Please Dote on Me - Novelbike

At night, the cold wind swept through the streets of Shibuya. Yang Jiexi finally let me walk alone, which was quite a rarity.

Can’t winter pass a little faster? I felt my face grow colder, stiffening and numbing. The bustling crowd and flickering neon lights made me feel restless. All I wanted was to head toward a quiet place, completely disregarding my own safety.

Before I knew it, I had wandered into an empty alley, where I heard the sound of crying in the distance-a girl was crying loudly. It seemed like the owner of the voice had no intention of suppressing her emotions, a kind of open-hearted, unrestrained crying that was enviable.

I found myself inexplicably wanting to see who it was that was crying on this snowy night close to midnight.

I walked toward the source of the sound, and soon I spotted the girl. She was running chaotically in the snow, stumbling and seeming to search for something. Eventually, she fell into the snow, her head hung low, her long, thick hair hiding her face. Her cries came out in wild bursts, almost as if they were spilling from her frail, small frame.

I was about fifty meters away from her, wanting nothing more than to get closer. Even I found my thoughts peculiar. To me, she seemed to possess an allure that drew me near.

As I got closer, she looked familiar. She was wearing a thick black cotton coat, but underneath, she only had a white shirt, which hung longer than the coat itself on this frigid winter night.

I crouched down and gently lifted her thin shoulders. I couldn’t explain why I was making such an inexplicable gesture. She was shivering, whether from crying or the cold, I couldn’t tell.

I felt an unexpected sympathy and pain for this stranger, even though I wasn’t sure I had the right to feel compassion for others.

Gradually, she calmed down and stopped shivering. Then she looked up at me with her translucent skin, her left eye showcasing a deep brown tear mole that seemed to shimmer under the streetlight.

“You finally remembered, didn’t you?” The girl said suddenly, a hint of excitement in her voice, her tear-streaked face flushed slightly.

“I remember you. We met by the lake in the park,” I replied. “You were also in Tokyo…”

I hadn’t finished speaking when the girl interrupted me, “How could you not remember? Why can’t you remember? Didn’t you come to Tokyo? Didn’t you come to look for the person you love? So why can’t you recall? Why can’t love be persistent? Heize Yangjie! No matter what, he has never disappeared. Can’t you see? He’s here, he’s right here!” She pointed to the Tear mole at the corner of her eye, her voice filled with desperation. “I’ve already been in hell, and I don’t want to be redeemed. If something as important as life can be discarded so easily, then why not just throw away life itself? Do you choose for me to die or for me to keep living? I struggle to tell you the truth, but my feeble strength seems unable to convey anything. In the end, you chose to be like everyone else.”

I let go of her shoulders and didn’t want to look at her face. I couldn’t tell if I felt disgust or fear. I just had this overwhelming desire to never see her again.

Every time I recalled her impulsive actions by the lake in the park, I would shudder.

“What does it matter who? The person you love the most? Have you given up on your lover? When you feel that someone is as important as your own life, when you think you can’t live without him, you would never let go, no matter what. Even if he vanishes completely, even if you have to search every molecule of air, you wouldn’t give up. But you-you’re not that kind of person. You like to think of yourself as loving someone while you don’t truly see them as vital as your own life. You’re, so, ridiculous,” she said all in one breath, panting heavily, looking exhausted.

“Qi Yang! It’s time to wrap up your walk, don’t you think?” Yang Jiexi’s voice sounded as if it came from the heavens.

I turned to see Yang Jiexi standing not far away, watching me.

“I promised to let you have some time alone, but I was still worried, so I came along. What are you doing?” Yang Jiexi approached me, extending his hand. “The ground is covered in snow; can’t you see? Get up quickly; we should go back and sleep.”

I wanted to say something to the girl with the Tear mole at the corner of her left eye, but when I turned to look at her, I found that she had vanished without a trace the moment I glanced back at Yang Jiexi, as if she had never been real.

I was so astonished that I couldn’t even speak. Yang Jiexi scolded me as he picked me up, “You really are an idiot. Why are you still standing there like that? Don’t you know it’s cold? The only thing you do every day is wear people down.”

After a long while, I finally asked Yang Jiexi in a stuttering voice, “The girl in the thick black coat who was just with me-didn’t you see her?”

“Shut up! What girl? I don’t have the energy to talk to you. You’re so heavy! I really don’t understand how someone so thin can weigh this much!” Yang Jiexi continued to curse.

Despite that, I didn’t want to walk on my own. I felt more exhausted than he did.

The girl with the Tear mole at the corner of her left eye? Was I seeing things?

It was ridiculous.

If Yang Jiexi said that he hadn’t seen her, then… what was she?

No matter what she was, it was best if she just never appeared again.