Chapter 12
9
I’ve always disliked summer, because I don’t want to move around—once I do, I immediately start sweating.
But summer vacation is also when I get to see San Ye the most, so for true love’s sake, I still often dragged him out under the blazing sun to watch movies or go shopping.
Since I never really exercised, usually after just two streets I’d already be wiping my face and neck with tissues nonstop, while San Ye was still calm and unbothered.
Once, after wiping my face, I noticed the tissue was torn, so I asked San Ye:
“Do you see if there are bits of paper stuck on my neck?”
San Ye lowered his head, glanced once, and said:
“Oh, there’s a lot.”
I tilted my head up with a cute smile:
“Then help me pick them off.”
He nodded seriously:
“Okay, no problem.”
Then he bent down and very carefully used two fingers to pinch off each bit of paper one by one. After a while he thought that was too slow, so he began rubbing with his thumb to sweep them away. As he kept rubbing, he started chuckling.
I was still maintaining my cute, upturned smile and asked suspiciously:
“What are you laughing at?”
San Ye solemnly countered:
“Am I laughing?”
I gestured at his mouth:
“Your grin is reaching your ears.”
He laughed harder, then pulled my little mirror from my bag.
“See for yourself.”
I held the mirror to my neck and discovered that my skin had been rubbed red in streaks by him. But that wasn’t the main point. The main point was… he had rubbed out several little white rolled-up bits of grime!
I laughed awkwardly:
“Ahem, I just—I just sweat easily, you know. I shower every day.”
San Ye also laughed:
“Mhm.”
But his laugh was that insufferable kind of smirk that makes you not want to look twice—the kind that makes you feel like he’s just uncovered some earth-shattering secret, like you wet the bed at seventeen and did it several times in a row.
Feeling wronged, I refused to meet him for the next week. It felt like maybe we couldn’t even be proper friends anymore.
10
In my freshman year, I took on a lot of extra elective courses. It sounded impressive when I told people, but the price was that by finals I couldn’t finish all the assignments. So, the end of each semester was usually peak quarrel season between me and San Ye. I was under a lot of stress and short-tempered, while San Ye became my main (actually, only) source of help when I was going crazy over assignments.
Once, for one of my electives, there was an optional paper for extra credit. I only remembered it on the due date, and since I was already drowning in other work, shamelessly I called San Ye.
Me: “Darling, there’s this paper for an elective course, just extra credit, not very strict. Can you write it for me?”
San Ye: “How?”
Me: “Well, there are a few English articles. Your English is so good, you’ll finish reading them quickly.”
San Ye: “Okay, then what?”
Me: “After reading, just translate them and then look up some related sources.”
San Ye: “And that’s all?”
Me: “Of course not—you still have to organize the material and write the paper.”
San Ye: “Then what are you doing?”
Me: “Me? I’m calling you for help!”
He went silent for more than ten seconds.
Me: “Do you not love me anymore…”
San Ye launched into lecture mode:
“Baby, this won’t work. You won’t learn anything like this.”
I switched to unreasonable-girlfriend mode:
“Other girls have boyfriends who go shopping, attend classes, and study in the library with them. If you were here searching for sources with me, I’d finish so quickly. But we only see each other every few months. I don’t complain about that—it’s long-distance, I know it’s hard for you too. But now I just ask one tiny favor, and you won’t even write a paper for me? How could you…”
San Ye: “…”
Me, continuing:
“My dormmates have all finished. They’re watching movies, reading comics. Only I haven’t. Do you know how stressful this is? On weekends I’m already busy with my double major. When they’re writing assignments, I’m in class. When they’re having fun, I’m writing. By the time they’re done, I’m still rushing. In a few days, there’s finals too, and I haven’t even revised. I’m about to collapse…”
San Ye asked:
“Are you sure when they’re having fun you’re writing?”
I shamelessly said:
“Well, I was tired from class. If I wasn’t so exhausted that I couldn’t keep my eyes open, how would my body ‘accidentally’ end up lying in bed?”
San Ye retorted:
“You were clearly lying in bed playing games…”
Me, angry:
“So you just don’t want to help me, huh?”
San Ye: “I have my own things too.”
Me, sneering:
“Your own things? Playing games? Oh, haha. Fine then, you’re busy.”
San Ye got a bit annoyed too:
“Don’t be like that. Let me finish my own assignments first, then I’ll look at yours.”
I said sarcastically:
“No need, I wouldn’t dare bother you. I’ll do it myself.”
Then, overwhelmed with stress, the more I thought about it the sadder I became. I ended up crouching in a hallway corner, crying.
Once I cried, San Ye caved:
“Why are you crying? I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. Just look at it yourself for a while. When I finish my work, I’ll help you, okay?”
I sobbed:
“You just don’t love me anymore, or you wouldn’t keep making excuses.”
San Ye started lecturing again:
“Crying won’t solve anything. You could have read a lot in this time already.”
I sniffled:
“Why didn’t you finish your assignments earlier instead of just playing ‘Three Kingdoms Kill’ and League of Legends? Otherwise, you wouldn’t still be busy at this hour.”
San Ye went silent.
I pressed:
“Why aren’t you talking?”
San Ye: “I’m about to collapse too…”
Me: “My paper has to be emailed to the professor before midnight. (sniff) I’m not talking to you anymore—go do your homework.”
The original intent of writing this story was to show how low San Ye’s emotional intelligence was. But after finishing, I suddenly realized how immature I was back then. Maybe relationships that start at eighteen are never really mature. At eighteen, we didn’t know how to handle each other properly. I’m grateful for all the bumps along the way, grateful that San Ye, despite his low EQ, had such a big heart, and grateful that our mutual tolerance carried this relationship to where it is today.
11
Speaking of arguments, many times San Ye would only act after I got angry, as if he couldn’t grasp the situation beforehand.
When we first started dating, whenever I got mad, he would panic and try all sorts of ways to coax me. Later on, though, our relationship developed into a strange new pattern:
Whenever I got angry, he’d get even angrier than me.
So in the end, it usually turned into me giving him a way out first, and then he’d immediately wag his metaphorical tail and reconcile with me.
For example, if I had my period and my stomach hurt, I’d be in a bad mood and might snap at him or ignore him. Then he’d get even angrier than me. When my temper cooled and I approached him with my chubby, sheepish face, asking:
“What are you even mad about?”
He himself wouldn’t know. Probably he was just mad at my attitude. But of course, in a reconciliation moment, he couldn’t say that. So he’d randomly throw the blame onto something unrelated:
“I’m mad because you’re on your period!”
