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

“What’s wrong with Jiang Youyi? Did you two have a fight?” Zhou Xiaoxiao belatedly realized that things didn’t seem simple.

Just now, she had been in a hurry to send Yan Wei to the school infirmary, running faster than anyone else, but now she was suddenly ignoring people.

Yan Wei pursed her lips and sighed softly, “I made her unhappy.”

“Ah?” Zhou Xiaoxiao looked puzzled.

Yan Wei didn’t say much, put down her plate, and sat down in the spot where Jiang Youyi had just eaten.

Returning to the dorm after the lunch break, Yan Wei found an excuse to go to the end of the corridor and deliberately passed by Jiang Youyi’s dorm room, glancing at Jiang Youyi’s bed. She could only catch a glimpse of a drawn curtain.

Yan Wei didn’t get a chance to speak to Jiang Youyi all afternoon. They were far apart, not as convenient as last semester.

In the first semester of their second year of high school, after the division into arts and sciences, Yan Wei and Jiang Youyi had been deskmates for a semester.

At the beginning of this semester, the homeroom teacher, Teacher Xu, rearranged the seating according to the end-of-semester grades. Jiang Youyi, as a poor student, was ruthlessly thrown to the last three rows, while the top student Yan Wei remained in the first three rows.

Moreover, boys and girls were not allowed to be deskmates. At the time, many students had complaints about this seating arrangement, but after two days of fussing, it died down.

After the evening self-study session, Yan Wei picked up a practice workbook and was stopped by the class monitor as soon as she stood up.

“If you don’t have time to eat breakfast in the morning, then eat some snacks.” The class monitor stuffed a bag of snacks into Yan Wei’s hand and ran off after speaking.

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

Yan Wei: “…”

She glanced at the bag of snacks in her hand and passed it to Zhou Xiaoxiao. “Help me return this to the class monitor. If he doesn’t want it, you can eat it yourself.”

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

Yan Wei leaned on the corridor railing. Students who had finished evening self-study walked past her in twos and threes. Zhou Xiaoxiao came over and asked if she wanted to go back to the dorm together. Yan Wei shook her head. “You go back first.”

Zhou Xiaoxiao said “oh” and left first.

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

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

Pushing back from this moment in time, it was only 24 hours ago, but in Yan Wei’s memory, seven years had passed.

That confession clearly felt very distant, yet at this moment, it felt as if it had really happened yesterday, and she could recall every detail.

The teaching building was empty except for a few office lights still on. The two of them, one standing and one sitting on the ground, were in the corridor, feeling the night breeze.

“Aren’t you going back to the dorm yet? The lights will be turned off soon.” Yan Wei lowered her head and gently kicked the railing under the handrail. A “thump” sound echoed particularly far in the quiet night.

Jiang Youyi held a small gift box in her hand, turning it over and over, playing with it. Hearing this, she pulled a strand of hair behind her left ear. “What’s wrong with staying a little longer?”

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

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

“Sing then.” Yan Wei let her hold her hand, leaning against the railing with her eyes closed.

In the silence, Jiang Youyi began to hum softly:

“A letter with no address to send,

This kind of emotion has a distance.

Whose song are you playing?

What kind of mood is it?

Can you tell me…”

Yan Wei didn’t understand music. She had heard the original version of this song, but she felt that Jiang Youyi sang it even better. She couldn’t say exactly why.

“I can accompany you to see the stars…”

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

Yan Wei felt something was wrong.

Jiang Youyi’s mood was a little strange, and Yan Wei felt an inexplicable tension and anxiety.

After the song finished, Yan Wei withdrew her hand, stood up again, and applauded. “That was very nice.”

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

Silence lasted for one second, two seconds…

Yan Wei pursed her lips and looked away. “We should go back. If we don’t leave, the dorm supervisor will take our names down.”

She wanted to leave, but Jiang Youyi stopped her.

“Yan Wei, I like you.” Jiang Youyi suddenly went straight to the point, with an expression of having staked it all, succeed or die. “I want to be your girlfriend.”

Yan Wei wasn’t sure how long she had been silent, long enough that when she said that sentence, she even thought she was hallucinating. “I’m sorry, I don’t like girls, I don’t have that kind of interest. I think we can only be friends.”

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

Jiang Youyi had probably guessed this would happen. She wasn’t too disappointed, just let out a long breath and squeezed out a smile that looked more like crying. “Then that’s it, Yan Wei, this is the end. I won’t mention it again, and I don’t want to be friends with you.”

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

Yan Wei’s memory of that night ended there. After that, Jiang Youyi deliberately kept her distance, and she let it be. They never had a proper conversation again.

Those conflicts, contradictions, and unpleasantness that had once happened suddenly felt like things from a past life.

Yan Wei stayed alone in the teaching building until very late. The security guard saw her during his patrol and urged her back to the dorm.

The lights in the dormitory building were already off. The dorm supervisor stood at the stairwell, stopping her. “Where have you been so late?”

“I wasn’t feeling well, I went to the school infirmary.” The good student Yan Wei blurted out.

The supervisor looked at her suspiciously. “You and Jiang Youyi also went to the infirmary yesterday.”

Caught off guard, she had really forgotten about that, but there was still a way out. “Yesterday I went with her, today I wasn’t feeling well myself.”

After dealing with the dorm supervisor, Yan Wei was physically and mentally exhausted. Without realizing it, she walked past her own dorm room and stopped outside Jiang Youyi’s. Her steps faltered slightly, and half a second later, she was startled awake by irrelevant voices from inside and hurriedly turned around and walked away.

The seven people in the dorm were all lying in bed secretly playing on their phones. Zhou Xiaoxiao heard the movement and poked her head out from under the covers. When Yan Wei walked to her bed, she whispered, “Why are you so late?”

Yan Wei threw the unused practice workbook on her bed, lowered her head upon hearing this, and replied in a low voice, “Didn’t pay attention to the time.”

Zhou Xiaoxiao thought Yan Wei was referring to going back to the classroom to study and forgetting the time, so she said “oh” and gave a thumbs up. “A top student is a top student, forgetting to eat and sleep!”

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

Yan Wei didn’t play on her phone like her roommates. Her family education was very strict. Her parents believed that playing on the 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. Besides study-related tutoring materials in her bedroom, there wasn’t even a novel.

So she had never kept a diary since she was little. She hadn’t written a diary until after graduating from high school, while the rebellious delinquent girl Xiao Jiang had such a small habit that didn’t fit her image.

What Yan Wei was thinking in her heart, no one knew except herself.

Yan Wei lay on her side in bed, resting her head on one hand, finding it difficult to fall asleep. Closing her eyes, her mind was full of messy memories. The deeper the night, the more mixed her thoughts became.

After she fell asleep, where would she wake up tomorrow? Would she return to the brightly lit KTV private room, or would this dream of returning to the past continue?

If she had really returned to the past timeline to live her life again, would the future she knew still happen?

In Yan Wei’s memory, after she rejected Jiang Youyi, their friendship ended. Although she would still be drawn to attention when others mentioned this name, she didn’t try to repair their relationship.

After this semester ended, in the first semester of their third year of high school, Jiang Youyi became even more silent.

She was isolated by her classmates due to her withdrawn and rebellious personality, completely giving up on herself, skipping classes every now and then to go online and play games, smoking and drinking, making friends with all sorts of unsavory characters outside of school. She didn’t obey the teachers’ discipline even after receiving school-wide criticism, and her academic performance plummeted, ending up at the bottom of the grade.

Teacher Xu had spoken to Jiang Youyi’s parents, and the result was that her father felt very embarrassed. In a fit of anger, he slapped her in public in the corridor.

Not long after, rumors spread in the school that her mother had died, killed by her husband’s domestic violence, her head hitting the corner of the coffee table. By the time she was taken to the hospital, she had stopped breathing and couldn’t be saved.

The court held a trial and classified the incident as an accident, not sentencing her father.

Classmates would take detours when they encountered her on the road. No one wanted to talk to her, and everyone treated her like a plague.

At that time, Yan Wei was very shocked when she heard this news. She wanted to care about Jiang Youyi, but after 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 categorized by her as “anyone else.”

Facing Jiang Youyi, who was like a stagnant pool, Yan Wei ultimately couldn’t say anything meaningful or comforting.

After that, Jiang Youyi died.

••••

During the weekend break a few days before the college entrance exams, Jiang Youyi’s state was very wrong when they returned to school. Until the night before the exam, Jiang Youyi swallowed sleeping pills and was sent to the hospital.

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

But even until her heartbeat stopped, Jiang Youyi didn’t open her eyes.

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

Yan Wei used the excuse of handing over the belongings to Jiang Youyi’s father on behalf of the doctor to intercept the items, but unexpectedly saw her name written on the letter.

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

The diary recorded the reason why the letter hadn’t been sent, and that diary also clearly documented the entire process of Jiang Youyi gradually moving towards despair and self-destruction.

At the end of the diary, several lines were scribbled messily:

He drank alcohol, like a madman, no, he was originally a madman.

He hit me, cursed 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 diary’s flyleaf:

She is the light.

Yan Wei hugged her head and curled up.

That beam of light came and went, wasn’t it also the executioner?

But in fact, she wasn’t light, she was shadow.

The two words Jiang Youyi, were her light.

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