Love Me Before I Die - Chapter 16

Extra: Xu Qing.

The world is a thick, inescapable mire.

This was a conclusion I reached long ago.

The day my father brought home that man was merely another confirmation.

Blood, family, ethics-these so-called bonds are nothing but laughable, fragile veils of shame.

Everything will eventually slide into nothingness and decay.

I hid beneath the damp eaves, hands trembling as I lit my first cigarette. The acrid smoke filled my lungs, but did nothing to ease my despair.

Instead, it only added another layer of self-loathing.

See, Xu Qing, how useless you are-even your attempts at release are clumsy and ridiculous.

Then I heard a heart-wrenching cry.

Turning my head, I saw a little thing squatting there, filthy as a stray cat.

Crying without a shred of dignity, face smeared with tears and snot.

So wretched.

I was already this miserable and hadn’t shed a single tear-what are you crying for?

But those eyes…

Crying so fiercely, yet shining with astonishing brightness.

Like two clusters of flames struggling not to be extinguished, they seared into my cold, sticky darkness.

So pure, so vivid.

Later, at school, I could always easily spot Mu Nanxing.

The way he secretly glanced at me, as if gingerly touching something fragile. He appeared at my mother’s rice noodle stall, curled up in a corner, eating slowly and with focus.

I knew he was watching me.

Every time I looked over, pretending it was by chance, he would jerk his gaze away as if burned, the tips of his ears flushing uncontrollably red.

A little cute.

But that thought was quickly smothered by deeper gloom.

What was he really looking at?

The false image on the honor roll?

This barely passable shell of a body?

Or was it the “Xu Qing” he conjured up out of sheer passion-a person who didn’t exist at all?

I was like a gutter-dwelling voyeur, coldly observing how he used those bright eyes to piece together a fantasy of me.

That affection, suspended above my real, mire-like life, was like a beautiful, fragile bubble.

I didn’t even dare to breathe, afraid it would burst.

So, we never had any open contact at school.

After my mother died, I dropped out and entered another world where money came faster.

Standing under dazzling stadium lights, the crowd roaring below.

Yet I could always spot him in the audience with pinpoint accuracy.

Those eyes, brighter than in my memory, brimming with pure excitement and adoration, following me with unwavering focus.

My heart clenched, aching and numb.

Almost instinctively, I smiled in his direction.

Wanting to see his reaction.

Sure enough, he stared wide-eyed, mouth agape, looking startled and silly-like a cat with its fur standing on end.

So pure.

But in the next moment, a vast sense of emptiness surged over me like cold tide, drowning that faint joy.

How long could such affection last?

As expected.

I don’t know from which match, but I never found those astonishingly bright eyes in the fervent crowd again.

See, Xu Qing.

You guessed right.

There’s no such thing as something eternal in this world.

I tugged at the corners of my mouth, wanting to smile, but a bitterness more intense than losing a match rose in my throat.

Empty, more painful than I’d imagined.

Later, my hand was ruined, my worth gone, discarded like a used dog.

For money, I fought illegal matches, sinking into pain and numbness, living only because I couldn’t yet die.

Until that day, when my opponent slammed me hard to the ground, maybe broke my ribs, my mouth full of blood.

The dazzling lights blurred my vision, mocking my wretchedness.

So be it, I’m tired.

Then.

A figure walked toward me against the light.

His voice laced with deliberate mockery and superiority.

But I felt as if struck by lightning, instantly recognizing him.

Those eyes.

Still burning hot.

Just like that rainy day years ago, they crashed into my lifeless heart.

My flame.

He broke into my world again.

I almost laughed, though my heart twisted with pain.

He was the exception my pessimistic philosophy couldn’t explain, the abrupt and solid presence in my nihilistic world.

All my dark observations, self-loathing, and doubts about existence crumbled before his nearly blind, fervent, reckless “heroism.”

It wasn’t him looking up to me.

It was me, a coward mired in existential crisis, finally raising my head to see the only brave flame that illuminated me.

His lingering gaze fell on me.

“Compromise” isn’t surrender-it’s capitulation.

Surrendering to a brightness I couldn’t understand, but longed to possess.

Surrendering to the only heroism of my youth.

……

Rain tapped against the glass, monotonous and stubborn.

Just like countless rainy nights with him, and just like the rainy night that finally took him away.

That place in my chest ached emptily.

Not a sharp pain, but a dense, endless one.

As if inside, silent drops of rain thudded in dull agony.

Only after he left did I belatedly realize how deep this love had rooted.

So deep it occupied every inch of bone and blood; so deep that after it was torn away, all that remained was a battered, hollow shell.

I hate you, hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you…

With Mu Nanxing gone, all color in the world seemed to fade to gray.

Existence reverted to that suffocating, unsolvable riddle.

Fateful rain.

From our first meeting to our final farewell, it never ceased.

He was like a butterfly whose wings were soaked by rain.

Pausing briefly on my branch, trembling, blooming with ultimate beauty, then swept away by the winds and rain of fate, flying off, vanishing into the misty world.

Too cold.

And too tired.

He flew away.

So I… will fly away too.

The rain gently accepts everything, washing away all traces.

As if no one ever stayed, and no one ever left.

Only the rain remains, falling on and on.

(The End)