Walking in front of the sink, I twisted open the faucet. Water hua hua flowed out, cool.
I cupped a handful of water and splashed it on my face.
Cupped another handful.
Then suddenly did not want to move. No strength left.
I only lowered my head, watching the water flow out from between the gaps of my joined fingers, watching the water swirl on the white porcelain surface, then flow into the drain, never to be seen again.
I did not look at the mirror, and did not know if the her in the mirror was looking at me.
I dared not look.
I knew roughly what I looked like right now—
The eyes were swollen, the tip of the nose cried red, the lips were dirty, perhaps still carrying a bit of stomach acid foam.
The hair perhaps messily stuck to the face, like a wet, about-to-die stray cat fished up from water.
That’s right…
I should have been like this from the beginning.
A black cat that no one wanted, dirty, only able to bring trouble to people.
Even if curling up by the roadside meowing toward passersby, rolling over the belly begging them to adopt me, basically no one would care or pay attention to me.
Even if someone truly came over, seeing the dirty and not good-looking me, they would only disgustedly kick me away with one foot, right?
A catgirl like me originally had no qualifications at all to pursue too dazzling illumination, yet still deluded myself that a good man like Gu Fan could fall in love with me, stay with me every day or something. Truly laughable.
I put the water cupped in my hands to my mouth, slowly sucked it in, rinsed the mouth then spat it out.
Repeated I did not know how many times. After the mouth was full of the light iron-rust taste of raw water, I only then stopped the action.
When walking out of the bathroom, my legs were still trembling.
To be precise, it was not walking, but shifting.
One hand supporting the wall, step by step, like a child just learning to walk, and also like a puppet about to fall apart.
The light in the room was not on. The curtains were also not drawn. Only the light of the corridor leaked in from under the door crack, a thin strip lying on the floor, like a line about to break.
I walked to the bedside. The knee knocked against the edge of the bed. The entire person just fell down like that.
Lying prone.
The kind of lying with the face buried in the quilt.
The quilt was cool, with the smell of laundry detergent, light, sweet. But smelling and smelling, that smell became something else—became the smell on Gu Fan’s clothes, became that smell I accidentally smelled when he approached me.
I wanted to vomit again.
Not the physical wanting to vomit.
The one inside the heart.
Turning over and over, messy and chaotic.
The mind began to turn again.
Like a broken projector, pictures cutting over one by one, fast to the point I had no time to see clearly, yet slow to the point every frame pierced into the eyes.
The picture of Gu Fan selecting a hair clip for Shiratori. That blue hair clip flashing once under the sunlight. Shiratori smiling as she took it.
Then the picture changed.
The picture of Shiratori smiling and leaning over.
Gu Fan’s side profile lowering his head.
Shiratori’s hand raising the stick.
That little ball disappearing in the gap between the two people.
Then the picture changed again.
Not today’s pictures.
Previous ones.
Ones I fabricated in my mind, that had never happened, yet I just could not control thinking of that kind of pictures.
Gu Fan walking together with another girl.
Gu Fan smiling at another girl.
Gu Fan buying takoyaki for another girl.
Gu Fan lowering his head, letting another girl feed him food.
“Enough…”
My voice was muffled in the quilt, unclear, even I myself could not hear very clearly.
“Enough enough enough…”
But the pictures did not stop.
They turned by themselves in the mind, like a swarm of flies that could not be driven away, no matter how one waved the hand they could not be driven off.
“I already said enough! Can you stop bothering me!!”
Collapsing and roaring in a low voice, I grabbed the tail behind me that kept swinging and opened my mouth to forcefully bite down.
Pain, sourness, and the despair about to devour me.
Tears like a water ball that had been pressed to burst suddenly flowed down along the cheeks.
I recalled those news I had seen before.
Ones brushed on the phone, sometimes searched by myself, sometimes inexplicably pushed by the homepage.
Husband having an affair, wife jumping off a building.
Dating for three years, boyfriend cheating with a rich young miss.
Married for ten years, only then discovering the husband had another family outside.
Those news titles one after another floated up from the mind, like bubbles at the bottom of the water, gu du gu du floating upward, bursting, then new ones floating up again.
The human heart is the hardest to fathom.
Who said this sentence?
I no longer remembered.
But I knew it was true.
Because… I recalled Father.
When little, Father in my eyes was the best man in the entire world.
His speech was always gentle and soft. The volume not large, the speed not fast. Every word seemed thought out before being spoken. He would braid my hair, would squat down to help me tie shoelaces, would secretly pull me behind him when Mother scolded me, smiling and saying “Alright alright, the child is still small.”
The appearance of him wearing a white shirt sitting on the sofa reading a book, I still remembered until now.
Sunlight shone in from the window, falling on his shoulders. His side face was outlined into a soft contour. The fingers turning the pages were slender and clean, like that kind in TV dramas—that kind of picture that made people feel “how can there be such a good dad in the world.”
I thought he was a gentleman.
I thought he was the kind of person who would never do wrong things in a lifetime.
I thought he was different from others.
Then I saw… those photos, those chat records.
And… the picture of Father and that woman walking toward the hotel. His hand around her waist, occasionally intimately kissing her cheek.
Just like usually holding little me and kissing the cheek, the action very natural.
Also like the expression when usually smiling at me, when reading, when pouring water for Mother—identical. Gentle, calm, as if no bad things would happen, as if all order was operating normally. As if… he was not betraying us at all.
I did not understand. I truly did not understand.
Why could a person be gentle to wife and daughter on one side, while kissing another woman on the other side?
How could a person braid a daughter’s hair, then turn around and call someone else “baby” on the phone?
These things mixed together in the mind, unable to distinguish which was which.
Then Mother also changed.
The gentle Mother, the virtuous Mother, the Mother who always smiled cooking in the kitchen, humming while stir-frying…
Overnight turned into a machine.
Not speaking.
Not crying.
Not smiling.
Not hitting me, and also not hugging me.
Like a perfect nanny set with a program, every month only transferring money into the card at fixed times, then disappearing.
Fixed-time transfers. As for other times… other times, she did not exist.
She never asked me if I was doing well.
Never asked if I was happy.
Never asked “Dad left, are you sad?”
“Are you afraid?”
“Alone, can you take care of yourself?”
She never asked, nothing at all.
I wanted to hate her, but I could not hate.
Because I knew she was not unwilling to love me.
She just… no longer could.
She had many things taken away by Father.
That bad man dug out her heart, then she turned into an empty shell that only knew how to mechanically operate.
I did not want to become like Mother.
I did not want to.
I was afraid…
So I desperately wanted to grasp Gu Fan.
Desperately without shame, like a blood-sucking insect… grasping him.
But the tighter I grasped, the more afraid I became.
Afraid he would be like Father.
Afraid that on the surface he was gentle and soft, yet in his heart he had long grown tired of me.
Once imagining Gu Fan’s face that usually only smiled warmly at me, yet in places I did not know, smiling at other women, I was so terrified the heart mouth trembled.
Gu Fan was very smart. His scheming was also very heavy.
He never let me know what he was thinking.
He was always bland, calm, like a very deep, very deep pool of water. Not a trace of wind on the surface. Something swimming underneath, but I could not see.
I did not know what he was thinking. Did not know if he truly liked me. Did not know if those words he said were true, or if he was just too embarrassed to refuse me.
He was always so good.
Good to the point that I felt unreal.
Good to the point that I felt… he was acting.
Acting as a gentle person.
Acting as a person good to me.
Acting as a… good man who would never leave.
But what if?
What if he was the same as Father?
What if those gentlenesses were all fake?
What if he was only waiting for a better person to appear, then throwing me away like trash?
Survival of the fittest.
This principle had been applicable from ancient times to now.
I was very stupid, but not to the point of completely not understanding history at all.
So many famous people of ancient times could not escape this law. Not outstanding enough was the loser. The winner could take all.
I thought of Shiratori.
She was better than me.
Able to make people happy, social ability also very strong. Even though I did not participate much in social interactions, I often heard from classmates’ mouths how the Shiratori from the neighboring class was this and that.
A man as outstanding as Gu Fan needed a virtuous helper like Shiratori who could openly and uprightly stand in front of others, not a maggot like me who only knew how to hide in the corner trembling.
Shiratori’s family background was also very good.
I had previously by chance flipped to her social media account, seen the photos she posted, and those vlog videos, also counted how many fans she had, how many people liked. She was the daughter of a locally famous rich merchant, starting from real estate, with many buildings idle at home.
The place she lived, just the living room was larger than my and Mother’s home.
She had been to many places, all over the world, taken many photos and travel videos. The smile was very bright, like a rich young miss who had seen the world and had a broad mind.
By common sense, a girl who did not worry about living and had everything, why would she set her sights on my Gu Fan?
She clearly had so many choices, so many boys of matching families.
Richer than her, better-looking than her, better at speaking than her…
Why did it have to be Gu Fan?
He clearly should belong to me!
My eye sockets heated again.
Not jealousy, but grievance.
That kind of grievance of clearly already working very hard, clearly already giving all that could be given, yet still not enough, still unable to compare with others.
I could do nothing.
Could give him nothing.
I had no money, no good family background, could not speak, could not smile, could not please people. The only thing I could give was myself—a dirty, dark, full of jealousy and fear, nauseating self.
Who would want it?
Who would want this kind of waste snack?
“You don’t deserve it.”
Who…? Who was speaking?
Oh… hehe, it was myself. It was my voice. As if pressed against my ear narrating, clearly through the auditory nerves, drilling into my brain.