Chapter 10 The New Roommate
My feelings were a mess.
Two days later, Qin Zhimin showed up in front of me again.
This time it was not the Tattoo Shop. It was the run-down building where I rented.
After Feng Yi left, one room on our side sat empty.
And Qin Zhimin became my new roommate.
"What, not happy to see me?"
He dragged his suitcase into that small bedroom of his.
I was startled. He had on a custom suit, and against the worn walls it looked all wrong.
"Qin Zhimin, you..."
"I know what you want to say."
Qin Zhimin stopped unpacking and looked at me, serious.
"I already made things clear with Jiang Qingyao. Agreeing to be with her back then was my family's arrangement."
"Song Sheng, the only person I like is you."
The sudden confession left me nowhere to put myself.
The only thing I could think of was running.
Qin Zhimin caught me before I could.
"Song Sheng, you do not know how much courage it took me back then to sneak out of the house and find you. You do not know how hard I had to set my mind before I took you out of Jiangcheng."
"But when I was full of hope, you reached an understanding with my mom. For Five Hundred Thousand, you did not want me anymore."
"You probably also do not know that the first year I got to England, I had severe depression. I left school for a year and a half. I needed sleeping pills every day just to fall asleep."
I stared, eyes wide with shock.
"It was not that I never thought of coming back for you. I just could not accept it, Song Sheng. I really hated you, so I forced myself through it."
"I was never going to that class reunion. But I heard you would come, so I went. I wanted to see how well you were living, you who threw me away for your future."
"After the reunion that night, my assistant put your information in front of me. You really disappointed me. Yes. Seeing you were not doing well, I was actually disappointed."
Qin Zhimin covered his face and sobbed, raw with pain.
"So I looked into why you never went to college. I thought of thousands of reasons. The only one I never thought of was that you never took that money at all."
I had never seen Qin Zhimin like this. He cried like a child, torn open.
I wanted to say something to comfort him. When I opened my mouth, my own voice was choked too.