STT – Chapter 31
by Little PandaDo You Still Believe in Love?
Lu Zizheng was so shocked by Xu Bohan’s words that she sprang to her feet and crossed the room in a single stride, reaching for Xu Bohan’s slender shoulders as if afraid that in the next instant, she would no longer be able to touch her.
Xu Bohan looked up and gave Lu Zizheng a faint smile, then gently placed her hand over Lu Zizheng’s. “Zizheng, don’t try to persuade me. I’ve been lying to myself for too long. I miss her so terribly much. I’ve given myself a final deadline — this August, the day she left.”
Lu Zizheng’s lips trembled as she choked out her plea. “Jie, please don’t do this. Yun Bo wouldn’t want this either. Just wait a little longer — can’t we wait a little longer?”
Xu Bohan shook her head, her voice heavy with sorrow. “Zizheng, I don’t dare to wait any longer. I always thought I would remember Yun Bo’s face forever — the exact curve of every smile she gave me. But these past few years, I’ve found it harder and harder to picture her. The way she looked when she laughed, when she frowned — it’s all growing blurrier in my heart. I’m so afraid that in the end, I won’t be able to remember her clearly anymore, that I’ll lose her. And I’m even more afraid that if too much time passes, she’ll forget me too… that she won’t recognize me anymore…”
Lu Zizheng’s tears finally broke free, sliding down from the corners of her eyes. “Jie, you can’t do this. This is too cruel for me. Now that I know everything, how can I do nothing and just watch you leave? Jie, please — don’t be like this. Give yourself and Yun Bo more time. Yun Bo will come back…”
Xu Bohan raised her hand and wiped away Lu Zizheng’s tears with difficulty, yet gently. “Zizheng, don’t cry. It’s your Jie who’s sorry — I’m being selfish.” She turned her wheelchair toward a small cabinet in the corner, opened it, and took out a book with a dark cover. Wheeling back to Lu Zizheng, she held it out to her.
Lu Zizheng took it with both hands, looking at Xu Bohan with confusion.
Xu Bohan’s smile was heartbreakingly poignant. “Zizheng, I’m sorry. I don’t have much time left. But I’m afraid that after I’m gone, no one will remember that Yun Bo once lived so vibrantly, and no one will know that she and I once loved each other so fiercely — with our very lives.” Her gaze shifted to the book in Lu Zizheng’s hands. “This is all I can leave behind — the only proof that we ever loved. Zizheng, after I’m gone, please publish it under my name. I can’t bear the thought that once I leave, there will be no one left in this world who remembers Yun Bo, no one who knows her grievances, no one who knows that she once loved me and hated me with her entire life.”
Xu Bohan had been submitting her writing for publication since her university days, and Lu Zizheng had always been her first reader. But she had never imagined that the last story Xu Bohan would give her to read would be one written with such lifeblood and tears. Lu Zizheng held the book in both hands and felt it weigh a thousand pounds — so heavy that her hands trembled and her legs could barely support her.
Lu Zizheng herself had once been in such a place. She knew too well how important faith was to a person. However many words of comfort she spoke, they would probably never shake someone who had made a clear-eyed, deliberate decision to die. Grief threatened to drown every thought in her mind as tears fell in heavy drops.
Through her tear-blurred vision, Lu Zizheng scanned the paintings that surrounded them. The girl in them had a cold, stern expression, but a gentle warmth lingered in her brows and eyes. Lu Zizheng stared at them for a long time, and slowly, a vague sense of familiarity crept over her. Her heart pounded. Perhaps…
She turned abruptly and blurted out, “Jie, I think I’ve seen her somewhere before!”
Xu Bohan was startled by Lu Zizheng’s sudden outburst. She furrowed her brow slightly before asking, “What?”
Lu Zizheng lunged at this opening, as if she had found a way to hold Xu Bohan back. Words tumbled out of her, urgent and frantic. “Jie, I think I’ve met someone who looks just like her — I don’t remember when or where, but I swear I have, I really have. Jie, believe me, just give me more time — I can definitely remember!”
Xu Bohan seemed to understand. She gave a faint smile and shook her head. “Zizheng, don’t lie to me.”
Lu Zizheng took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down. Speaking with deliberate seriousness, she explained again, “Jie, you have to believe me. It’s true. Yun Bo must still be alive — I’ve definitely seen her somewhere.”
Xu Bohan’s smile was tinged with sorrow. “Zizheng, you don’t understand. Over the years, I’ve seen so many people who looked like Yun Bo. But none of them were her. I’ve believed so many times, but…” She didn’t finish her sentence. Instead, she suddenly turned her wheelchair and steered it out of the inner room, changing the subject. “Zizheng, enough about me. How are things going with you and Huaixi?”
Lu Zizheng still wanted to argue. She called out to her, drawing out the word. “Jie… really, just listen to me…”
Before she could finish, Xu Bohan turned back and smiled, pleading. “Zizheng, we don’t get to see each other often. Let’s skip this topic for now, alright?”
“Jie!”
Xu Bohan pressed her index finger to her lips and blinked, making it clear she would not discuss this any further.
Lu Zizheng bit her lip and stared at her, her thoughts a chaotic mess, her mind foggy and dazed. Later, when Xu Bohan said more to her, she couldn’t remember a single word. In the end, she didn’t even know how she had left the Xu Residence.
She refused the Xu family driver’s offer to take her home and walked back along the road in a daze, hoping to sort through the chaos in her heart. But the more she tried, the more tangled everything became. All the noise and commotion around her seemed to have nothing to do with her. The only thing left in her mind was the final page of the book Xu Bohan had given her, which read:
By extinction, let love be immortal, from now on unchanging and undying; by this text, let us prove that we once loved each other, from now on unfading and undiminished. Yun Bo, I love you.
By extinction, let love be immortal1
Xu Bohan had said, “Losing isn’t really what’s frightening. What’s frightening is never having possessed anything. To have everything vanish without ever having any proof that you once loved, that you once had something.” And she had added, with no false modesty, “I believe we once loved each other.”
And what could she use to prove her own love?
Lost in thought, Lu Zizheng had no attention to spare for traffic lights. She walked forward without looking, following the road. Suddenly, the phone in her bag rang, jolting her back to reality. She fumbled hurriedly in her bag for it and saw that the call was from Jiang Huaixi. For a moment, she froze. Then a motorcycle brushed past her, its horn and the driver’s curses sounding simultaneously. Startled, Lu Zizheng’s hand slipped, and the phone flew from her grip, hit the ground hard, and went silent…
Lu Zizheng bent down to pick up the phone with its shattered screen — now silent and dead — and a wave of sorrow washed over her…
What could she leave behind, so that after Jiang Huaixi left, she could prove that this woman had once existed in her life — so tenderly, so profoundly?
An unanswered call? An unread text? Or the countless call records?
But what if one day, the phone was lost, the number no longer in use?
What could prove that the tenderness Jiang Huaixi had once given her had truly existed — that it wouldn’t, like every other “once,” eventually be replaced by pain and despair, buried and ground to dust by time?
Weighed down by her thoughts, Lu Zizheng walked aimlessly. Before she knew it, her feet had carried her to her father’s grave. When she was little, whenever she faced a puzzle she couldn’t solve, her father was the first person she would think of. Now she realized that this habit had never really gone away.
Gazing into the distance, Lu Zizheng could vaguely make out a woman standing in front of her father’s gravestone. She frowned, puzzled. The silhouette didn’t belong to anyone she knew.
She walked toward the woman, step by step. The figure grew clearer, but remained unfamiliar — until Lu Zizheng came to a stop beside her and the woman turned around. Only then did she recognize, with a shock, that it was Zhou Fangfan.
Zhou Fangfan clearly hadn’t expected to run into Lu Zizheng either. Her expression shifted between surprise and delight, a complicated tangle of emotions twisting her features. Her mouth fell slightly open, and her eyes went round.
Lu Zizheng frowned, her tone cool and distant. “What are you doing here?”
Zhou Fangfan lowered her head slightly, not daring to meet Lu Zizheng’s eyes. Her voice was subdued. “A few years ago, I came here to visit my grandfather and discovered your father was also buried here. Later, whenever I came to see my grandfather, I would stop by and say a few words to your uncle.” She paused. “When I ran into you a few years ago, you said if fate was meant to bring us together again, it would. So I often waited here, hoping fate would deliver. I never thought I’d actually run into you today — what a coincidence.”
Lu Zizheng stepped forward, crouched down, and wiped the dust from her father’s face on the gravestone with her hand. Her voice was flat. “So I suppose I should thank you for keeping my dad company with your conversations.”
Zhou Fangfan bit her lip, her expression complicated as she looked at Lu Zizheng. Finally, she crouched down too, and spoke in a low, sincere voice. “Every time I came to see your uncle, I would say a hundred ‘I’m sorry’ in my heart — sorry for hurting you. Today, I finally have the chance to say those words to you in person. Zizheng, I’m sorry. Back then, I wasn’t brave enough. I was too much of a coward…”
Lu Zizheng turned her head and fixed her gaze on her. Her eyes gradually sharpened…
How could she say the word “sorry” so lightly? What weight did those three words even carry? The roomful of psychology books, the scar on her wrist — every single piece of evidence proved that the woman standing before her had plunged her into a nightmare.
That day, she had woken up on a hospital bed with thick bandages wrapped around her wrist. Her mother, eyes red from crying, had asked her, “Your father is gone — are you going to leave too? Are you going to abandon your mother all alone?”
In that moment, she had understood clearly: she couldn’t leave. She had responsibilities. She still had to take care of her mother.
But she was still terribly unhappy. She read book after book, trying to heal herself, but she only got better in fits and starts.
At night, she often couldn’t sleep. Within half a year, she had wasted away to skin and bones.
She asked her mother, “Am I really the pervert they said I am? Mom, did I remember wrong? Did I really force Xiao Fan? Why can’t I remember clearly anymore? Mom, I don’t want to be a pervert, but I can’t change myself. Mom, what do I do? I’m so scared.”
It was her mother who held her, telling her over and over again to give her faith. “You’re not a pervert. You’re the one who’s right. They’re wrong. They’re bad people. They don’t know anything — they’re just talking nonsense.”
The year of her high school entrance exam was the worst period of her illness. After transferring to a new school in an unfamiliar environment, she became like a mute. Besides studying, she retreated entirely into her own world. While doing her homework at night, she would often start crying in the middle of it.
Later, her mother took her to see a psychologist. Combined with the end of the exam period and starting high school, her mother told her this was a brand-new beginning — everything would get better. And slowly, she did start to improve.
But fate was cruel. She still ran into middle school classmates in high school. Before long, the rumors about her had spread through the entire grade. With her classmates looking at her through biased eyes, it was as if every bad thing that happened was somehow connected to her. Even when the class fund went missing, because it was known that her father had died young and her family wasn’t well off, she was privately considered the prime suspect. So the nightmare she thought had ended came roaring back with a vengeance…
Lu Zizheng raised her hand and looked at her wrist through narrowed eyes, ready to coldly reject Zhou Fangfan’s apology. But as she lifted her arm, the first thing she saw was not the terrible scar — it was the thoughtful watch Jiang Huaixi had given her.
In an instant, all her resentment was like dark clouds meeting sunlight — slowly, they dispersed…
Perhaps everything was arranged by fate all along, cause and effect in motion. Without the seeds Zhou Fangfan and the others had planted back then, perhaps the sweet fruit of Jiang Huaixi would never have grown. Was it possible that all the shadows in her life had existed only to await the arrival of Jiang Huaixi — this warm ray of sun?
Lu Zizheng sat down on the ground, leaning against her father’s gravestone. Looking at the wide watch strap on her wrist, she smiled, finally letting go. “Fangfan, it’s all in the past. Let’s just… forget it.”
Zhou Fangfan sat down beside her, her gaze heavy as still water, and murmured, “Forget it?”
Lu Zizheng turned sideways, looking at her profile — so similar to the one she remembered from their youth. When she thought about those days in middle school, sitting at the next desk and secretly watching her during class, a wave of melancholy washed over her. She tilted her head back and looked up at the cloudless, azure sky. Then she asked, “Xiao Fan, do you still believe in love?”
The warmth in her voice was familiar to Zhou Fangfan.
Zhou Fangfan let out a low laugh. “Love? Zizheng, I’m getting married tomorrow. The groom is someone I met through a blind date half a year ago. Our parents thought we were well-matched in every way, and we’re both at that age where people start to get anxious. They felt it was good enough, so we settled it. I came here today to tell my grandfather personally.”
Lu Zizheng felt as if a dull club had struck her chest. A heavy, aching pain spread through her.
Grandmother Jiang’s words echoed in her ears: “Huaixi, your younger brother has already settled down, so Grandma doesn’t need to worry anymore. When can this other bracelet on my wrist be delivered to my good grandson-in-law’s hand?“
Suddenly, Zhou Fangfan leaned close to Lu Zizheng, her lips brushing her ear. Her voice was soft and gentle. “Zizheng, let me tell you a secret. My first love was a girl. I liked her for a very, very long time. And later, I regretted it for a very, very long time too. In this lifetime, since her, I’ll probably never be able to love anyone that way again.” She paused. “I want to tell that girl — she has to be braver than me. And happier than me.”
And again! No one is really bad. They were all just kids and scared. Now they’ve all grown up and admit to mc. Dang this novel is one of a kind. I actually don’t really hate anyone.
And again! No one is really bad. They were all just kids and scared. Now they’ve all grown up and admit to mc. Dang this novel is one of a kind. I actually don’t really hate anyone.
I think you could go and hate Lin Wei 😤