With You Ch 65

Coda: The Best of Us

No.356

I don’t tell Luo Zhi what I’m planning to do. I only tell her that I’m sure she’ll like it.

The first scene is in the classroom. 

Luo Zhi, writing an essay at her desk, the hem of her white wedding skirt spread down the aisle in between groups. The bride holds a pen in her right hand, white lace gloves on, head slightly tilted, biting her lip and writing extremely seriously.

And behind her, a suited Sheng Huainan, craning his neck to peer at the paper like a curious young boy.

The second scene is outside of Sheng Huainan’s old classroom.

I also make an appearance as a person wearing the school uniform who hasn’t yet become self-conscious or shy with age. I hold a notebook with both hands inside the classroom entrance and hand it to the dressed-up groom, Sheng Huainan.

And in the distance, Luo Zhi faces the camera from the side with her head craned over to watch us. As she peeps quietly and humbly as a stranger in the corner, the bridal dress on her body makes her the proudest and most animated focus of the scene.

The third scene is at the flag-raising platform. The new bride grips the flagpole with her head lowered to look at her man below the platform, lightly stretching out her hand.

Would the national flag be raised like that out of nervousness ever again?

Never again.

……

The last scene is on the top floor of the administrative building.

Luo Zhi is the last one to walk up there, slowly accompanied by my assistant and the makeup artist.

She lifts her eyes, and with a glance she sees Sheng Huainan standing in front of the long-since-whitewashed message wall.

On the wall behind him is a sentence he has just written with a thick brush pen.

“Sheng Huainan loves Luo Zhi, and the whole world knows.”

I’m fiddling with the reflector, but as soon as I look up, I see Luo Zhi, pale with tears running down her face.

My senior sister who’d never bat an eye even if Mount Tai collapsed in front of her — in the end, she cries through her makeup when faced with this line of words. And raising up her skirt, running on her high heels, just like a 16-year-old girl, she ignores all the strangers here with us and flies up the stairs into the arms of the person she has loved with all her heart for ten years.

Yu Huai.

In this moment, I can only think of Yu Huai.

I think of that night, of the Geng Geng who was pushed away — who, just like Luo Zhi right now, cast aside everything and everyone to leap to the Yu Huai next to her and kiss him without shame.

He didn’t reject me.

The person who kissed him was not the Geng Geng who was his cowardly deskmate, the Geng Geng who didn’t have any sort of courage.

It was me. The one who wants to kiss him, who wants to hug him, who wants to be with him, whose heart hurts for his persistence and his compromising and the one who wants to face the unknown with him every single day — is me.

Can the past and the future really be separated so clearly?

I bow my head to look at my hands. These hands couldn’t solve math problems correctly, but they took pictures of those flowing years. I’ve never separated myself into two, so why should I need to identify where my love began?

I miss him. Even after so many years, I have never stopped missing him. Time changes us, but it does not change love.

No.357

I pick up my phone and send a message to Yu Huai.

“I’m at the late autumn highlands.”

The last text I ever sent him was on the morning we received our college entrance exam answers. Today, with a new phone number, I text him again.

Our story was cut short after that text. Today, from here, I want to start anew.

I didn’t wait on that summer day, but today I will definitely wait.

Everything that ever happened to us appears in a mess before my eyes.

He pretended he couldn’t see my terribly tragic test papers, laughed at my book covers, carried my bag full of books to send me home, pulled me with my bloody nose to run wildly across the sports field, wrote notes on functions in a gridded book night after night, carried a sapling across half a city… and finally, left one sentence that couldn’t be fulfilled: You’ve got me, don’t be afraid.

He once liked such an ordinary me.

Now it’s my turn.

Yu Huai, you’ve got me. No matter what happens in the future, I’ll always be by your side. Don’t be afraid.

The meaning of love — is two people fighting against fate together.

While we’re together, we are the best.

I watch my youth coming over from afar. At first he still has on that look of estrangement from back when we were at the hospital entrance, but then gradually, gradually, he is unable to keep himself from smiling.

Smiling like a bad child who’s succeeded.

I knew that he would definitely come.

The rebellious youth who stood next to his potbellied uncle on the phone;

the youth who stood in front of the red boards and said to me, “The person to the left of my name is Geng Geng. When you put our names together, it coincidentally makes geng geng yu huai”;

the youth who slanted his pen and pretended to casually write “the best time”;

the youth who waited alone in the corridor outside of the parents’ conference;

the youth who cried out from the top floor, “Continue to worship me”;

the youth who stood in front of my house and said, “There’ll be many chances in the future”;

or, the man who turned off the Nintendo game console and said, “And this is the only thing I can do”;

the man who shyly scratched his head and said, “I don’t know when it started, either. The days passed like flowing water”;

……

The years that he carries behind him flurry over.

Like a flood of information bringing back our youth from seven years ago until time finally arrives to pass in front of my eyes today.

We climb up the hill to look for that tree.

As we look, I mumble, “There’s no way that it died, right?”

“It’s not dead.” He knocks on my head. “I saw it last week.”

I look over and smile at the man who let his words slip. He turns red, ducking down his head, and pulls my hand. We run over to the tall, straight, poplar tree.

Before I can react, he suddenly points to the tree trunk and says, “Look, the name of the person next to me is Geng Geng. When you put it together with mine, it happens to be geng geng yu huai.”

I laugh as I look at him. I say: “I’m that Geng Geng.”

That was the beginning of our story.

So let us start again from here.

Not for nothing have I taken this to heart for so many years.

-END-

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It’s common to refer to youth as one’s “springtime of youth”, and it’s easy to see why. Sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter, a season of growth and maturing. But every season has its end, even if it’s difficult to definitively mark when that is. Still, why should we need to? Our feelings and our growth don’t disappear just because we’ve left one phase of life. Goodbye, Geng Geng and Yu Huai!

Thank you to everyone who has commented and supported me as I translated this novel!