If Only Time Stopped at the Moment We First Met Read online

  Chapter 12

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  In a voice I couldn’t even hear myself, I said, “Sorry. I didn’t think about anything else, I just thought I went too far. I wanted to make up for it, but I know that nothing I say will be useful. But we won’t be seeing each other again, I hope you forget about that unhappy event.”

  After a very long time, I reflected back on things and felt that the words I said weren’t human.

  His eyes were a bit dull and he whispered, “I won’t take it to heart, I just hope you will live a happy life in the future.”

  We said goodbye just like that. On the way back as I sat on the train, my heart was like dead ashes. I listened to Pachelbel’s “Canon” a few hundred times and my tears wouldn’t stop flowing.

  I went back to my own dormitory and a month drowsily passed. It wasn’t until the time when I was about to leave that I carelessly organised my personal things, hurriedly bid farewell to my colleagues and sat on the airplane to America. From then on, I lost contact with all the people in China. It was done deliberately. I was afraid to hear news along the lines of him getting a girlfriend or marrying. I was willing to live in my own fantasy world, no matter if it was painful or sweet, I didn’t have to bear with the attacks of reality.

  After a long time had passed, I came back.

  However, he wasn’t there anymore.

  He wasn’t anywhere in this world anymore.

  Someone once said, falling in a love with a homosexual will usually result in a bad ending. Even if it was a novel written by another person, one character would always be killed off as part of the plan, or they would both die. Thus, I was once angry and never believed in all those accidents like car crashes, but when it was my turn, I could only say life was like a drama and drama was like life.

  He wasn’t involved in any accidents, instead he ended his own life without a sound.

  I once thought, perhaps the reason for him to make such a choice was not me. Even if the hurt and pain from those past years didn’t disappear, he wouldn’t have ended his life now. In all fairness, I started living in my own little world after falling in love with him. On the other hand, he was different, his sensitive nature towards depression caused his autistic social behavior. He didn’t embrace this world and the world didn’t have room to embrace him either. He didn’t blend with the outside world, he never thought of pouring other people’s clear springs into his own water tank. I didn’t get a deeper understanding of this trait of his until I recalled all the known details of his life.

  Nonetheless, I still couldn’t relieve myself from this pain. Sometimes I would lean against his gravestone and think back starting from his eighteenth year all the way through to our last farewell. I deeply understood what ‘sorrow-stricken’ meant, I think I cried all the tears in my life dry in a month. I was a cowardly weakling, the impulsion of my eighteenth year was only due to the folly of youth as well as the instigation from others. That wasn’t who I was.

  However, I couldn’t absolve myself, I obtained him through such a cruel method, yet I lost him forever in the end.

  I was closest to him when he was in his tomb, but at the same time we were also the furthest apart. When I was breaking down in pain, I remembered that someone might have said that the furthest distance apart in this world isn’t the separation between life and death, but rather when I stand in front of you and you don’t know I love you. I wanted to say, no that’s not right, the furthest distance apart will always be life and death. If he could become resurrected, I would gain enough courage to say it, but that will never be possible.

  If you love someone, you should say it as soon as possible because once you wait until you want to express it, perhaps god won’t give you the chance to.

  When I wasn’t indulged in misery anymore, I got ready to leave this place and start a new life. I carefully flipped through every item I owned as if I wanted to remember him and half of this life of mine that belonged to him.

  When I got up to flipping through a stack of books, a letter unexpectedly fell out. The signature on the bottom right corner was Li ZhenYun. That name that was so familiar yet could never be spoken again.

  There was also a small slip of paper, it was a colleague’s handwriting: Your letter, I placed it in between your book, I have something on so I need to leave.

  That was the eve of my departure from China, and so he must’ve wrote it after I went to see him. I wasn’t here that day, my colleague put it away for me. He rigorously put it in the book, yet it became a huge joke that fate played on me.

  My colleague forgot to tell me about it. In a chaotic state of mind I had hurriedly bundled those books up —— a tiny thing that unknowingly changed people’s’ lives forever.

  There were only a few very simple words written on the letter: If I had another life, I would still be lonely for a lifetime because the person I love doesn’t love me.

  And written everywhere on the entire letter, in every gap and space…

  Was my name.

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  Rui here, thank you for sticking through with this novel and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. A true roller coaster of nothing but depression and sadness, and ending in nothing but grief and regret. A true tragedy where one lives and one dies. Stick around for more