“Remember? Not long ago, you used to look down on me with your righteous sense of morality, criticizing me and defining the differences between us with your superiority. But now, what do I see? Do you think I don’t know what kind of party you just attended? It turns out I didn’t lose to your morality—I lost because you simply wanted to find a stranger for a one-night stand before your wedding. Isn’t that disappointing enough?” His words were like a dagger, piercing through my heart. And he wasn’t done—he crushed the shards right before my eyes with no intention of sparing me.
“You have no right to say this to me!” I glared at Chu Ke Huan, tears burning in my eyes. “It was you who added me as a friend! It was you who asked me out for dinner! And it was you who said you wanted to sleep with me!”
“Yes. That was my fault. I’m not kind, and I know I’ve committed many sins. If you want to accuse me, then let me confess everything now!” As he spoke, he took a step closer, forcing me back. “My mistake was wanting to talk to the girl I liked a little more, agonizing every day over the fact that she seemed not to like me, but liking her anyway. Even though her presence disrupted my life every time, I still tolerated it. And do you know what’s the saddest part? We’re both about to get married, and I’ll never even have the chance to try dating her, to find out if she could ever like me. I can’t control myself—I’m left with nothing but despair as I think about her! And then, in a drunken moment, I accidentally confessed my desires. I had so many chances to take her, but every single time, I let her go.”
He cornered me until I had nowhere left to retreat. I stared into the fire burning in his eyes, and I felt something within me crumble. All the resistance I’d mustered against Chu Ke Huan now seemed utterly futile.
“Do you know?” I choked out, tears spilling from my eyes. “I shouldn’t be here right now. You shouldn’t have saved me. My boyfriend shouldn’t be in Shanghai. And you and I—we should never have had feelings for each other. Everything that’s happened between us is a mistake.”
“Don’t go.” Chu Ke Huan pulled me into his arms, holding me tightly as if he had been waiting for this moment for an eternity. “I’m holding you now. I won’t let you escape again.”
“No… we can’t…” Once again, colliding with that solid chest left me dizzy. “Chu Ke Huan, if we do this, we’ll hurt other people…”
“But if we don’t, you’ll hurt yourself.” Chu Ke Huan cupped my face, his gaze unwavering. “You’ve already admitted your feelings for me. I won’t let go of you again.”
“I—I really have to go!” Summoning all my strength before completely losing my composure, I broke free from Chu Ke Huan’s arms. As I fled, I left behind the most agonizing words: “If there’s a parallel universe, let’s fall in love there instead!”
I think, in front of Chu Ke Huan, my only defining stance will always be escape.
If… we ever meet again.
No one chased after me. The man who had so adamantly vowed never to let me go, who made me understand what it meant to be consumed by fiery passion—Chu Ke Huan—ultimately let me go.
Everything was perfectly logical.
The last time, I forced Chu Ke Huan to show me his wedding candid photos. This time, I spoke of an unreachable parallel universe. What about next time? How could I be even crueler, even more resolute in pushing him away? No—at this point, I wasn’t even sure if Chu Ke Huan would have the courage to create a “next time.”
You’re engaged. You handled that well. I tried to convince myself, reassuring my actions as the right ones.
The dimly lit exit of the late-night metro station loomed ahead, like the gaping maw of a giant beast, swallowing my desires and emotions whole. On the last train ride home, as the station names gradually brought me closer to my apartment, I pieced myself back together bit by bit—or, perhaps, it wasn’t truly myself I was reconstructing, but rather the version of me dictated by society’s rules and rationality.
I had my reality to face, and didn’t Chu Ke Huan have his own as well? No matter how deeply we were drawn to each other, the workings of the world—like gravity—would always pull us back to our separate, parallel paths, making it far too easy for us to give up on each other.
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