With that, Pei Chongxi opened the car door and placed the white chrysanthemums on the passenger seat.
She drove extremely fast along the way.
By the time she reached the cemetery, it was a gloomy dusk.
The girl in the black and white photograph was permanently frozen in a radiant smile, beaming brightly at every passerby.
Placing the bouquet of white chrysanthemums in front of the tombstone, Pei Chongxi bent down to sweep away the fallen leaves, then sat cross legged on the ground.
Leaning her back against the tombstone, she said, “I’m sorry I came to see you a day late. An’an, don’t be mad at me.”
Pei Chongxi babbled on about the hallucinations. “It was all my fault. I forcibly kissed the hallucination of you and made you hate me. Do you despise me?”
Pei Chongxi pulled out a cigar from her bag, clipped the tip, lit it, and began exhaling clouds of smoke.
“Oh, right, you don’t like drinking. I’ll drink this glass myself.”
Holding a small bottle of liquor between two fingers, Pei Chongxi made a toasting gesture. The bottle clinked against the tombstone with a crisp ting.
“Sometimes I really don’t know what to do. I hate myself to death, but I’m going crazy.”
Bloodshot streaks filled Pei Chongxi’s eyes. Even now, she couldn’t release the pain of hearing the words “I don’t like you” from the hallucination’s mouth.
An Rong had never said she disliked her.
It wasn’t as if she and An Rong had never argued, but one of them would always compromise first, because neither wanted to remain angry for long, nor had they ever thought of separating.
Pungent alcohol rolled down her throat, followed by a deep drag of the cigar.
The tombstone behind her stood silently, the smiling girl’s expression unchanged.
Smoke blurred Pei Chongxi’s brows and eyes. She leaned back against the tombstone as if relaxing on a lounge chair, like two lovers sitting back to back on a lawn enjoying the sunset.
“An’an, do you hate me? Hate me for having no restraint, hate me for loving you, and hate me for actually manufacturing an hallucination of you just to take liberties with it?”
All that answered Pei Chongxi was the howling of the cold wind.
An Rong received a call from Yu Shan, who gave her an address and hailed a cab for her, telling her to head straight toward the cemetery.
She also mentioned that they had agreed to go to the police station tomorrow to get her ID card.
Naturally, An Rong had no reason to refuse. After getting into the car, she watched with growing unease as the surroundings grew increasingly desolate, until they finally reached the suburban cemetery at dusk.
At a single glance, she spotted Pei Chongxi leaning against a tombstone, drinking liquor and smoking a cigar.
A gust of smoke blew over, making An Rong choke and cough repeatedly.
An Rong ran over to Pei Chongxi, panting heavily.
She had gone through so much trouble clearing out all the liquor bottles Pei Chongxi left around the house, only to find her drinking here!
Furious, An Rong pointed at Pei Chongxi and scolded, “Are you trying to die?! Drinking with your body in this state, do you want to drink yourself to death?!”
Pei Chongxi, who had been yelled at, slowly raised her head. Seeing An Rong, she didn’t look surprised at all.
“Are you still mad at me? How about Sister Pei apologizes to you?”
“Of course I’m still mad at you!”
An Rong assumed Pei Chongxi was referring to her drinking.
An Rong wanted to say more, but Pei Chongxi choked on the cigar smoke, breaking into a fit of violent coughing.
Seeing her cough so hard she could barely catch her breath, An Rong snatched the burning cigar away, threw it onto the ground, and stomped it out with her foot.
The expensive cigar was crushed into the dirt and dust.
As the final rays of sunset faded, An Rong caught sight of the name and photo on the tombstone.
Shock and horror washed over An Rong’s heart!
She uttered a low curse, pointing at the tombstone, then looking at Pei Chongxi who was coughing violently.
“I’m a living person right here! You’re drinking, smoking, and offering flowers to my tombstone, are you crazy, or am I?!”
An Rong remembered Yu Shan saying on the phone that Pei Chongxi was always in a terrible state whenever she returned from the cemetery.
All along the way, An Rong had wondered which relative Pei Chongxi was mourning, but as far as she knew, Pei Chongxi had grown up in an orphanage and had no deceased family members to mourn, never in her wildest dreams did she expect this tombstone to belong to herself!
Was Pei Chongxi insane, sweeping a tomb for her when she was alive and breathing right here?!
A scene straight out of a horror movie was unfolding before An Rong, and looking at Pei Chongxi’s pale face, looking no different from a female ghost in a horror film, it sent chills down her spine.
She… An Rong’s first reaction was to force feed Pei Chongxi some talisman water to snap her back to her senses.
“Are you… actually real?” Pei Chongxi’s raspy voice sounded.
With her hair disheveled, she looked quite disheveled.
An Rong cupped Pei Chongxi’s cheeks with both hands, slapping them lightly. “You thought I was fake this whole time?! What did you take me for? A ghost?!”
The girl’s expression was vivid and bright, leaving Pei Chongxi momentarily speechless.
She was afraid that the moment she spoke, An Rong would turn into an illusion, a shadow her fingers could pass right through.
She was afraid that all of this was an hallucination, that God was taking pity on her while simultaneously playing a cruel joke on her.
She was afraid… there were simply too many things she was afraid of, too many to count.
The bitterness of the cigar and the bite of the alcohol swirled in her mouth, leaving Pei Chongxi’s mind a complete blank.
An Rong was both shocked and enraged, stammering over her words:
“Your manager said you’ve been visiting my grave for ten years! You… you, has being a lesbian fried your brain?!”