Chapter 6 The Day I Met You Instead
I used to think I could never do it.
The first year after ending that unhealthy thing with Ji Chuan, the desperate need for him just… vanished.
What came after was worse. I had no strength left to love anyone else.
I lived alone in Beijing. One by one, the friends around me got married.
I had liked him for more than ten years. Nothing came of it.
I often wondered—if I had liked someone else back then, and that person liked me too—how lucky that would have felt.
I wouldn’t be like this now: completely unable to believe in love, yet terrified of being alone.
So I went on blind dates with strangers.
That was the mood I carried when I walked into the restaurant and met Song Zhong Zheng.
My mentor had set it up.
He was taller than Ji Chuan, broad shoulders, long legs, handsome in a sharp, almost dangerous way.
“Hello, I’m Lin Xia Yi.”
I sat down slowly.
He was still looking at financial reports on his phone, like he was in the middle of something important.
I went straight to the point. “Are you the one who’s supposed to marry me?”
He raised an eyebrow, surprised.
I froze, suddenly tongue-tied.
“I… I mean, aren’t you the guy my mentor introduced for the blind date?”
“No.”
His voice was clean and a little low.
I pulled out my phone. A few minutes later I realized—I had gotten the table wrong.
My Mandarin still carried that slight northern accent.
I’d heard “table ten” as “table four.”
The embarrassment hit me so hard I wanted to disappear.
“Sorry.”
I shot up so fast I almost knocked the chair over. His dark eyes met mine, quiet and amused.
He looked like he was holding back a laugh.
“Six years ago you got in the wrong car. Six years later you almost got the wrong husband.”
“Lin Xia Yi, your eyesight is something else.”
Ji Chuan always thought Song Zhong Zheng and I met because of him.
He was wrong.
We hadn’t met many times, but every encounter stuck with me.
The first time was in our second year of high school, after school.
I had waited for Ji Chuan a long time.
“Stop waiting for me,” he said, pushing his bike. “We don’t have to go home together every day.”
I was too clingy.
He didn’t want people misunderstanding our relationship.
Normally his words would have hurt, but that day I just blushed and stayed quiet.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“A guy from your class told me…”
“That someone confessed to me, right?” Ji Chuan sounded impatient. “The girl from the next class—I turned her down, okay?”
“Are you addicted to controlling me now?”
I gripped my schoolbag strap and didn’t answer.
But I stopped walking. For a second I looked back.
Behind the teaching building the sunset burned orange-red. Someone stood on the second-floor corridor, watching me the whole time.
I had wanted to tell Ji Chuan.
While I was waiting for him, Song Zhong Zheng from his class had said to me:
“Stop liking him. Like me instead.”
His eyes looked lonely when he said it.
I thought he must have been really sad.
The second time was in our sophomore year of college, on Valentine’s Day.
A group of us were trapped at a mountaintop villa celebrating Ji Chuan’s birthday after a typhoon.
No cars could get down the mountain.
My best friend dragged me into fortune-telling. She read my cards and declared:
“Your true soulmate will appear in the next second!”
But Ji Chuan had already left with someone else.
He was chasing his first love hard at the time. The whole party had been planned for her. I didn’t even know.
I was still waiting for him to come back and drive me home.
“No way,” I said.
My friend hated when people doubted her mysticism. She huffed.
“How do you know you won’t meet someone better?”
Right then my phone buzzed.
A message from Ji Chuan:
I’m here to pick you up. Come out.
I looked toward the floor-to-ceiling windows and saw the sports car outside.
I bounced out without even putting my coat on properly, yanked the door open and blurted:
“Didn’t you say you had to drop someone else off first?”
The excited words died the moment I met a pair of deep, calm black eyes.
I recognized him instantly.
Song Zhong Zheng.
His face clearly said, “I knew you’d mistake me for him.”
“I’ll drive you back,” he said.
Inside the car.
Two strangers in heavy silence.
He drove smoothly.
I’d heard he went abroad to study right after high school.
When I’m around people I don’t know well, my brain replays whatever I remember about them.
But with him, I only had that one moment from sophomore year of high school.
“Stop liking him. Like me instead.”
Maybe it had just been a whim. With a face like Song Zhong Zheng’s, he probably never lacked admirers. He must have forgotten me completely.
The car was eerily quiet. Soundproofing too good.
I started scrolling on my phone to fill the silence.
I accidentally opened a voice message from my best friend.
Her loud voice exploded through the speakers:
“Is Song Zhong Zheng picking you up? God he’s criminally hot. He’s literally on the must-try list. Wonder what he’s like in bed?”
I stabbed the screen trying to shut it off.
I wanted to throw the phone out the window.
What kind of list was that? I’d never even heard of it!
Thanks to her, I was even more nervous now.
I didn’t dare look at Song Zhong Zheng’s face.
“Um…” I coughed. “Can we play some music?”
“Sure.”
His tone was cool and distant.
I was done for.
I tapped the screen and decided to play whatever he’d last listened to—maybe it would ease the tension:
You should just say goodbye out loud, even if tears fall.
Let this heartbreaking, tangled love be forgotten.
Say goodbye loudly—if you can love bravely, you can leave bravely too.
An old song.
Line after line telling someone to move on. I shut it off immediately.
My frantic movement seemed to amuse him. His hand on the window trembled slightly.
I asked, “Is this your repeat playlist?”
“Yeah.”
A guy this handsome listens to cheesy old love songs?
I teased, “Haha, got some unforgettable heartbreak or something?”
“Yeah.”
“So after listening this many times, you should’ve forgotten by now, right?”
He didn’t answer.
Instead he rolled down the window. Night air rushed in.
Beyond the glass, the sea shimmered under dusk, salty wind wrapping around us.
“Can’t forget,” he said.
My fingers tightened on the seatbelt.
The wind that messed his hair also blew mine wild. Then he spoke again.
“Lin Xia Yi, don’t be nervous.”
“What I said back then still counts.”
I turned. His peach-blossom eyes looked almost bewitching.
They seemed to chant over and over: Pick me. Pick me. Pick me.
That year, my one-sided love for Ji Chuan had reached its most hopeless point.
I had fantasized countless times—if Ji Chuan liked me back, what we would do together.
Sit in his passenger seat. Spend Valentine’s Day by the sea listening to music.
But that night, all those things happened with Song Zhong Zheng instead.
When I got home, Ji Chuan called to interrogate me.
“So? Think he’s good enough?”
“Fair warning—he’s got high standards. Hard to chase.”
In the background, a girl called Ji Chuan’s name.
I gripped the phone. For a long time I said nothing.
“…You didn’t actually fall for him, did you? Beg me and I’ll help you out.”
He sounded sincere, but for the first time I wanted to hide something from him.
“No,” I said. “He’s too intimidating.”
The third time I saw Song Zhong Zheng was three years ago—the same day Ji Chuan and I ended our messed-up relationship.
Ji Chuan dragged a bunch of friends out drinking.
Song Zhong Zheng was there too.
“Chuan-ge, you got dumped?” One of the guys tried to stop Ji Chuan from downing drinks like water. “Who was it? Who made you this wrecked?”
“No one. I’m not wrecked.”
Ji Chuan refused to admit anything.
“If she wants to leave, let her. I’m not begging.”
The guys were surprised, but none of them really felt bad for him.
It had always been Ji Chuan who did the dumping. No one had ever dumped him.
No wonder he couldn’t handle it.
About time he felt it.
Among everyone, only Song Zhong Zheng stayed quiet and drank with him, comforting him.
He was so gentle it hurt to watch.
Two ridiculously handsome guys sitting together, drawing eyes all night.
At one point Song Zhong Zheng couldn’t hold back anymore. He pulled Ji Chuan’s head against his shoulder to hide his own face and muttered, “What a shame.”
People around them sighed.
“Those two are really close.”
“That’s how male friendship looks.”
In the end Song Zhong Zheng drove Ji Chuan home.
He tucked him in, made hangover soup, silenced his phone.
Let him sleep it off quietly.
Only after all that did he go downstairs and get back into his own car.
The sports car stayed parked under Ji Chuan’s building for a long time.
Song Zhong Zheng opened the center console. That same old song started playing again.
You should just say goodbye out loud, even if tears fall.
Let this heartbreaking, tangled love be forgotten.
The heart that died for love will eventually come back to life one day.
They all say forget her, go your separate ways after all the twists.
But who doesn’t know you can’t let go.
Still bitterly in love with her.
He glanced at the song title.
"One-Sided Love for a Flower"
He listened for a long time. Stared at his own reflection in the rearview mirror for a long time.
A little sadness, a little regret.
Then—pure, soaring satisfaction he couldn’t hide.
He started laughing.
He turned the key.
Drove through the empty, steel-and-concrete city at dawn.
Came to my apartment and knocked.
“My friend just broke up.”
We both knew he meant Ji Chuan.
I thought he was here to blame me. “So?”
But he said, “I’m really upset. Comfort me.”
His eyes were faintly red.
Like he’d cried too hard.
I stared at him, then hurried to explain.
“Don’t be sad. We broke up because of me, not because of you. I just… don’t like him anymore.”
“You… hey, wait—don’t cry.”
I reached out and hugged him.
His head settled lightly on my shoulder. He breathed unevenly against me.
Crying so pitifully.
A few seconds later I realized I’d overstepped and started to pull away.
His large hands slid up my back.
He wrapped me tight, like he wanted to erase every inch of space between us.
I had to stand on tiptoe, all my weight against him.
I thought—he must really be hurting.
Only later did I start to suspect.
Maybe Ji Chuan never needed to create opportunities for him.
Song Zhong Zheng had always been good at seizing the right moment.