Additional update.

She was so flustered that she didn’t even manage a proper goodbye to Jiang Chen. Her gaze drifted blankly toward the window. Outside, the night was pitch black, and wind and snow raged with abandon—like pear blossoms weighed down on every branch.

Her breath grew heavy. Lying on her side, her fingers brushed the phone screen, accidentally activating a song.

“Weeds overtook my youth, yet I lived it in peace.”
“Now it’s the passing years that accompany me instead of you.”
“After so many departures and farewells, I admit I’ve locked my feelings away.”
“My self-esteem is dense, tangled as thorns.”

Ye Mian listened in a daze, a fine ache blooming in her heart. A single tear traced its way to her ear, soaking into her hair with a chill that reminded her of her own sorrow.

She closed her eyes. In high school, she had believed that getting into Class One meant she could always be near Jiang Chen. She thought coming to Wencheng would let her maintain this delicate, distant closeness. But life is full of changes. The gears of fate turn ceaselessly— the closer she tried to be, the farther Jiang Chen seemed to drift.

Things were already beginning to veer off course.

She didn’t know if, in her previous life, Jiang Chen’s silence in university was because he’d gone abroad. Or perhaps, she wondered, had her changes driven him away? The more she struggled and chased after him, the farther fate seemed to carry him from her.

She wiped away her tears, her mind clouded by alcohol, yet she was painfully aware: she couldn’t find Jiang Chen anymore. He had moved too far out of reach.

The music played on, relentless. Agitated, she scratched her head and, her voice thick with tears, pleaded, “Stop singing.”

She grabbed her phone, too drunk to figure out which app was playing the music, so she simply set the volume to mute and clutched the phone in her palm.

Her thumb brushed the voice recording button in the chat window.

A few seconds later, she sang, half-mocking herself, a song that wouldn’t become popular for another two years.

“Heaven, can’t you see how much I love him?”

The voice message, over sixty seconds long, was sent automatically.

She slept through the night in a haze. When she awoke, her eyes were swollen. She touched her damp pillow and realized she must have cried herself to sleep.

Her head throbbed, memories from the previous night blurry and fragmented. The Thai restaurant’s wine must have been fake—her head hurt worse than ever before. She stared around the hotel room, slowly recalling she’d come with two friends.

Ye Mian slapped her face, trying to clear her mind. She had this problem: she often blacked out when she drank. Not everything was forgotten, but the fragments never quite fit together.

“If I’d known, I wouldn’t have drunk so much. My head is killing me.” In despair, she buried her face in the covers and reached for her phone to ask Qin Feifei where she was.

But as soon as she unlocked the screen, she froze.

The chat with Jiang Chen was still open.

And now, inexplicably, there was a voice call record and a sixty-second voice message.

Both sent by her!

She pressed her lips together and tapped the voice message.

After a few seconds of odd rustling, her drunken, off-key voice wafted through.

“Heaven, can’t you see how much I love him?”

What on earth was this?!

She covered her mouth, on the verge of tears. Jiang Chen could easily accuse her of harassment. It would have been bad enough to send just a line of a song—but the rest of the minute was nothing but rustling and incoherent noise. Utterly contentless.

If someone sent her such a message in the middle of the night, she’d be furious!

Clutching her phone, Ye Mian agonized over how best to apologize.

Suddenly, the phone vibrated—Jiang Chen was calling her directly.

(End of chapter)