WARM Chapter 2 [End]

The first time I met Wen Yu, it was drizzling. The spring rain was gentle, each drop falling softly on my face, feeling refreshing.

Everyone around was hurrying home with umbrellas, but I was happily splashing in the puddles by the roadside.

It was then that Wen Yu spotted me in the crowd.

At that time, we didn’t know each other. Although we attended the same high school, he was a grade above me, and we had never crossed paths before.

He made his way through the crowd of people holding colorful umbrellas and walked up to me, shielding me with his umbrella.

Under the black umbrella, his face looked porcelain pale, and his fingers were slender.

I couldn’t help but glance at him a few more times.

The light rain continued, and the greenery on both sides of the street was strikingly vibrant. The chaotic colors behind him swayed back and forth, irritating me.

I told him I didn’t need an umbrella.

But he said my hair was wet.

I instinctively reached up to touch my hair, brushing the wet bangs away from my forehead. The rain-soaked wind blew, making me feel even cooler.

By then, most of the people stuck in the traffic had left. I stepped into a puddle, ready to head home.

He closed his umbrella and stopped me, telling me his name was Wen Yu.

Wen Yu.

At the time, I didn’t know which characters made up his name. When I woke up the next day, my mind was blank, and I had completely forgotten.

Back in high school, I didn’t have anyone I liked. My understanding of teenage crushes was limited to confessing feelings or writing love letters.

I didn’t think much of Wen Yu’s proactive approach, but I figured he must be a decent person.

For a long time after that, I often ran into him on my way home from school.

But I still couldn’t remember his name.

He said I was absent-minded, and I thought he was just too forward.

He really was too forward. Somehow, he found out that I was struggling with math, and he showed up at my doorstep with a perfect math test, offering to tutor me.

I ignored him and didn’t open the door.

But he shamelessly lingered outside, calling my name.

Embarrassed, I finally let him in just to shut him up.

He listened to me and stopped shouting. He spread out the test paper and actually started explaining the problems to me.

His voice was pleasant, and he spoke slowly. He often stayed at my house for the entire afternoon.

Over time, I got used to this routine and finally remembered the name he wrote on my scratch paper—

“Wen Yu.”

He liked it when I called him by his full name.

He said every time I called his name, he would remember the sunsets we saw on our way home.

He loved sunsets, and he also loved… me.

That day, he stood by the roadside, the sky behind him painted in hues of orange and red. He told me he liked me.

He even showed me the math test with half the page filled with scribbles, saying that the perfect score and the doodles were his way of showing his sincerity.

I looked at the blank spaces on the test paper, now filled with his writing, and I really wanted to know what kind of nonsense was going on in his head.

He insisted on handing me the test paper.

I told him he was crazy, and he said it was lovesickness.

I tried to hit him, but he recklessly pulled me into his arms.

He seemed a bit nervous, his forehead sweaty, and his chest pressed against my shoulder felt warm. Even though it was autumn, it felt like he was living in summer.

Then he asked me if I wanted to date him.

I pushed him away and said no.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. All I could think about was his warm chest and the sweat on his forehead.

I didn’t understand his feelings for me, and I instinctively resisted them, but that didn’t mean I disliked him.

Thankfully, he still waited for me on the way to school, even when he saw the dark circles under my eyes. He never asked.

We continued as before, walking to and from school together, studying at home, inseparable.

It was as if nothing had happened.

During winter break, the senior students had to return to school early to prepare for their exams, so their holiday was cut in half. He called me to complain, saying he wanted to see me.

As soon as I agreed, he told me to come downstairs and open the door.

I realized something and stood up to look out the window. There he was, standing outside my house, phone in hand, smiling brightly at me.

Suddenly, my heart started racing.

An inexplicable urge surged through me, and I rushed downstairs to see him. I even opened the door and threw myself into his arms.

Seizing the moment, he asked, “Xiao Pei, will you date me?”

I said yes.

He carried me inside, closed the door behind him, and pinned me against the wall.

I thought he was going to kiss me.

But he didn’t. Instead, he asked me how I had come to my decision.

I joked that I didn’t know and that I was having second thoughts.

His expression immediately fell, and he asked if I could have a little more faith in him.

I nodded and touched his lips.

He stared at me in surprise, probably never expecting that once I came around, I could be even bolder than him.

Then he quickly leaned in to kiss me, his warm chest pressing against my shoulder.

He stayed until evening.

We went over a curve function problem three times, and then, somehow, we ended up close again.

He only kissed me lightly, never going deeper, even when I tried to take the lead.

I started to suspect he was inexperienced.

Then he pinned me down on the bed and kissed me fiercely.

I admitted defeat.

He said I was asking for it.

I got up to hit him, but he just let me vent. When I finally calmed down, he glanced outside and said he had to go.

I stood up and looked at the empty street below, asking if he wanted to stay.

My parents’ jobs were unusual, and they were rarely home. Most of the time, I was alone.

He knew this, but he still refused.

He said he would bring me breakfast early the next morning. Before leaving, he kissed my forehead and said he hoped I would dream of him.

Unfortunately, I didn’t dream that night.

The next morning, the sky was just beginning to lighten. I dragged myself out of bed, grumpy, and went downstairs to open the door for him, tossing my spare key at him.

He smiled and coaxed me, pulling me inside despite the chill.

He dropped his backpack on the sofa and set down the soy milk, fried dough sticks, and buns he had brought. Then he came over to pull me closer.

I wasn’t in the mood to eat and just wanted to go back to sleep, but he wouldn’t let me. Instead, he pinned me on the sofa and kissed me again.

I was fully awake now and so annoyed that I almost considered breaking up with him.

But the look in his eyes as he urged me to eat breakfast was so sincere that I softened and decided to put that thought aside for now.

After finishing breakfast and getting dressed, we walked hand in hand to school as usual. Occasionally, people would glance at us curiously.

I didn’t really care, but he still pulled my hood up over my head.

I asked if he was embarrassed, and he said he just wanted to kiss me.

I thought he was changing the subject, but I kissed him anyway.

I felt like I was doomed.

Looking up at the school gates, I never thought I would feel so reluctant to part with him.

He said he regretted not staying at my place the night before.

But there’s no cure for regret, so I told him to hurry up and get to school.

He asked me to wait for him.

I thought, “Wait, my ass.”

After that, on days we didn’t go to school together, I would visit him under the pretext of bringing him food.

This continued until early March when school started again. Even the security guard at the gate recognized me, and the old man even said I had a future as a chef.

When I told Wen Yu, he laughed like an idiot and said I should consider going to New Oriental Cooking School.

I wanted to break up with him again.

But then he spread out all his test papers and notes in front of me, and I saw my name written everywhere.

He said he missed me all the time.

I forgot about wanting to break up and asked him what he missed about me.

He said everything, and that he wanted to kiss me.

Coincidentally, I wanted to kiss him too.

He quickly leaned in and bit my lip.

I grabbed the long hair at the nape of his neck and asked why he liked me.

He thought for a moment and said, “There’s no reason. The first time I saw you, the street was crowded, and colorful umbrellas were everywhere, but I noticed you immediately. Out of all the people in the world, why did I see you? It must be fate.”

But I really thought he looked like a lunatic that day, insisting on holding an umbrella for me.

He kissed me wildly again, and it went on for so long that I didn’t even notice when his hand slipped under my shirt and touched my back. We were both sweating, hiding in the school storage room, trying to calm each other’s restless desires.

He carefully wiped my fingers clean and gently kissed my forehead, saying he liked me, really liked me.

But after that, he didn’t dare to kiss me so freely anymore.

I was afraid he was getting tired of me.

When I asked him, I found out he was thinking a lot, even about marrying me.

I thought he must be dreaming.

After correcting his wording a few times, I was even more convinced he was still asleep.

He kissed me again, leaving marks all over, and finally pinned me against the storage room door, forcing me to agree with him. I couldn’t hold back and begged for mercy in his hands.

He kissed my eyes and brows gently, stopping just in time.

As their college entrance exams approached, we saw each other less and less. The longest stretch was ten days without meeting.

After those ten days, his high school life was officially over.

That afternoon, I spotted him in the crowd outside the school gates. His gaze was so tender, as if he had a thousand secrets but only wanted to share them with me.

I finally started to believe what he had said about “fate.” I also started to think… about him marrying me.

When I was seventeen, I really liked Wen Yu.

I liked watching him lean down to kiss my forehead, how he always made sure I walked on the inside of the sidewalk, how he flashed his confident eighteen-year-old smile, and how he placed a silver ring in my palm, promising to marry me when I turned twenty-two.

I never imagined he would die so cruelly in the year I loved him most. He didn’t even wait long enough for me to start liking him a little less.

I wanted to yell at him, hit him, make him kneel and apologize, make it so he could never kiss me again…

But I was also so sad.

It was his fault for making me sad, but it wasn’t his fault.

He loved me so much, even said he wanted to marry me. How could he bear to make me this sad?

I really wanted to ask why.

I hadn’t even accepted the fact that he was gone, and yet people were already asking me how he died.

How would I know!

By the time I heard the news, all that was left of him was a stone tombstone. I stood in front of it, staring at his photo.

He left me no words. I didn’t even dare to visit his parents to ask. Later, I heard it was a car accident.

A car accident… How could something so random happen? He had just finished his exams, and then he was gone.

Why was he so unlucky?

Why was he so unlucky?

I never knew I could feel this miserable.

I didn’t even attend his funeral, didn’t meet his family, and no one knew about our relationship.

It felt like he had left me behind so easily, without even giving me the right to cry and vent.

…

I can’t even remember how I got through those days. By the time I snapped out of it, I was already in college.

Maybe he knew he had wronged me, because he never appeared in my dreams during those years.

I remembered the first day we were together, he told me to dream of him that night.

I suspected he was watching me from above.

I even felt like he was still here.

So when I met Gao Xuyan, who looked a bit like him, I became even more convinced of this absurd thought.

I tried so hard to be good to Gao Xuyan, to fulfill all his expectations, to make sure his life was smooth and peaceful.

It was as if I could make up for the years Wen Yu had been gone.

I knew exactly what I was doing.

I was just looking at Wen Yu through someone else.

Or maybe, because so many people had a little bit of Wen Yu in them, I thought they all resembled him.

I missed him so much. I wanted everyone to be like him, I wanted him to be alive, right here in front of me.

Over the years, I occasionally couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if Wen Yu were still here. Would we still be in love? Would we have grown apart? Would he have already put a ring on my finger?

I was such a fool, still clinging to these impossible what-ifs.

I got my answer, and Gao Xuyan shattered the beautiful dream I had woven for myself.

That day, I brought roses to his grave and stomped on the petals in a fit of rage.

He probably hadn’t seen me this angry in all these years, or maybe he knew he was wrong, because that night, he finally appeared in my dream.

He told me he still loved me, that at twenty-three, he still only wanted to marry me.

He slipped the ring he had given me when he was eighteen onto my finger and kissed my knuckles, saying, “Pei Xu, I love you.”

See, even in my dreams, he loved me so much.

He was only dead outside of my dreams.

I wished the night could last longer, much longer.

But he still had to leave, abandoning me in the cold dawn, leaving me to wake up with a tear-soaked pillow.

I guessed he wouldn’t come to my dreams again.

I wanted to hate him, but I loved him even more.

In the thin light of dawn, I touched the ring around my neck and slipped it onto my finger.

I called out his name and said, “The promise I made with you only lasts until I’m 22.”

“Next year, I’ll try to like you a little less.”

Well, maybe…