After Returning To Twelve Years Before My Late Wife’s Death - Chapter 2

After that first sentence, for a very long while, Zhao Mingyue could not hear the voice on the other end of the phone clearly. There was only a buzzing in her eardrums, droning on and on without stopping.

Her mind went blank, almost frozen. In that silence where she could no longer tell how time was passing, Zhao Mingyue opened her mouth, wanting to say something. Air rushed into her throat, but suddenly brought up a wave of nausea and dry heaving.

The phone slipped from her palm. She gripped the steering wheel tightly and bent down to pick it up while enduring the spasms in her stomach. Her weak fingers touched the screen, but for a moment, she did not even have the strength to grab it.

The screen automatically woke. Zhao Mingyue’s eyes were dazzled by the light, and through her blurred vision, she finally saw the lock screen clearly.

That call had ended at some unknown point. The only thing lit on the screen was the lonely wallpaper of the wedding ring design. There were no other messages.

She picked up the phone. There was a slight dampness on the screen from somewhere. After turning it over a couple of times, she realized it was sweat that had appeared on her palm without her knowing.

It was as if her senses abruptly returned at that moment. Only belatedly did Zhao Mingyue feel the bone-chilling cold spreading from her sweaty hands and feet, from her back, all the way into her chest.

What happened?

Zhao Mingyue sat there blankly. Even the workings of her mind seemed to have become unbearably sluggish. She rubbed her temples hard and thought.

What happened?

What happened?

Oh.

Someone said.

Someone said Cui Xuan, Cui Xuan…

A gust of cold wind suddenly rushed in, the chill making Zhao Mingyue tremble all over. Only then did she turn her head and discover that the car window had been rolled down at some point.

The wind had picked up outside. A very strong wind. Dry fallen leaves spun inside it, scattering everywhere, flying up toward the sky.

The dead branches and withered leaves that had been tumbling in the air fell into the car and landed on Zhao Mingyue’s lap. She wanted to pick up that leaf, but the moment her fingers touched it, before she used much force at all, the dried leaf shattered.

It was too cold.

Zhao Mingyue shut the car window and curled up in her seat, but that chill still did not dissipate. She turned the car heater higher, pressed herself close to the vent, and was still shaking from the cold.

When did the weather get this cold?

Zhao Mingyue thought, she should probably go home and add another layer of clothing.

The people she later met and the words she later heard were all a blur, like a silent film being fast-forwarded, rolling over time as it flowed soundlessly past. Zhao Mingyue tried hard to remember, but she could no longer recall much clearly.

There was a strange woman at home who claimed to be Cui Xuan’s entrusted lawyer. The entrusted matter was not the divorce agreement. It was the execution of Cui Xuan’s will.

Zhao Mingyue did not even get to see Cui Xuan one last time. Her body had been taken away by her cousin for cremation.

The lawyer said Zhao Mingyue did not need to keep vigil or see her off. In truth, there had been no funeral at all. By the time that call came, Cui Xuan had already been laid to rest in the cemetery.

What was left for Zhao Mingyue was only the bathtub in the bathroom, overflowing all over the floor with bloodstained water.

Zhao Mingyue had never known that so much blood could flow from a human body.

She could accept even less that so much blood had flowed from Cui Xuan’s body.

So much blood had actually flowed from Cui Xuan’s body.

Cui Xuan was mentally ill. Dissociative disorder, trauma response, delusional memories… But Cui Xuan had never had any tendency to self-harm.

She was someone so afraid of pain.

She was so afraid of pain. How could she leave so resolutely in such a painful way?

The person who had still been alive in the early hours of the morning—how had she suddenly become someone who could never open her eyes again? From a living, breathing person, to a cold corpse, then to a handful of ashes sealed in a small box and buried deep underground?

Zhao Mingyue could not believe it. She could not accept it. Even now, with Cui Xuan’s grave right before her eyes.

That brand-new, utterly improper, absurd headstone of Cui Xuan’s.

It was right before her eyes.

Cui Xuan
Born March 23, 2000
Died April 3, 2018

Wife of the seventeen-year-old Zhao Mingyue

The wind was cold, the rain bleak, and the night dim. Zhao Mingyue stood alone before that headstone for a long time, soaked by the fine drizzle.

She thought, even at the moment of her death, even after her death, the one Cui Xuan had thought of with all her heart was still that seventeen-year-old Zhao Mingyue.

Perhaps the Cui Xuan now, the Cui Xuan who had gone to find that Zhao Mingyue, was truly happy at last.

How ridiculous.

Cui Xuan was ridiculous, treasuring an imaginary fake as if she were something precious.

Zhao Mingyue was even more ridiculous. A living person had, in the end, willingly and voluntarily become a substitute for a fake.

After hearing the truth from Cui Xuan’s mouth, she had not even dared to wake Cui Xuan and question her. She searched for an entire night before finally finding Cui Xuan’s former psychiatrist and learning the truth.

The psychiatrist said that after experiencing an enormous upheaval, Cui Xuan had developed a trauma response and triggered a self-defense mechanism, fabricating a safe memory.

A memory in which “Zhao Mingyue” helped Cui Xuan and made up for all the regrets of the past.

In that memory, Zhao Mingyue saved Cui Xuan, who was being bullied, and changed Grandma Cui’s fate. In that memory, Cui Xuan did not become lame, and her grandmother did not die. In that memory, Zhao Mingyue was endlessly attentive to Cui Xuan and gave everything she had…

Later, Zhao Mingyue tried hard to remember and finally recalled that she probably had indeed saved a classmate who was being bullied that day. But she had not even seen the other person’s face clearly. By the time she finished beating up the bullies and looked back, that person had already run off without a trace.

Even now, she still was not certain whether that person had been Cui Xuan.

But perhaps that was not important either. Even if the person she had saved back then truly had been Cui Xuan, what Cui Xuan truly could not let go of, what she had kept in her heart all this time, was the Zhao Mingyue from her fantasy—the Zhao Mingyue who changed everything, saved everything, and made up for every regret.

And Zhao Mingyue had not changed anything.

Without Cui Xuan’s help, she could not have survived. Without Cui Xuan’s guidance, she could not have climbed back up. How could she possibly compare to that flawless white moonlight, that incarnation of hope and beautiful dreams?

Even the fact that Cui Xuan had helped her was only thanks to that Zhao Mingyue.

Zhao Mingyue could not control her thoughts. The first time Cui Xuan met her, who had she been thinking of? When Cui Xuan held their marriage certificate, who had she been thinking of? When Zhao Mingyue put the ring on Cui Xuan’s finger, who had Cui Xuan been thinking of?

Zhao Mingyue could not control herself from thinking, from thinking jealously, from thinking until she nearly went mad.

When she and Cui Xuan embraced, kissed, went to bed together, when Cui Xuan’s eyes were blurred with tears and she called Mingyue’s name in broken, breathless murmurs, who was she calling?

Zhao Mingyue was furious, angry, humiliated, unwilling to accept it. Yet after all those hundreds and thousands of intense emotions fell powerlessly to the bottom, the thing that rose in the end was actually heartache.

The Cui Xuan of the past, in Zhao Mingyue’s eyes, had been mature and calm, resilient and strong, gentle and tolerant.

No amount of past suffering had crushed her. No deep, cold mire had trapped her. No matter how difficult or long the road was, Cui Xuan had still crossed it step by step and finally reached a distant place others could hardly touch.

Cui Xuan had never brought up that past of her own accord. Her achievements were more eye-catching than her experiences, and her strength shone brighter than her pain. Because of that, Zhao Mingyue had admired her more than she had ached for her, respected her more than she had pitied her.

So much so that Zhao Mingyue had never even thought that Cui Xuan was still trapped in that rainy night from years ago and had never truly walked out of it.

Perhaps Cui Xuan had treated her as a vessel for her fantasy. Perhaps Cui Xuan’s feelings for her had come from transference, mixed with too many projections…

But that was Cui Xuan, who had given everything to save her. Her legal wife. Her lover, who had stumbled and struggled alone through countless hardships.

Zhao Mingyue thought, she could not blame everything on her.

The only family member Cui Xuan cared about had died because of her. Cui Xuan had become lame, been treated like a burden and pushed back and forth. Her heart had rolled through cold treatment, mockery, indifference, and disgust until wound upon wound piled up over it. Yet her grandmother would never again shield her behind her back, would never again hold her in her arms and pat her gently in comfort.

She had completely lost her place to return to, becoming a piece of drifting duckweed in this vast world, with no harbor where she could rest and heal. The life of her closest loved one pressed down on her heart. Regret connected to every nerve, continuously, endlessly bringing her pain.

Every day she lived, every birthday in the years after, every word she heard related to it, every lame step she took… all of it would tear open that scar that could never heal, again and again.

That was the true past Cui Xuan never mentioned, yet Zhao Mingyue had pieced together. From those silent years, she had truly touched one person’s pain. She could not really say she felt it as if it were her own, but it was already enough to hurt her to the bone.

She thought Cui Xuan had simply been too tired, too hurt, and had no choice but to find a pillar that could support her as she kept moving forward.

She could not blame Cui Xuan for everything.

It was Zhao Mingyue who had come too late and failed to change the past. It was Zhao Mingyue who had discovered it too late and let Cui Xuan bear it alone for so long.

But a person could not, and should not, be trapped forever in the past, escaping reality, sinking into a river of pain, only to collapse completely after waking up.

Only by slowly walking out of false fantasies, by stepping firmly onto the ground with her own feet, by personally touching sunlight and rain, by rooting her senses back into reality, could she truly live again.

Zhao Mingyue wanted Cui Xuan to walk out of it. She thought she could do it… She followed the doctor’s instructions, careful and cautious, testing the safe boundaries little by little, guiding Cui Xuan to talk about the past, listening to the past Cui Xuan had imagined.

She thought she had chosen correctly. She thought that road would make Cui Xuan better. But she had overestimated her own abilities and underestimated Cui Xuan’s stubbornness.

The first time they talked about the past, Cui Xuan ended the topic without revealing much. The information Cui Xuan gave her was even less than what Zhao Mingyue had learned from the doctor.

After that, no matter how Zhao Mingyue tried to sound her out indirectly, Cui Xuan refused to confide in her at all. Later still, Cui Xuan left for another city under the excuse of a work trip.

Zhao Mingyue knew Cui Xuan was avoiding her.

At first, she anxiously sent Cui Xuan many messages. Later, realizing this would not do, she apologized seriously to Cui Xuan and no longer dared to send messages to disturb her.

She began treating her Moments feed like a message board, a Moments feed visible only to Cui Xuan. She could post dozens of entries in a single day.

Every few days, Cui Xuan would silently give one of them a like, as if using that to report her safety and tell Zhao Mingyue to rest assured.

Zhao Mingyue suppressed her unease and the impulse to go find Cui Xuan. She thought that if she gave Cui Xuan some time alone, once Cui Xuan’s emotions eased, she would come back.

This wait lasted more than two months.

Until Cui Xuan gave no reply for several days in a row. Zhao Mingyue finally could not endure it anymore and ran to Cui Xuan’s company.

After asking around several times, she finally learned that the so-called business trip had only lasted ten days. Cui Xuan had saved up three months of vacation time. After the external project ended, she left on leave, and no one knew where she had gone.

Cui Xuan had no family and no friends. Once she left the company, Zhao Mingyue did not even know where to ask for news of her.

She worked hard to control her anxious, restless emotions and seriously thought about the places Cui Xuan might go. In the end, she found Cui Xuan, feverish and delirious, in Grandma Cui’s old house in the countryside.

After two months apart, Cui Xuan, whom Zhao Mingyue had spent three years trying to fatten up just a little, had lost a whole circle of weight. In the house where sunlight could not enter, Cui Xuan was curled up quietly, lying inside an old, heavy cotton quilt.

If Zhao Mingyue had come a few days later, Cui Xuan might have silently died there.

She picked Cui Xuan up and carried her out. Cui Xuan opened her eyes in a daze, looked at her for a while, then buried her face in Zhao Mingyue’s arms and choked out that she had waited for her for so long.

Her tears soaked the clothes over Zhao Mingyue’s chest, warm enough to burn. Yet after the wind blew over them, they became very cold.

Zhao Mingyue still remembered that moment clearly even now.

She knew the person Cui Xuan had waited so long for was not her. At the time, she wanted to say something, but in the end, she only gave a dull hum.

She had always felt that letting Cui Xuan receive treatment and return to reality was the unquestionably correct path.

But holding that bundle of sharp bones in her arms, holding the burning-hot, sobbing, tearful Cui Xuan, in that moment, Zhao Mingyue’s thoughts wavered as never before.

If the road leading to the correct path required Cui Xuan to suffer so much, why couldn’t Zhao Mingyue walk the wrong path with her?

Why couldn’t she walk that road together with Cui Xuan?

But in reality, she had chosen the wrong road again.

What was fake was fake. What was lost was lost. Just like Cui Xuan’s still-aching foot and her grandmother’s cold headstone, what had passed away in the past would never return.

No matter how Zhao Mingyue disguised herself, she would never, could never, become the Zhao Mingyue Cui Xuan wanted.

Compared with the fact that Zhao Mingyue was not “Zhao Mingyue,” Cui Xuan was even more unable to accept Zhao Mingyue’s disguise.

A clumsy counterfeit shell, an object for emotional projection, yet trying to pretend to be the truly sacred, perfect, untouchable white moonlight in Cui Xuan’s heart.

That was a disgusting offense.

Cui Xuan said she did not need Zhao Mingyue to pretend. Cui Xuan said Zhao Mingyue did not resemble her at all. Cui Xuan said…

Cui Xuan said their contract marriage would soon end. If Zhao Mingyue agreed, they could divorce early.

That was the first time Cui Xuan mentioned divorce to her.

The initial stirring of her heart, the heartache that came after understanding, the fear that Cui Xuan would immerse herself in fantasy and one day collapse when she woke up, then later all those tangled hesitations as she stripped away her dignity and personality to pretend to be an illusory person… all of it seemed to have become a joke.

A joke no one cared about or needed, a one-woman emotional monologue performed by her alone.

Zhao Mingyue had never felt so humiliated. Never discovered that she could be so laughable. Never so deeply realized the gap between herself and that Zhao Mingyue. Never, never so clearly discovered that Cui Xuan did not care about her, disliked her, and resisted her to this extent.

That Zhao Mingyue had only appeared in Cui Xuan’s life for one brief instant.

But Zhao Mingyue, with the most intimate identity, had accompanied Cui Xuan for five years.

She was clearly the real one. The one who had saved Cui Xuan in the alley back then had clearly been her. The one who turned around and ran away had clearly been Cui Xuan… Clearly, she was the one who came first.

She had a terrible fight with Cui Xuan.

It was not like she was insane. Hadn’t she repaid what she owed Cui Xuan long ago? She was not some bootlicker or masochist who would still eagerly move closer and wag her tail after being belittled like this.

Cui Xuan was the one who was sick! Mental illness, stomach problems, lumbar muscle strain, her ankle… She was ill from head to toe, inside and out. There were so many things to pay attention to when taking care of her that they could not even be counted. If Cui Xuan left her, who else would worry about Cui Xuan like this? Who else would feel such heartache for her and take care of her this way?

Clearly, Cui Xuan was the one who could not leave her.

Clearly, Cui Xuan was the one who could not leave her. If Zhao Mingyue left Cui Xuan, she would only feel relieved. What was there to be reluctant about? Who would be reluctant to part with trouble?

She did not actually like Cui Xuan all that much.

It was only the suspension bridge effect. Only that she had confused gratitude for kindness with a stirred heart. Only that she had blurred the line between heartache and affection.

Only because she had once possessed too much, and later lost too much. Only because she was too lonely, too desperate to grasp something, to obtain something.

And at that time, the only person by her side was Cui Xuan, so she could only hold on to Cui Xuan.

Even if there was love.

Even if there was that tiny bit of affection.

But feelings were the easiest things to change. The distance between love and hate was especially blurry, especially close, especially… difficult to distinguish.

She never imagined that the one and only fight they had on Cui Xuan’s birthday would also be the last one in Cui Xuan’s life.

Beneath the lead-gray sky, in the chilly drizzle, beside the cold headstone.

The cold soaked through her back. Rain struck her whole face. Zhao Mingyue held on to the headstone and could not help pressing hard against her chest.

Her vision went black for a moment. After a dull, heavy stab of pain, she exhaled shakily and lifted her head. The black-and-white photo on the headstone gradually came into focus in her field of vision.

The person in the photo had quiet brows and eyes, just like their first meeting beneath the runway back then, when the shifting lights had made everything seem dreamlike and unreal.

It was as if emotion, only at this moment, finally belatedly broke through the chaotic fog and came rushing in with the force to destroy everything in its path.

Only now did she seem to realize sluggishly that Cui Xuan was dead.

Cui Xuan was dead.

Cui Xuan was dead.

A living, breathing person. Her savior, her friend, her wife, her lover, her Cui Xuan… was dead.

And she could have stopped all of it.

And she could have stopped all of it!

If, during that first meeting years ago, she had caught hold of Cui Xuan and seen Cui Xuan.

If, later, she had been able to find out more details and played the role realistically enough.

If, on Cui Xuan’s birthday, she had controlled her emotions and not said so many hurtful words she could never take back. If she had been able to think of a better, more professional method…

Would Cui Xuan then not have… died?

Would Cui Xuan hate her?

Cui Xuan definitely hated her, right?

Hated her for shattering the fantasy. Hated her for not being the ideal white moonlight. Hated her so much that even after death, she did not want to see her, and even the words carved on her headstone were “wife of the seventeen-year-old Zhao Mingyue.”

What was so good about that seventeen-year-old Zhao Mingyue?

That seventeen-year-old Zhao Mingyue! What was so good about her!

The twenty-nine-year-old Zhao Mingyue slammed her fist into the inscription “seventeen-year-old Zhao Mingyue.”

In the dizzying weightlessness that spun the world and overturned her insides, in the bleak, cold rain and the desolate wind, her fist struck hard bone through flesh.

A shrill howl pierced her eardrums. A silver flash wandering at the edge of the sky suddenly illuminated the dim alley.

She saw the person who had screamed clutching his eye socket and collapsing to the ground, unable to get up.

Amid the deep, unending rumble of thunder, Zhao Mingyue held her aching head. Her mind was muddled and unclear, and she almost thought she had returned to a dream.

This was her first meeting with Cui Xuan. The beginning of Cui Xuan’s years of longing. The starting point that separated her from that Zhao Mingyue. The past she had regretted countless times and dreamed of returning to countless times, yet could never change no matter what.

She pressed a hand to her dizzy, heavy head and turned back urgently, almost in panic.

What entered her sight was no longer the dull wall from her memories and dreams. A thin, hunched back was just about to walk out of the alley.

Zhao Mingyue’s pupils constricted. She instinctively stepped forward, but her weakened knees nearly made her fall to the ground. Her staggering steps grew faster and wider. The distance between them kept shrinking. Trembling, without thinking at all, she reached out with all her strength toward that person.

In the narrow, dilapidated alley, beneath a sky where dark clouds covered the moon, the cold wind howled and scraped against her, and the icy rain filling the sky held her back.

Her hand broke through the wind and rain. Countless similar dreams, scenes of missing by just a hair again and again, flashed before her eyes in broken fragments.

She had thought countless times, countless times, that if she could return to this day, if she could do it all over again, she would definitely, she definitely…

Her closing fingers tightly seized an icy, thin wrist, as frail as a dead branch.