Confession to You in Early Summer (GL) - Chapter 3

“What’s wrong with Jiang Youyi? Did you have a falling out with her?” Zhou Xiaoxiao realized belatedly that things seemed to be more complicated than she thought.

She had rushed to the infirmary to take Yan Wei there faster than anyone else, but now she suddenly ignored her.

Yan Wei pursed her lips and sighed, “I upset her.”

“Huh?” Zhou Xiaoxiao looked puzzled.

Yan Wei didn’t say much. She put down her tray and sat down in the seat where Jiang Youyi had just eaten.

When they returned to the dormitory for a nap, Yan Wei found an excuse to go to the end of the corridor and deliberately passed by Jiang Youyi’s dormitory, glancing at Jiang Youyi’s bed, only to see a pulled-up curtain.

Yan Wei didn’t talk to Jiang Youyi at all for the whole afternoon. The two of them were far apart, not as convenient as last semester.

At the beginning of the second semester of high school, Yan Wei and Jiang Youyi had been deskmates for a semester.

At the beginning of this semester, their homeroom teacher, Mr. Xu, rearranged the seating according to the results at the end of the last semester. Jiang Youyi, as an underachiever, was mercilessly thrown to the back three rows, while Yan Wei, an excellent student, remained in the front three rows.

Moreover, boys and girls were not allowed to sit together. At that time, many students had quite a few opinions about this seating arrangement, and after making a fuss for two days, they calmed down.

After evening self-study, Yan Wei took a copy of a popular Chinese math exercise book and was just about to stand up when she was stopped by the class monitor.

“If you didn’t have time to eat breakfast this morning, just have some snacks.” The class monitor stuffed a bag of snacks into Yan Wei’s hand and then ran away.

At the same time, Jiang Youyi walked slowly past Yan Wei’s seat.

Yan Wei: “…”

She looked at the bag of snacks in her hand and handed it to Zhou Xiaoxiao, “Return it to the class monitor for me, if he doesn’t want it, you can eat it yourself.”

By the time she walked out of the classroom, Jiang Youyi was gone.

Leaning against the railing of the corridor, Yan Wei watched as students who had finished evening self-study passed by her one by one. Zhou Xiaoxiao came over and asked if she wanted to go back to the dormitory together, and Yan Wei shook her head, “You go back first.”

Zhou Xiaoxiao replied with an “oh” and left first.

Yan Wei stepped onto the small platform under the railing and leaned over to look at the neatly trimmed shrubs and flowers in the flower bed below.

On the evening of March 27, 2013, Jiang Youyi confessed to her here.

Counting back from this moment, it had only been 24 hours, but in Yan Wei’s memory, it had been seven years.

That day’s confession seemed so distant, but at this moment, it seemed like it really happened yesterday, and she could recall every detail.

The teaching building was empty, with only a few lights on in the offices. The two of them stood and sat, blowing the night breeze in the corridor.

“Aren’t you going back to the dormitory yet? The lights will be turned off later.” Yan Wei looked down and gently kicked the railing under her, making a clanging sound that echoed far in the quiet night.

Jiang Youyi was holding a small gift box, playing with it over and over again. Hearing this, she pulled her left ear back with her left hand, “What’s wrong with staying a little longer?”

“Nothing, it’s your birthday, you’re the boss.” Yan Wei also leaned against the railing and sat down, sitting next to Jiang Youyi.

Jiang Youyi stretched out her right hand and took Yan Wei’s left hand, “Then I want to sing, will you listen?”

“You sing.” Yan Wei let her hold her hand and closed her eyes leaning against the railing.

In the silence, Jiang Youyi hummed softly:

“I send a letter to no address

This kind of emotion has a distance

What song are you playing?

What kind of mood is it?

Can you tell me…”

Yan Wei didn’t understand music very well, and she had also heard the original singer of this song, but she felt that Jiang Youyi sang it better, and she couldn’t say exactly where it was better.

“I can go watch the stars with you…”

Jiang Youyi’s voice was very low, very soft, and light, like the slightly cool breeze on this night, whispering something.

Yan Wei felt something was wrong.

Jiang Youyi’s emotions were a bit strange, and Yan Wei felt an indescribable tension and anxiety.

After finishing the song, Yan Wei withdrew her hand, stood up again, and applauded, “It sounds great.”

Jiang Youyi took a deep breath, then looked up at Yan Wei.

Silence lasted for a second, two seconds…

Yan Wei pursed her lips and looked away, “We should go back, or the dorm manager will take attendance.”

She wanted to leave, but Jiang Youyi stopped her.

“Yan Wei, I like you.” Jiang Youyi suddenly went straight to the point, with a look of desperation, as if she would do or die. “I want to be your girlfriend.”

Yan Wei was unsure how long she was silent, so long that when she said those words, she even thought she was hearing things, “I’m sorry, I won’t like girls, I’m not interested in that aspect, I think we can only be friends.”

Her words left no room for maneuver, not even a chance to try.

Jiang Youyi might have guessed it would be like this. She wasn’t too disappointed, but she let out a long sigh and squeezed out a smile uglier than crying, “That’s it then, Yan Wei, that’s the end of it, I won’t mention it again, and I don’t want to be friends with you.”

Then she grinned again, “Shall we go back together? I want to have a happy birthday today, just pretend you rejected me tomorrow.”

That’s where Yan Wei’s memory of that night ended. From then on, Jiang Youyi deliberately distanced herself, and she let it be, and they never spoke properly again.

All those scenes of conflict, contradictions, and unpleasantness that had happened before suddenly seemed like things from a previous life.

Yan Wei stayed in the teaching building alone until very late. When the security guard patrolled and saw her, he chased her back to the dormitory.

The dormitory building was already dark, and the dormitory manager was guarding the stairs, stopping her, “Where have you been so late?”

“I was feeling a little unwell, so I went to the infirmary.” The good student Yan Wei lied without hesitation.

The auntie looked at her suspiciously, “You went to the infirmary with Jiang Youyi yesterday too.”

Unexpectedly, she had really forgotten about this, but there was still a way to save it, “I went with her yesterday, and today I was feeling unwell myself.”

After dealing with the dormitory manager, Yan Wei felt physically and mentally exhausted. Unconsciously, she walked past her own dormitory and stopped at the door of Jiang Youyi’s room. She paused for half a second, then was startled by the irrelevant voices in the room and turned around hurriedly.

Seven people in the dorm were all lying in bed, secretly playing on their phones. Zhou Xiaoxiao heard a noise, poked her head out from under the covers, and when Yan Wei walked over to the bed, she asked her in a low voice, “Why so late?”

Yan Wei threw the unused math workbook onto the bed and replied in a low voice, looking down, “Lost track of time.”

Zhou Xiaoxiao thought Yan Wei meant she had forgotten the time because she went back to the classroom to study, so she nodded and gave a thumbs up, “A top student is a top student, you study so hard you forget to sleep and eat!”

Knowing she had misunderstood, Yan Wei didn’t explain. She went into the laundry room in the dark, washed up, and climbed into bed.

Yan Wei didn’t play with her phone like her roommates. Her family was very strict, and her parents believed that playing with a phone would definitely affect her studies, so they didn’t buy her one and didn’t allow her to save money to buy one herself. They would also occasionally go through her things.

She had no privacy at home. In her bedroom, besides learning materials, there wasn’t even a novel.

So she didn’t keep a diary since she was young, and she never wrote a diary until she graduated from high school. It was the rebellious and bad girl, Xiao Jiang, who had such a habit that didn’t fit her personality.

No one knew what Yan Wei was thinking, except for herself.

Yan Wei lay on her side on the bed, pillowing her head on one hand, and couldn’t fall asleep. With her eyes closed, her mind was full of messy memories. The deeper the night, the more complicated her thoughts became.

Where would she wake up tomorrow after falling asleep? Would she return to the brightly lit KTV box, or would she continue this dream of reliving the past?

If she really went back to the past and lived again, would the future she knew also happen?

In Yan Wei’s memory, after she rejected Jiang Youyi, their friendship ended. Although she would still be attracted to the name when she heard it mentioned by others, she didn’t try to repair their relationship.

After this semester ended, in the first semester of senior year, Jiang Youyi became more and more silent.

Because of her solitary and rebellious personality, she was isolated by her classmates. She completely gave up on herself, skipped class to play online games every now and then, smoked, drank, made friends with all kinds of people outside the school, and refused to obey the teacher’s discipline even after being reported by the school. Her academic performance also declined and she became the bottom of the grade.

Teacher Xu found Jiang Youyi’s parents, but the result was that her father felt very embarrassed and slapped her in the face in public in the corridor.

Not long after, there were rumors in the school that her mother had died, killed by domestic violence from her husband. She had hit her head on the corner of the coffee table and had stopped breathing by the time she was sent to the hospital and couldn’t be saved.

The court heard the case and ruled that it was an accident and did not sentence her father.

When the classmates met her on the road, they would walk around her and no one was willing to talk to her. They all treated her like a plague.

When Yan Wei heard this news, she was very shocked. She wanted to care about Jiang Youyi, but when she stopped Jiang Youyi in the corridor, Jiang Youyi told her that she was fine and didn’t need anyone’s pity.

Yan Wei had already been classified as someone else by her.

Facing Jiang Youyi who was like a pool of stagnant water, Yan Wei couldn’t say anything meaningful or comforting in the end.

After that, Jiang Youyi died.

••••

A few days before the college entrance examination, there was a weekend off, and when Jiang Youyi returned to school, she seemed very off. On the night before the exam, Jiang Youyi swallowed sleeping pills and was sent to the hospital.

At first, Yan Wei didn’t believe it. Ignoring the school rules late at night, she climbed over the wall and ran out to see Jiang Youyi for the last time.

But even until her heart stopped beating, Jiang Youyi never opened her eyes.

The doctor said there were two things in Jiang Youyi’s pocket, a diary and a letter.

Under the pretext of giving the belongings to Jiang Youyi’s father, Yan Wei intercepted the items and accidentally saw that the letter was addressed to her.

It wasn’t a suicide note, but a confession letter from a year ago.

The diary explained why the letter wasn’t sent, and the diary clearly recorded the entire process of Jiang Youyi gradually descending into despair and self-destruction.

At the end of the diary, a few lines were written in a messy handwriting:

“He drank alcohol, like a madman, no, he was a madman from the beginning.

He beat me, scolded me, mistook me for the woman he killed, pulled my hair, tore my clothes….

I can’t live anymore.”

•••

Perhaps, what made Jiang Youyi most desperate was not her father, but the four words on the cover of the diary:

*She is the light.*

Yan Wei curled up and buried her head in her arms.

That light came and went, and it was also the executioner.

But in fact, she was not light, she was a shadow.

The name Jiang Youyi was her light.

On March 27th of that year, she personally gave up the light that should have belonged to her.

Author’s Note: The author has nothing to say.

T/N: The first time I read this novel, it made me shed a lot of tears, but how do I still cry every time those paragraphs in the diary are mentioned? 😭