Minazuki Ruri.
That name was like an incantation condensed from ice crystals and morning dew, etched into the softest corner of Su Yuqing’s soul.
Perhaps even if time shifted and ten thousand cycles of reincarnation passed, she would never be able to strip that name from the marrow of her memories.
After all, it represented the most brilliant sunset of her youth, as well as her deepest and most secret wound.
Memory pulled her back to that long summer vacation, the second month after the Secondary School Entrance Exam had ended.
The air was permeated with the unique restlessness of summer—a mixture of rising heat from the asphalt roads and the buzzing of cicadas.
Su Yuqing, who had just checked her final results over the phone, felt her heart leaping in her chest like a bird escaping its cage.
She could not wait to fly toward the only person she wanted to share her joy with.
With trembling fingers, she immediately dialed the number she knew by heart.
Her voice was filled with an irrepressible excitement that almost overflowed.
“Ruri! Ruri! My results are out! They’re twenty points higher than my Mock Exam! Except for the city’s top ‘monster’ high schools where I might still be on the fence, I can definitely get into any other school!”
Her words poured out like a cheerful stream, as if she could already see the beautiful future of the two of them walking into the same high school campus side by side.
On the other end of the line, Minazuki Ruri’s voice was as calm as a lake in late autumn, showing only a faint, polite ripple.
“Mm, that’s great. Congratulations.”
This overly flat reaction was like a small pebble cast into the celebratory lake of Su Yuqing’s heart, stirring a trace of unease.
Suppressing her subtle disappointment, she continued to press, trying to pull the other girl into her blueprint for the future.
“Then… what about yours? Ruri, I remember you’ve always been an Art Student. The academic requirements will be much lower, so you should be able to take your pick of almost any high school, right?”
“Of course,” Ruri’s tone remained nonchalant, carrying the slight aloofness and pride typical of an Art Student.
“After all, Art Students can have lower score requirements. There’s always more room for choice.”
“So…”
Su Yuqing took a deep breath and asked the question concerning their fate that had circled in her mind countless times.
Her voice carried a cautious hope and an unquestionable intimacy.
“…Which one did you actually put down as your first choice? Tell me!”
A brief silence followed, like an invisible thread tightening around Su Yuqing’s breath.
Then, she heard a counter-question that made her heart tremble. It carried a sense of pure confusion and even… a faint hint of mockery.
“Huh? Why are you asking me that?”
Ruri’s voice came through the receiver, clear and cold.
“Is that question… really that important?”
“Please! Of course it’s important!”
Su Yuqing grew anxious, her voice rising unconsciously.
She felt a sense of grievance and absurdity at being questioned.
“This isn’t just some ordinary choice! This is about the future between the two of us! Whether we can stay together depends on this!”
“The future… between us…?”
Ruri repeated the phrase.
Her tone was filled with the kind of astonishment one might have upon hearing an unbelievable joke.
Then, she laughed softly.
“No, no, no. I think you must have misunderstood something, Su Yuqing.”
Every word felt like a gradually freezing icicle.
“You are you, and I am me. There is no reason for the two of us—and we never made a promise—to report to the same school. Isn’t that right?”
“No… what kind of nonsense are you talking about!?”
Su Yuqing felt as if all the blood in her body had reversed direction in an instant, rushing to her head before freezing into ice the next second, leaving her limbs cold.
Her voice became sharp with extreme shock and panic.
“The things you just said… you must be joking, right?! This joke isn’t funny at all!”
“I’m not joking, Su Yuqing.”
Minazuki Ruri’s voice turned completely somber, shedding its disguised gentleness to reveal the hard core underneath.
“I’m very serious.”
On this end of the phone, Su Yuqing felt as if she could hear her world shattering.
She gripped the receiver tightly, her knuckles turning white as she tried to make a final struggle.
Her voice was already choked with sobs.
“B-But our relationship… we clearly…”
“What relationship?”
Ruri interrupted her.
Her tone was as if she were discussing a trivial matter that had nothing to do with her.
Those words were like a final dagger, accurately piercing through Su Yuqing’s heart.
She nearly screamed, using all her strength to confirm the fact she had thought was beyond doubt.
“But aren’t we… haven’t we been dating for a long time already?! Starting from that Rooftop! Starting from that kiss! From when you asked me to be your model…!”
“Dating?”
Minazuki Ruri let out a short sound that was almost pitiful.
“I don’t recall ever formally or explicitly establishing any kind of romantic relationship with you.”
She paused, as if giving Su Yuqing time to digest this cruel fact, and then continued in that calm-to-the-point-of-cruelty tone to dismiss all of Su Yuqing’s beliefs and memories as a self-indulgent delusion.
“B-But that letter—!?”
Su Yuqing tried in vain to grasp at the last straw—the confession letter that had carried all her first-love palpitations.
“Ah… so you’re talking about that confession letter I ‘discovered’?”
Ruri intentionally dragged out her words, each one carrying a cold sting.
“Did you forget, Su Yuqing? That day on the Rooftop, I already ‘returned’ that letter to you, completely intact.”
Her voice carried a detached clarification.
“I have never, at any point, formally entered into a ‘relationship’ with you.”
“Never.”
“…You…”
Su Yuqing opened her mouth, only to find she could no longer make any coherent sound.
A massive sense of absurdity and the pain of being completely denied washed over her like a tsunami.
It turned out that those heart-fluttering moments, those intimacies, and the kisses and touches she had cherished as treasures were, in the other girl’s eyes, nothing more than a non-committal game played on a whim.
“I think you must have gotten something mixed up.”
Minazuki Ruri’s voice donned its casual social mask once again, as if the cruel conversation from a moment ago had never happened.
“Alright, alright, it’s getting late. Both of us should go get some dinner. Goodbye.”
*Beep… beep… beep…*
The busy tone rang out like a mocking finale.
Su Yuqing stood frozen in place.
The phone receiver slipped from her hand and hit the floor with a dull thud.
She didn’t even notice.
The world around her lost all color and sound, leaving only a hollow white noise.
In a daze, the hopeful nursery rhyme she used to hum to the kitten in her arms echoed uncontrollably in her mind, but the melody had changed, stained with a color of despair:
‘Xiaozhi, Xiaozhi, grow up fast…’
‘Xiaozhi, Xiaozhi, grow up healthy…’
‘Xiaozhi, Xiaozhi, we will never… never be apart…’
‘Xiaozhi, Xiaozhi, please… please don’t leave me…’
The song finally shattered in her mind.
The irrepressible, burning tears finally broke through the last dam, surging from her bloodshot eyes and streaming down her pale cheeks.
It was then that the cat she had named Xiaozhi quietly approached her feet.
Using its furry head, it gently rubbed against her cold shins, letting out a comforting whimper.
Su Yuqing crouched down and buried her face deep into Xiaozhi’s warm, soft fur.
Her body began to tremble violently from silent sobbing.
Warm tears continued to fall, and eventually, a few drops landed accurately into the cat’s clear, lapis-colored eyes as it looked up at her…