, saying, “You have another game tomorrow. Remember to ice it.”

At the time, I asked her with a smile, “How do you remember everything?”

She froze for two seconds before smiling back.

“Maybe I just have a good memory.”

It wasn’t that she had a good memory.

It was just that she remembered everything related to me.

Her diary read:

“Today was the first time he called me by my name on his own initiative.

Just two words: Lin Wan.

But after I got back to the dorm, I was still secretly happy for a long time. Tang Yutang said I’m hopeless. I thought about it, and she’s right. I really am hopeless.”

I leaned against the half-unpacked cardboard boxes, feeling my eyes sting.

I had always thought Lin Wan was good to me because she was simply the kind of person who was good to everyone.

Now I know that wasn’t it.

She just kept her favoritism so quiet-so quiet that I took it for granted, assuming it was just how she was supposed to act.

I truly began to rely on Lin Wan during my sophomore year, after I broke up with Pei Shuwen.

Pei Shuwen was the acknowledged beauty of our department-bold, gorgeous, and everyone said we were a perfect match when we stood together. We dated for nearly a year, and our arguments were just as flamboyant as our romance. Later, she went abroad for an exchange program. Before she left, she broke up with me at the back gate of the university.

She said, “Shen Du, I don’t want to waste any more time on you.”

It was pouring rain that day.

I stood by the roadside, soaked to the bone like a drowned rat. My phone rang over and over, but I didn’t answer a single call. Around ten that night, Lin Wan found me in a barbecue shop near the school entrance that was about to close.

She didn’t ask anything. She just placed a cup of hot water by my hand and sat with me.

I drank a lot of alcohol-so much that my stomach eventually churned and my mind turned to mush. I remember grabbing her wrist and asking the same question repeatedly.

“Why doesn’t she want me?”

Lin Wan kept her head down. Her fingers turned white from my grip, yet she didn’t pull away.

She said, “That’s her business. It’s not your fault.”

I sneered. “You don’t understand.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t understand.”

But that night, she sat with me until three in the morning. She then walked me back to my dorm and waited downstairs until Chen Xubai came down to get me before she finally turned to leave.

The next day when I woke up, there was a hangover soup on my desk with a sticky note tucked under the thermos.

“Don’t take painkillers on an empty stomach.”

I sent her a message: “Thanks for last night. You’re still the most sensible one.”

She replied with a smiley face.

But in the diary, she wrote:

“When he was drunk, he mistook me for someone else.

Actually, I felt a little sad at that moment.

But when he grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go, my heart still softened. It seems that when you like someone, you really do swallow your grievances automatically.”

I stared at those lines, feeling an indescribable sense of shame for the first time.

It turned out that what I had considered trust, reliance, and preference back then wasn’t a reward for her.

It was a slow death by a thousand cuts.