Chapter 37
Lian Xia returned home in a daze. After replenishing the incense in the censer, she stood on the balcony holding the cold iron vessel, staring into space.
Tears fell like an unclosed tap, drip by drip onto the floor, onto the censer. Her body tilted forward, one foot resting on the middle rail of the balcony, maintaining that motionless pose until the sky dimmed and the sun sank below the horizon.
Someone was pounding on the door—sounded frantic.
She wiped her tears and went to the door, peering through the peephole, only to see a pair of eyes covered in white haze!
Naturally, Lian Xia screamed and stumbled backward, nearly falling over.
"Do not go to high places."
The voice outside was somewhat familiar—it was the old man who'd sold her incense: "When people stand somewhere too high, they can't help wanting to jump."
Lian Xia: "..."
How did he know she'd just had thoughts of ending it?
"Go see him, if you truly can't let go."
She yanked the door open, but the short figure was already gone. Only a plastic bag swayed from the doorknob.
Inside the bag was a map of Shanghai, with an area in the northeast circled in red.
If she went there, would she be able to see him?
She grabbed the map, her wallet and keys, and hurried out to hail a cab.
The driver's brow jumped when he saw the area circled on the map, but seeing Lian Xia's expression somewhere between grief and joy, her cheeks unnaturally flushed, he let her in anyway. On the road, though, he couldn't contain his curiosity.
"Miss, it's getting dark. What are you going to that place for?"
"To see my boyfriend."
"Huh??"
The driver clammed up and hit the gas. Nearly forty minutes later, the car slowly pulled up before a dark iron gate.
From the scale, this had to be the local cemetery—the largest one.
Lian Xia got out, only to find that after dark, the iron gates were already locked.
Fortunately, the fence wasn't very high—her small frame could climb over. The hard part was finding him with no map of the grounds.
The saving grace was that the grave plots here were very expensive, so searching by the year of death wasn't too overwhelming.
She searched from dusk until midnight before finding a lone headstone in the northeast corner of the cemetery. The top didn't have a scary black-and-white photo, but a clear color portrait—presumably from when he was healthy. Those narrow eyes, that reserved smile—far from frightening, it conveyed a sense of resolve and depth.
The others buried here were white-haired elders; only he was young and distinguished.
From the photo, his resemblance to Chen Xi extended only to the eyes. Gu Xichen's own features were more balanced and refined—his nose was high-bridged with a slight bump, his lips well-defined with a fuller lower lip, and when he smiled, it was gentle and warm.
She seemed to accept his new appearance without hesitation, slowly sliding down until she leaned against the headstone.
"How could you love me and then leave me behind?"
"How am I supposed to live the rest of my days..."
She pressed her face against the cold picture, her warm breath making his handsome features blurry. The girl who couldn't stop gazing at him would reach up to wipe away the condensation, over and over again.
The sky was so dark, the wind so cold, but staying beside him, Lian Xia felt a strange peace. Drowsiness crept over her, her eyelids growing heavy.
She had so much to say to him—complaints and endearments alike—but facing that flawless smile, she couldn't bear to disturb his rest. And so she fell asleep leaning against the headstone.
When she woke again, broad daylight filled the sky.
Lian Xia didn't want to rise, preferring to sit quietly against his photo. Behind her, a man in white stood holding an umbrella in the misty rain.
"Are you okay?"
He looked young, pale and thin: "Were you a friend of Mr. Gu's when he was alive?"
She was hardly a friend from his lifetime—more like a belated friend from after his death.
The girl shook her head: "I wasn't."
"Then you..."
Realizing he'd overstepped, the man quickly shifted gears: "I was Mr. Gu's attending physician. Today is the second anniversary of his death, so I came to visit."
"A doctor? Doctors become friends with their patients too?"
He looked somewhat puzzledly at the girl before him. Her pale, fever-flushed face radiated an heartbreaking intensity of longing... perhaps she was just a former secret admirer. After all, he'd been so brilliant and successful—it wasn't surprising someone still remembered him after his death.
So he replied carefully: "Rarely. He was the first, and the last."
The girl, her eyes red, sat before the headstone and pleaded: "Then could you tell me about him? I'll leave after hearing a few stories. I won't disturb him."
The man wanted to say he was an atheist and that disturbing the dead wasn't really his concern, but seeing how humbly she'd positioned herself, he didn't correct her. Instead, he shared some fragments of his own memories.
"After he was diagnosed with paralysis below the lumbar spine, he didn't give up. He went to several countries for newer treatment options and was active in rehabilitation. He was the strongest patient I've ever seen."
"Because his investment losses dragged down several families—including his parents' and friends' properties, which were all seized to pay debts—he felt terribly guilty. Even though those same people had profited handsomely when the business was profitable."
"Actually, what he complained about most wasn't his condition, but the fact that he'd been too busy and ended up alone. He said that if he could stand again, he'd seriously date someone—even if he got dumped, or got treated like an ATM..."
That playful complaint instantly brought the man's voice and smile into focus.
The girl couldn't help but laugh through her tears. Both were infected by the memory of him, and they laughed until their chests ached and their vision blurred.
"By the way... he was paralyzed later, right? How could he still hang himself?"
The man's smile vanished instantly.
The moment she asked that question, her own smile withered like a blooming flower that quickly crumbled.
"We don't know how he did it. Maybe he climbed onto a stool, then climbed onto a table, and then..."
Words scattered in the wind, fragmented and broken.
He couldn't go on. The girl was already sobbing as if her insides had turned to porridge, her slender neck bowed, too weak to ever lift again.
The man dug through his pockets for a while before producing a tissue and handing it to her, so she could wipe her cold-chapped face: "If you cry like this, he won't be at peace down there."
He didn't know who she was, and could only offer the limited comfort of his sympathy.
Chapter 38
Lian Xia stayed at Gu Xichen's grave until dark. His kind doctor friend left once but came back, probably worried, and eventually persuaded her to let him take her home.
Before parting, afraid she might do something desperate, he gave her his business card and hinted she should reach out if she needed anything.
The wind howled, rattling the windows. Outside, the buildings were dark, and the silhouettes of the high-rises across the way were hazy and sinister in the darkness.
Yet Lian Xia threw the windows open with desperate hope: "Xichen, is that you?!"
No matter how cold the room got, she insisted on keeping the windows wide open, afraid he'd be locked outside.
In turn, she herself was freezing, buffeted by the gale.
Two days and a night with nothing but water, and she had no appetite at all. Her frail body leaned against the balcony railing, swaying precariously in a dangerously unstable pose.
Perhaps if she fell from here, she could really reunite with him somewhere—instead of endlessly chewing over the bitter fruit of disappointment alone.
Urged on by the dangerous thought, she placed one foot on the railing, then slowly lifted the other...
Just as her body tilted completely forward, a gust of wind surged from behind, violently sweeping her off her feet and onto the floor. An icy atmosphere instantly spread, engulfing the small apartment.
A hoarse, sinister voice came from beside her, heavy with disappointment: "I thought you were brave. Turns out you're just as cowardly as me."
She burst into tears of joy: "Xichen?"
No one was there. Only a... mass of flowing darkness?
No matter how desperately she grasped, her slender fingers always passed through that darkness in vain.
"How could you give me warmth and then cruelly walk away?"
His sharp features were shrouded in darkness, indistinct: "I should have left long ago. I only stayed because I couldn't let go of you."
After being knocked out of Chen Xi's body in the car crash, he'd found himself even weaker than before—unable to coalesce into a proper form. A sense of impending doom gripped him, as if something even more terrible would happen if he didn't return to wherever he belonged.
As to what that place was, he still didn't know.