A promise shattered in the wind
Su Xiaoxiao's "asking for advice" has become a regular occurrence.
Every break between classes, she would come to find Li Zichen with her sheet music. Sometimes she would stand in the corridor, sometimes she would sit directly in an empty seat in our classroom. Her laughter was as clear as a wind chime, but it always seemed to reach my ears. Li Zichen was indeed "dutiful," patiently explaining things and occasionally glancing in my direction, as if to say, "Look, we really are just discussing something." But the frankness in her eyes was more unsettling than any explanation.
I started avoiding him.
I took a longer route home from school, pretended to sleep during self-study, and even made excuses to switch to another group for choir rehearsal. His messages piled up in the chat box, from "Today's questions were a bit difficult, I sent you the solutions" to "When are you going to stop making trouble?", and finally turned into a red exclamation mark—I blocked him.
That night, he stood downstairs at my house for a long time. The early winter wind swirled snowflakes, rustling against the windowpane. My mother told me to draw the curtains, but I stared at the blurry figure downstairs until one in the morning, when he finally stamped his feet and left, leaving a trail of deep footprints.
It felt like a piece of my heart had been hollowed out, and cold winds were howling inside. I knew I was being stubborn, but my pitiful pride wouldn't allow me to chase after them and ask, "Who do you choose?" like I used to.
During the weekend's arts festival rehearsal, I stood at the front as the lead singer, but my eyes kept glancing towards the side of the stage—Li Zichen and Su Xiaoxiao were huddled together looking at sheet music. His finger was pointing to a certain note, and her head was almost resting on his arm. The spotlight shone on my face, burning like fire, but my voice trembled uncontrollably.
"Shen Zhixia! You're off-key!" The conductor's angry roar came from below the stage. "You're in such bad shape, if you don't want to sing, get off the stage!"
All eyes were on me, some with pity, some with mockery, and Su Xiaoxiao cast a faint, almost imperceptible smile my way. I gripped the microphone tightly, my nails digging into my palms, my throat felt blocked, and I couldn't utter a single sound.
“Let her rest for a while,” Li Zichen’s voice suddenly rang out. He walked over from the side stage and naturally took the microphone from my hand. “I’ll take her to get some water.”
He grabbed my wrist and pulled me outside with a strong grip. I struggled to break free, but he held on even tighter. The backstage corridor was dark, and all we could hear in the darkness was our breathing.
"What exactly do you want?" He turned around, his voice filled with suppressed anger. "Just because of Su Xiaoxiao? I already said we're just friends!"
"Do friends really need to be this close?" I finally yelled, tears streaming down my face. "Li Zichen, you know what I care about! You just enjoy being surrounded by people, you don't care about my feelings at all!"
"I don't care?" He seemed to have been hit where it hurt, his voice suddenly rising, "When I waited for you downstairs until midnight, who didn't care? When I wrote out the explanations of the wrong questions for you three times, who didn't even look at them? Shen Zhixia, is your sense of security so cheap that you need to block me to prove it?"
"What about your promise?" I asked, my voice choked with emotion. "You said you'd only be good to me, you said..."
"I've said that countless times!" he interrupted me, his impatience piercing me like an icicle. "You keep harping on one thing, aren't you tired? How old are we? What are we talking about forever? Can't you be a little more mature?"
The word "mature" slapped me across the face like a blow.
It turns out he wasn't unaware; he just thought my concern was childish and my anxiety was pretentious. It turns out that those emotions he once cherished and carefully protected became evidence of my "immaturity" once the novelty wore off.
The green light at the emergency exit at the end of the corridor shone on his face, flickering on and off. I suddenly felt that the person in front of me was a stranger—the boy who would secretly slip a hand warmer into my backpack, the boy who said, "I'll marry you when you get into university," seemed to have been blown away by the wind, leaving only this indifferent and impatient look.
“Okay,” I sniffed, wiped away my tears, and said in an unusually calm voice, “I’m immature and don’t deserve your ‘maturity.’ Let’s call it quits.”
He was stunned, probably not expecting me to say that. A hint of panic flashed in his eyes, but he still stubbornly insisted, "Forget it! Who cares!"
After saying that, he turned and left, his footsteps echoing in the corridor for a long time before finally disappearing at the end.
I stood there until my legs went numb before slowly squatting down. The sound of a chorus came from backstage; Li Zichen was leading the singing. His voice was beautiful, blending perfectly with Su Xiaoxiao's harmonies, like a flawless song.
But there's no place for me in that song anymore.
The wind slipped in through the cracks in the window, rustling the sheet music on the floor, making a rustling sound like someone was crying. I reached into my pocket; inside were the throat lozenges he'd given me last week, lemon-flavored, my favorite.
I unwrapped the candy, popped it into my mouth, and it was so sour that tears streamed down my face.
It turns out that some promises really do shatter in the wind, leaving not even a trace of sweetness.
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