Chapter 64

Her vision went dark, tiny dense specks of starlight rushing into view, and Wei Xiaolu felt as if she might stop breathing. Her whole body seemed to grow lighter and lighter.

"Xiaolu," Shen Siyan’s voice came from somewhere. "Xiaolu, do we need to go stop your brother?"

Stop him. Right. Stop him.

Wei Xiaolu fumbled blindly for something to grab, caught Shen Siyan’s hand, but her breathing was too tight; the words she wanted to say were completely stuck in her throat.

"Breathe, Xiaolu," Shen Siyan said again. "I’m here. Relax. It’s okay."

Her vision gradually cleared a little. Fumbling, she pulled her phone from her pocket, ready to call Wei Jialuo in a desperate last-minute rescue attempt.

But when she opened her phone, she saw her brother’s missed call, along with a message sent after the call failed to connect.

【Wei Jialuo: I knocked, but nobody was answering over here, so I came in and sat down for a bit.】

Suddenly, all at once, Wei Xiaolu had no strength left to argue. Everything that had happened had been traceable all along. If she hadn’t been so blinded by lust, if she had checked her phone earlier, if she had answered Wei Jialuo’s call, if that fight hadn’t happened that day—

Wei Xiaolu grabbed her hair and crouched down. "I’m done for."

Her vision blurred with tears; she could no longer see the future.

"Done for," Wei Xiaolu cried uncontrollably. "I’m done for, done for! I’m dead."

She couldn’t think at all; she could only cool down together with this frozen world, following her instincts.

The carefully planned coming-out, in an instant, turned into foam.

—I’ve been stripped bare, completely seen.

Under the spotlight, there was no privacy at all. The secret she had guarded so carefully had been shattered to pieces after the kiss was interrupted.

"They know," Wei Xiaolu howled. "What do I do? They all know. He called my mom. What do I do? They know now, they all know..."

Shaken by the shock and panic of being exposed, Wei Xiaolu could no longer find herself; even Shen Siyan seemed to vanish with her. Only when the thought of "Shen Siyan" surfaced again did she realize Shen Siyan’s front was soaked through, her embrace filled with Wei Xiaolu’s tears.

"It’ll be fine," she finally heard Shen Siyan’s calm reassurance. "Even if something does happen, I’ll be with you."

Wei Xiaolu lifted her head. "I wasn’t ready for them to know yet."

"It was too sudden," Shen Siyan said.

Wei Xiaolu burst into tears again. "It really was too sudden!" She was half-gasping, half-wailing. "It’s all Wei Jialuo’s fault. He didn’t even ask my permission before barging in! He didn’t even ask my permission before telling my mom!"

Shen Siyan held her. "I’m here, don’t cry, baby."

But anger and betrayal made Wei Xiaolu unable to accept that kind of tenderness.

She shoved Shen Siyan away, but because she stood up too abruptly, her low blood sugar made her vision go black. Dizzy and unsteady, she still raged at Wei Jialuo.

"How dare he!"

Staggering across the living room, Wei Xiaolu saw the blueberries on the floor and viciously stepped on them, crushing them into jam. "Coming out is my business! Whether I tell Mom and Dad or not is my right! What gives him the right to say that? I was just having trouble finding a job; I’m not possessed or something. The one who’s crazy is clearly him!"

Even after crushing the blueberries, she still wasn’t satisfied. Wei Xiaolu plopped down on the floor and howled at the sky.

"Ahhh—" Her face was smeared with tears and snot. "I didn’t even do anything! I just fell in love, what did I do wrong? Why did he have to accuse me like that? I just kissed someone, what’s so abnormal about that? Do we look disgusting or something?"

"No," Shen Siyan crouched in front of her and slowly wiped away her tears. "He was probably just startled."

"Sister..." Wei Xiaolu looked at Shen Siyan.

"Mm." Shen Siyan answered immediately.

"Not only do they know about me, they definitely know about you too," Wei Xiaolu said. "Sorry. It’s all because I didn’t stop my brother, so you got dragged into this too."

Shen Siyan shook her head and said it wasn’t like that, telling her not to overthink it.

Wei Xiaolu cried herself out, and suddenly had no strength left. She sat there dejectedly for a while, her mind blank and heavy, as though it couldn’t bear the weight of coming out.

About ten minutes later, she got up from the floor and searched the whole apartment for her phone. She finally found it in the entryway. When she unlocked it, there wasn’t a single message. The furious reaction from her parents she had imagined, the rupture, the possible argument, even the direction things might go if they were forced into cutting ties—none of that came. What replaced it was a silence like abandonment.

She had only been arguing with Wei Jialuo moments ago, yet now everything was cold and still. Those two extremes of hot and cold made Wei Xiaolu feel dazed.

She slumped onto the sofa.

So what was the situation now?

It seemed like a mess, but within that mess there was also a faint, excruciating steadiness.

Before she had even sorted anything out, still sitting there in a daze, Shen Siyan came over and sat beside her.

Wei Xiaolu instinctively turned to look. Shen Siyan had her arms folded, deep in thought, her fingers tapping idly against her arm.

"Xiaolu." In the wrecked living room, Shen Siyan spoke calmly.

Wei Xiaolu didn’t move.

"For now, don’t contact them. Keep your phone on silent, or let me hold onto it."

Wei Xiaolu shook her head. "No need. They haven’t looked for me. There isn’t any message."

After another brief stretch of consideration, Shen Siyan stood up.

"This isn’t your problem alone; it’s the two of us," she said, pacing two steps before stopping. "Before we figure out how to respond, don’t rush to contact your parents, unless they’re coming here in person to take you away."

Wei Xiaolu looked at her.

"We need to first clarify the core message to send your family," Shen Siyan said. "About our relationship, they need to know this was a decision made after careful consideration. We love each other, and we’ll both take this relationship seriously."

"Second, with your brother, we need to make it clear that his barging into the apartment and recklessly telling your parents has hurt you to a certain extent."

"Lastly, regarding future plans, we hope to be respected, but we won’t change because of pressure or opposition. If they can’t accept it in the short term, we can temporarily stop living together and later seek support from other relatives or friends—"

Wei Xiaolu suddenly felt exhausted and called out to stop her. "Can you not talk to me about this yet?"

Cut off mid-sentence, Shen Siyan froze.

Looking at the blouse collar soaked through with tears, at the wrecked living room around them, Wei Xiaolu also found herself thinking with self-disgust: why was she still unable to crawl out of this hysterical panic, while Shen Siyan could remain so clear-headed and composed?

What made her feel even more inferior was this: Shen Siyan’s composure had never been armor prepared for anyone; it was simply the skin she had been born wearing when she stepped into this world, invulnerable to blades and bullets.

That was not a good thing.

Because in that stark contrast, Wei Xiaolu regretfully discovered that in just this short time, something as sweet and light as falling in love had become a problem she needed to explain to her family, defend, and even "fight" for.

The bits of blue-black jam scattered across the floor deepened her shame in that moment, and Wei Xiaolu instinctively hid from Shen Siyan’s gaze, darting her eyes away.

"I don’t want to hear it," Wei Xiaolu said coldly.

Shen Siyan didn’t say anything else.

But once she stopped talking, Wei Xiaolu felt even worse. Her nose stung, and grievance surged up all over again.

"Don’t tell me all that messy stuff," Wei Xiaolu snapped suddenly, angry over something completely random. "It’s not like I don’t know what to do."

Shen Siyan asked right away, "What do you do?"

Her heart spasmed. Wei Xiaolu flung the pillow beside her aside and, in utter defeat, said, "I don’t know what to do! I don’t know, okay!"

She didn’t even have time to care that her own words and the next ones were warring in her head; the very second after she shouted, she was already regretting her outburst.

Facing Shen Siyan’s expressionless face, she chose not to face it at all. Turning around, she strode back into the bedroom and slammed the door.

And Shen Siyan, who was good at handling relationships, didn’t keep her in a standoff for long. After a series of sounds from tidying up the room died down, someone knocked on Wei Xiaolu’s bedroom door.

"Xiaolu."

She didn’t answer. So Shen Siyan apologized, saying she shouldn’t have interfered so much; she had just been too anxious earlier.

In truth, Shen Siyan hadn’t done anything wrong. It was only in front of her own childish tantrum that Shen Siyan’s organization and conviction became a kind of original sin that made Wei Xiaolu feel ashamed.

She admired Shen Siyan’s perfection, yet at the same time, that perfection became the mirror that reflected her own brokenness.

Wei Xiaolu no longer had the strength to struggle against this absurd life. The recent string of setbacks had left her physically and mentally exhausted. She told Shen Siyan she wanted to be alone for a while, and Shen Siyan didn’t insist; she only told her to rest well.

"If you need me, I’m always here," Shen Siyan said at last.

Wei Xiaolu wanted to use silence to steady herself.

But when everything around her became a void, that same panic returned again; she didn’t know when the scolding would come, didn’t know how deep the water was.

She tried watching videos, listening to music, or simply opening her computer to revise her graduation thesis, but nothing could get rid of that dead-water feeling.

That state tormented her over and over, until finally—

At nine o’clock that night, Wei Xiaolu’s phone rang.

She had long had a feeling she’d receive a call, but when she saw with her own eyes that it was Tang Xiaofen, Wei Xiaolu still couldn’t stop her fingertips from going numb with panic.

She swallowed the nervousness of answering into her trembling breath. Even though she knew why this call was coming, even though she had absolutely no script in her head, even though she didn’t have a clear plan for handling it like Shen Siyan did, she still did what she had always done so many times before; the moment she saw her mother’s call, she answered immediately and habitually called out, "Mom."

"Mm." Tang Xiaofen answered.

Then, by unspoken agreement, neither of them said anything else.

"Um," after a very long while, Tang Xiaofen spoke first, haltingly. "Girl, I’m just really worried. I was afraid you might have..."

Halfway through, she stopped; she didn’t speak for a long time. When her voice came again, it was already tinged with tears. "I was just worried that you might’ve been... you know, subjected to workplace sexual harassment by your boss?"

The crying Wei Xiaolu had been desperately trying to cover by clamping a hand over her mouth and nose was finally, under Tang Xiaofen’s cautious protection, laid bare.

Tang Xiaofen was just too easy to read. Wei Xiaolu almost instantly saw through her embarrassment and avoidance. She didn’t mention the crucial issue of sexual orientation at all; instead, she turned to the most basic, most maternal kind of concern, trying to dissolve the panic the two of them were secretly sharing over this absurd coming-out.

"No." Wei Xiaolu used all her strength to steady her voice and keep the crying from sounding too obvious.

"Oh, okay, good, then I’m relieved. It’s fine."

Tang Xiaofen’s words came in fragments, like she was just filling the space before hanging up.

But before she ended the call, she added a little more about today’s matter: "Also... I had your brother bring you some blueberries you like. It’s underfloor heating in your place, so they won’t keep well. Remember to eat them soon, okay?"