Chapter 18

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I worked in the United States for six years. My parents kept urging me to get married, and the more they urged, the more impatient they became, so they began pressing me to go back to China for a blind date. I became so annoyed that I simply told them I liked girls.

When they visited afterward, I told them about all of the relationships I had had over the years. I said it wasn’t that I hadn’t tried, and I had even tried more than once. There was no possibility of me marrying a man anymore, unless you wanted me to die of depression.

My mom cried for several nights, and my dad kept sighing nonstop. They wanted to leave after staying for a few days, but I told them not to. They disagreed, saying that they couldn’t understand anything people said here and were both mute and deaf. Over those few days, my parents looked much older all at once. These past few years, we spent more time apart than together, and every time I saw them I would feel that they had aged a bit, deepening the guilt in my heart a bit.

Time was merciless. The “me” in the mirror had already changed appearance, not to mention my parents.

Ever since I entered college and started spending time with Chen Ruobing, I gradually became more distant from them. That was when I was beginning to really learn how to love someone and wanted to give her the best of everything—my time, energy, and thoughts.

Our parent-child relationship eventually grew further apart, until the year I turned thirty when we lived together for over ten days, but my parents felt out of place.

In the end they said, “Why don’t you stay in America? Your life will be easier here.”

I cried. I said, “I have thick skin, and I’m not afraid of anything. I don’t want kids and don’t need that much money. If I can’t find the right person, then I’ll just pass the time with you for the rest of my life. So you two should look on the bright side, people like me live an easy life.”

During those one or two years, my company’s business in China increased and there were frequent opportunities to return there. I later applied to the company and was transferred to a domestic branch. After waiting for more than a year, I finally returned to Beijing the year I turned thirty-two.

I used the money I’d earned over the years to buy a one-bedroom apartment that wasn’t far from my parents. Everything was going as planned. I liked these nine-to-five days. Because of a lack of self-control, I needed an established biological clock. I worked during the day, read at night, went to Chongli to ski with a few friends over the weekends in the winter, and went to a badminton club the rest of the weekends. This was basically the life I wanted to live. Even if I spent the rest of my life like this, I would have no problem with it.

I didn’t tell Chen Ruobing about my return. Some people said that the best way to forget someone was to make up a story and write her as the protagonist. I had since tried this approach, and it seemed to be of some use, so I would continue to try it.

One time, my mom happened to mention, “That smart girl in your class before is a doctor at Youyi’s gastroenterology department now. Are you still in touch with her?”

I knew I would hear of her sooner or later, and see her again sooner or later. But I didn’t know she was actually working somewhere so close to me. The news made me a bit anxious.

I felt that I should take the initiative to see her. No matter what, I shouldn’t just come back without saying a word.

One Friday after work, I went to the gastroenterology department of that hospital, asked the nurse at the door, and found the consulting room Chen Ruobing was in that day.

Chen Ruobing’s thin body was draped in a doctor’s coat, her hair tied up at the back of her head. She wore a face mask, writing a medical record with her head lowered as she spoke with a patient. I waited in the chair by the door for a while until the patient left. I walked over.

“Did you register? I’m off duty for the day.”

Chen Ruobing looked at her computer screen, her voice a bit muffled because of the mask. Her voice was soft, and it required a bit of effort to hear every word that she breathed out.

Noticing that I didn’t move, Chen Ruobing lifted her head.

With a madly racing heart, I did my best to put on a calm smile.

But I failed the moment I met her eyes.

Chen Ruobing’s palm-sized faced only revealed a pair of pitch-black eyes.

I had never seen her with eyes like that, resembling a cold, deep well. Looking into the mouth of the well, there was only a pure, bottomless black.

The blackness froze me in place as a thought rushed into my head.

Chen Ruobing was grown up now and no longer the little girl who made up stories and ate chocolate with me. A little girl wouldn’t have eyes like that.

“You, why are you here?” Chen Ruobing stood up and blinked, the two wells of water flashing in the sunlight.

“Um… I came to see you.”

“Then, shall we go out for a meal?” Chen Ruobing put down her pen, clasping her hands then unclasping them, then she lifted her hand and tucked the stray hairs by her face behind her ear.

“Okay, I’ll wait for you outside.” I lowered my head as I turned around and saw that she was wearing a pair of white cloth shoes, the kind that all of the girls in the hospital wore. I suddenly felt that she really was suitable to be a doctor, and there was no one more suitable than her.

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