Seventy-Four: QQ Space

Back at school, I spent every day either staring at a computer screen or idling away the hours.

Tomorrow was National Day. Because the school required all students and teachers to remain on campus on the first for the flag-raising ceremony, I would not be able to go home until the second. During that whole month, Lele had astonishingly not called me even once, while I had sunk so deeply into online games that I had long since forgotten all about contacting her.

After two morning classes, I skipped the rest of the day. Packing the fast food I would eat for lunch, I hurried back to my rented room. Only after I had turned on the computer did I suddenly remember that today was the game’s routine maintenance day. In my boredom, I opened QQ, which I had not logged into for ages, to see whether anyone had looked for me in the past month.

“Huh? Someone left a message on my page?” I muttered in disbelief as I glanced at the notification above the QQ desktop and moved the mouse over it.

Because I was usually lazy and hardly ever visited my friends’ pages, very few people came to visit mine in return. After opening my page, I discovered that beneath an old post I had reposted long ago, there was actually a message from Lele. The message had been left at 12:25:34 a.m. on September 30, 2007—that is, in the early hours of this morning.

“I once imagined a scene on the bus: the car, at the bend in the road, sliding off the pavement and plunging into the Pacific. In the five seconds before falling into the sea, what would I do? I would call you, hear you say ‘hello,’ and then you could hear the sound of seaweed, the sound of fish, and my cry from this life into the next…”

Between the lines, Lele always seemed to carry a faint trace of melancholy.

In my memory, Lele had never been very active on QQ. Even her own page had been set up by me out of boredom during the summer vacation. Could Lele really have changed? In utter disbelief, I clicked her avatar and entered her page.

Lele’s page was as empty as ever, except that in the blog section there was one newly written post from the early morning.

When had that lazy girl become so diligent? Full of curiosity, I opened the post titled National Day!!!

There were only a few lines of text. In less than five seconds I had finished reading it all. It turned out that Lele would be going to visit her family in the Nine Valleys Scenic Area for National Day. After that came a string of words about anticipation and dreams, and in the end Lele said she would try her best to take lots of photos back to share with everyone.

I closed QQ at once and picked up my phone to call Lele.

“Hey, you dead Lele, going on a trip and not even telling me! If I hadn’t been bored enough to check your page, I wouldn’t have known anything about it,” I complained.

“Hehe, it’s not that I meant to leave you out. I just didn’t have time to tell you yet.” Lele’s voice sounded weak and listless.

“Don’t tell me you stayed up all night again? Look at how worn out you sound! Honestly, I don’t know what to say to you.” I could not help but worry about her. “Have you been feeling better lately? Is the anemia still bothering you?”

“Idiot, I’m fine,” Lele answered rather quickly. “Oh, right! Are you coming back tomorrow?”

“I probably can’t come back tomorrow! That insane school is still organizing a flag-raising ceremony in the morning!” Just thinking of the school’s National Day arrangements made me feel gloomy.

“Ah, I just got a perm two days ago. I was hoping to show you my new look. What a pity!” Lele sighed helplessly, and I could hear the disappointment in her voice.

“Hmph, no matter how you change, it’s still the same!” I said indifferently. “Are you leaving tomorrow?”

“Yes, I have to set off tomorrow…” In her half-finished sentence, I sensed that the girl seemed to be hiding something from me. I only hoped it was merely my overactive imagination.

“You’ve got anemia and you still dare to go off traveling in the mountains? Are you trying to kill yourself? That… that altitude sickness, can you handle it?” I was still worried about her health.

“Drop dead. I really have nothing in common with you,” Lele said with mock irritation, then added carelessly, “Beizi Pig, why don’t you skip the flag-raising tomorrow and just come back? Let’s go have fun together!”

“No, no. I’ve already been there…” Back in the summer after I graduated from junior high, I had gone to the Nine Valleys Scenic Area with my family. The scenery there was indeed beautiful, but the journey was far too grueling. It took more than ten hours just to get there by bus from the city, the whole way jolting and lurching; even thinking about it made me tired. No matter what, even if you killed me, I would never want to go again.

Lele seemed to know I would say that. Before I had finished, she took up the thread at once.

“All right, then stay home and be good! I’m coming back on the evening of the fourth. You still owe me a meal at Micky-Mac. When the time comes, we’ll go eat together!”

“How come it’s Micky-Mac again? Don’t you ever get sick of it?” I had promised long ago to treat Lele to a meal, but I had never managed to make good on it. She had always held it against me.

“Not sick of it. How could I be sick of it?” Lele muttered to herself, then suddenly raised her voice and said solemnly, “Beizi Pig, while I’m gone, you must, must remember to miss me!”

“All right, all right, I know! Don’t worry and go. I’ll definitely miss you!” I answered with some impatience, though in my heart there were a million reasons why I did not want her to leave.

Perhaps even more.

“You swear!” Lele seemed not to trust my sincerity.

Again with the swearing. Dead Lele, could you not think of something a little fresher? With no other choice, I could only say perfunctorily, “I swear, I swear! Is that enough?”

“Mm, Beizi Pig. I’ll miss you…” Before I could even gather my thoughts, Lele had already hung up the phone in a flash.

“Hello? Hello?” I kept saying hello for ages, but all I got from the phone was the dead hum of a disconnected line.

“What the hell! Again with this? Hanging up halfway through a conversation!” Furious, I hurled my phone onto the bed. Just then, the game maintenance ended, so I logged in, grumbling all the while.

In the afternoon I had English class. Since I would not understand a word anyway, I simply chose to sleep.

The air was crisp and bright, the perfect season for sleeping. Just as I was having a lovely dream, I suddenly received a text message from Lele. It was very short, containing only one word: hello.

Dead Lele, sending me nuisance messages again! A perfect sweet dream had been mercilessly interrupted, and my mood naturally turned foul. I could not help but grumble at Lele’s capriciousness, and then I switched my phone off in a huff.

The cicadas outside the window were still calling tirelessly, though summer had long since ended…

At some unknown point, an unease had begun to stir faintly within me. Only I did not know where that unease came from.

(Revision of this chapter completed on September 24, 2010)