Su Zhinian felt like someone had sucker-punched him in the guts. He stood beside Song Qingchun, just staring at her quietly.
“…Or are you too busy to come get me?” Her words sounded natural and easy, and there was even a trace of smile in her voice, but her tears kept on coming. “Then, it’s okay…”
She took a pause as if worried that she might lose her composure. She bit on her lower lip and after a while, forced her lips into a smile. With her eyes shining with tears, she added with a barely discernible tremble in her voice, “…It’s okay, I can wait for you. Please come fetch me when you’re no longer busy, okay?”
After she asked that question, the curve on her lips suddenly disappeared. Like her soul had been pulled out of her, she gripped the phone in her hand and stared at the street ahead of her dumbly. After a long while, she said softly to herself, “How could I have forgotten? You already told me not to wait for you anymore…”
A veil of loneliness seemed to have fallen over her at that moment. When she finished the statement, her eyes scanned her surroundings as if with panic. Following two rows of tears, she lowered her eyes, and the hand that held her phone fell limply to her side like she had lost all her energy. “…In fact, you won’t even be my friend anymore.”
Her hand holding the phone and her head fell even lower. Then, tears the size of pearls fell on the asphalt, creating a rhythm of sorts.
Those were the cruel words that he had told her on the night he rejected her. When he said those words, his heart had been twisting with pain. However, he had still forced them out of his lips. The main reason was because he wanted her to give up on him, but he did not expect that they would cause the girl such emotional trauma.
Su Zhinian’s heart broke into pieces as he stared at the girl who was crying soundlessly. His lips were moving, and he was about to call out her name when the girl slowly sat down to the floor and curled up into a ball. With a voice that was as airy as fog, she started to talk into the phone again. “Su Zhinian, I don’t want to be a bother in your life, but I really love you. Can’t we pretend that the confession didn’t happen and return to the state of being friends?”
As she continued to talk, she began to choke on her tears. “I promise not to fall in love with you, to not let you find out I’m in love with you. If you need a greater assurance, I can find a boyfriend or even get married. That way, I wouldn’t be able to cling onto you anymore. It’s a happy ending for both of us, right? That way, we will only be friends. That way…”
She suddenly raised her head to look at him. There were two globes of light shining at the bottom of her teary eyes. They spoke of hope as she breathed out. “…That way, we’ll be able to be just friends, right?”
Su Zhinian felt like someone was using a knife to carve through his heart. Blood gushed out of his heart, and the pain seeped into his bones and marrow.