---
Aning didn't blame anyone. She just felt a hard lump in her chest.
She'd been battling this habit every night, trying her hardest to make peace with this secret. She'd tried so hard for so many years—why couldn't anything change?
They said time changed everything. Why couldn't it change this one thing?
---
That night, Aning drank a lot at the dinner. When she got home, she hugged the toilet and threw up.
Human habits are so powerful and terrifying—even though Aning had vomited until she was dizzy and barely conscious, come four a.m., she still had to sit on the toilet and relive her nightly nightmare.
Aning sat on the toilet and gave a bitter, self-mocking laugh.
As if a little bit of drinking could stop this wretched habit. She'd tried everything—eating less, skipping meals, forcing herself to sleep with sleeping pills—when the time came, nothing changed.
Afterward, Aning poured water to flush the toilet and sat in the bathroom for a long time.
She did nothing, just stared blankly upward, watching moonlight filter through the window screen and fall onto the floor in jagged pieces, like writhing maggots—so eerie, so hateful.
Aning stood up and blocked part of the screen with her hand, not letting the moonlight keep coming in, because every ray that entered died a pitiful death.
As for herself, she was trapped behind this screen—no matter how hard she pushed, she couldn't break through.
---
Aning went to see a therapist.
It was expensive, but Aning didn't mind the cost if it could solve the problem.
At first she was hopeful, honestly telling the therapist about her habit and what it looked like, hoping for help.
The therapist asked: Have you tried an automatically flushing toilet?
Aning shook her head. She'd encountered them in hotels on business trips. During the day they worked fine, but at night she couldn't even lift the lid—her body seemed to have an obsession with toilets that required button-flushing, both terrified of the sound and unwilling to let her switch.
The therapist asked: Have you ever actually tried pressing the flush button in the middle of the night over all these years?
Aning said she had—extremely rarely, maybe two or three times.
Each time, the roaring flush sound brought massive panic, gripping her chest so viciously she felt she'd rather die on the spot.
The therapist asked: Have you ever thought about the root cause of this problem? Can you remember anything unusual happening the first time it occurred?
Aning tried hard to remember. Her mouth opened and closed, her throat tight.
But in the end, she said nothing.
---
Aning decided to stop trying to fix this old habit.
She could live with it. She just needed to change jobs, spend more money on a studio apartment, and cut ties with old classmates, friends, and colleagues.
Not that they'd remember her fondly anyway—to them she was just that woman who didn't flush the toilet. Aning was genuinely grateful for the anonymity and indifference of modern society—everyone fended for themselves, no one was indispensable.
In fact, she'd been doing okay these past few years. Through hard work and a few lucky breaks, Aning had achieved some career success. Her income and benefits were decent.
There'd been hardship and sacrifice, but compared to the four-a.m. nightmare, Aning felt she could handle it all.
The only thing was the loneliness.
Because Aning had drawn a circle around herself, keeping everyone out. Besides necessary professional relationships, she never made close friends, and she certainly never dated.
That way, no one would have the chance to spend the night with her, discover her secret, or earn the trust that might make her blurt out that damn secret again.
Aning was completely safe. She no longer needed to rush to pour water down the toilet every night—she could just flush in the morning when she woke up. Life suddenly felt much easier.
Enduring long-term solitude, Aning decided, was a fair trade.
---
But how could someone alone for so long truly resist falling in love?
Aning eventually broke her own rule and started seeing a man.
She'd met him through work—a peer at another company in the same industry, around her age, with a few flaws she didn't care about and many more qualities that made her heart flutter. They'd had endless things to talk about from their very first meeting.
It was as if he'd been custom-made for Aning.
Faced with this serendipity, Aning was first exhilarated, then insecure. She'd seen through this trick—fate always gave you a taste of something beautiful, then snatched it all back when the time came, not caring how frustrated or humiliated you'd feel losing it.
So Aning gently reminded herself: such a great guy could never stay with a freak like her who was just pretending to be normal. Impossible. She didn't deserve him.
But Aning couldn't fight her own greed.
She wanted to be with this man whose smile held sunshine. She wanted to share a piece of his beautiful life, to leave herself something worth remembering years from now in her terrible existence.
In the end, she accepted his confession.
She also prepared herself for the likelihood of losing him soon.
---
The day Aning feared never came, and she grew anxious.
Was she wasting his time? Were her hints not clear enough? How could he sleep so soundly every night that he didn't even notice her slipping out to the bathroom at four a.m. and secretly pouring water into the toilet?
Actually, a few times he'd been half-woken by her movements, but he'd just rolled over, mumbled something, pulled her close, and fallen back asleep.
Aning, who'd been anxious for ages, wanted to kick him.
She actually did kick him, but it only earned her a sleepy, thick mumble: "Okay, okay, go back to sleep, don't be silly."
Aning wanted to scream.
She even sometimes deliberately didn't pour water to flush, leaving the toilet unsightly, hoping he'd notice—hoping he'd discover that his seemingly normal girlfriend was actually this disappointing inside, her heart as foul as an unflushed toilet, totally unworthy of everything he gave her, and he should just give up on her.
But every time she did this, she regretted it.
She'd lie there with her eyes wide open, listening to his even breathing, her mind filled with all his good qualities.
Big things—he'd planned their future together for the next fifty years, down to how they'd travel the world after retirement. Small things—he always gave her the last beef meatball at hotpot, maybe throwing in some extra fatty tripe and quail eggs, scooping food and saying with a grin, "You've been working so hard lately, you need to eat more."
The sadder Aning grew, the more she couldn't wait for him to get up—she'd scramble out of bed first and rush to clean up the mess, hiding her worst self again.
Why couldn't she let him go? What was the point of dragging this out? Was she being too selfish?
Aning couldn't figure it out. Aning couldn't sleep.
She tossed and turned, praying: Please, let me love him just one more day. Just one more. Okay?
---
Days passed in Aning's indecision until the night that was always coming.
That night, the neighborhood's power grid was under maintenance, so the whole area lost electricity. No AC—it was hot and stifling. Aning felt irritable too, tossing and turning until four a.m., then getting up, going to the bathroom, using the toilet, and not flushing.
It wasn't intentional. Maybe the heat was making her fuzzy, or maybe a mosquito buzzing nearby distracted her. Either way, for the first time in over twenty years, Aning forgot to flush. After washing her hands, she walked straight back to bed and lay there, half-asleep, mind blank.
By coincidence, her boyfriend yawned and got up to use the bathroom too, turning on the emergency lantern. Aning jolted awake and ran in barefoot.
In the emergency light, Aning's face was deathly pale, her whole body so thin she looked like a ghost that might dissolve at any moment.
"I didn't flush," she said.
Her boyfriend looked confused.
So Aning said it again. "I didn't flush."
"Then just flush it." He pressed the button without hesitation.
The roar of water instantly filled the tiny bathroom, smashing the night's silence to pieces.
Aning felt herself falling apart.
---
Her boyfriend stood there helplessly watching Aning sob uncontrollably.
She said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I actually don't flush the toilet every night."
She said, "I lied to you. I'm this disgusting person who doesn't even flush the toilet. Everyone knows, everyone thinks I'm gross, and you're the only one I've managed to fool."
She said, "But I really can't help it. This cursed habit has been with me for twenty years, and I just can't change it."
Her boyfriend listened to her incoherent confession. He didn't fully understand what was going on, but he still stepped forward, wrapped his arms around her, gently patted her back, and said softly, "Then don't change it, Aning. It's okay. Don't cry. It's really okay."
He didn't ask why. He didn't demand explanations. Even though he had no idea what was happening, he just wanted Aning to stop hurting, so he kept comforting her, saying, "Don't be afraid, Aning. It's okay. I'm here. Don't be scared."
Aning trembled as she held him tighter. And she remembered—her father had said the same thing to her, so long ago.
Her father in her memories was always gentle, kind to both her mother and Aning. Even in that terrifying four a.m., when he'd been stabbed repeatedly and could barely stand, he still reached out to hold the petrified Aning beside the toilet, soothing her.
"Daddy says, Aning, don't blame Mommy—she's sick. Aning, don't be afraid. It's okay. Daddy's here. Don't be scared."
Remembering all of this, Aning shook even harder, holding her boyfriend and wailing.
The truest part of her secret, the part she'd never told anyone, was simply too heavy. Too, too heavy.
Aning finally crumbled beneath it.
She said, "It's all my fault. If I hadn't gotten up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, if I hadn't pressed the flush button, if the sound hadn't woken up Mom when she was having one of her episodes—Mom and Daddy... they, they might still be alive!"
Aning had never forgiven herself.
The moment she pressed that flush button, the beautiful world she'd had was torn to pieces.
---
Aning cried for a long time.
She hadn't cried in twenty years, but on this dark, sweltering night, kneeling on the bathroom floor, she cried out all the tears she'd saved up.
Her boyfriend knelt beside her, holding her, murmuring comfort again and again.
He said, "Aning, this isn't your fault."
He said, "Aning, I don't mind this at all. Really. I never lie to you—you know that."
He said, "Aning, don't think about leaving me. I'm never letting go. I've already planned the next fifty years for us, and I'm not letting you escape before we see them through."
Aning couldn't stop her tears. She shook her head violently. "I don't deserve you. I don't deserve you."
"You do deserve it, Aning. Only you do." He wiped her tears as he spoke, looking at her swollen eyes, saying, "Aning, you're so good—you just forgot to see it yourself."
Then he held her close and listed every good thing about her one by one—from the big things, like a major account she'd recently closed and been praised for, down to the tiny things, like how she carefully picked every single green onion out of his food.
He even apologized, saying he should have told her all this sooner—it could have saved her some pain.
He wasn't oblivious. He was just shy.
He said: "Aning, you've been walking forward for twenty years already. Take your eyes off the toilet and look around—look at everything else. You've been walking so well all this time. Stop trapping yourself in that one day. We have fifty more years to walk together."
Aning sobbed: "But I still can't flush the toilet. This might be how I am for the rest of my life."
He kissed her forehead: "So what? I don't care."
Aning stared at him through her tears: "Not flushing the toilet is gross."
He laughed: "If you care about it that much, then I promise—I'll flush the toilet for you for fifty years. Every night, I'll flush it for you once. You just agree to marry me, okay?"
Aning suddenly stopped crying. She almost wanted to laugh. She thought this vow was absurd—who on earth proposed marriage by promising to flush the toilet for someone?
But the person he was proposing to was Aning—a woman who'd been fighting the flush button for twenty years. Then it wasn't strange at all.
Aning didn't know if this decision was right. She suspected it was another trick fate was playing on her. She knew some deep-rooted problems couldn't be solved easily, and her boyfriend's determination might not last forever.
But Aning was tired. So, so tired. She couldn't think about complex problems anymore. She didn't want to struggle anymore. She just wanted to love someone freely—even if that love was torture, even if it was a test.
Aning remembered her father's words: Aning, don't be afraid.
So she nodded and agreed, kneeling on the bathroom floor of a powerless apartment—exhausted, messy, uncertain—agreeing to a proposal witnessed only by a toilet.
Outside the window, the sky was beginning to lighten.
END