scar

Luo Yan was organizing newly arrived sports magazines at the bookstore when her fingertips brushed across the cover of "Tennis World," and she paused. The athlete on the cover was leaping and smashing a shot, sunlight dancing on his sweat-dampened hair.

She put the magazine back on the bookshelf, but the little warmth that had just begun to emerge in her heart was quickly swept away by the howling cold wind outside the window.

He said, "I'll volunteer," and that awkward smile lingered in her mind. She even found some materials on youth tennis instruction, thinking it might be helpful, but she hesitated to send them to him.

The wind chimes in the bookstore suddenly rang, their clear sound carrying a hint of urgency. Luo Yan looked up.

It is a prayer for prosperity.

He was wearing a gray down jacket, zipped all the way up. His eye sockets were somewhat sunken, and there were faint dark circles under his eyes, as if he had been staying up for several nights in a row.

He walked straight to the sports theory section, his fingertips sliding across the bookshelves, finally stopping in front of several books on tennis tactics analysis, pulling one out and flipping through it.

Luo Yan carried over the freshly brewed hot water, her steps very light. "Senior."

Qi Sheng turned his head and, upon seeing her, a flicker of surprise crossed his tired eyes, quickly turning into a faint smile. "Are you busy?"

"It's alright." Luo Yan handed him the water glass, her fingertips touching the back of his hand, which was icy cold. "Are you looking at a tactics book?"

“Hmm,” he said, taking the water glass and unconsciously rubbing the glass with his fingertips. “The children in the charity competition have varying skill levels, so I’m looking for training methods suitable for beginners.”

"Do you need me to find some programming-related materials for you? Like a simple motion analysis program?" Luo Yan regretted her words as soon as she finished speaking, afraid that being too proactive would make him back down.

But Qi Sheng didn't shy away from the question; instead, he thought about it seriously: "Wouldn't that be too much trouble?"

“No trouble at all,” Luo Yan said quickly. “I happen to be learning image recognition, which might come in handy.”

He looked at her, his smile deepening, like the surface of a lake after the first thaw of snow: "Thank you for your trouble."

Just then, the bookstore door was suddenly pushed open, and the wind chimes made a jarring clanging sound. A cold wind, carrying snowflakes, rushed in, rustling the pages of the books on the shelves.

A woman in a beige coat stood at the door, her hair slightly disheveled by the wind, her exquisite makeup unable to conceal the weariness and sharpness in her eyes. Her gaze swept across the bookstore like radar, finally landing precisely on Qi Sheng, her voice trembling with barely suppressed emotion: "Qi Sheng."

These two words, like an ice-cold awl, instantly pierced the air that had just eased in the bookstore.

Qi Sheng's fingers tightened around the water glass, his knuckles turning white. He slowly turned around, the smile on his face vanishing instantly, leaving only an icy coldness. "Su Yu, what brings you here?"

“Why can’t I come?” She took two steps forward, her high heels clicking on the floor like tapping on something. Her gaze swept over the book in Qi Sheng’s hands, then fell on Luo Yan, filled with undisguised scrutiny and hostility. Finally, she turned back to Qi Sheng, a mocking smile playing on her lips. “If I hadn’t come, would I have just watched you play the role of an enthusiastic senior, pretending to be serene while looking at a tennis book?”

Luo Yan subconsciously took a half step back. Looking at the person before her, at the flame of pain and anger burning in her eyes, she instantly understood—this was the one who had made him put away his tennis cap and give up tennis. The one who had etched a deep scar on her heart.

Qi Sheng's voice was as cold as a winter lake, without a ripple: "What I do is none of your business."

"None of my business?" Su Yu suddenly raised his voice, took out a long, cloth-wrapped object from his bag, and slammed it hard on the cashier counter next to him. The cloth unfurled, revealing what was inside—a tennis racket.

The frame was somewhat worn, but the strings were well-maintained, showing how much its owner had once cherished it. It struck the hard table with a dull thud, causing the pen holder next to it to fall over, pens rolling all over the floor.

Luo Yan's breath hitched as she noticed Qi Sheng's pupils suddenly contract, as if he had been burned by the racket, and he abruptly looked away.

“You say it has nothing to do with me,” she pointed at the racket, her voice trembling with tears, yet each word sharp as a knife, “What about this? Do you dare say it has nothing to do with you? Do you dare say you’ve forgotten how we used to fight side by side on the court, holding the same rackets!”

Qi Sheng pressed his fingertips against the bookshelf behind him, his fingertips turning white from the pressure, but he didn't take another step back. His lips were pressed into a tight line, his Adam's apple bobbing silently, and only his heavy breathing echoed in the quiet bookstore, as if he was trying his best to suppress his surging emotions.

“You don’t dare,” Su Yu pressed on, her gaze like a knife piercing him, “You don’t even dare to look at it! Weren’t you very proud back then? Didn’t you say tennis was your life? Didn’t you say that if I gave up, I would be a coward? So why are you hiding now?”

She grabbed the racket and forcefully shoved it into Qi Sheng's hand. Qi Sheng tried to pull away as if electrocuted, but she held his wrist firmly. Su Yu's nails almost dug into his flesh, her voice filled with an almost frantic obsession: "Pick it up! Swing it like you used to, show me! You're too scared? You're afraid that if you pick it up, you'll remember how you gave up your provincial team spot after I left, remember..."

Qi Sheng abruptly closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the red veins in his eyes spread like a spider web. However, he did not roar, but his voice was hoarse as if it had been sanded, with a cold and hard restraint: "Stop talking."

"I'm going to say it anyway!" Tears streamed down her face. "We organized a camping trip for the weekend, and we agreed to watch the stars together, but you said you had to practice your backhand; I finally managed to get two tickets to my favorite band's concert, but you said we had to go into closed training before the provincial competition; I said I wanted to go to an exhibition in a neighboring city after the exam, but you said the team had added a competition..." Her voice choked up. "Qi Sheng, all my invitations are less important to you than a regular training session."

Qi Sheng stood rooted to the spot, his back ramrod straight, only the force of his fingertips digging into his palms betraying his suppressed emotions. Books from the top shelf clattered down, landing at his feet, but he didn't even lift an eyelid. He looked at the tearful person before him, his eyes churning with pain and the humiliation of being exposed, yet he gritted his teeth, refusing to show a trace of vulnerability, like a stone frozen solid by ice and snow.

He remained silent, his jawline tightening, his fingertips digging into his palms so hard they almost drew blood, yet he uttered not a single word. The memories of being accused surged up like a tide, choking him and making his throat constrict, even breathing a dull ache.

"You're too lazy to even defend yourself?" Su Yu said, her voice filled with endless sorrow as she saw his silence. "When I said I wouldn't play tennis back then, it wasn't because I was tired. It was because I suddenly realized that tennis would always be your top priority, and I was always just an option."

She bent down to pick up the tennis racket from the ground, gently stroking the worn frame with her fingers, her movements carrying an almost cruel tenderness: "I saw the poster that you're going to volunteer for a charity tennis tournament. I was thinking, are you going to reject the warmth of everyone around you again for the sake of tennis?"

Qi Sheng's lips were tightly pressed together, his jawline taut like a string. His gaze fell on the tennis racket, those deliberately sealed memories piercing his heart like icicles, yet they didn't make him retreat an inch. His eyes grew colder and colder, like the surface of a lake frozen by the cold wind.

Su Yu smiled, a smile tinged with self-mockery, "You still can't face it."

She tossed the tennis racket into Qi Sheng's arms and turned to leave. "Here's your racket back. You can keep your tennis ball."

The bookstore door was slammed shut behind them with a loud bang.

Qi Sheng gripped the tennis racket tightly in his hand, his knuckles turning white from the force. The anti-slip tape on the handle was worn out, its edges digging painfully into his palms, as if reminding him of his indelible past. He stood before a messy bookshelf, his eyes vacant like two bottomless wells, churning with despair but frozen by a thick layer of ice, leaving only a deathly cold surface.

Luo Yan stood there, her body ice-cold. She looked at Qi Sheng's straight back, at the tennis racket in his hand that felt like a branding iron, at the books scattered on the ground, and at the icy pain in his eyes. Her heart felt like it was being squeezed tightly by something, and she could hardly breathe from the pain.

The scars in his heart were never just one, but a dense, layered mass. Su Yu's appearance didn't just reopen those scars, but ripped open his scabbed skin, revealing the still-bleeding flesh beneath, which he chose to encase himself in an even harder shell of ice.

After a very long time, Qi Sheng slowly turned his head and looked directly at Luo Yan.

The gentleness and restraint he once held in his eyes were gone, replaced by a desolate stillness and an almost numb indifference. "You saw it."

Luo Yan opened her mouth, wanting to say something, wanting to tell him that what she saw was not like that, wanting to tell him that everyone has a past and flaws.

But Qi Sheng spoke first, his voice eerily calm, like the stillness of the sea after a storm: "This is me. A selfish and cowardly person." He raised his tennis racket as if holding up evidence of a crime.

Luo Yan's tears fell, her voice trembling with sobs, "You're not like this, senior..."

“I should go,” Qi Sheng interrupted her, his gaze shifting from her face to the swirling snow outside the window. His voice was as soft as a sigh, yet carried an undeniable resolve. “Luo Yan, your world is so pure; it shouldn’t be tainted by my messy affairs.”

"I'm sorry, I won't be going to the charity match. Please don't contact me again recently."

After saying that, he picked up the book that had fallen to the ground, carefully placed it back on the bookshelf, and without glancing at Luo Yan again, turned and walked out. As he passed by her, his shoulder accidentally bumped into her, the force light, but carrying an undeniable resolve.

Luo Yan watched his figure disappear into the wind and snow. The person who had just given her a faint smile, the person who said he wanted to try picking up a racket again, was completely swept away by the giant wave of the past.

The bookstore was a mess, his fingerprints still lingering on the scattered pages, the air thick with the mingled scent of old books and tears. Luo Yan crouched down, slowly picking up the pen from the floor, her fingertips icy cold.

That afternoon, the snow fell heavier and heavier, as if trying to bury the whole world. Luo Yan messaged Qi Sheng many times, asking him "Are you okay?", but all her messages went unanswered. In the evening, she finally couldn't resist anymore. She wrapped her down jacket tighter around herself and trudged through the ankle-deep snow towards the graduate student dormitory of the sports academy.

She didn't know what she could do. Perhaps she just wanted to make sure he was alright, or perhaps subconsciously she felt that she couldn't let him bear all of this alone.

The sports academy's dormitory building was located at the northernmost part of the campus, far from where Luo Yan lived. She walked for a long time before she saw the solitary gray building. Few lights were on inside the dormitory building, making it look like a silent tombstone in the vast white snow.

She stood downstairs for a long time, snowflakes covering her hair and shoulders, making her teeth chatter from the cold. Just as she was about to freeze, she saw a familiar figure emerge from the building.

It is a prayer for prosperity.

He wasn't wearing a hat, a thin layer of ice formed on his hair, and his face was even paler than it had been in the bookstore. He held a can of beer in one hand and a tennis racket tightly in the other. His steps were steady, but his eyes were frighteningly empty, like a puppet whose soul had been ripped out.

"Senior!" Luo Yan couldn't help but call out to him, her voice trembling in the wind and snow.

Qi Sheng turned his head and saw her, his eyes showing no emotion. "Why are you here?"

Luo Yan walked up to him, looked at his red eyes, and felt a pang of sadness in her heart. "I was worried about you."

"Worried about me..." Qi Sheng looked down at the beer and tennis racket in his hand, and chuckled softly, a kind of indescribable sadness in his laughter, "Worried that I'll use this racket to smash the wall, or worried that I'll get completely drunk?"

His words pierced Luo Yan's heart like an icicle: "That's not what I meant..."

“What does that mean?” Qi Sheng raised his head, looking directly at her with weariness and indifference in his eyes. “Luo Yan, these things in my heart have become one with me.”

He held up the tennis racket, snow falling from the frame: "This is my scar. If you get close, you'll only catch it and become like me."

Luo Yan cried and said, "I never thought that way! I just... didn't want to see you like this..."

"That's enough." Qi Sheng's voice suddenly dropped, hoarse with exhaustion, interrupting her. "I'm sorry I had to break my promise regarding the charity match." He paused. "Don't worry about me. Move on, live your own life, and don't look back."

He turned and walked away quickly, as if fleeing something. The tennis racket swayed in his hand, the strings cutting through the cold wind with a whistling sound, like it was crying.

Luo Yan stood there, watching his figure disappear into the depths of the snowstorm, tears blurring her vision. The cold wind rushed into her collar, making her shiver, but it couldn't compare to the chill in her heart—the despair of watching someone sink into the abyss helplessly.

Su Yu's appearance not only reopened his wounds but also dragged him back into that past filled with arguments and pain. The glimmer of hope he had just ignited for tennis, and the little bit of reconciliation they had painstakingly built up, were all completely crushed in this storm.

That night, Luo Yan didn't sleep a wink. She sat at her desk, watching the snow fall and stop outside the window, feeling empty inside, as if a piece of her heart had been ripped out. She remembered Qi Sheng's smile when he said "Thank you for your trouble" in the bookstore, his trembling fingers as he held the tennis racket, and the resolute determination in his final words, "Don't look back," and tears streamed down her face.

After that day, Luo Yan ran into him a few times on campus, seeing that familiar figure from afar, but she didn't dare to approach. His thesis proposal was approved, and Luo Yan saw his name on the bulletin board of the School of Physical Education, but she didn't dare to send him a message to congratulate him.

As winter break was drawing to a close, Luo Yan received a message from Qi Sheng, consisting of only one simple sentence: "Keep moving forward, don't stop."

She stared at the message for a long time, her fingers hesitating on the screen for a long time, before finally replying with "OK".

The moment she pressed the send button, she seemed to hear something inside her shatter, a sound as light as snowflakes falling on ice, yet so heavy it made her breathless.