Chapter 12

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Chen Ruobing spent the first three years of university at Tsinghua, which my school wasn’t far from. After swaying along on the bus for about half an hour, I could then arrive at the west gate of Tsinghua.

Every time, Chen Ruobing would wait for me by the river next to the west gate, pushing a bike. Most of the time I would take her on the bike and ride toward the school. We would always ride aimlessly down the trail, turning randomly at a certain intersection each time. Thus, for a while after school had just started, we always got lost. Fortunately, most of the roads in Tsinghua were due north and south, so we could find our way back after circling around for a bit.

Freshman year came with a packed schedule. After entering university, my personality gradually opened up. Because there were specialities in sports and the arts, there was a greater variety of activities. Although I didn’t have as much free time as I had imagined, I still gladly ensured I went to Tsinghua at least once a week.

The period of time when I had just started college could be described as carefree. Chen Ruobing would always have to spend large amounts of time doing homework, while I normally copied my homework the night before it was due. Chen Ruobing and I would spend most of our time in the library at Tsinghua. As Chen Ruobing did her homework, I would read beside her. During those three years, I had gone through most of the books in the library’s literature section. Tsinghua’s library patrons at the time must not have liked reading novels. There would only be two or three bestsellers added each time that would be quickly checked out. Chen Ruobing would use her loan quota to borrow the more in-demand technical books, to the point that I would often read half a novel one week, then it would be gone the next week when I came back. I didn’t know when the next time I could get it would be.

So, maybe my love for creating stories was an interest that was forced to emerge from the torment of reading half a story and never knowing what would happen next.

After the gaokao, Liu Yufei got into Shanghai. At that time, smartphones had started to become popular, and instant messaging was slowly on the rise, making it extremely easy for people to contact each other.

Despite this, real communication was still a difficult task.

I didn’t know if anyone had looked into whether working efficiency became higher after the popularization of WeChat, but I believed that love never had anything to do with technology nor social progress.

Liu Yufei returned to Beijing for National Day freshman year, and we went on two dates.

After that National Day, we went about our own business again, and we spoke less and less. It was always just about what we ate, what classes we had, and other trivial matters.

That was the first time I learned of the cruelty of long-distance. When we were together, we could just hang out even if we had nothing to talk about. But with long-distance, how long could we last relying on those previous interactions?

After a few months of this, I sent him a message saying we should break up.

He didn’t seem very surprised either. At the time I thought, technological advancement really is a good thing with how much awkwardness it saved.

When Chen Ruobing asked about me and Liu Yufei, we were eating noodles in the cafeteria. It was the weekend, just before exam week, so self-study seats were in great demand, making it impossible to go to the library. Chen Ruobing and I spent the day studying in the third teaching building and only ran to the cafeteria for dinner once it was dark.

She twirled her noodles with her chopsticks and asked with her head lowered, “How are you and Liu Yufei?”

I lifted my head and said, “We broke up.”

Chen Ruobing’s hand froze and her eyes held shock for a moment. She quickly lowered her eyes and poked her chopsticks around in her bowl, wanting to say something but not knowing how to say it.

“It happened last month,” I added.

“Oh.”

“So spicy.” I took a bite of noodles, cutting the conversation short.

I didn’t want to talk to her about my ex-boyfriend at all, as I thought there was nothing worth talking about. My ex-boyfriend hadn’t done anything wrong, and Chen Ruobing was also fine. Nobody had done anything wrong. I just thought that Chen Ruobing and I should talk about more interesting things together.

I firmly believed Chen Ruobing also felt this way because the entire she was with Yang Xu, she never talked about him to me. She never said anything good about him before, and didn’t speak badly of him after.

I suspected that she and I had the same feelings about boys, which could probably be described as disinterest to the point that it wasn’t worth mentioning to us.

Translator’s Notes

1. National Day is a holiday in China celebrated on October 1st every year. Back

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