Five-year agreement
At 2:17 a.m., the dormitory lights had long been off.
Xu Ying curled up in the chair, her knees pressed against her chest, as if trying to curl herself into a tiny ball. The blue light from the computer screen reflected on her face, stretching the shadows of her eyelashes long. The video call window was stuck in buffering mode, Zong Heng's face frozen on a blurry pixel, his lips slightly parted, his brows slightly furrowed, as if the pause button had been pressed.
"...Can...you...hear...?" His voice was broken and intermittent, like fallen leaves scattered by the wind.
"I can hear you," she answered instinctively, her voice so soft it was almost inaudible.
Zong Heng on the screen seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, a weary smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. The office behind him was brightly lit, and outside the floor-to-ceiling windows was the California nightscape, with the city lights in the distance resembling scattered stars. His tie hung loosely around his neck, and his suit jacket was casually draped over the back of his chair—an outfit that Xu Ying found unfamiliar.
It's been three months since we last met. No, to be precise, it's three months and seventeen days.
"Today..." she began, her voice suddenly choked. Clearing her throat, she forced herself to continue, "The cherry blossoms at school bloomed today, just like in high school."
Zong Heng's gaze softened for a moment, but was quickly interrupted by a burst of static. The video froze again, and his mouth seemed to be saying "What?", but the sound completely disappeared.
Xu Ying stared at the blurry image on the screen and suddenly felt a wave of suffocation. This pixelated Zong Heng, this Zong Heng separated by a twelve-hour time difference, this Zong Heng being torn apart bit by bit by work, family, and distance—was he still the boy who would shield her from all collisions on the basketball court?
"Zong Heng," her fingers unconsciously fiddled with the edge of the keyboard, "I..."
A sudden, piercing crackle of electricity rang out, and the screen froze completely. Xu Ying sat bolt upright, her fingers hovering over the keyboard, completely bewildered.
Three seconds. Five seconds. Ten seconds.
The screen suddenly returned to normal, and Zong Heng's face appeared clearly in the picture, his brows furrowed.
"What did you just say? The signal is terrible." His voice was visibly tired, and his eyes were dark and swollen.
Xu Ying opened her mouth, but found that she couldn't make a sound. Her throat felt blocked, sore and painful.
"Xu Ying?" Zong Heng leaned closer to the camera, his face magnified on the screen, and she could clearly see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes—those had only appeared in the last six months.
"I..." she finally managed to utter, but found her voice trembling with tears, "Zong Heng, I can't hold on much longer."
These words were like a knife, piercing between the two of them. Zong Heng on the other end of the screen froze, his pupils dilated slightly, and his lips pressed into a straight line.
There was a sudden knock on the office door, and a male voice spoke in English, saying something about "meeting" and "urgent." Zong Heng didn't turn around; he just stared intently at the camera, as if trying to grab her through the screen.
"Five minutes," he said to the person behind him without turning his head, his voice as cold as ice.
Looking at all this, Xu Ying suddenly felt it was utterly absurd. This was their love—forever fragmented, forever forced to yield to other things.
"I'll be able to go back to China next month—" Zong Heng said eagerly.
"And then?" she interrupted him, her voice trembling. "Stay for two days before leaving? Or get called back in the middle of the night like last time?"
She remembered the last time they met. Zong Heng received a call at three in the morning and had to rush back to the airport. He kissed her forehead as he left and said, "See you soon," but that was four months ago.
A tear fell onto the keyboard, making a soft "plop" sound.
Zong Heng's breathing became heavy. He loosened his tie as if he were suffocating from the fabric. Xu Ying had never seen him like this before—like a trapped beast, locked in a cage called responsibility.
"Xu Ying," he said, almost through gritted teeth, "don't do this."
Don't do what? Don't cry? Don't complain? Don't... need him?
Rain began to fall outside the window, the raindrops tapping against the glass like some kind of countdown. Xu Ying looked at Zong Heng on the screen and suddenly felt that what separated them was not the Pacific Ocean, but an entire world.
"Do you remember our first date?" she asked suddenly, her voice as soft as a dream.
Zong Heng paused for a moment, then his brow relaxed slightly. "Of course I remember. You were wearing that blue dress, and you were so nervous you spilled ice cream on my shirt."
"Then you deliberately spilled the Coke, saying it was revenge." Xu Ying laughed, but her tears flowed even more fiercely. "Those were such simple times."
On the other end of the screen, Zong Heng's expression became complicated. He reached out and touched the screen, as if trying to wipe away her tears.
"Xu Ying, I..."
The video froze again, Zong Heng's silhouette shattering in the pixelated frame, his voice cut off by static: "Xu Ying... listen to me... the board of directors..."
She stared at his frozen, furrowed expression on the screen and suddenly noticed that he had just gotten a new ear piercing in his left ear—it was a promise they made in their senior year of high school to wear matching earrings together. Now his earlobe was bare, with only a small, almost healed hole remaining.
"You got a haircut." She reached out and touched the cold screen. Last week during the video call, he still had some wispy hair on his forehead, but now it was all combed back into a sharp style, revealing the scar from the fight.
Zong Heng seemed not to hear, and was turning his head to speak rapidly in English with someone. Several figures in suits flashed past outside the office's glass wall, and someone tapped their clock face with their fingers.
"Give me thirty seconds," he said, covering the microphone, his eyes reddening as he turned back to the screen. "Where were we?"
The sound of rain suddenly intensified. The window behind Xu Ying wasn't closed tightly, and a wisp of damp air seeped in. She watched the rainwater meandering on the glass on his side, and then realized that she was the one crying.
"Tell me why you haven't replied to my emails for three weeks straight," she said, pulling a strand of hair from the back of her neck. "Tell me why a woman answered the phone on my birthday."
Suddenly, Zong Heng approached the camera in the video, and the leather chair behind him overturned.
"That's my cousin! Her phone's dead—"
"I know," Xu Ying interrupted him. "Your father had his secretary send me the complete surveillance video, along with an invitation to your family dinner."
Zong Heng's pupils contracted sharply. Xu Ying was very familiar with this expression; back in their second year of high school, when someone spread rumors that she had cheated, he had clenched his fists like this at the back door of the classroom.
The laptop suddenly emitted a high-temperature warning, and the fan spun wildly. Xu Ying stared at the flashing icon in the taskbar—Zong Heng's assistant had sent three more urgent emails, all with the subject "URGENT".
"Turn it off," she said softly.
"What?"
"Turn off your work email, right now."
Zong Heng's hands hovered over the keyboard, veins bulging. Five seconds later, he abruptly slammed the other two monitors shut.
Silence spread between the two. Xu Ying could hear the ticking of the second hand on his wristwatch, a Patek Philippe that his father had given him for his eighteenth birthday.
"I passed by the high school last week," she suddenly said. "The cypress tree on the playground has been cut down."
Zong Heng's breath hitched for a moment. Their first kiss was behind that tree; he pressed her against the rough bark, his school uniform jacket stained with the fresh, resinous scent of youth.
"The equipment room was locked too," she continued, "but I climbed in through the window and found..."
"What did you find?" His voice was terribly hoarse.
"The words we carved are still there." She finally looked at the camera, "'Zong Heng and Xu Ying for a lifetime,' the 'one' character you carved was very deep."
Zong Heng's knuckles cracked. There was a knock on the door behind him, and a woman's voice said respectfully, "Mr. Zong, your father is waiting for you on the 27th floor."
Xu Ying saw his jawline taut like a blade. The next second, he grabbed a mug and smashed it against the door; the ceramic shattered against the bulletproof glass.
"Get out!"
The screen vibrated slightly at the roar. Xu Ying instinctively leaned back, her lower back hitting the desk—the starry night lamp he had given her in her senior year of high school was still there, long since out of use.
"Listen," Zong Heng loosened his tie and hid it behind his shirt buttons, "Give me five more years."
Xu Ying's fingernails dug into her palm.
He said the same line last year, "three years," and the year before, "two years."
"Do you know what I look like now?" She suddenly turned on her phone's front-facing camera and pointed it at herself. "Dark circles under my eyes, hair loss, I fainted in the bathroom yesterday..."
Zong Heng's pupils contracted sharply. He saw the IV mark on her wrist from the hospital, next to a crescent-shaped scar—it was from when she had surgery in her sophomore year, and he couldn't make it back to sign the consent form.
"Your dad's right," she chuckled, "We're not even in the same world anymore."
The screen suddenly went completely black. Three seconds later, Zong Heng sent a text message:
"The computer is out of battery. Answer the phone."
The phone rang sharply in the rainy night. Xu Ying pressed the answer button and heard his heavy breathing mixed with the elevator's descent.
"I'm going to get into the elevator, the signal will drop." He spoke quickly, "Remember three things..."
The piercing sound of electricity drowned out the second half of the sentence.
Xu Ying clutched her scalding phone, hearing the last half of the sentence, fragmented and disjointed:
"...Waiting for you to wear it..."
Ten minutes later, the phone lit up:
[ZH: Do you remember our promise?]
[ZH: Within five years, I'll make sure that old man can no longer control me.]
[ZH: I'll give you whatever you want then.]
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, trembling.
[XY: What if you've changed in five years?]
[ZH: Then come find me and beat me up, like that time in my second year of high school.]
She remembered their first argument, when she angrily threw a physics book at him, but he just laughed and grabbed her wrist: "Xu Ying, you look really cool when you're angry."
Memories were like knives; she curled up and typed: "Five years from now, if you don't come, I really won't want you anymore."
Zong Heng's reply arrived almost instantly:
[ZH: You dare.]
Xu Ying stood in front of the mirror, her fingertips gently touching the silver necklace on her collarbone.
She slowly took it off; the metal was slightly cool and gleamed coldly in the morning light.
"If you don't come five years from now, I really won't want you anymore."
The words she sent last night were like a knife, severing their last escape route.
The drawer was pulled open, and inside lay a stack of yellowed train tickets, a few movie ticket stubs, and a dried-out box of strawberry-flavored lip balm—all traces left by Zong Heng.
She put the necklace in, her fingertips inadvertently touching a folded piece of paper.
Unfolding it revealed a small note he had written to her during their second year of high school, the handwriting wild and messy:
"Xu Ying, I'm doomed for you in this lifetime."
She slammed the drawer shut, the metallic clanging sound crisp and resolute, as if locking away her youth.
The phone vibrated on the table, and the screen lit up – “ZH”.
She stared at the name, her finger hovering in mid-air, hesitant to press the answer button.
The third vibration.
She finally picked up her phone, but the ringtone stopped abruptly just before her fingertips touched the screen.
The room was eerily quiet, with only the sound of her own breathing.
Three minutes later, a text message popped up:
"Xu Ying, I love you."
She stared at those six words, then suddenly burst out laughing, but tears streamed down her face onto the screen.
What's this?
Does he slap her and then give her a treat? Or does he think that as long as he says he loves her, she will continue to wait endlessly?
She gripped her phone tightly, her knuckles turning white, but in the end she simply placed it gently back on the table.
Outside the window, the rain had stopped, and sunlight streamed through the glass, falling on the suitcase she had packed the night before.
The wardrobe door was opened, and Xu Ying reached out and took off the dark gray cashmere scarf.
This was left behind by Zong Heng when he returned to China last winter.
It was snowing in Beijing that day, and he rushed over to see her, but was overwhelmed by a phone call from his father at the airport.
"I have to leave tonight," he said, his voice hoarse as he pulled her into his coat.
She didn't speak, but buried her face in his scarf and took a deep breath—the scent of cedar mixed with a faint tobacco was his unique aroma.
"Here, take this." He pulled off his scarf and wrapped it around her neck. "I'll come back next time."
But he didn't do it again.
After that, he was sent to Europe, and in the ten months that followed, they only had three video calls.
Xu Ying brought the scarf close to her nose; the familiar scent of cedarwood had long since faded, leaving only the smell of detergent.
She folded it gently and put it at the bottom of the drawer.
"Zong Heng, you'd better keep your word."
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