Confession to You in Early Summer (GL) - Chapter 7
The bus departed at 7:30 and didn’t arrive in Yizhou until over four hours later, close to 12 o’clock. The students’ parents had received prior notice and were already waiting at the station. As soon as Yan Wei got off the bus, she saw her parents in the crowd.
They were both respectable intellectuals, younger than they would be many years later. The wrinkles at her mother’s eyes were fewer, and her father’s temples hadn’t yet turned white.
But Yan Wei looked at them with complicated emotions.
Many feelings welled up, an instinctive apprehension, mixed with a few strands of sympathy, and a helpless sorrow.
Before the emotions could fully develop, her mother saw her and excitedly raised her hand. “Weiwei!”
A relieved smile also appeared on Yan’s father’s face.
Yan Wei dragged her light suitcase and followed her parents out of the station. Yan Tingyue eagerly took the suitcase from her and put it in the trunk. Yan Wei got into the back seat, leaving the passenger seat for her mother, He Ping.
“Weiwei, are you tired from the bus ride? What’s wrong with your school? Why did they let you come back so late?” He Ping began to nag as soon as she got in the car.
Yan Wei leaned against the car window, closing her eyes to rest, mumbling some vague response. Yan Tingyue glanced at her in the rearview mirror and advised his wife, “Can you not be tired after a four or five-hour bus ride? Say less and let Weiwei rest for a while. She should have been asleep long ago at this time. Let her wash up and rest directly when we get back, so it doesn’t affect her energy during the day and disrupt her biological clock.”
He Ping felt her husband was right and turned to Yan Wei. “You sleep, I’ll wake you up when we get home.”
Yan Wei hummed in agreement, her forehead pressed against the car window, her eyes half-closed as she watched the scenery outside the window rush by.
“Weiwei, we’re going to see Grandma tomorrow, no sleeping in.” Back home, Yan Tingyue took off his shoes while telling Yan Wei the next day’s plan. “Remember to set an alarm, get up at seven for breakfast. We’ll go early and come back early, so it doesn’t affect your homework.”
As before, Yan Wei didn’t express any opinion on their pre-made decisions, only obediently nodding. “I know.”
She returned to her room, the familiar yet distant furnishings. Although she hadn’t been back for over a month, the floor was still clean, and the desk was spotless.
Yan Wei looked at the few books sandwiched between the bookends, remembered something, walked over, took out one of them, and quickly flipped through it.
The doodles sandwiched between the pages were indeed gone.
Every weekend, He Ping would clean Yan Wei’s room, tidy her desk, and throw away everything she thought shouldn’t be in a second-year high school girl’s room, even just a few meaningless doodles.
Her parents rarely questioned her about why she would do these inexplicable things during study time, but beneath their seemingly gentle and tolerant attitude, their actions were even more dictatorial, direct, and unreasonable.
In my past life – I don’t know if this dream will ever end, so let’s just call the experiences in my memory my past life for now.
She rarely went home after university, sometimes staying in Fudu to work during winter and summer vacations. Every time she saw her parents, she would find that they had aged a bit more, but before she could feel regret, she would be back in reality, and they would start arguing after a few sentences, usually ending with Yan Wei storming out, and they would part on bad terms.
During the two years she stayed at school for postgraduate studies, she didn’t go home once.
Having been a good girl for too long, once she rebelled, it was unstoppable. The accumulated grievances, resentment, and the confusion and sadness brought by Jiang Youyi’s death broke through the threshold, making her feel tired and weary, unwilling to continue playing the obedient child to please anyone or avoid punishment.
Or perhaps, she was simply venting her emotions.
Reaching the point of no contact in the end, everyone was at fault, but no one was willing to back down, especially her parents who had been dictatorial for twenty or thirty years.
But at least now, they would still rush to pick her up late at night because they were worried about her safety. She never doubted their love for her. From their perspective and standpoint, putting aside those unconscious selfishness and unreasonable demands, they truly poured all their love and hope into her.
It’s just that they never reflected on themselves, nor did they understand that such overbearing and controlling love, like shackles, confined her, making her always want to escape.
She had the same pride in her personality as them, and because of long-term suppression of her own will, she developed inferiority, timidity, and cowardice. These contradictions twisted her values, causing her to constantly accumulate rebellion in her life of submission, fighting with another self deep within, and finally erupting regardless of the consequences, burning everything clean.
He Ping came in without knocking and handed Yan Wei a glass of warm milk.
She saw the open book in Yan Wei’s hand, but didn’t ask anything or say anything. Everything seemed matter-of-fact.
Yan Wei put down the book, finished the milk in one gulp, and handed back the empty glass. “Thank you, Mom. You and Dad should also rest early. Good night.”
“Good night.” He Ping smiled and went out, closing the door behind her.
The next day, as soon as the alarm rang, Yan Wei immediately opened her eyes and got out of bed without any hesitation.
About two minutes later, He Ping pushed open the door and looked at Yan Wei, who was folding her quilt, with a satisfied smile. “Weiwei, breakfast is ready, hurry up and wash your face and eat.”
“Okay,” Yan Wei agreed, smoothing the corners of the quilt at the same time.
Five minutes later, the family of three sat down neatly for a meal. Yan Tingyue and He Ping sat side by side on one side of the long table. Yan Wei glanced at the empty seat on her left, didn’t show any emotion, and quietly finished her own breakfast with her head down.
They left home at 7:40. Yan Tingyue drove his wife and daughter to the cemetery in the suburbs to sweep the graves.
Today was Qingming Festival. The sky was gloomy, and it was drizzling. From afar, Yan Wei saw a figure standing in front of her grandmother’s grave, holding a black umbrella.
Yan Tingyue and He Ping also saw her and stopped in unison.
The other person seemed to sense something, turned her head, and glanced at the family of three not far away. There was no expression on her indifferent face, but her gaze lingered on Yan Wei for a few more seconds before looking away. Then she turned and walked down the long steps from the other side, without saying a word from beginning to end.
A woman was waiting for her at the bottom of the steps.
He Ping took a deep breath and glanced sideways at Yan Tingyue, whose face was livid.
“She still has the nerve?” The veins on Yan Tingyue’s forehead bulged. “She actually dared to bring someone here? Family misfortune! Disgraceful thing!”
Yan Wei watched the two figures walk away, rationally keeping silent.
The young woman was called Yan Chu, Yan Wei’s older sister, three years older than Yan Wei. And the person beside her was her lover. They had been together for many years.
In Yan Wei’s memory, when she was in the second year of junior high school, Yan Chu was exactly her current age, in the second year of senior high school.
Yan Chu had an early romance, which was discovered by the teacher. The object of her affection was actually a woman eleven years older than her, almost an elder.
Before this incident, Yan Chu had always been her parents’ pride and Yan Wei’s role model. She was excellent in academics and participated in many mathematics and physics competitions during junior and senior high school, winning numerous awards. She was the teachers’ favorite, a true precious gem.
After her relationship was exposed, she didn’t hesitate to come out to her parents. The argument was earth-shattering. Yan Wei had never seen her gentle and considerate older sister erupt with such overwhelming force. Her refined and respectable father also went crazy, a slap landing on Yan Chu’s face, but it couldn’t extinguish the stubbornness in her heart.
In the end, Yan Chu slammed the door and left, getting into that woman’s car. She didn’t go back to school and never returned home after that.
Yan Tingyue and He Ping hadn’t stopped looking for her, but even after she was forced to drop out of school, she didn’t break up with her girlfriend.
From that time on, the family tacitly agreed that this person didn’t exist. Neither Yan Tingyue nor He Ping ever mentioned Yan Chu’s affairs, but they controlled Yan Wei more strictly than before in all aspects of her studies and life.
Many times, Yan Wei felt that perhaps her parents’ love for her was mixed with something else, for example, they wanted to find the shadow of the former Yan Chu in her.
But she wasn’t Yan Chu, she didn’t have the confidence to be willful, and she dared even less to accept Jiang Youyi’s confession while wearing such firm shackles, dragging that already scarred girl into another abyss.
In her past life, she only understood this after Jiang Youyi died.
She wasn’t truly willing.
Effort might not necessarily lead to perfection, but without actively striving, all that remains is regret.
She envied Yan Chu’s rebellion and courage. Life had given her a chance to start over. Even if it was just a dream, she didn’t want to let it go.
Not just to keep Jiang Youyi, but also for herself.
After a somber and stifling atmosphere during the grave sweeping, Yan Tingyue sat down on the sofa and turned on the news when they returned home. He Ping went to prepare lunch, while Yan Wei consciously returned to her room to do homework.
High school students’ holidays were never short of homework. The amount of homework was even more than during school days. Teachers of various subjects always managed to reach an incredible consensus on squeezing students’ rest time.
The Qingming Festival had a three-day holiday, with two test papers per subject, totaling twelve papers. Coupled with the upcoming monthly exam and midterm exam review after Qingming, the academic workload was heavy, and there seemed to be no other free time besides studying.
And in this family, only studying could be considered an effective use of time. Only during the time she was holed up in her room studying could she gain a brief moment of freedom.
Having spent more than ten years with her parents in such a seemingly peaceful but lacking rational communication mode, she had long been accustomed to it and had figured out the internal patterns. The moment she heard footsteps outside the door, she could make a judgment and predict how many seconds it would take for the person to push open her room door.
Just as Yan Wei closed the drawer, He Ping’s voice rang out along with the click of the doorknob turning, “Weiwei, take a break and come out for lunch.”
“I’ll come as soon as I finish this question, two minutes,” Yan Wei replied.
The door closed again. Yan Wei reopened the drawer, flipped through a thick stack of photo albums for two more pages, found a specific photo, took it out, and saw a string of mobile phone numbers written on the back with a ballpoint pen.
This was her junior high school graduation photo. Yan Chu had come to school to see her on the day they received the photos.
Yan Wei didn’t know if Yan Chu’s phone number had changed in the past two years, but this was the only way she could possibly contact Yan Chu now.