Pei Weixue had always thought he didn’t need any emotional support from the outside world, but after meeting Su Yin, it was Su Yin who showed him through his actions that he had someone he could lean on. If his designs didn’t turn out well, it was fine, he had a professional Color Palette to help him. If he was in a bad mood, someone would coax him out of it. Their cold wars never lasted more than half an hour.
Su Yin cared even more than he did about his meals, his health, his mood.
And later, it was Su Yin himself who shattered the dream he had built for him.
But now, Su Yin was actually holding the pill bottle and asking him in that familiar tone if he was taking medicine again.
All those sleepless nights, all those arguments where every word cut like a knife, had worn him down until only one thought remained.
Don’t look back.
“Just go.” Pei Weixue didn’t answer his question. He forced down his emotions and spoke.
“Go where?” Su Yin stood up, so anxious he paced in circles. “You can’t keep taking these. If it relapses, that’s fine, I’ll be with you.” He tried his best to move closer to Pei Weixue in a gentle way. “I don’t remember doing any of that. You can just treat me like I lost my memory if you want, but either way, if you just make me leave like this, I won’t accept it.”
Pei Weixue gave him a sidelong look. “Then what do you want?”
Su Yin answered quickly. “At least let me stay with you until your condition is under control. Xue’er, don’t give up on yourself. You’re supposed to become an IT elite. You won a web design award, you’re supposed to keep designing.”
“I have a studio now.” In other words, those basic design jobs no longer needed his personal attention. The staff under him could do them, and he only had to review the work. Pei Weixue had wanted to tell Su Yin that no matter what happened now, it wouldn’t affect his work, but the moment Su Yin heard he had a studio, his eyes lit up. “Wow, Xue’er, you’re amazing. I knew you’d be incredible.”
Those words sounded exaggerated, flattering even, but six years ago Pei Weixue had heard them often. Coming from Su Yin, they never felt perfunctory. You could tell he was genuinely happy for him.
He hadn’t heard the nickname ‘Xue’er’ in six years either. How ironic. Back then, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep Su Yin’s heart. Now he had given up, and Su Yin wanted to win him back. He had even put on some ridiculous amnesia melodrama.
“Can you go outside?”
The order to leave was given again and again. Su Yin stared at the back of Pei Weixue’s head. He wanted to reach out and touch that fluffy hair, but after extending his hand, he drew it back. After thinking it over again and again, he still turned and left. He couldn’t make Pei Weixue unhappy, or he’d start taking medicine again.
The moment he turned around, Pei Weixue behind him tilted his head slightly.
After leaving the guest room, Su Yin rubbed his aching head with both hands. He had no idea what was going on. Could it be that the twenty-six-year-old Su Yin really didn’t love Pei Weixue anymore?
The nerves in his skull twisted and throbbed, over and over, the pain spreading to his scalp until his brows knit together. Countless images flashed past, too fast for him to catch.
If the twenty-six-year-old him no longer loved Pei Weixue, then did Mom know? Mom liked Pei Weixue so much she practically doted on him like her own son. After all the rotten things he’d done, what did Mom think of him?
“Xue’er, I can’t get through to Mom. Ask if she’s asleep.” Su Yin thought maybe it was because of all those absurd things he’d done that his mother wasn’t answering his calls.
From inside the study, Pei Weixue said with his back to him, “You blocked all of us. How are you supposed to get through?”
Su Yin: “?” He walked to Pei Weixue’s doorway again. “How could I possibly block Mom and you?” He was that filial. His dad would probably claw his way up from underground just to beat him up.
Pei Weixue walked out. Before the corner of Su Yin’s mouth could even lift, the door slammed shut with force. A gust of wind swept over his bangs. Helpless, he wandered into the living room, looking here and there.
There was a fish tank on the balcony, but the fish inside were long gone. The two little koi he’d bought had probably died sometime over these past six years too. He stared at the waterless tank in a kind of despair. If…
If he had only lost his memory, if he had really cheated, really stopped loving Pei Weixue, fought with his mother, stolen his brother’s lover, then how had he become like this? Feelings might change in an instant, sure, but at the very least, his feelings for his mother shouldn’t have changed.
His father had died young, and his mother had raised him alone through a lot of hardship. He had never once talked back to her. Even during his rebellious phase, the most he’d done was turn in bizarre fashion sketches for homework. The second a teacher mentioned calling his parents, he’d cave on the spot.
No matter how many steps back he took, he still couldn’t accept that the things Pei Weixue described were things he had done.
He should go see Mom first. Luckily, she lived right across the hall.
Standing at the door, he knocked with nervous hope, waiting for his mother to come out and tell him that all of this was fake, some April Fool’s joke.
Knock knock…
He knocked for a long time, but no one opened the door. He stood there waiting and called his mother several times too, but she never picked up.
More than half an hour later, the elevator chimed. He looked over and saw Su Qingyue walking toward him with a bag of vegetables hanging from her arm. The second she saw him, she went straight to the door and opened it.
“Mom.”
Su Qingyue ignored him and went inside after opening the door. Su Yin jammed a hand in the doorway and said anxiously, “Mom! Are you abandoning me too?” The moment he saw the white at her temples, his eyes filled with grief and hurt. “I really… don’t know what I did. Xue’er doesn’t want me, and now you don’t want me either.”
Everything on his body hurt, but that pain couldn’t compare to the pain of being abandoned by the people he loved most. “Mom.”
Su Qingyue turned sideways and carried the vegetables into the kitchen. Silently, she put everything into the refrigerator. There was also a small bag of kiwis. She took out the juicer, sat down at the dining table, and began peeling them, dropping one into the machine after each one was peeled.
“Mom.” Su Yin stood beside her with both hands placed neatly in front of him, his head lowered. “Mom, let me do it.” He reached for the peeler, but Su Qingyue shifted her hand away, and he drew back again.
“Didn’t you do a fine job pretending to be dead yesterday? Why are you here saying all this today?” Su Qingyue shot him a glance and kept peeling. Yesterday Su Yin had collapsed at the hospital, and the doctor had said he was only asleep, that he’d be fine after he’d slept enough. The thought of it made her fury flare up all over again.
“I really wasn’t pretending.” Su Yin dragged over the trash can and dumped the peels inside, then went to bring her a glass of water. “Mom, you might not believe this, but yesterday I was still twenty, and today I suddenly turned twenty-six.”
Su Qingyue glared at him. “These past few years you’ve been lazy and useless. First you holed up at home, neither working nor leaving the house. Then for that He Nan, you worked for him for free, drawing design drafts. And now you think you can just say you don’t remember anything and brush it all aside?”
Thump.
Su Yin dropped to his knees fast. He grabbed his own ears with both hands and admitted fault. He felt wronged inside, but if his mother said so, then he must have done those things. Better to admit it first and not make her angrier. “I…”
He held it in for a long while before finally, painfully forcing out the two words, “I’ll change.” No matter how he looked at it, there was no way he could have done something that absurd.
First of all, he might not have a father anymore, but he had a mother, and he’d been raised right. There was no way he should be capable of cheating, stealing his brother’s lover, and angering his own mother like some bastard. Second, he’d always wanted to open a studio of his own, so how could he possibly work for someone else for free? And finally, he’d only just confessed to Xue’er. He’d only managed one kiss. Even if feelings faded, they didn’t fade like that.
Logically, it made no sense at all. From the bits and pieces he could glean from everyone’s descriptions, it sounded more like he’d been cursed.
“As if I’d dare believe whether you’ll change or not. Go get the discipline ruler. Today I am absolutely going to teach you, you pathetic lapdog, a proper lesson!” After peeling all the kiwis, Su Qingyue pressed the button on the juicer, then turned around and glared at Su Yin furiously.
Su Yin shrank his head back a little. He felt like a turtle right now, one slash if he stuck his neck out, a few hundred if he pulled it back in. The key was, he didn’t want to be a coward. Until he figured out what had happened, he still had to make amends as much as he could.
Make amends for all the wrongs he didn’t remember committing at all.
He came out of the bedroom holding the discipline ruler, then knelt in front of the ancestral tablet in the living room.
Su Qingyue first lit three sticks of incense and muttered, “Old Li, today I’m going to break my rule and beat your son. If your spirit’s still watching from above, shut your eyes. Don’t look.”
She turned around, took the ruler, raised it high. In front of her eyes rose all the absurd things Su Yin had done over the past six years, and all of Pei Weixue’s careful devotion. She closed her eyes and brought it down hard.
“Nn…” Su Yin let out a muffled groan as he endured the pain, gritting his teeth. “I was wrong!” Every strike drew another admission, and his back burned like it was on fire.
“Wrong about what!” Su Qingyue demanded.
Su Yin wanted to say he didn’t know, that he really didn’t know, but all he could say right now was, “Cheating.”
The ruler fell again. “What else!”
“Making you angry.”
It came down again. “What else!”
“Disloyal, unfilial, unrighteous.”
His T-shirt was already stained with flecks of blood, enough to show how hard Su Qingyue had struck. Unable to bear it anymore, she finally stopped after fifty blows. She walked in front of Su Yin and pointed at Father Su’s memorial tablet. “Back when your father died in the line of duty, what did you say in front of his body?”
Su Yin knelt there with his back straight, ignoring the pain in his back, and looked at his father’s tablet. “That I would become someone like Mom, someone who saves lives and heals the wounded. That I would become someone upright like Dad.” His mother had once been a doctor. With a single scalpel, she had saved many lives.
“Did you do it?!” Su Qingyue had once prepared herself for the possibility that Su Yin might never get better, that she might never acknowledge him again. But today he had come to confess his guilt, and all the restraint she’d held onto for days shattered. “I gave you the character ‘Yin’ from the phrase ‘to draw forth a spring and nourish the withered land’, but instead you’ve done every vile, conscience-losing thing under heaven and turned into the ‘Yin’ of ‘letting the wolf into the house’! You’ve made me lose all my face. Now when I go sell vegetables and run into people I know, they all ask me, ‘So where’s that pathetic lapdog son of yours?'”
“Tell me! Did you do it or not?!”
Su Yin looked at his mother. His nose stung a little, and all the grievance in his heart had nowhere to go. “Mom. I’ll change for real.”
“And Weixue. Do you still remember what you said to me when you told me you liked Weixue?” Su Qingyue wiped the ruler with a towel and let out a heavy sigh in her heart. Even now, only half her anger had vented.
“I remember.” Those things, those words, were still vivid in Su Yin’s mind.
Before he confessed, he had knelt in front of his father’s memorial tablet just like this and solemnly sworn to his mother that he was serious about Pei Weixue, serious in the way of wanting to spend a lifetime together, and he had hoped she would agree.
Su Qingyue was not only a good doctor, she was also a good mother. She had given him all the maternal love she could and had never overly interfered in his choices.
Only that one matter had made her require him to swear and promise in complete sincerity.
“I won’t forgive you unless you make Weixue forgive you. And if you dare spend his money again, then never call me Mom for the rest of your life!” Su Qingyue didn’t even know whether that threat would work. She looked at the memorial tablet. Old Li, should I give him this chance?
Su Yin wiped away his tears and studied Su Qingyue’s face carefully, the obvious crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, the deepened lines around her mouth, and those few strands of white hair that stabbed at him most of all.
Just yesterday, Mom had still been healthy and energetic. She loved her hair most of all, kept it in excellent condition, glossy black, making her look much younger than women her age. She always joked and chatted with him with a smile. On weekends, he would even go to the park with her to dance in the public square.
Whenever he had time, he would drag Pei Weixue along too. He and his mother had always been more like good friends.
And now, in the blink of an eye, lingering exhaustion clouded her face, frost and snow had climbed into her hair, and even her spirit looked far more drained.
He simply couldn’t accept that he himself was the source of all this. “Mom. I want to hug you.”
At that, Su Qingyue’s eyes reddened. She turned her head aside. “Come hug me after you’ve truly changed. Go on, get out.”
Pei Weixue had told him to get lost, and now his mother was telling him to leave too. Su Yin staggered to his feet and walked out, looking back every few steps. “Mom, I’m sorry.” For making you worry about me.
After stepping outside, Su Yin wiped at his eyes, twisted around to look at his back, and hissed a few times when the movement tugged at the wound before slowly making his way to the apartment across the hall. But he still didn’t dare go in.
If he ever found out who had put a curse on him, he’d beat them into a pig’s head.
Now it was new injuries piled on old ones, and every inch of his body hurt. Other than when he’d gotten into fights with Jiang Zhi as a kid, he had never suffered this kind of grievance.
He touched the flab on his stomach. His abs, damn it. With a body this awful, who was he supposed to win back? He didn’t even know who had beaten up his face.
He pushed the door open and slipped inside quietly. In the living room he grabbed the first-aid kit. When he took off his shirt, the dried blood had glued the fabric to the wound. One tug hurt so much he wanted to call for Mom, but then he remembered he was already twenty-six, so he forced himself to endure it and ripped it off in one motion like a man heading to the execution block.
The snow-white T-shirt had been dyed into a blotchy mess.
This was misery. Who the hell was messing with him?!
He took a towel into the bathroom and wiped away the bloodstains before coming back out and dabbing the wound with disinfectant alcohol.
Click.
The bedroom door opened.
He looked up and met the eyes of Pei Weixue, who had just come out. “Xue’er, ah…” In his excitement, he accidentally pressed right on the wound. He looked at Pei Weixue pitifully.
Pei Weixue took a bottle of juice and went right back into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. From beginning to end, he didn’t spare Su Yin even one extra glance.
Su Yin lowered his head and went back to treating the wound. Looking at the trash can full of bloodied tissues, he felt wronged again and pouted.
Ding. His phone chimed. He bent down to look and saw a notification from an app reminding him that he hadn’t clocked in today.
Clock in my ass. How was he so stupid, stupid enough to work for free?!
He’d seen photos of He Nan in the gallery earlier, and the more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t figure out what exactly he had seen in him.
Never mind that He Nan was Jiang Zhi’s man. Even if he took ten thousand steps back, a few million steps back, he still wouldn’t poach his brother’s lover.
Mom had said he needed Xue’er’s forgiveness. But now Xue’er was dead set on divorcing him, so maybe he should… go along with it first? And then win him back afterward?
But that wouldn’t work either. What if the moment he let go, Xue’er just ran off for good? And he couldn’t just watch Xue’er keep taking medicine like this.
He stared blankly at Pei Weixue’s tightly shut bedroom door, not knowing whether his vision had been affected again.
But judging by the colors Pei Weixue was wearing, everything matched normally, so it probably hadn’t affected him.
Knock knock…
Hm? Who was it? Mom?
Su Yin hurried to open the door, only to find a strange woman in a suit and tie standing outside. “And you are?”
“I’m Engineer Pei’s assistant. I came to deliver the bidding documents. Just call me Xiao He.” Xiao He wore a perfectly polite smile the whole time, more like an emotionless work machine than a person.
“Oh, give them to me, I’ll pass them on to him.” Su Yin thought to himself that Xue’er’s studio really was doing well, even having an assistant and all.
“Xiao He.” At that moment, Pei Weixue came out. “Give them to me.”
“All right. If there’s nothing else, I’ll be leaving now.”
After she left, Su Yin followed behind Pei Weixue with a hand at his waist. “Xue’er, what kind of bidding are you taking part in? Is it for an enterprise management system?” Bang, the door panel slammed into his face again, nearly hitting him. He looked at the door and sighed before going back to the living room.
There were still chibi snowman stickers and a dog pulling a sled stuck to the lid of the open first-aid kit. He ran a finger over them, then turned to look at the TV’s bare “head.”
There should have been little snowman and dog figurines clipped there too, but now they were gone.
He sat cross-legged in front of the coffee table, propping his chin on his hand as he looked at the house, changed beyond recognition. So many memories were gone.
In the kitchen, they had cooked together. On the balcony, they had hung laundry together. On the sofa, they had watched TV together.
As he leaned forward, his stomach felt wrong. He looked down and was so horrified by his own belly fat that he smacked it hard. It made a sound like beating a drum.
“Who told this chunk of meat to grow on me?!” Su Yin took out his frustration on his own stomach, wishing he could just cut it off. How long had it been since he’d worked out? Dear god.
Mom didn’t cherish him, his husband didn’t love him, and as for his brother, who knew, but he had blocked him anyway. And his physique had vanished too.
Right now he felt like quoting one of Foyego’s lines, “Pain, so much pain.”
“My love is forever lost, and ruin fills my sight.”
Sigh~
The mention of [Foyego] reminded him how, when he used to game with Pei Weixue, this had been his favorite character to play. One ultimate, one kill, godlike every match.
Because of his color blindness, Pei Weixue couldn’t tell the red and blue buffs apart, so he had to memorize them by rote. Whenever he wanted red buff, he would end up hitting blue buff instead, and the mid laner would often tear into him in chat.
So Su Yin started jungling instead and gave all the buffs to Pei Weixue. He could carry anyway, and the teammates wouldn’t complain.
Those memories were all so vivid, and yet they also felt impossibly far away.
He pulled out his phone and logged into the app, wanting to see if there had been any changes to his game account. Instead, he discovered that over the last six years, every single ranked record showed him dying at least eight times, starting from 0/8 and only getting worse.
At the end of the season six years ago, his rank had still been Challenger. Over these years, he’d dropped straight from Diamond all the way to Iron.
His vision went black again. He clicked into Pei Weixue’s game account and discovered that over the past six years, they had never duo queued again. During the same times he had been online, Pei Weixue had only played a pitiful handful of matches.
And he had been using Su Yin’s favorite champion, the first champion Su Yin had ever taught him to play, yet his results were still terrible.
When he played alone, did he think back too on all those little moments when they had duo queued together? He must have been heartbroken too.
What exactly had caused him to become such a different person over these six years? He was nothing like himself, hurting everyone around him one by one. Was that even human? Huh? Was it?
He cursed as he kicked out, only to hit the leg of the table. His toe nearly flipped over from the impact. “Ow~” Grimacing, he grabbed his foot and leaned back, only for the injury on his back to hit the sofa too. The pain was so bad he couldn’t sit, couldn’t stand, couldn’t lie down either.
Damn this useless brain, even if I’ve got amnesia, could you hurry up and remember already? Even if I have to die, at least let me die knowing what happened.
He stared mournfully at his toenail, half peeled back, then tilted his head, looking like there was nothing left to live for.