Chapter Text
The city drifted past the car window in slow blurs of grey and amber. For several minutes, neither of us spoke. I had lived in this city long enough to know its roads. The bookstore near the intersection. The convenience store where I used to buy instant noodles at midnight. The narrow alley that led to my apartment.
We passed all of them.I frowned. "This isn't the way to my apartment."
"I know."
His answer came so naturally that it took me a moment to realize what he had said.
"...Then where are we going?"
"My house."
I laughed. The sound escaped before I could stop it, thin and awkward, the sort of laugh people make when they don't know what else to do.
"You don't have to do that."
"I know."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
I turned toward him. He looked different from the last time I had truly looked at him. A pair of thin-framed glasses rested on the bridge of his nose. His white shirt was neatly pressed despite spending an entire night in the hospital. The sleeves were rolled to his forearms, revealing faint marks where the fabric had been creased for hours.
He looked less like the quiet boy who used to sit beside me in high school. More like someone who had learned to carry exhaustion with dignity.
"I can go home by myself."
"I know."
"I've been living alone since my grandmother passed away."
"I know."
"I've managed just fine."
"I know."
I let out a slow breath. "Then stop treating me like I can't."
The car fell silent. Only the rhythmic clicking of the turn signal filled the space between us.
Then Cheng Ye spoke.
"Because you were almost killed."
His voice wasn't loud. If anything, it was softer than before. Yet it struck me harder than if he had shouted.
I looked away.
"I don't need someone watching over me every second."
"No."
"I don't need someone feeling responsible for me."
"I know."
"Then why?"
His hands tightened slightly around the steering wheel. For a moment, I thought he wouldn't answer. Finally—
"Because you're hurt."
I laughed again. This time, there was nothing amusing about it.
"You're still doing it."
He glanced at me briefly.
"Doing what?"
"Making decisions for me." The traffic light turned red. The car came to a gentle stop. Outside, people crossed the street beneath umbrellas, moving quickly through the afternoon drizzle.
Someone has to. The words were so quiet I almost missed them.
I turned to him.
"...What?"
"You never ask for help."
"I don't need—"
"You do."
"I don't."
"You always wait until it's too late."
Something inside me snapped. "You don't know anything about me." The sentence escaped before I had time to regret it. The moment it reached the silence between us, I wished I could take it back. Cheng Ye didn't answer immediately.
The light turned green. The car moved forward. Then, almost absentmindedly, he spoke.
"I know you sleep on your left side when you're exhausted."
I froze.
"I know coffee gives you stomachaches, but you still drink it during exams."
"..."
"I know you only eat the yolk if someone else finishes the egg white."
"..."
"I know you still carry your grandmother's house key."
His voice remained calm. Almost frighteningly calm.
"I know you pretend to like strawberries because she loved them."
My throat tightened.Each sentence peeled away another layer of certainty. Things I had never remembered telling anyone. Things I wasn't even sure I remembered myself. He swallowed.
Then, with a tired smile that barely reached his eyes, he said,
"I know... more than I probably should."
Neither of us spoke again. Rain began to gather against the windshield. The wipers swept it away in slow, measured arcs. I suddenly couldn't breathe inside that car. "Stop." He looked at me. "Please." Without another question, he pulled over. Before the car had fully stopped, I reached for the handle. Cold air rushed in the moment I opened the door. Rain kissed my face almost immediately. I stepped onto the pavement without knowing where I intended to go. I only knew I needed distance.
Needed air.
Needed time to understand how someone could know me so well while I had spent fifteen years convincing myself he was nothing more than a stranger. Behind me, the engine remained running. He didn't call my name. Of course he didn't. Wen Cheng Ye had always been the sort of person who understood that some silences had to be crossed alone. I walked until the rain began to soak through my shirt. Only then did I realize I was still holding something.
An umbrella.
His umbrella.
For fifteen years, I had mistaken patience for distance. Perhaps that had been my greatest misunderstanding of all. The rain showed no sign of stopping. I continued walking until I reached the bus stop at the corner of the street. Its narrow roof offered little protection, but it was enough to keep the rain from falling directly into my eyes. A bus would come eventually. I leaned against one of the metal pillars and let out a slow breath.
The city blurred behind a curtain of rain. I closed my eyes. For the first time in years, my mind refused to stay quiet. Fragments of memory returned one after another. A carton of chocolate milk. An orange I had thrown away. Teachers visiting my grandmother. The keychain. A promise I had forgotten.
"...Idiot." The word escaped before I realized I had spoken aloud. I laughed quietly. It wasn't Cheng Ye. It had never been him. It was me. I had been the one who kept walking away.
A pair of headlights swept across the wet pavement. I stepped forward absentmindedly. My foot slipped. The world lurched. Before I could hit the ground, someone caught my wrist with surprising force. I stumbled backward instead, crashing into a solid chest. The umbrella slipped from my hand. It struck the pavement with a dull sound before rolling into the rain.
For a moment, neither of us moved. I looked up. Wen Cheng Ye stood before me, rainwater dripping from his dark hair onto the shoulders of his white shirt. His glasses were gone. His breathing was uneven. What startled me most, however, was his expression. His eyes...
They were red.
As though he had spent the last few minutes holding something back with all the strength he possessed.
"Cheng Ye..." I barely managed to whisper his name.
Before another word could leave my mouth—
His arms tightened around me. Not gently. Almost painfully.
"Wen Cheng Ye..."
He didn't answer. Instead, I felt his breathing against my shoulder. Uneven. Shaking.
He still didn't move.
"Cheng Ye."
Slowly, he loosened his grip just enough for me to lift my head. Rain clung to his eyelashes. For the first time since I had known him… He looked completely defenseless.
"I almost lost you."
His voice cracked.
"I almost lost you again."
Again? The word lodged somewhere inside my chest.
"...What do you mean?"
He laughed. A short, bitter laugh I had never imagined hearing from him.
"You always leave."
"..."
"You left when we were children."
"You forgot."
"You left after high school."
"You kept walking away every single time."
His breathing became increasingly uneven.
"And every time..."
"I told myself..."
"...it's okay."
"I'll find you again."
Another laugh, but more like a scoff. This one sounded closer to breaking than amusement.
"I was stupid enough to believe that."
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. He looked at me as though he had finally grown tired of carrying fifteen years alone.
"You know what hurts the most?"
His eyes met mine.
"It's not that you hated me."
"It's not that you forgot."
His voice trembled.
"It's that..."
He swallowed.
"I stood right in front of you."
"I was always there."
"And every single time..."
"...you chose somebody else."
Silence settled between us with a peculiar weight, the sort that arrives only after words have exhausted themselves. It was not an empty silence but one crowded with everything neither of us knew how to say.
Rain battered the pavement in relentless sheets, dissolving the edges of the city until buildings, traffic lights, and passing faces became little more than blurred impressions behind a curtain of water. Every drop seemed determined to erase the world beyond the two of us.
"I watched you with Tian Yu."
"I watched you smile because of things I asked him to do."
"I watched you believe he remembered everything about you."
"I never corrected you."
"...Because I thought..."
He closed his eyes.
"...if you were happy..."
"...it didn't matter who received the credit."
His shoulders trembled.
"But then..."
"The doctor asked me if I was family."
"I couldn't answer."
"I wasn't."
"He asked me to call someone who mattered to you."
Another bitter laugh escaped him. And somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, I realized that the only thing which had truly changed was me.
"I realized..."
"I've spent fifteen years making sure you were never alone."
"...and if you had died..."
"I would've become a stranger standing outside an operating room."
The sentence hit me harder than the accident itself.
"I can't do it anymore."
His voice was barely audible.
"I can't keep pretending..."
"...that watching you from a distance is enough."
Another silence. Rain continued to descend with mechanical persistence, striking roofs, pavements, and the black surface of the road with equal indifference.
Then—
"I love you."
Just three words spoken by someone who had run out of strength to hide them.
"I've loved you..."
"...for so long..."
"...that I don't even remember what my life looked like before you."
He lowered his head.
"If you still want to leave..."
"...I'll let you."
"...I won't stop you."
"...Just..."
His fingers slowly slipped from my coat.
"...don't disappear again."
“Please…”
A pause.
Then, almost too quietly to hear—
The word broke something inside me.
Rain streamed down his face in restless lines, blurring the distinction between tears and water until I could no longer tell where one ended and the other began. Yet I knew.
Some grief cannot be disguised, not even by a storm. For years, I had convinced myself that Wen Cheng Ye was incapable of feeling anything at all. I had mistaken silence for indifference. Restraint for distance. Patience for the absence of love. How astonishingly wrong I had been.
My throat tightened. I had spent years believing I was protecting myself. Keeping my distance. Refusing to depend on anyone. Yet the walls I had built around my own heart had trapped someone else outside them. Someone who had been knocking all along.
He had been my first friend. The first person who taught me that kindness could exist without asking for anything in return. When my childhood had begun to fall apart, he had been there.
Simply... there.
My vision blurred. Not because of the rain. Because I could no longer bear the weight of everything I had failed to see. Slowly, I reached for him. This time, I didn't hesitate. I wrapped my arms around him, feeling him stiffen in surprise before, almost imperceptibly, he relaxed into my embrace.
I had believed he was the one chasing after me. Only now did I realize… He had never been chasing. He had simply been waiting. Waiting for me to turn around.
I buried my face against his shoulder. "I'm sorry." The words came out broken, carried away almost immediately by the rain. "I'm sorry I forgot."
"I'm sorry I kept walking away."
"I'm sorry... I made you wait."
His arms tightened around me. Neither of us spoke. There was nothing left to explain. The rain continued to fall, steady and indifferent, washing over the city as though trying to erase fifteen years of misunderstanding.
At last, I lifted my head. He was still looking at me with the same quiet eyes I had spent so many years refusing to understand. I smiled.
A real one.
The first I had ever given him without anger, without pride, without misunderstanding standing between us. I reached down, picked up the umbrella that had fallen onto the pavement, and opened it above our heads. The rain softened into a distant murmur.
I took his hand. This time, he didn't let go. "Let's go home."
He looked at me, almost as if he wasn't certain he had heard correctly. I squeezed his hand gently. "...I'll never leave again."
For a brief moment, he simply stood there. Then, so quietly I almost missed it, he smiled.
And together, we walked home.