I who had originally been anxious to soothe Zhi Nian suddenly came back to my senses. The restless state of mind immediately calmed down.
“What did you say?”
“I said, I am not worthy of you.”
She lightly sighed. The sigh was light to the point of almost being inaudible.
“Gu Fan, you are truly very good. Gentle personality, steady in doing things, never showing annoyance toward me.”
“Sometimes I even think, is this the reaction a normal person should have? If it were other boys entangled by me like this, they would only feel ‘so troublesome,’ right? After all by rights, with conditions as superior as Gu Fan’s, wanting to find a girl prettier than me, with a better figure than me, and even richer than me should be as easy as flipping a hand.”
“But Gu Fan, you didn’t. You have never dated a girlfriend. At least in my perspective, you are in a single state.”
“I therefore produced some bad thoughts I shouldn’t have, wanting to always possess you, keep you by my side.”
“But… Gu Fan, you are too good, to the point of being this good to everyone. I am so jealous.”
“You are also good to Shiratori, also good to the female classmates who usually come to play ball. You treat everyone with that kind of flawless smile, attitude mild as if you simply do not have negative emotions like anger and irritability.”
“But I only want you to be good to me alone. I only allow you to place attention and love on me. Why can’t I monopolize all of this?”
“…I know I am very selfish. I know I have no qualifications to demand you be gentle only to me alone. I am clearly nothing, yet delude myself into obtaining everything of yours. I nothing—”
“Don’t say anymore.”
As the words fell, the other end of the phone quieted down, as if the entire world had stopped turning.
I counted my own breaths. When it reached the tenth, I slowly took a deep breath.
“Little Zhi Nian… I want—”
“Don’t! Don’t scold me, don’t despise me… I know I am just a blood-sucking insect.”
“I have never thought that way.”
“But am I not? I only know how to suck your blood, stick to you, tie you by my side. When other girls want to come compete with me, I hiss to scare them. I can give you nothing, yet keep entangling with you tightly and not letting go.”
“Zhi Nian, calm down. Don’t continue speaking.”
“I have already made the scene this ugly and ridiculous. In the future Gu Fan will definitely not want to pay attention to this crazy catgirl anymore!”
“I won’t.”
“I don’t want! If I don’t say it now, there will be no chance later. Don’t coax me. I don’t want you to be good to me. I am afraid. The more you treat me gently, the more my heart panics.”
Zhi Nian’s voice grew more and more urgent.
“I am afraid one day you will grow tired and no longer be this good to me. What should I do then? I finally got used to the feeling of ‘being cared for,’ yet you are going to leave. What does this count as?”
“I am so afraid… I am afraid you will leave, afraid you will be like…”
As if associating to some terrifying existence, Zhi Nian’s voice abruptly stopped.
Vaguely I heard a very light sound as if covering the mouth.
“Like what?”
She did not answer.
On the other end of the phone there was only the sound of breathing.
Urgent, chaotic, like someone struggling in water.
“Zhi Nian?”
A tone nearly grinding the teeth, as if using the strength of the whole body.
“Like my dad.”
“Before my dad had an affair, he was also perfect like a good husband that only existed in TV dramas. I completely could not find a single bit of shortcoming. My mother should have also felt that way.”
“But he indeed had an affair, kissing a rich young miss right in front of me and walking into a hotel, abrupt like a movie with extremely poor ratings inserting a segment of eerie plot that no audience could understand.”
“I cannot figure it out. Why would a good man who always performed so family-oriented suddenly have an affair without any warning? Is this the changeable human heart? So I am afraid…”
“So I am afraid… will you also be like this?”
My heart suddenly tightened.
Zhi Nian was not questioning. She was in fear.
The most primitive, most bottom-layer fear without any disguise or cover.
“Gu Fan, will you one day also walk into a hotel with another woman? It can be understood… pursuing better is human nature. Even Gu Fan would not be an exception, right?”
“No.”
“You guarantee?”
“I guarantee.”
“…Liar.”
Zhi Nian’s voice carried a hard-to-detect broken feeling.
“Will your guarantee really be useful? Can it let me let down my guard and trust?”
“My mom also made my dad guarantee. He made a vicious vow, then not long after stayed a whole night at another woman’s home and did not return.”
“I think, perhaps only one method can avoid this kind of situation from occurring…”
Speaking halfway, Zhi Nian suddenly stopped, seeming to realize that the next words to be said were a bit inappropriate.
“Only what?”
I pressed.
“…Do you really want to know?”
A very light, very light voice, like a resentful female ghost leaning to the ear and lightly breathing.
From the other end of the phone came a very light laugh, as if self-mocking, and also as if feeling the next words to be said were very absurd and unbelievable.
“Mm.”
“…As long as I tie you by my side, making you have no chance at all to walk out of the room, making you feel that leaving me will pay an unimaginable price. I feel this is the most effective, most reassuring method for me.”
“I can think of ways to earn money to support you, and Gu Fan, you only need to obediently stay at home. I will be responsible for raising you into a waste who does not need to think of any other troubles. Just properly please me…”
“Hehe… do you feel I am very terrifying? This is my true delusion.”
“If you hate me, then run away immediately now, thoroughly cut off relations with me. If you still don’t let go, I won’t be able to hold back. I don’t know what other strange actions I will make.”
“I am just this extreme and crazy catgirl. My heart is full of these dark, nauseating, unpresentable thoughts. Every night I will fantasize about these possibilities to please myself. The scene of locking you by my side will keep circling and circling in my dreams.”
“This kind of thing is hard to realize, and also incorrect, wrong, violating moral discipline.”
“But I cannot restrain myself… I clearly have no right to think this way, yet my whole body is like being eaten by ants on the bones. The little demon in my brain also keeps shouting…”
“Shouting for me to catch you, press you on the bed, use a well-behaved, cute, smart and chubby little baby to solidify the childhood sweetheart relationship between us. Can you accept it?”
“When pregnant with the baby I will try my best to learn other methods to satisfy you, guaranteeing that Gu Fan will have no energy to go find other girls. Hmph, you must absolutely guarantee you are not allowed to leave me, okay?”
“And also, after the child is born, let’s go live in Hua City. There there are better educational conditions and living environment. Just that the coming and going of people is too crowded. But everything for the child to grow up healthy and strong is worth it. Hehe, Gu Fan, do you say this is suitable or not?”
“Speaking of which, what kind of position does Gu Fan like the most? I can go learn all of them, as long as Gu Fan likes it and can be happy. Moreover I heard that suitable positions can let the other party enter the state more, maybe also more suitable for conceiving a baby? If Gu Fan wants it today, I will immediately go buy—”
Du—
The sound disappeared.
Only a busy tone remained, du du du, very regular, very cold, as if saying…
This is the end.
I did not know if the call had been hung up, or if some special situation had occurred.
Zhi Nian’s rambling words were ruthlessly cut off.
I gripped the phone, standing by the bed, listening to those busy tones one after another.
My legs stood a bit numb. The disordered movement of the heart was far more exaggerated than I imagined.
The phone screen was lit, displaying “Call ended.” I dazedly stared at it, watching the phone automatically return to the main interface. The wallpaper was still the scenery photo taken with Zhi Nian back then at the railway theme park.
To be honest… I rarely had this kind of situation where the amount of information was too vast to the point that the brain was a bit dazed.
Zhi Nian had said a lot, basically words she had never spoken, and also words hidden in the deepest part of her heart that had never been known by anyone.
Then… she disappeared.
Like a pebble thrown into deep water, with a dong, then nothing at all.
Not even ripples.
Yet the echoes circling back and forth in the mind told me that all of this was not fantasy. As if the call just now simply did not exist.
“I am not worthy of you.”
“I am afraid you will leave.”
“Will you also be like this?!”
And the most important—
Her voice when saying this sentence carried an emotion that made my heart ache.
“Only by giving birth to a child can I tie you down, right?”
Not a threat.
Not a demand.
It was—
Despair.
A kind of despair of knowing oneself should not think this way, yet unable to control oneself.
A kind of despair of knowing oneself is very terrifying, yet not knowing what to do.
The phone screen after a long time began to darken, and after a while thoroughly extinguished into a black screen.
The wind outside the window somehow stopped. I moved my legs a bit, slightly exercising the body that had become stiff from maintaining one posture for too long.
Then walked to the entrance, put on shoes, took the keys, and pushed open the door.
The voice-activated light in the corridor lit once, then went out.
I almost ran downstairs.
Footsteps smashed on the stairs, dong dong dong, echoing in the empty stairwell.
Three steps as one jumping down the steps. When arriving at the fourth-floor corner platform, my hand subconsciously supported that freshly painted wall plaster to unload force and buffer.
When reaching the first floor, I almost tripped over the threshold.
Then—
I stood at the entrance of the unit building, looking at the street outside. Some street lamps lit up. The white fluorescent light mixed with the orange-yellow radiance of the sunset sprinkled on the ground, pulling the shadows of passersby very long, very long.
There were still people walking on the street.
In twos and threes, some carrying plastic bags, some leading children, some just slowly walking.
I did not know where Zhi Nian was.
The celebration side should have begun growing livelier and livelier, right?
Did not know if she was still there. Did not know where she had gone. Did not know what she was doing right now…
Crying? Or spacing out? Or… I dared not think.
I took out the phone, wanting to send her a message. Her phone did not know if it had run out of battery and shut down. Sending might also be useless. Perhaps the her whose emotions were out of control right now simply did not want to reply to messages.
Fingers suspended above the screen, paused once.
But I still typed a few characters and sent them.
“Where are you? I’ll go find you.”
In front of the message it spun a few circles, then a red exclamation mark popped up.
“You are no longer the other party’s friend. Please verify the friend message before sending.”
…Heh?
The heart seemed to suddenly stop for an instant. I tucked the phone into my pocket and began running toward the direction of Zhi Nian’s home.
A lone cat with nowhere to go should hide into her own home and bedroom to recuperate, right? Moreover from the other end of the phone basically no noisy speaking sounds or hawking sounds had come out, not even car horns or the gongs and drums of the celebration. Probably she was at home.
The evening wind poured into the collar, cool and chilly, but I could not feel it. In my mind there was only one thought—find her.
When passing the first intersection, I recalled that sentence she had just said.
“I am just a blood-sucking insect that cannot leave you.”
She was not.
She had never been.
Perhaps the one who could not leave her was actually me.