Chapter 34
The spring of senior year is fleeting.
With the college entrance examination approaching, academic pressure is becoming increasingly heavy.
Sang Sui buried himself in a sea of questions, like an ostrich trying to numb himself with busyness.
She forced herself to stop deliberately searching for that figure, to stop refreshing the Weibo account that would never be updated again, and even forced herself to stop clicking on that owl avatar.
Until that dull afternoon.
I just finished a mock exam, and my head is still foggy.
She squeezed onto the bus home, paid the fare, turned around, and her gaze habitually swept across the crowded carriage before, unexpectedly, fixing on the seat by the window.
Liang Fengshen.
She met him again on the bus.
In fact, she often ran into him, almost to the point of losing count. But each time, she would just watch his back from afar, without saying a word, quietly gazing at him.
He always arrived at the station before her.
Sang Sui watched him get on the bus, pay the fare, watch his back as he rode alone, watch him get off the bus, and then turn to look out the window until his gaze completely disappeared from her sight.
This was what she would do every time she went home and met him throughout her senior year of high school.
Sang Sui thought that they would have absolutely no interaction today.
But she still couldn't bring herself to not approach him.
Liang Fengshen is acting very strangely today.
He sat there alone, his head against the cold glass window, his eyes closed.
Outside the window, the city street scene flowed by, blurry. Sunlight filtered through the dust, forming beams of light in the air that fell on him, but could not illuminate the lingering, melancholy weariness between his brows.
He seemed to have lost a lot of weight, his jawline was more defined, and he looked like a taut bow, as if it would break at the slightest touch.
He looked very unhappy.
So the concern and heartache she had been forcibly suppressing surged up uncontrollably at this moment.
The bus swayed and wobbled as it moved forward.
Sang Sui gripped the strap of her schoolbag tightly, her nails digging into her flesh. Looking at his tightly pursed lips and slightly furrowed brows, an impulse overcame her shyness and the fear of being rejected by him.
She walked step by step through the crowded passengers to his seat.
He seemed to sense someone approaching; his eyelashes trembled slightly, but he didn't open them.
Sang Sui took a deep breath, as if using all his strength, and sat down in the empty seat next to him.
The seat was cramped, and she could even feel the faint warmth from his arm.
He finally opened his eyes and turned his head to look at her. There was a moment of confusion in his eyes, but then he regained his usual detached calm, devoid of emotion, simply looking at her.
Sang Sui's heart was pounding wildly in his chest, almost shattering his ribs.
She lowered her head, took her phone out of her pocket, unlocked the screen, opened the music app, and then handed one of the white earphones to him.
Their movements were clumsy, yet they carried a desperate, all-or-nothing courage.
Liang Fengshen looked at the earphones she handed him, then glanced at her flushed cheeks and trembling fingers. He didn't move, a faint, unfathomable complexity flashing across his eyes.
Silence spread between the two, broken only by the noise of the bus and the whispers of the surrounding passengers.
Sang Sui's courage was fading little by little. Just as she was about to despairingly withdraw her hand, she heard herself say in a weak, almost pleading voice:
"Can you... just treat me as a friend?"
She didn't ask for much.
I just wanted to show my concern for him as a friend.
That's all.
These words were as light as a sigh, yet they seemed to have exhausted all her dignity and remaining strength.
Liang Fengshen's gaze lingered on her face for a few seconds, and something seemed to soften there.
He finally reached out and took the earphone, his movements slow, his fingertips inevitably brushing against hers, carrying her slightly cool body temperature.
He put the earphones into his ears.
Sang Sui's heart, which had been hanging in suspense, suddenly sank, followed by a tremendous, almost exhausting, soreness.
She quickly put the other earphone into her ear and randomly selected a song from the playlist.
She couldn't hear what song it was anymore.
All I could hear was the deafening pounding of my own heart and the buzzing of my blood rushing through my ears.
She sat stiffly, not daring to turn her head to look at him, only staring at the constantly swaying handrail in front of her, feeling the real presence of the person beside her, and the familiar, faint scent of lime mixed with sunshine on him.
They sat side by side on the noisy bus, sharing the same incomprehensible song, neither of them saying a word.
Sunlight streamed through the car window, casting their shadows on the ground, which briefly overlapped, like a fleeting, untouchable dream.
This is probably the closest and the furthest distance between them.
After some time, the bus announcement came over the loudspeaker. Liang Fengshen moved, took off his earphones, and handed them back to her.
"Thank you." His voice remained low and calm.
He stood up, ready to get off the bus.
Just as he was about to step out of his seat, Sang Sui suddenly looked up at his back, mustered the last and all of her courage, and spoke in a low voice that clearly pierced through the noise of the carriage:
“Liang Fengshen,” she called to him, forcing a smile as he turned to look at her, even though her eyes were already uncontrollably reddening, “Cheer up.”
Liang Fengshen looked at her, a fleeting emotion flashing across his clear eyes, too fleeting for her to catch. He paused for a moment, then nodded slightly to her, his lips parting slightly as he uttered three words she never expected to hear:
"You too, Sang Sui."
After saying that, he turned around, got off the train, and joined the bustling crowd on the platform.
Sang Sui suddenly turned his head, pressed his face against the cold car window, and stared greedily and intently at the thin figure that was getting further and further away, until the bus turned the corner and he could no longer see it.
You too, Sang Sui.
She hadn't spoken to him in a long time, but he still remembered her name.
He wished her happiness too.
Tears finally welled up and streamed down her face, hot and wet. She quickly lowered her head and wiped them away forcefully with her sleeve.
My heart felt like a jumbled mess of emotions, a mixture of sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, and salty, making it impossible to tell whether it was a final solace or a deeper despair.
A few days later, Grandma's condition relapsed again, and Sang Sui took leave to rush back to her hometown of Rongcheng to take care of her.
During a break from her exhausting hospital visits, she inexplicably clicked on that Weibo side account again.
LFS's Weibo still only has that one post: "Happy Birthday, Mingying".
But this time, she noticed a detail she had previously overlooked—the location of the IP address of the client who posted the Weibo post was displayed below: Jiangcheng.
Jiangcheng? Sang Sui's heart sank. Her hands were almost trembling as she opened the webpage and typed in the name "Mingying".
Mingying now has a Baidu Baike (Baidu Encyclopedia) entry, but it's unclear who created it.
Search results show that Mingying's Baidu Baike entry clearly states "Jiangcheng" as her place of origin.
boom--
It was as if a thunderbolt had exploded in my mind.
Liang Fengshen went to Jiangcheng.
While she was overwhelmed with worry about her grandmother's illness and the college entrance examination, he went to Mingying's hometown.
All the speculation and uncertainty found their cruel answers at this moment.
During the time Mingying disappeared, he never gave up. He even searched for traces of that girl in ways she could never have imagined.
How could he like Mingying so much?
The last spring of senior year ended hastily amidst this unspoken, immense sense of loss.
The countdown clock showed "one hundred," and the 100-day countdown rally came to an end. Liang Fengshen did not attend the rally, and for a long time afterward, Sang Sui almost never saw Liang Fengshen at school again.
With only twenty days left until the college entrance examination, he still rarely leaves the school.
For more than two months, Liang Fengshen's seat was often empty, his profile picture never lit up again, and his social media profile had long since stopped updating.
He vanished as if he had evaporated from the face of the earth, completely disappearing from the world she depended on for survival, the world that included him.
Sang Sui felt something was off, and one day after school, he stopped Cheng Xiao.
“Cheng Xiao,” her voice was hoarse, “do you know…where did Liang Fengshen go? I haven’t seen him in a long time.”
Cheng Xiao looked at her, the usual playful smile on his face disappeared, and his eyes showed a hint of understanding and sympathy.
He scratched his head, his tone somewhat helpless: "Him... he's changed his old QQ and WeChat accounts. Now, I guess only Lao Song, me, and one or two of his closest friends can contact him."
Sang Sui's heart sank lower and lower. Clinging to her last glimmer of hope, she asked almost pleadingly, "Could you give me his new contact information?"
Looking at the humble expectation in her eyes, Cheng Xiao shook his head, his tone unusually serious and resolute: "No. Sang Sui, Liang Fengshen... he's preparing to sign with an agency. He'll become a trainee right after graduating high school. He won't give his contact information to any 'unrelated' people."
Trainee.
Unrelated people.
Sang Sui couldn't accept this fact for a moment: "How could this be? There was no warning beforehand."
“Actually, Liang Fengshen has been preparing for this for a long time. A year ago, shortly after Mingying dropped out of school, he was already preparing to enter the entertainment industry,” Cheng Xiao said. “I didn’t mean to hide it from you. It’s just that even I only found out these last two days. Liang Fengshen is like this; he doesn’t tell anyone before he’s done something. He works quietly on his own, and now that he’s almost successful, he’s only telling us…”
Cheng Xiao said something else after that, but Sang Sui couldn't hear it at all.
Only a few words remained in my mind—
Liang Fengshen will be signing with a company soon.
While she was trying to get closer to him, he was also trying to get closer to another girl.
Just when she thought she was getting closer to him, he had already silently walked further and further away.
Two weeks later, the news that Liang Fengshen had signed with a management company and was about to become a trainee spread like wildfire throughout the campus, becoming the most explosive news before the college entrance examination.
"Wow! Liang Fengshen is going to become a star?"
"No wonder I haven't seen him in so long!"
"With his looks and talent, he's bound to become famous!"
"From now on, you'll be a big star, someone from a different world than us..."
The surrounding area was filled with excited and envious chatter from classmates.
Sang Sui sat in her seat, looking at the bright, almost blinding sunlight outside the window, and felt that her world had shattered completely at that moment.
It shattered silently, completely and utterly.
She finally understood that the brief moment they walked side by side on the bus, and the words "You too, Sang Sui," were the final and only echo of this long unrequited love.
The bell for the college entrance examination had not yet rung, but her youth had already come to an end prematurely.
The boy who had captivated her throughout her adolescence embarked on a journey to the stars, to pursue the moon that his heart longed for.
She was left behind, without even a proper farewell, and was completely deprived of the right to silently watch his retreating figure.
She could no longer contact him.
Her affections ended there.
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