Chapter 7 The Truth That Was 3 Years Late_2

Am I embarrassingly hypocritical?

Using a clever way to lie to myself, I sustained a relationship that I was afraid of losing, yet unwilling to admit.

But beyond being a hypocrite, I had an even more cunning tactic called self-deception.

I convinced myself that I didn't love Yi, that my feelings for him were nothing more than admiration and just a smattering of affection.

Yi said, I was like his psychologist, helping him mature quickly.

He stopped writing letters every day, stopped pursuing romance, stopped looking for passion...

What mattered more was that he stopped saying he loved me; I no longer felt like I was the only one in his world.

Everything went as I expected.

Could my hypocrisy have acted as the catalyst for these steps?

Yi didn't notice a thing; he never said he no longer loved me.

Should I marvel at my own perfect scheme?

My junior year was a blur.

We shared many memories.

We also missed many opportunities to move each other.

And we misunderstood quite a few things that never existed.

During that year, influenced by Yi, my grades soared, and I became the "science-mad woman" capable of getting into a top ten-ranked university nationwide.

But to my bitter joy, I discovered that Yi's number one position was occasionally taken by someone else.

Yi no longer studied as hard as before; that's good, right? The distance between us started to close, right?

At an age when we hardly understood love, we naively liked each other for an entire year.

On that special first anniversary,

Yi told me why he let himself go.

He tried not to focus on studying, not to be first all the time.

This way, as long as I kept striving, eventually, we could enter the same university.

Studying was once everything in Yi's life.

On such a special anniversary,

When I felt that Yi's affection for me had faded,

Yi was thinking about our future so far away.

I never truly understood Yi's sacrifices.

I didn't even sense that Yi, for what he believed was my dislike for handwritten letters, for romance, for passion, chose to suppress his feelings.

Yi chose only to show a little, chose restraint, chose to be sad alone.

Yi moved me once again.

I realized. I was sure. I liked Yi, had liked him long before, from the very beginning.

And then, I began to speak, just when I overcame hypocrisy, confronting my feelings for Yi, so strong from the start.

I told Yi,

"I'm sorry, though I don't want you to know of my selfishness and wickedness, sometimes my conscience does awaken. From beginning to end, I never liked you, not at all.

I didn't reject you because you were the most outstanding boy beside me; now I'm tired and don't want to continue.

Please let me go. Can I ask you this as a favor?"

I asked Yi because he never rejected my requests.

For a long time after that, Yi lay on his desk in class.

I fully understood Yi's disappointment, thoroughly felt his pain.

I was upset but couldn't show it.

Days following, I came to the classroom cheerily every day, parading joyfully before him.

Yi lay down every day; I laughed every day.

I never told him that my feelings for him had grown beyond liking.

I never told him that on the day before our anniversary, his mother furiously asked me to persuade him to apply to Peking University.

I didn't tell him that I felt like his shackle.

I didn't tell him I hoped he would get into Peking University, which is why I chose to exit his life.

I didn't tell him that no matter what happened, I would wait for him for two years.

I only told him I'd deceived him, nothing more.

I went through the most painful "happy times" of my life.

Then,

Yi gradually recovered from my deception and started anew.

I slowly woke from my deception and began to wither.

My senior year was desolate.

I can no longer recall life in senior year.

Selective amnesia, a self-defense mechanism, scrubbed senior year to mere fragments in my memory.

I only remember I couldn't concentrate on studying for an entire year.

No matter how sad, I had to make Yi feel I was happy.

It was a responsibility I took on when I chose to leave.

I soothed like a gentle cold.

In the noisy crowd, I felt loneliness; surrounded by loved ones, I felt solitude.

In the still of night, I warmed my right hand with my left.

And then, I felt that I still existed.

Yes, I still exist.

Later, everything happened as I wished; Yi went north to Peking University, and I headed south to Xiamen University.

Besides me, no one else in the class chose to go south.

The admission score for Xiamen University in Zhejiang was not lower than Zhejiang University, but their rankings were far apart.

Xiamen University clearly wasn't my best choice, but I just wanted to escape.

I can't remember how many people I turned down during my freshman year.

I relentlessly adhered to the promise to myself.

Two years, I would definitely wait two years.

Even though I didn't know what I was waiting for.

Even though I didn't expect any outcome from my wait.

Regret, for me, was a luxury.

Yi went where he was meant to go, where I hoped he would go, and that was enough.

I wondered what these two years meant for me.

Was I supposed to bury a relationship with two years of waiting?

Was I supposed to punish my own hypocrisy with two years of waiting?

All of these, I had no answer to.

Two years.

So long. So short.

At the start, I thought it wouldn't end.

At the end, I thought it had just begun.

Tomorrow, can I possess my own heart again?

Can the opening and closing of the heart's door be decided by me again?

Can I go to sleep now?

Is it tomorrow when the day breaks?

It's time to write the Tombstone Inscription for the relationship that ended before it began.

On the tombstone inscribe: Imperfection is but another form of perfection.

~~~~~~

Xiao Mo has a subscriber QQ group now~

Group number: 454173

Thank you to everyone who subscribes to the original!

Muah~