Chapter 27 Pity Is Not Love
Xiao Yuan came into the study and called my name in a hoarse voice.
"The day my parents divorced, neither of them wanted my custody. Grandpa Xiao told me to come eat at your house.
"You were in a very bad mood that day too. You practiced the violin in a violent temper. I went upstairs. You saw me and asked, annoyed, what I was crying for?"
I kept staring at the teacup. My throat was a stretch of bitterness, and it dragged my eyes with it, sore enough that I almost dropped tears.
"You didn't comfort me. But you improvised a piece for me. That piece, I remembered for ten years. Later I made that stretch of melody into a beat, and released the first album of my life, Spilt Water."
My tears fell like rain. I could not stop them.
"Spilt Water went red across the whole country. With that song I appeared out of nowhere and opened my career as a singer."
Xiao Yuan came closer and called my name in a low voice.
In this moment we shared the bitter pain and hate.
"I didn't know." I covered my face. Tears fell from my palms. "The year I was twenty, I was trapped with a high penalty for breach. My dad could not be reached. My mom had cut me off. You helped me pay that money."
"You actually." My voice caught. "You didn't want to deal with it at all, did you?"
"Zhiyi, don't cry. Don't cry, all right?" Xiao Yuan's eyes were fully red. He held my shoulders. His hands were shaking. "Don't say it. Don't say it."
"If only you hadn't helped me pay. If only you hadn't played that piece." I cried out loud. "Why did you help me? Why weren't you iron-hearted like those five years?"
Because it seemed we shared the same wound. Because I guessed that, in that deformed relation of the older generation, I was the most complicated emotion he did not want to face. Because at that time my parents had just divorced, and five years later my mother abandoned me completely again.
In front of a me who knew nothing, it felt like his pity for me reached its highest peak.
In the five years after that, complicated feelings seemed to slowly replace pity.
And I, at fifteen, was caught by him. At twenty I fell completely into his net.
He had known nothing either.
Xiao Yuan held my face. His eyes, holding a sheen of water, met mine. "It's my fault. It's all Brother Yuan's fault. Zhiyi, don't cry. Don't cry."
I shoved him away hard. "I had already started to waver."
I repeated it in a light crying voice. "Brother Yuan, I had already started to waver."
Silence, time, and the tears of this moment again lay between me and him.
"Just treat it as pity for me." Xiao Yuan looked as if he had realized fear was closing in. A huge emptiness and loss seemed to hang over him. He looked at my eyes, which were shedding tears like his, and pleaded, "Zhiyi, just pity me."
I shook my head. "Brother Yuan, pity is not love."
"It can be." Xiao Yuan repeated it stubbornly. "It can be. Pity me a little, Zhiyi."
"Haven't I already practiced that?" I cried and laughed. "These five years, did you fall in love with me?"
"Xiao Yuan." I stood up and met his eyes, and fully announced my judgment of him. "From beginning to end, we were never on the same line."
He was only a river in my life.
And I, in the end, would wade through.
I could not stay.
Xiao Yuan turned his face away. He covered his eyes. After a long moment he asked in a hoarse voice, "Can I hug you once?"
He opened his arms to me. I went into his hold.
Warm, wide, extremely safe, with a faint wood scent.
From the time I was fifteen to twenty-five, a full ten years, this was our closest distance.
In body, and in heart.
I held onto his well-built back and said in a light voice, "Brother Yuan, this perfume you use was actually given by me."
Xiao Yuan buried his head in the crook of my neck. Scalding tears soaked the clothes.
The hug lasted five minutes.
But the misplaced love had already ended.