It was late at night. In the dim room, the only source of light was the pale glow spilling from a computer screen.
The spacious bedroom was piled with countless things: empty takeout bags, instant noodle cups tossed aside at random, half-finished drinks already gone moldy.
By contrast, the bed at least maintained a basic level of neatness. Setting the mess aside, there were no ugly stains on it.
This was not a shared apartment, nor the den of some slovenly middle-aged man. There was only one person in the room.
At this moment, a blond-haired girl stared unblinking at the source of that glow, her eyes bloodshot and unfocused.
…
Name: Ye Zhe
Age: two x
ID Number: six x x x x x x
“Ah…”
A hoarse, short sigh was pulled from between her lips, echoing through the room with deep unwillingness.
“Thinking of you again, you animal…”
As she spoke, her gaze sluggishly yet forcefully licked over every pixel on the screen.
After a long while, she moved the mouse, closed the text file named “Ye Zhe,” then opened an image from the same folder.
What appeared were several students posing together at school.
Slowly lifting her fingers, her eyes settled on a boy in a school uniform smiling openly on the screen.
She rubbed that blindingly sunny face again and again with her fingertip, as if doing so would let her touch him directly.
“Can’t forget you…”
It was as if a warm sun rose in her heart.
Her hand movements suddenly sped up, and her scattered, lifeless gaze snapped into focus at an eerie pace.
An ill-timed flush spread across her deathly pale cheeks, more like the mark of an unrelenting fever.
“Hah…”
Her chest, steady just moments ago, began heaving violently without warning.
The deathly silence was broken by rough breathing.
The corners of her cracked lips slowly pulled upward, finally freezing into place.
“Ye Zhe… your name…”
The smile tangled with her words, making her already hoarse voice sound strangely warped.
“Ah!”
A sharp pain shot from her eyes. Dazed, a burst of glaring sunlight pierced through the curtains, landing squarely on her dry corneas and yanking her thoughts back from fantasy.
“Is it morning already? I pulled another all-nighter again, that fast?”
Reflex tears welled up. She wiped away the moisture with her hand, then hurriedly raised her arm to block the light.
The girl stumbled over the clutter on the floor. With a sharp swish, the pitch-black curtains finally sealed off all the light.
After doing all this, she collapsed onto the bed as if she had survived a disaster.
Her gaze, out of her control, was once again drawn to the face on the screen.
“Ye…”
The lingering warmth tempted her to reach out again, but disgust seized control.
For a brief instant, she even felt like throwing up.
‘No… this animal. I’m supposed to get revenge… I can’t be like this…’
When she looked again, clarity struck like a revelation.
She violently tossed her hair aside, her immature hand slamming down onto the desk.
Panicking, she grabbed the mouse, rapidly closed every window, and put the computer into sleep mode.
With the click of the mouse, the room’s only light source faded away, leaving her finally wrapped in the darkness she had been craving.
‘What I feel for him… is hatred.’
‘Bone-deep hatred!’
‘I clearly hate him to the core. I hate him so much I want to tear apart that mocking smile of his. I hate him so much I want to treat him like a toy and play with him at will. I hate him so much I want to destroy him completely…’
‘This is payback. This is revenge. Everything started with him. If he hadn’t made me feel those things, I would never have become like this!’
‘He destroyed me first…’
“Damn it… I should just sleep. I’m exhausted.”
Irritating thoughts kept crawling up her mind. A nameless fire surged in her head, burning until she felt dizzy.
She lunged forward and buried her head straight into the pale pink blankets.
Once her head was hidden beneath them, the bedroom fell silent.
Saying she was not tired would be a lie. After staying up all night writing a novel and drawing illustrations and drafts, she was long past her limit.
Yet even so, she could not fall asleep.
A few minutes passed. The silence was broken by the soft rustling of fabric.
She turned over in bed, her eyes resting on the computer screen, now completely black.
“Ye Zhe… animal… disaster… scumbag…”
She could not forget. No matter what, she could not forget.
Especially after seeing his photo in person.
That handsome, nearly perfect outline. Those eyes that once seemed to burn with passion, yet now felt nothing but fake when she recalled them.
Those long, elegant hands with distinct joints. They appeared in her dreams countless times…
During the time she searched for information about Ye Zhe, she thought that seeing real photos would dull her fantasies about him.
But that person was even clearer than her dreams. Even more beautiful.
To be honest, she fell the moment she saw the photo. Completely, utterly fell.
And yet it was someone so gentle, someone who could tolerate her, someone who could understand her, who abandoned her without reason.
Like discarding an insignificant toy.
No, not just her. He abandoned everything.
She had once used special means to log into his social account. His friends, his classmates—he contacted none of them.
As if he had vanished from the world.
“Ye Zhe… where are you, really…”
From deep within the blankets came several muffled, indistinct sobs. Her dry throat kept convulsing uncontrollably.
‘I’m not crying… my throat just hurts too much…’
“I miss you so much…”
Curled up inside, her whole body trembled uncontrollably.
Whether her mind was hazy or buried feelings had seized the opening, a line even softer than before escaped her lips, pitiful and filled with a weakness and longing that even she herself feared.
After those words, the suppressed, broken sobbing inside the blankets was abruptly strangled, as if by an invisible hand.
In its place surged an even more violent hatred.
“Why! Why did you leave!”
Inside the blankets, she clenched her teeth. The intense emotion shot through her body like an electric current, followed by a sharp, familiar pain deep in her brain.
It felt like countless needles stabbing her nerves at once. Her vision was instantly drowned in snow-like static and warped flashes of light.
Enduring the agony that threatened to split her head apart and the world-spinning dizziness, she struggled to pull one arm out from the heavy blankets.
Her trembling fingers fumbled as they reached toward the small white medicine box on the nightstand.
Finally, at the very moment before she lost consciousness, her fingertips touched the cold plastic lid.
She hurriedly pushed herself up. With a click, the lid popped open, and the bitter smell of pills spread into the air.
‘He used to remind me every time…’
Whether it was hatred, love, or regret, she could no longer tell.
For her now, even a dreamless sleep of just a few hours was an undeserved blessing she dared not hope for.
In the past, she could at least rely on his sweet words and these pills to numb her nerves.
She had once believed his arrival was a gift from the gods. That sense of security, that emotion, and his honesty and care for her.
He had stuffed everything she craved most into her hands, only to snatch it all away in the blink of an eye.
‘I hate you…’
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