“Let’s... break up.”

The first snow of early winter finally fell. It was a little late, but somehow, it fit the moment.

The girl in front of him trembled slightly. It was a pity she had that thick plaid scarf wrapped around her. Otherwise, he would’ve been able to see her slender neck, pale as fine snow.

Her eyes were lowered, so he couldn’t make out her expression. She didn’t answer Su Yu. Instead, she held out her hand and caught a few thin snowflakes drifting down with the wind. They landed in her palm and melted into water in an instant.

“Mm... I understand.”

Su Yu parted his lips, still wanting to say something. But the words got stuck in his throat. They struggled there for a long time and never came out. In the end, all that was left was one vague sentence.

“Let’s both calm down.”

The girl raised her head. Her clear, watery eyes rippled like mist over a lake, only faintly red at the edges. She blinked, still looking just as cute as ever.

“Mm... I understand.”

That sentence again...

The fist hidden in Su Yu’s sleeve tightened without him noticing. They had been together for a long time. The girl was very obedient. Whenever he asked for something, this was often her answer.

The old Su Yu used to enjoy how obedient she was. But later, that sentence gradually became a curse. It bound him tightly, and no matter how he struggled, he couldn’t break free.

And just like that, they broke up. Right when the first snow of winter arrived.

As for the reason... even Su Yu couldn’t explain it clearly. Maybe it was the crushing weight of life. Maybe it was because the two of them had drifted farther and farther apart. Or maybe... he had changed.

She was an outstanding girl. So outstanding that it took Su Yu four years to finally win her over. That secret crush had begun in their first year of high school and ended in his first year of college.

What she lacked least was male attention. That beautiful face, the one that still amazed Su Yu no matter how many times he saw it, had drawn far too many admirers. Su Yu had only been one insignificant speck among them.

A simp. In today’s terms, that was what Su Yu had been back then. Fortunately, the word hadn’t been invented yet when he was chasing her. He could still comfort himself and call it devotion.

On a battlefield of endless yellow sand, Su Yu charged forward among thousands upon thousands of soldiers. He stepped over countless corpses and fought with everything he had. But thankfully... he was the last foot soldier left alive, the one who killed his way into the city tower and seized the high banner.

They dated for five years, from sophomore year in college to the second year after they started working. The girl was too outstanding. She always stood in the light, while he stood behind her and watched. At first, he felt proud. Later, he only felt inferior.

To get closer to her, Su Yu had chased after her all the way. In his whole life, he had never done anything worth bragging about. But getting into the same university as her had become what their high school classmates called the eighth wonder of the world.

Some people can give everything they have, and their finish line is still right there. Su Yu had thought that getting into the same university meant he had closed the distance between them. But he was wrong. The girl had kept moving forward, while he... had been standing still for a long time.

He had relied on a decent college degree to find a decent job after graduation. He earned a decent salary and gave the girl a decent life.

She often worked overtime until very late, so he usually cooked at night. When she came home, she would sit with him and eat takeout, along with the barely edible food he made. She never complained.

But Su Yu would rather she had complained...

They weren’t parallel lines. But once they crossed, they could only drift farther and farther apart.

The free meals in her company cafeteria were fancier than the restaurants Su Yu took her to. The gifts clients gave her out of courtesy were more luxurious than the holiday presents he had agonized over. The life she touched was one Su Yu couldn’t understand at all. They had less and less to talk about...

These things piled up little by little in the corners of their life. More and more... more and more. Until Su Yu could no longer ignore them. Because if he kept ignoring them, they were going to rise past his ankles.

“You’re not good enough for her!”

That was what the girl’s former best friend had once said to Su Yu. Back then, Su Yu had hated that friend. Young and full of pride, he had never thought he wasn’t good enough for the girl. He could create the eighth wonder of the world for her. What was there that he couldn’t do?

But later, Su Yu hated that friend for the same reason. He hated her for not scolding him awake sooner. If she had, maybe he never would’ve chased the girl. He could’ve stayed useless in some dark corner, and that would’ve been fine. At least the girl wouldn’t have had to see that ugly side of him.

If you love a girl, then give her the best.

Su Yu liked that sentence very much. He felt that was exactly how it should be. The woman who would walk through life with you, who would stay by your side from green youth to white hair—why wouldn’t you give her the best?

But sadly, this was where they ended.

They wouldn’t be able to walk through this life together after all.

Su Yu was an ordinary man. He couldn’t escape the sadness of parting either. The girl dragged her suitcase away from the tiny rental they had lived in for two years, leaving Su Yu alone in the same place. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to move. There was still half a month left on the rent. If he left now, he’d lose quite a bit of money.

He looked at everything familiar in the apartment, and memories flooded into his mind without stopping. The more he remembered, the more pathetic he felt. She could’ve moved into a high-end apartment complex long ago, yet she had stubbornly stayed with him in this broken place where even daylight couldn’t get in properly. He had trapped her. He had trapped her here for a full two years.

It felt like something had sliced a tiny cut open in his heart. Every breath burned with pain. The wound kept stretching wider and wider, until it hurt so much Su Yu wanted to grind his teeth to pieces.

In the end, he couldn’t take it anymore. Carrying his luggage like a stray dog, he fled the apartment. He found an even smaller place to live in. Everything became unfamiliar, and somehow... he felt saved.

Later, Su Yu realized that time couldn’t erase the things that truly haunted you. But the beer cans piling higher and higher on the balcony could.

His life became very calm. The kind of calm where even throwing down a giant boulder wouldn’t stir the slightest ripple. Su Yu thought maybe he could live out the rest of his life like this. It wasn’t so bad. At least the wound in his heart wouldn’t keep widening.

But heaven didn’t seem willing to let him go. Out of nowhere, an invitation to a class reunion was sent to his phone. It was in the city where he lived, and it was on the weekend. Su Yu had no reason to refuse.

Or maybe he did. But Su Yu hadn’t seen the girl in a long time. People are pathetic like that. All of a sudden, he really wanted to know how she was doing. Had she moved into a high-end neighborhood? Was she eating at outrageously expensive restaurants? Had she found someone worthy of her...?

In the end, Su Yu still went to the reunion.

The gathering was in the evening. Su Yu arrived fairly early, but the girl came late. Their classmates started making noise and arranged for him and the girl to sit together.

Actually, none of the classmates who came to this reunion knew that he and the girl had once had that kind of relationship. They only knew that the two of them had gone to the same university, and that... Su Yu had secretly loved her through all of high school.

Maybe it was because they hadn’t seen each other in so long, but Su Yu felt the girl looked especially beautiful today. More beautiful than she had ever been in his memory.

A class reunion was always the same few routines. Catching up was just a pretense. The people organizing the gathering were usually the most active at the table. They had achievements worth showing off, and the confidence to laugh the loudest.

When it came to Su Yu, he only smiled and said there was nothing much to talk about. Then he raised his glass and took a big gulp. The rim of the glass hid the bitterness at the corner of his mouth. The result spoke for itself.

The girl didn’t say much either. She had always been low-key. Su Yu and the girl were like outsiders at the table. She looked at her phone. He kept drinking...

Glasses were raised and traded back and forth. At some point, someone dimmed the lights in the private room. The atmosphere turned vaguely ambiguous. Catching up... or maybe feelings from the past, feelings that had never been spoken, or had been missed by accident.

No matter how much or how little people talked, everyone seemed to be carrying something on their mind. With the buzz of alcohol, their words started losing restraint.

“Hey, Su Yu, do you have someone now?”

At some point, the topic of the reunion shifted to love lives, and eventually it landed on Su Yu.

“I...”

He fell silent for a moment and turned his gaze to the girl beside him. But by chance, their eyes met. Then they quickly looked away again.

“Yeah, I’m seeing someone.” Su Yu smiled very gently. He looked like he really loved the girlfriend he was talking about. “We’re getting married soon...”

Crash!

The wine glass in the girl’s hand fell to the floor and shattered into pieces. Sharp shards scattered everywhere, their edges flashing with a harsh light.

Su Yu instinctively bent down to pick up the broken glass, but his hand brushed against the girl’s. His body tensed slightly, because her hand was cold as ice.

“I’ll do it...” he said with a smile, picking up the shards one by one.

It was only a small interruption. Soon, they started asking the girl questions too. Su Yu slowed his movements. He focused, because he wanted to hear her answer as well.

But the girl only shook her head and said nothing.

Some people felt regret. Some were secretly delighted. So the goddess from high school still didn’t have a boyfriend, huh?

After that, the number of times people urged the girl to drink clearly increased. In the end, a class reunion was nothing more than a gathering of people with their own hidden motives.

When the reunion ended, Su Yu paid his part of the bill and left first. He walked through the howling wind of deep winter, his head tilted up slightly, his eyes blown dry by the cold.

She seemed to be doing pretty well. It was just a bit of a pity that she still hadn’t found a boyfriend.

Su Yu didn’t even know why he had told that lie at the dinner table. Maybe he had drunk too much. Or maybe it was pride. He didn’t want to leave himself any way back. Rekindling old feelings... that was impossible between him and the girl now.

If he could live his life over again, he would rather have never met her at all.

There weren’t many people on the late-night street. A few scattered pedestrians drifted along, each one alone, each silhouette lonely.

Someone walked toward Su Yu from the opposite direction. A black hoodie hid their face beneath the hood, with only a few strands of long hair slipping out and fluttering in the cold wind.

It felt strangely familiar...

Su Yu brushed past that person, but the more he thought about it, the more familiar it felt. Too much like her.

He wanted to turn around and look. But before he could speak, a twisting pain struck his chest. The pain was familiar. It was the same pain as when that tiny cut in his heart was torn wider.

A numbing agony shot along his nerves and into his brain. His muscles spasmed, and in an instant, he lost control of his body.

The strength drained from Su Yu. He fell backward and slammed hard onto the ground. Lying there with his face turned up, he saw the face beneath the hood.

That breathtaking face.

The face he would never forget for the rest of his life.

“Why? Didn’t you say we just needed to calm down? Then why is it that now, Xiao Yu, you’re already about to get married?”

The cold wind threw back the girl’s hood, revealing the obsessive, sickly expression hidden in the shadows. Her emotions were violently unstable. Her face was full of madness. A few hot, glistening tears fell onto his face, as if trying to leave behind the last scraps of warmth that were almost gone.

“You were the one who confessed first, weren’t you? So why was it also you who left first, Xiao Yu?”

“You promised me. You said you’d marry me... We were supposed to be together for the rest of our lives...” The girl’s grip tightened. She drove the stun baton, now turned up to a higher setting, into Su Yu’s chest. The faint crackle of current running through his muscle fibers seemed to hiss right beside his ear. “Liar!”

“Cough...”

Su Yu opened his mouth, trying to say something. But his whole body was numb, and his vocal cords, locked in his throat, could barely force out even a simple sound.

He looked at the girl’s breathtaking face and squeezed out an ugly smile. In her clear black-and-white eyes, he saw thick hatred and bitter unwillingness.

He raised a hand, trembling, wanting to touch her cheek. But his strength drained away too fast. When he was only an inch away from her, his strength gave out. His consciousness began to blur, bringing with it the illusion of standing at death’s door.

“S-Sorry... Chika.”

He refused to accept it. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end! But his arm still dropped to the ground all the same.

“It’s okay. We’re not done yet.” The girl’s lips lightly brushed Su Yu’s earlobe. Her soft, gentle voice carried an icy resolve. “We’ll always be together. Forever...”