NOVEL WEB
Chapter 59
"I'm downstairs at your place now, come down now," Zhou Zhou said last night.
Yan Xi barely slept last night, Qi Yili's "Do you like me?" echoed in her mind like a curse, lost in wild thoughts.
After replaying what happened tonight for the nth time, it was almost 4 am when he suddenly jumped out of bed and shouted as he confirmed this fact:
"Damn! I really like her!"
He grabbed his hair and got out of bed.
Since he couldn't sleep anyway, he might as well pull an all-nighter.
A loss is a loss, it's not like he can't take it!
He quickly got up, tidied up, and went to a nearby breakfast place to buy breakfast for her.
The owner of the breakfast place was scared by him - he had never seen anyone come to buy breakfast before he even opened the stall, at 4:30 am!
It was also Zhou Zhou's first time getting up so early in the morning to buy breakfast for someone else - something that would absolutely never have happened before. If someone had told him earlier that he would lose sleep for a girl and run around like an idiot to buy her breakfast, he would definitely have punched them and told them to go get treated for stupidity!
It was almost 5 am when he got the breakfast, although there was no one in front of him the owner still had to open the stall and prepare ingredients before he could start cooking!
"Go back to school yourself, I took time off," Yan Xi said to Qi Yili clinging onto her sleeve beside her.
She had almost pulled an all-nighter dealing with Qi Yili's mother's funeral affairs and comforting Qi Yili's emotions, until Zhou Zhou called her at 6 am in the morning.
"What?"
"I said I took time off these few days, don't need to pick me up anymore, we'll talk about this when I get back to school."
Yan Xi was so tired she almost wanted to hang up right away.
The breakfast in his hand seemed to lose warmth in that instant, and the mess of feelings in his heart that morning immediately turned sour.
"Why did you take time off?" Zhou Zhou asked right away.
"Are you caring about me?" Yan Xi retorted.
Her reply left Zhou Zhou unable to respond. Why does she always manage to ask questions he can't answer?
"I'm caring about the breakfast I bought for you! Making a fool of me early in the morning! I admit I lost, but you can't go overboard!"
Zhou Zhou said in an almost shameful manner, beyond caring.
The other end of the phone seemed to fall silent.
What he said was really...princess-like. Felt like she was some sort of heartbreaker. Yan Xi didn't even know how to reply for a moment.
".....then you eat the breakfast."
Zhou Zhou seemed to sense that Yan Xi was choked up.
After spurting out those words in a frenzy, his previous awkward restraint seemed to vanish completely.
Liking her then liking her! So what?! It's her honor that he likes her!
He didn't even know what he was awkward about before!
After all, she doesn't dislike him right?
Great, he just happens to like her. And since she finds Qi Yili disgusting for liking her, he should feel happy instead!
After figuring this out, Zhou Zhou's mentality seemed to stabilize. He no longer had that awkward restraint he did before when facing Yan Xi, instead full of anticipation.
"Alright, I'll come pick you up again when you're back at school."
"When do you want to go back to school?" she asked, looking at Qi Yili, her plans all stalled.
This is the cemetery.
Qi Yili had been standing in front of the gravestone for a few hours, gazing at his mother's photo when she was alive.
The black and white photo seemed to be reiterating the eternal separation between humans and the dead over and over.
He heard Yan Xi's words and turned around. Yan Xi had been standing with him for a few hours too.
Qi Yili remembered the injury Yan Xi's leg sustained previously.
"We'll go back tomorrow, you go back to the car first, I'll be right there."
"Okay."
Yan Xi left him private space, knowing Qi Yili seemed to have things he wanted to say to his mother that she shouldn't be present for.
Yan Xi left.
"Mom..." His voice seemed to come from deep inside his throat.
"I'm in so much pain...." Qi Yili frowned, stroking the words on the gravestone, his fingerprints rubbing against the rock, the warmth of the contact merging with acute pain.
"Did I do something wrong?"
Qi Yili muttered to himself, he enjoyed that rare bit of happiness, while his mother endured the cold and the threat of death in the hospital ward.
He felt as if he had used his mother's death in exchange for the chance to live on, just like before.
In order for him to attend Qingteng College, she used up almost all her savings without hesitation, even when betrayed by her husband, bedridden and paralyzed, the first thing she thought of was still him, thinking of saving money for him, which was why she delayed going to the hospital for treatment so he could keep studying.
He was like a vampire, only able to live on by sucking his mother's blood, unable to withstand sunlight or emerge from the sewers. "If not, why would you leave me?"
Qi Yili murmured, eyes empty and powerless, like a ghost wandering the mortal world.
"I don't want anyone else to leave, Mom."
"I can make people stay by my side, right?" Qi Yili's eyes flashed at this point.
But if you look closely, it's the last dim glow before a shooting star burns out.
"I'm sorry I couldn't make you stay, Mom..."
"But.....I don't want to lose anyone else."
Looking at his mother's still warm smile towards him in the photo, he smiled as well.
The self-inflicted nail marks had long scarred over.
He didn't want to go back to that hellish anguish again. Since there was no turning back to the path he came from, it didn't matter.
Even if the road ahead might not be bright, what's the harm in falling if he could grab hold of something?
He had long rotted away, had he not?