Since I was a child, I’ve had a habit: whenever I’m unhappy, I love to eat. I would stuff myself until I was completely bloated, with food piled right up to my throat, right on the verge of throwing up. It felt as though as long as my stomach was full, I would feel happy and blessed. The truth is, eating until you’re bloated brings far more pain than happiness, but I still managed to derive a tiny shred of bliss from it.
Even if it came at the cost of pain, I embraced it willingly. For a while after getting together with Miss Y, I kept this habit. But then I realized that the happy times spent with her far outnumbered the painful ones, and gradually, the habit faded away. I’ve always talked about the greatness and magic of love because I truly found the strength to fight pain through it.
When you meet the right person, you really become like a knight clad in armor—charging forward, indestructible.
I’ve encountered a lot of things while writing novels. I’ve been accused of plagiarism, mocked for having terrible writing, and people have even dug up old captions I posted years ago to attack me for having “incorrect viewpoints.” When I first started seeing these hate comments, it would break my heart.
I’d cry my eyes out in Miss Y’s arms. Being constantly attacked made me feel so uncomfortable that I suffered from insomnia and hair loss; my whole well-being deteriorated. Watching me waste away day by day, Miss Y started controlling my phone, forbidding me from looking at those toxic comments.
She would personally hop onto the apps to argue with people and speak up for me. I am so grateful to her; if it weren’t for her, I might really not have survived that period. Every day, the moment I opened my eyes, my notifications were at 99+, filled with nothing but abuse. Someone even dug up our home address and mailed razor blades to Miss Y and me. Back then, both of our mental states were actually in a terrible place.
I needed the internet to make a living, so I couldn’t just stay off my phone forever, and Miss Y had her real-life job to attend to, meaning she couldn’t be by my side every second. During that time, the two of us felt like we were walking on thin ice, living with extreme caution for a very, very long time.
After typing for ages and sitting in my chair for hours on end, my body always aches in the strangest places. The pain makes me toss and turn at night. Lying in Miss Y’s arms, she would massage my aching arm muscles while softly humming a lullaby. For some reason, it made me really want to cry.
How should I describe myself before I met Miss Y? I was quiet, a loner, and I never seemed to notice anyone else.
My grades were merely upper-middle, but my EQ was shockingly low. I always dressed in dark colors, walked with a slouch, and from afar, I just radiated a total lack of style. It was this humble, insignificant version of me that met Miss Y during our third year of middle school. Back then, Miss Y was bright and radiant. She wasn’t a literal sun, but she was better than one, warming everyone around her—including me. The only time I was ever brave was when I asked someone for Miss Y’s contact information.
We kept chatting, slowly transitioning from strangers to best friends, then to girlfriend, and now to my wife. I want to say that meeting Miss Y is the greatest stroke of luck in my life. Meeting her in this lifetime is more than enough; I have no regrets.
I usually wear headphones when I’m typing away. I don’t know if it’s because I wore them for too long, but my ears kept hurting, and for a while after that, I couldn’t hear a thing. Terrified, I rushed to see a doctor. The doctor said it was because I had worn headphones for far too long and told me to check into the hospital for observation and rest. I originally thought I’d just take some medicine and be fine, and I didn’t want Miss Y to worry.
But needing to be hospitalized meant I couldn’t hide it from her anymore. Afraid of disrupting her workday, I waited until she clocked off to text her that I was at the hospital. Miss Y’s company is about a thirty-minute drive from the hospital, but she somehow managed to sprint-drive there in just ten minutes.
She came running into the room, and when she saw my ears wrapped in gauze, before I could even say a word, her tears started falling. I even laughed at her at the time, calling her a crybaby. She cupped her hands over my ears and cried. Watching her mouth open and close, I couldn’t hear a single thing she was saying. She just held me and wept. It was so strange—clearly, I was the one who couldn’t hear, yet she was the one crying so heartbreakingly.
I think Miss Y is absolutely perfect. She can draw and works as an animation special effects artist for a major company. She’s gentle, bright, incredibly patient, and knows how to take care of people. Her face gives off a sense of serene prosperity and elegance, yet she also has the vibe of a gentle older sister next door. She’s amazing at socializing, treats people with absolute sincerity, never gets stage fright during important occasions, and her fashion sense is always on point. Her speech is incredibly refined. I could praise Miss Y for three days and three nights straight and still not finish. How can she be so perfect?! Ahhh!
In the winter, my hands always break out in tiny blisters. They’re so itchy. Once I scratch them open and the fluid comes out, the itching stops, but they just pop back up a few minutes later. I have no choice but to endure it. When the itch gets bad, I focus on typing; when I’m completely engrossed in a task, I don’t feel the itch anymore.
I didn’t really care about it myself—after all, it was just a bit itchy. It was only later, while holding hands during a walk, that Miss Y noticed my hands were covered in tiny blisters.
She took me to a clinic to get some ointment. She supervised me applying it every single day, and slowly, the blisters subsided. However, they still return every winter, so every year when winter comes, Miss Y buys a tube of ointment to apply it for me. Sometimes I even forget to do it myself, but Miss Y always remembers.
Out of nowhere, I woke up in a terrible mood. When Miss Y got up for work, I didn’t get up to give her a morning kiss, I didn’t do any chores, and I didn’t cook breakfast or dinner. When Miss Y came home, she found me lazily sprawled on the couch watching TV. She leaned in to kiss me, but I pushed her away in annoyance. Undeterred, she kept leaning back in to kiss me. I reluctantly let her peck me once before shooing her away.
Miss Y realized I was in a bad mood, so she set to work preparing dinner. She asked me what I wanted to eat, but I didn’t say a word. So, she made some sweet and spicy dishes. I wolfed down two bowls of rice, but I was still unhappy. Miss Y then took me out for a run. We ran five kilometers, and my mood instantly improved—no more gloom, no more distress. My lungs, however, felt a bit uncomfortable.
Sometimes Miss Y uses strange onomatopoeias when she speaks. For instance, when she eats something delicious, she’ll say “Miya Miya.” When she wakes up, she’ll say “Hamo Ji Hamo Ji.” When she encounters people or things she dislikes, she’ll mutter “Ara Ara.” Even though I have no idea what she’s saying, and she doesn’t really know what she’s saying either—just some bizarre vocal habits she came up with—it doesn’t stop me from thinking she is unbelievably cute.
Miss Y woke up early and bought three pounds of fresh lychees. I was still fast asleep when she got home. Afraid that the lychees wouldn’t be fresh by the time I woke up, she literally dragged me out of bed to feed me. My eyes were still completely glazed over with sleep when a lychee was stuffed into my mouth. I chewed on it in a daze, spit out the pit, and immediately lay back down to sleep. No matter how much Miss Y called my name, I just couldn’t get up. Let it be known to the world: citizens of the Planet of Eternal Sleep cannot be awoken.
While I was scrolling through my phone, Miss Y started getting playful and touchy with me. I was too lazy to care, so I just let her get away with her flirting. Later, she sat up to do my hair. Again, I was too lazy to bother, so I let her tie my hair into little pigtails. I ended up spending the whole day sporting the little pigtails she made for me. In the afternoon, I caught a glimpse of myself in the window reflection and realized she had given me ox-horn pigtails. Thinking it looked pretty cute, I took a picture and sent it to a friend, bragging, “My wife did my hair.” My friend told me to get lost.
When I wear slippers, I have a habit of sliding my toes too far forward. Because of this, my slippers always wear out much faster than Miss Y’s. Even if I’m extra careful, they break easily. Just so we could wear matching couple slippers, Miss Y accompanied me to replace mine time and time again. Eventually, fed up with how fast I ruined them, she straight-up forced me to watch shoe-repair tutorials so I could fix my broken slippers and keep wearing them.
Thanks to that, I actually developed a solid shoe-repairing skill.
While we were chatting aimlessly at night, Miss Y asked me if I would still love her if she turned into a cucumber one day. “Why a cucumber? Can’t it be something else?” “I just feel like cucumbers are crunchy and seem very delicious.
So, if I turned into a cucumber, would you still love me?” “Can we switch to a different living organism? If you’re a cucumber, I’d harvest and eat you while you’re still on the vine.
There wouldn’t even be time to develop feelings.” “Then what if I turned into a toad? Would you still love me?” “Yes.” “Wow, you have such bizarre tastes! Who on earth loves a toad? I’m not talking to someone with such weird tastes anymore, I’m going to sleep.” With that, Miss Y pulled the blanket over her head, intending to sleep. “Wait, no, you…” I stared at Miss Y as she pretended to be asleep, feeling my blood pressure spike.
Miss Y signed up for a yoga class. Every night after dinner, she would go practice. On Saturday during our day off, I asked her what she had learned in class. Miss Y wanted to show off. She brought out a yoga ball that had been sitting around forever to demonstrate a pose for me—and immediately got a muscle cramp. I ended up massaging her for ages.
When Miss Y makes dumplings, she is incredibly generous with the filling. She can pack a pound of filling into a single wrapper. When they go into the pot to boil, they almost always burst and turn into a pot of dough-wrapper soup.
It’s a good thing Miss Y doesn’t run a restaurant; otherwise, the shop would go bankrupt and customers would file endless complaints. They’d come for dumplings, only to end up with a pot of dumpling soup.
I ran out of inspiration while writing, so I texted Miss Y to ask her what to do. Miss Y replied, “Then just filler-write a bit. Just pad it with fifty words, or take a break.” Taking a break was out of the question, but padding the text was worth considering. And so, this paragraph was born. Hahaha! A successful piece of filler text, let’s just consider it a bit of rambling.
I’m still in touch with my high school friend. She is one of the few people who know about my relationship with Miss Y. A few days ago, I was scrolling through our old chat logs, and she had said this: “I’ve always thought of Miss Y as a free, wild breeze that never stays still for anything, while you are like a silent, vast mountain.
The two of you seemed to have no common ground, as if her breeze appeared merely to rustle the leaves and grass on your mountain. But later, I slowly realized that Miss Y is a free bird and you are a resilient, mighty tree. She built her nest on your branches.
You provide her with a place to rest, and she brings you beautiful music. You two seem to have nothing in common, yet only the two of you understand how vital you are to one another. Neither of you can live without the other.”
My hair has grown to shoulder length, and the back can just barely be tied into a tiny little topknot, leaving a lot of loose strands behind. I always feel those loose hairs tickling my skin, making me itch. Miss Y told me to grow it out longer so it would be easier to tie up, but I feel like long hair is too troublesome to wash. Left with no alternative, Miss Y bought me a bunch of cute hair clips to pin my hair back.
Sometimes when I get bored while typing, I glance into the transparent container at the cute hair clips Miss Y bought me, and I instantly feel full of energy again.
Wearing a ring for so long has left a permanent mark on my finger. I call it the imprint of love’s memory. Sometimes, looking at the mark left by the ring, I can’t help but recall the days I’ve spent walking alongside Miss Y.
Thinking about all these years gone by, we have loved each other for so long. It turns out we have been happy for a very, very long time—so long that we are already in our thirties, so long that crow’s feet have begun to appear on our faces.
We’ve bought a lot of bizarre furniture for our home: voice-activated bathroom lights, a water cup that glows, a faucet that requires you to sing a song before it dispenses water, a tissue box shaped like corn, a chopstick rest shaped like a cat, a Baroque-style vanity mirror, a chair that wobbles the moment you lie on it, a sofa shaped like a hamburger, and a vase shaped like a Piranha Plant.
Although they are all incredibly strange, it is precisely this quirky furniture that gives our home its warm atmosphere.
Miss Y specially took the time to draw two matching couple profile pictures for us.
It’s an animated style featuring two little cats with their faces pressed together. In the picture she sent over, the two little calico cats are both wearing straw hats, snuggling close to each other, just like Miss Y and me.
Looking at the cute little cats reminds me of my adorable Miss Y. Sometimes when we chat and I see our matching profile pictures, my heart feels warm, as if I’ve eaten ten thousand candies.
Miss Y got her period and her stomach was hurting, so she arched her back and lay face down on the bed, whimpering. One minute she wanted me to pour her hot water, the next she wanted me to rub her stomach, and then she’d say the heating pad wasn’t hot anymore and asked me to stick a new one on.
She basically ordered me around in every way possible. In the middle of the night, after I fell asleep, I felt something squirming next to me for a long time.
I reached out and felt Miss Y tossing and turning from the pain, so I ended up rubbing her stomach for half the night.
The next day, her stomach didn’t hurt anymore, her back wasn’t sore, and her body felt completely fine and energized. Meanwhile, I was so exhausted I could barely keep my eyes open and slept the whole day.
When I finally opened my eyes, I found my editor had been chain-calling and messaging me to turn in my manuscript. I scrambled out of bed in a hurry, but the moment I stood up, my lower back gave out—it hurt terribly.
In the end, I had to write the manuscript on my phone to submit it. Miss Y came home and happily started eating ice cream; her stomach didn’t hurt at all, and she was just enjoying her food and drinks. Meanwhile, I was laid up in bed because of my back pain, hurting so badly I couldn’t swallow a thing. Ah, what a twist of fate!