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The girl picked up her phone, wincing as the bright light nearly blinded her poorly-adjusted eyes.
03:04 AM
Fuck.
Sang zhi should've been asleep a long time ago
For goodness' sake, she had midterms lined up starting next week, was absolutely swamped with assignments, and then there's that summer internship to apply for.
Yet here she was. Here she fucking was.
Thinking about him, the love of her life and the bane of her pitiful existence.
Duan Jiaxu.
It had been little over a year since she moved to Yihe for college.
Either it was to escape Nanwu—with all its evasive reminders of him at every turn—or to come to the city that held the one thing she could never have.
Sang zhi didn't know which of the two it was. But she'd told everyone, including herself, that the digital media program here was too good to let go.
Just then, a memory resurfaced.
"It takes imagination to draw. Besides, I've always felt that people who can draw are full of kindness to the world."
And while it wasn't remotely due to his influence that she had chosen digital media—a major which she genuinely adored—it still made her feel all warm inside to recall the words spoken over two years ago by the man who was blissfully unaware of the enamoured young girl in front of him.
Sang zhi felt embarassingly proud that she continued to do something that Jiaxu appreciated about her.
Duan Jiaxu, who was the kindest man she'd ever known.
She tossed and turned in her bed for the umpteenth time, letting out a strangled sound that was somewhere between a groan and a sigh, and loud enough that she hoped none of her poor, tired roommates were stirred awake by the sound.
Sang zhi had trouble sleeping ever since she was a kid. Her excitable pre-teen self would often have too much energy and stayed up late, either drawing or reading comics.
But insomnia didn't seem to pose much of a problem for her until she came to Yihe. Now it seemed to have gotten much worse, and was especially bad during exam season.
How incredibly frustrating, since her overworked brain would be too tired to stop the flood of memories from carrying her away.
So once again, she circled back to those few instances with jiaxu that had infuriatingly burned themselves into her memory.
The time in highschool when she was pushed around by some bullies. He'd been searching for her.
Well, obviously.
because sang yan had given him the responsibility of getting her home safely.
The way he'd hugged her—with concern that felt too brotherly for her liking.
Or the time he'd carried her and tended to her wounds when she fell down during sports day.
Just like how he'd helped another girl.
Because it was literally his job to assist the lanky adolescents with poor limb control and a tendency to get hurt.
She sighed.
Every memory of them was marred with the realisation that he held about as much affection for her as you would for a puppy.
And yet she couldn't stop remembering.
She needed a lobotomy. She needed him.
What would he do if he found out the way she reconstructed all of their moments in her head every night? Would he laugh at her childish antics?
At the way she hopes to rediscover some blurry detail as if it were some tape she was seeing and not her own, questionable, love-struck recollection.
Or maybe he'd pat her hair and smile at her in a way that was painfully Jiaxu. Calling her by his annoying nickname for her with amusement.
Xiao peng you
God It was so pathetic. She was so pathetic.
Yearning over the same guy since highschool.
A guy who probably thought she forgot him and moved on with her life since she'd stopped replying to his wechat messages.
Sang zhi wanted to laugh.
It was quite hilarious, honestly–knowing none of it meant anything to him and still reliving it like it's the only time she'd ever felt alive.
And maybe it was.
Sang zhi had been coddled and sheltered since she was a child, but she'd only ever really felt seen by Duan Jiaxu.
Maybe that's why she kept chasing the ghost of his touch like it would ease at least some of the soul-deep longing inside of her.
But her biggest fear was that even those attempts would be futile soon.
Because unfortunately, human memory only lasts so long and everyone is built to forget. Even the faint pressure of his arms around her would soon be hard to recall.
That's just great.
Sang Zhi was built to eventually forget Duan Jiaxu and the cruelty of it made her want to punch a wall.
Because how could it be fair that she'll only ever love him in secrecy?
That she'll never really get to know him fully and he'll never really want to know her and they'd go their entire lives without ever knowing what haunts the other person at night.
And he'd never picture her—or them, together—with some silly, morbidly curious part of him wondering if she had thoughts similar to his.
Nothing may come out of it, but still, Sang Zhi never wanted to forget any of it. She swore up and down that she wouldn't.
Because forgetting would feel like watching proof wither away.
Proof that she was there and he was there and she'd felt it. Something akin to starburst in her very heart.
And god he must've felt it too, right?
With at least a tiny fraction of the enormity with which she had.
She had to have mattered.
She saw it in his eyes—a flicker of something—when she'd flown to Yihe.
The intensity in his gaze, the possessiveness with which he'd reprimanded her.
But Sang Zhi had wondered this far too many times, and it was getting easier to convince herself that it really was just one of her hopeless delusions.
He had a beautiful girlfriend. It'd been nothing but concern for his best friend's annoying little sister who was acting up once again.
She yawned,
Looks like sleep was finally affording her sweet relief after an hour and half of spiralling over something that was indefinitely out of her control, and had been from the start.
And so she found herself drifting off, slowly—imaging herself wrapped in a barely-there-scent and strong arms.
To the only place she'd ever meet him again.
Or so she thought.