My name is Ling Wei. I have been a wealthy young miss since I was a child. Although my family dotes on me, I never became arrogant or spoiled like other socialites. However, I don’t know why, but from the moment I met Murong Yun, it felt as if my sanity had vanished. I thought I had fallen in love with him after all, no one had ever made me lose my reason before.
But gradually, I discovered something was wrong. While liking someone involves jealousy and envy, it shouldn’t reach the point of losing one’s mind and hurting others. Although my rational mind knew this, whenever I saw other girls with Murong Yun, an uncontrollable impulse would arise. Every time I snapped out of it, I felt deep regret for my actions. I thought I would spend my entire life in this cycle of conflict and remorse, until I met Su Mu.
Su Mu was a girl Murong Yun used as an excuse to make me angry. I knew this, yet I couldn’t control my urge to target her. She must have liked Murong Yun too; at the very least, I could see her provocations toward me, so I had no favorable impression of her.
Once during class, I was called on because I was spacing out. I didn’t expect Su Mu to help me. Although my family doesn’t have the same power struggles as other clans and I’m not deeply scheming, I wasn’t stupid enough to believe a love rival would help me for no reason. I mocked her, hoping she’d take the hint, but her subsequent behavior left me utterly astonished. She handed me a note that read: [You look so beautiful when you’re angry]. I couldn’t help but wonder if this person was… sick in the head.
Following that, through her various teases and flirtations, the thought in my mind gradually solidified: this person really might have a problem with her brain. I had already planned to stop targeting her, but one day, for some inexplicable reason, I rushed into the restroom and said a series of provocative things to her. In response, that bastard Su Mu pushed me directly into a stall; no matter how I looked at it, it felt like a rogue teasing a female student.
At the moment she leaned her head down, I almost thought she was going to kiss me. Just as I was getting nervous, she actually invited me to eat spicy hot pot (malatang). I felt speechless; I didn’t know what to say to her. But through that incident, I realized Su Mu wasn’t just “sick,” she was also incredibly strong.
Later, she saved me, and I felt a mysterious emotion toward her—perhaps it was called “thankful we didn’t miss each other”? I didn’t know where this thought came from; maybe it was just about not missing out on a friend…
When she collapsed to the ground and I struggled with all my might to get her onto the bed, Su Mu suddenly pulled me into her arms. I couldn’t break free no matter what I did. Just as I was fuming, this person actually kissed me. Even though it was just a light press against my lips, it was my first kiss, wasn’t it? Leaning in Su Mu’s embrace, I felt a strange sense of familiarity for some reason. Trying my best to ignore the abnormal thumping of my heart, I gradually fell asleep.
Interacting with her later, I knew Su Mu was a good person, just a bit of a lecher. The way she looked at me was always a bit strange; deep down I sensed her thoughts, but I wasn’t sure. Later, when Murong Yun wanted me to get engaged to him, the person I thought of was actually Su Mu, which gave me a sense of panic and confusion.
Later, she saved me again. Although I knew her explanation was full of holes, I didn’t expose her. After all… she was the only girl who was truly sincere to me.
Her eyes also let me know she liked me.
I didn’t poke through the veil. I wanted to see how long she could hide it, and I also wanted to know how I felt about her. However, during the following year, I didn’t know what to do. The person was still the same person, and she was as good to me as ever, but I felt like something was slightly off.
So, when Nangong Shan deliberately approached me frequently, I didn’t refuse. I wanted to see if Su Mu’s feelings for me were truly that kind of thought. Yet every time, Su Mu made me feel as if she were behind a layer of mist; I couldn’t grasp her.
Then, on the way to the class reunion, her expression made me feel she was jealous. That sense of distance was gone, but instead, it made me feel like I couldn’t hold onto her.
When I sang a duet with Nangong Shan, her face grew darker and darker, yet strangely, I felt a constant sense of pleasure. Later, she sang “Later” (Hou Lai). There was a kind of pain in it, like something sought but not obtained, and a kind of longing. I narcissistically guessed… could the person she missed be me? But wasn’t I always by her side?
She drank a lot of alcohol, so she had the courage to kiss me in the dorm and confess her love. But I knew clearly that she and I could not be together.
It wasn’t just because of gender, family background, or even Nangong Shan. That man was not simple; he looked gentle as water, but his eyes toward me revealed danger—he wasn’t someone to be provoked lightly. I could see he liked me, even loved me with a morbid kind of love, so he would absolutely never let Su Mu go.
But I seemed to have fallen for a girl named Su Mu. For the next month, I was intentionally cold to her, even showing disgust. Seeing her heartbroken look made my own heart feel a strange sensation. I thought I might be sick too, enjoying self-torture.
I kept suppressing my feelings, but for some reason, she always had a mysterious confidence that I liked her. Although it was true, seeing her lecherously teasing me made me feel annoyed no matter how I looked at it.
I thought I had hidden it deeply, but Nangong Shan suddenly proposed that I become his wife—his wife, not his girlfriend. He even used Su Mu’s life to threaten me. I looked at him, and though I felt some dread in my heart, I didn’t agree.
But later, when Su Mu and I were shopping, someone actually came to rob us. It didn’t happen earlier or later, but exactly then. And seeing how the robber didn’t dare to hurt me, I knew it was arranged by Nangong Shan.
With bodyguards around, I wasn’t worried about anything happening, but when the robber started fighting Su Mu, my heart still leapt into my throat. When her arm was slashed, the heartache was like being suddenly punched; I felt a sense of suffocation. Su Mu could have dodged it, but because I was behind her…
Looking at Su Mu’s pale face as she smiled at me foolishly, I suddenly had an impulse to grow old with her. So, I decided to agree to Nangong Shan’s request. That’s right—to marry him.
I wasn’t crazy. I wanted to be with Su Mu openly, to be together without obstacles. I told my parents about my feelings for Su Mu because I needed their help and the support of the Ling family. They were surprised for a while but expressed their acceptance, only hoping that once the matter was resolved, Su Mu would visit the Ling family. This was expected; after all, their love and understanding of me are very deep, and there is still my brother to carry on the family line.
I knew that during this period, I could no longer show any concern for Su Mu. I even cruelly interrupted Su Mu’s confession to me, telling her that the one I liked was Nangong Shan and that I didn’t like women. My tone was so mean and mocking that I didn’t even want to hear it myself.
A month later, everything was prepared, just waiting for the right moment.
At my wedding with Nangong Shan, I felt an inexplicable irritability one could even say panic. When Nangong Shan and I were exchanging rings, my heart suddenly felt a sharp pang of pain, and the ring dropped to the floor. I paused the wedding; Nangong Shan agreed. When I got my phone, there were two messages: one from my mother saying the contract was successfully signed, and one from a bodyguard saying Su Mu had died.
I thought hope was just ahead, but in the blink of an eye, it was a bottomless abyss.
Seeing the news that Su Mu had been shot, my hands trembled. I used all my strength just to keep the phone from falling. When I rushed out the door, I saw Nangong Shan’s triumphant smile. It turned out… he had planned this all along.
Everything that followed was strangely smooth. I successfully canceled the wedding with Nangong Shan. What surprised me even more was that Nangong Shan explained he had fallen in love with a man and a fifty or sixty-year-old sanitation worker at that. He made such a scene that he almost lost his status as heir.
Originally, I wanted to take revenge on him, but later, seeing him constantly following that old man, I stopped my retaliation against his companies. After all… no matter what, that person wouldn’t come back. Though, the fact that Nangong Shan liked a sanitation worker thirty years older than him was truly bizarre.
I still sent that sanitation worker and his family abroad and blocked all their information, so Nangong Shan could never find them no matter what, letting him understand what it means to love without being able to have.
Once, walking down the street, I heard a female busker singing “Later.” I stopped my car and listened quietly.
“Later, I finally learned how to love. Unfortunately, you have already gone far away, vanishing into the sea of people.”
Later, I could never find another person who treated me like their very life, with such tenderness.
Later, I went to many places and saw many landscapes, but though ten thousand sights passed before my eyes, none compared to your gentle brow.
“Later, I finally understood amidst tears, That some people, once missed, are gone forever. How do you remember me? With a smile or in silence? In all these years, has there been anyone who keeps you from being lonely?”
Mu Mu, are you okay? In that other world, have you met someone you like? Do you still have memories of me? Do you occasionally think of someone you once loved in another world, who is still missing you now?
I plan to start my life anew. I only hope that in the other world, someone is loving you in my place.