Chapter 89 Step 99

  The terrible mood is just like the terrible weather that has been going on, making me feel more and more depressed and suffocated. I admit this is the first time since I grew up that I have had such a terrible mood for so many days because of a boy.

  Kang Jian, a very strange boy, yet at the moment he inadvertently broke into my life, made me no longer so calm, he thoroughly disrupted my life and my emotions...

  Many girls are attracted to his appearance, but what attracts me more is something beyond his appearance. I'm curious why I would like him. He's almost completely different from the "Prince Charming" I've imagined in my heart, but from the moment we met, I had a premonition that something was going to happen between us...

  Actually, from the moment I got off the car, I had already compromised with him. If he had hugged me tightly from behind at that moment, I think I would have forgotten everything that happened before without any hesitation. But now everything is so quiet, quiet to the point of making me a little scared...

  "Ke Yī, are you still lying in bed? I'm begging you, sister! Come out and have some fun with me!" Ah Sì walked in after class and saw me lying in bed writing my diary, couldn't help but express a sigh of emotion.

  "It's been raining all along... I'm not in the mood...” As soon as I saw Ah Si coming in, I suddenly didn't even have the mood to write my diary anymore. I closed my diary, stretched my waist and found myself as weak as a dying patient.

  "Lao Se Gui has been looking at you for the past few days, thinking of killing you. Today's class was also quite unenthusiastic..." Ah Si said to me with a guilty-looking face.

  "Hah! That's even better, at least you won't be disturbed while sleeping......" I sat up from the bed, leaning my head against the wall.

  "Let's go shopping this afternoon, I want to buy a few sets of clothes." Ah Si said to me while sitting on my bed.

  "No mood..."

  "What's wrong? Didn't you just have a fight with your boyfriend? It's nothing! What's the big deal?! He didn't even call you for so many days, was he hit by a car or something?" Ah Si said to me with a scornful face.

  "What are you talking nonsense!" I hastily stopped Ah Si's crow mouth from continuing.

  "Heh heh! I still feel a bit sorry for him! Do you want us sisters to help you tie him up?" From the day I met Ah Si, she has been a staunch supporter of violence being the best policy.

  "Does he need to be tied up to come? Have you forgotten how he got in last time? And how did he manage to escape unscathed?" As soon as I finished saying this, I thought of the scene where he broke into our dormitory last time, and suddenly felt a sense of depression in my heart. It seems that my worries are being confirmed step by step. Otherwise, he wouldn't have gone so many days without even making a phone call.

  "What's wrong with you guys? You didn't even make it clear that day, and weren't we still close before the holiday?" Ah Si curiously asked me.

  "There are many things you don't understand... and I can't explain to you either..." I'm too lazy to make things clear, and I also don't want to tell others about the truth between us.

  "Go! I'm angry, but I still have to live! Do you really want to sit in the dorm all day and let beautiful girls turn into ugly ones? You know that with you like this, I haven't slept well for days?" Seeing Ah Si's inexplicable concern for my recent life and mental state, I finally felt a hint of warmth amidst these gloomy feelings over the past few days, although previously I had also been surprised and puzzled by Ah Si's unusual words.

  "Fourth sister... thank you... I know that in the dorm, it's actually still you who cares about me the most. You let me feel some remaining warmth of humanity at a time when my thoughts on love were about to turn to dust!" To encourage Fourth Sister to continue saying some warm and fuzzy words to stimulate me, I exaggeratedly expressed non-existent emotions to her and gave her a passionate hug.

  "Actually, I'm afraid that when I wake up suddenly in the middle of the night, I'll find a silly girl in my dorm room who has turned white-haired overnight due to heartbreak and will scare me to death. That's why I've been having insomnia these past few days. When I was little, I got scared watching 'The White-Haired Girl'. You say, lying in bed every day, staring at your sparkling eyes that don't sleep, looking out the window... who can sleep peacefully?"

  A sudden knock at the door timely stopped my impulse to ask Ah Si for an explanation, and Ah Si escaped from my cannibalistic gaze, running to open the door in a relieved manner.

  "Wow! Good teacher! Welcome, teacher, to guide our work!" As soon as Ah Si opened the door, he spoke in a eunuch-like tone, and I couldn't help but look towards the doorway, where the dormitory aunt with a bucket-like figure happened to appear before my eyes.

  "What's going on with your dorm room? It's made like a pigsty, every day the curtains aren't closed, the door curtain isn't closed, can't you take care of yourselves?! In the past, considering her as a middle-aged woman who has been suffering from menstrual irregularities for a long time, ignoring the pain and insisting on working at her post, her spirit deeply moved us. So we often kept silent in the face of her unreasonable accusations. Moreover, after experiencing so many years of torture and erosion by the Chinese education system, we have become numb to the shrewish behavior of these elementary and high school educators who were once considered normal. Let alone a university dorm worker who hasn't received much education, she can use such words instead of spouting profanity like her colleagues. Unfortunately, I, who has been in extreme depression recently, had a small spark of anger accumulated in my heart ignited by the aunt's words."

  "Hey! Teacher! So, if we open the curtains every day and let passersby and the boys in the dorm opposite us feast their eyes, does that count as self-love? Or should we consider it our duty to help the poor?" I stood up from bed and said sarcastically to the auntie. After listening to my words and completing a color transition from white to red to green on her face, she dropped "Deduct points, write a self-criticism!" and scurried away with her head down...

  "What's wrong with you and her?! Can't take a joke?!" Ah Si said, sitting beside me to comfort me after seeing my expression.

  "I just want to find her and vent a bit, poor thing!"

  "You're so unlucky! You still have to write a self-criticism, but you can ask Kang Jian to help you with it. The last time he wrote one for Zhang Wei was really deep! No one who read it wasn't moved!" Ah Si said with a hint of implication, and the direct result was that after hearing the name "Kang Jian", the depression I had just vented out came back again...

  Lying in bed until noon, I decided to go out and see the sunlight in the afternoon and attend classes. It's been almost a week since I felt the warmth of the sun on my body. The sky was very kind in the afternoon, pushing away the dark clouds and letting out some sunshine, making me feel much more relaxed while strolling with Ah Si on the way to class.

  Due to the campus characteristics of HuaYuan, it's very difficult to avoid someone or not see someone in school. Considering this point, from the moment I left my dormitory, I was worried that I might run into Kang Jian, worried that when we met face-to-face, we would be awkward and have nothing to say, or pretend not to see each other like strangers... I carried this worry all the way until I entered Building 6, where it slightly alleviated, but at the same time, I also felt a little lost.

  Standing at the entrance of the elevator on the first floor, watching the flashing numbers one by one, a question suddenly flashed through my mind, "When the elevator door opens, will he appear?" ... But considering that Building 6 is where our art school gathers, the possibility of this happening is almost negligible, so I subconsciously found it funny that I was becoming silly because of love.

  Just as the elevator door had not yet fully opened, I suddenly felt that my previous worries seemed possible again. The gap in the door also reflected a familiar figure at this time. When the door was fully open, Kang Jian was already standing at the elevator door, looking at me in surprise.

  "How... did you end up here?" I controlled my emotions and awkwardly said to Kang Jian.

  "I'm looking for Zhang Wei about something... Do you have class?"

  "Ah! In 6628!" After I nodded lightly to Kang Jian, the long-lost silence between us returned, but even in the silence, I hoped that time would only stay at this moment, even if we just stood there silently...

  "Come on..." Ah Si finally couldn't help but remind me that everyone in the elevator was waiting for me.

  "I... went first..." I wish Keane could say something to me in these few seconds of our brief encounter, even a sentence "I miss you" would make me cry my heart out at this moment. I hope he can hold me in his arms, and when facing his broad chest, I even have an unconscious impulse to rush into his arms. But Keane just looked at me silently, making me feel a great sense of loss...

  The moment the elevator doors closed, Ken and I still didn't give up chasing each other's gaze until the gap was so small that we couldn't see each other's eyes. It wasn't until the elevator doors were completely shut that I realized Ah Si was calling my name.

  "Are you okay?" Ah Si asked me with concern.

  "It's nothing!" I said with a smile to Ah Si, then looked at the changing numbers on the elevator and kept asking myself "Is it really over like this?"...

  The elevator door slowly opened, and my eyes also gradually became blurred. When I saw a tall boy standing in front of me, it felt like a hallucination.

  "Maybe... let's talk..." As I heard the familiar voice, I no longer doubted that it was him, so I wiped away my tears, and Kang Jian stood panting in front of me.

  "Let's talk..." Kang Jian panted heavily, but repeated the words from just now over and over again, as if he was afraid I wouldn't give him a chance.

  "What's going on...? I have a class?" I said coldly to Kang Jian.

  "2 minutes..." Kang Jian said breathlessly, at this time Ah Si walked over with a smile, took the book from my hand and said to Kang Jian, "Don't worry! You guys talk! Any amount of time is fine! She hasn't been to class for several days anyway, it doesn't matter about this one!"

  I strolled aimlessly with Kang Jian on the main street, and more than 2 minutes had passed, but neither of us seemed willing to break the silence first, reminding me of when we took photos of Zhang Wei as a model on Central Street.

  "If you have nothing to say, I'll go back to class?" I finally gathered the courage to remind Kang Jian that I didn't come here to take a walk with him.

  "We haven't seen each other for almost a week..." Kang Jian said calmly.

  "Really... I thought you didn't know about that?"

  "But what should we do from now on?" Kang Jian suddenly shifted the topic to the crucial point, asking me without any preparation.

  "I don't know either... what do you want?"

  "These past few days, I've been thinking about the arguments and unhappiness between us. As I slowly recall them, I realize that there are so many problems between us..." Kang Jian's words made my heart tense up immediately, making me feel that this wasn't a good start to our conversation.

  "Continue..." I controlled my excitement and calmly said to Kang Jian.

  "We can't go on like this, or we'll all be tortured to death... Let's separate..." Kang Jian said to me in a low mood, causing a sharp pain in my heart.

  "You finally... understood, right? What I said before was true... you don't love me..." I didn't want to appear weak when we broke up, so I forced back my tears and smiled, pretending it was no big deal.

  "What?... Okay, let's make it interesting... Let the game decide our fate... I don't want to give you up either, but I'm torn..." Kang Jian looked at me silently for a moment, then suddenly said to me, making me somewhat unbelievable.

  "Game......" I asked Kang Jian in confusion, really couldn't understand how he still had the mood to play games at this time.

  "This is what I saw online, at first I thought it was very boring, but now unexpectedly I'm in the mood to play with you... actually it's simple, we back to back, each walking 100 steps forward and then turn around, if we can still see each other, we forget all the unhappiness of the past and start anew; if we can't see each other, just keep walking forward, don't look back..."

  ……

  When I took the first step, a thing called sorrow flooded my heart: My love journey only has 99 steps left. How did we get to this point today? When was it that we strolled together in the rain, our clothes soaked but not feeling cold; when was it that we held hands and watched the sunset together, leaves falling all around; when was it...

  I've walked twenty steps, I really want to turn around and take a look at Kang Jian, see if he's having as hard a time as me, but I don't have the courage to turn back. So I slowly took out my phone and dialed his number...

  "How many steps have you taken so far?" I asked as soon as the phone was answered.

  "Hello?" came Kang Jian's somewhat downcast voice over the phone.

  "I've walked to 20... do you still remember? When you taught me computer programming, you once told me about a situation called 'infinite loop', where if you enter it, you can't get out. You said your love for me was an infinite loop back then, and I was deeply moved. Later on, I realized that infinite loops aren't incurable, as long as you give up the entire program and exit, you can re-enter a new one. Are you thinking of infinite loops now? Have you decided to exit... the carefully crafted program and start anew?" After hearing my words, Kang Jian remained silent, so I gritted my teeth and continued walking forward...

  I had walked fifty steps when an old man selling sweet potatoes asked me if I wanted some. I shook my head and he pushed his cart away. How I wished he would say a few more words to me, so that I could stay for a while and not have to continue walking...

  Eighty steps have already passed behind me, I don't know if Kang Jian is also thinking about the unhappy days we had before. We quarreled over a small matter, I don't know why, but I cried for him... He may not even know that he's the only boy who has made me shed tears...

  I've finally reached the 99th step. I lifted my heavy foot with great difficulty, reluctant to put it down. I'm afraid that when I put my foot down, I'll turn back and never see Kang Jian again; I'm afraid that when I put my foot down, I'll lose him forever; I'm afraid that when I put my foot down, I'll never be happy again; I'm afraid...

  My feet finally touched the ground, tears streaming down my face. I didn't want to look back, nor did I dare to. I couldn't control myself and knelt down, sobbing uncontrollably...

  Suddenly, a pair of broad hands grasped my shoulders. I turned around and saw Kang Jian, his eyes filled with deep guilt and thick love...

  "I don't want to go any further!" I finally couldn't bear it anymore, and rushed into Kang Jian's arms, crying as I spoke. He held me tightly and gently stroked my long hair: "Actually, I've been walking behind you all along, waiting for you to turn around..."

  "You're bullying me again... At this time, you still tease me..." After hearing Kang Jian's words, I couldn't control my emotions even more, but my heart was filled with happiness...