Seventy-Eight: Lele’s Room

The road was still the road, the buildings still the buildings, yet people were no longer people.

As we walked along the deserted lane, the dim streetlamps stretched our shadows long and longer, until they seemed to reach beyond sight.

“Come in.” Lin Hui opened the door and stepped aside, motioning for me to enter.

Watching her as she unlocked it, I could not help asking, “How do you have Lele’s key?”

Inside, it was pitch-dark. I fumbled through the doorway, found the switch for the living room ceiling light by relying on a vague memory from before, and turned it on.

“That’s normal,” Lin Hui said calmly. “Lele always forgets to take her keys when she goes out, so her father had an extra set made and left them with me, just in case.”

I could not tell what she felt from her face, whether joy or sorrow or anything at all.

I did not even know how many times I had been here before, yet this visit somehow felt strangely unfamiliar. Though the furniture remained as it had been, every piece was covered with a large white cloth. Confused, I stepped forward and gently brushed one of the cloths draped over the sofa with my fingers.

Only a thin layer of dust lay on it. It must have been placed there not long ago.

By rights, if she was only going on a trip, there was no need to make the house look as though she had left forever, never to return. Thinking of that, a faint suspicion rose in my heart: had Lele really gone to Jiuzhaigou to travel?

“After the accident, her grandmother was taken away by relatives, so the house naturally ended up like this,” Lin Hui seemed to see through my thoughts. “Xiao Bei, don’t think so much. No one wants something like this to happen...”

I lifted the white cloth from the sofa and turned back to look at Lin Hui. “Is it okay?”

Lin Hui gave a slight nod without saying a word. So I sat down quietly on the sofa. The instant my body touched it, a memory long since faded suddenly surged back into my mind.

“Piglet Bei, I’m burning up.”

“You drank so much. Of course you’re hot.”

“I feel awful.”

“Lele!”

“Xiao Bei, you are the one I love most in this life. I know you like Chu Chu, but... but I really...”

“Lele, let go of me.”

“Whether you like me or not, stay and keep me company tonight, okay?”

...

The words still rang in my ears, yet where were you, Lele?

I tried hard to suppress the urge to cry, got up, and slowly walked to the window in the living room.

Taking a deep breath of the fresh air outside, my earlier gloom seemed to ease somewhat. The night wind was much like this one; perhaps I had never forgotten the girl who once stood here, her long hair flying like a soft dance.

Turning my head, I saw the refrigerator still standing by the kitchen door, and my thoughts were drawn back into the past.

“Lele, let me help you.”

“No, if you help, you’ll only make things worse. I’d better do it myself!”

“Move, you silly pig. You’re blocking the refrigerator.”

“Er... are you sure you don’t need this househusband?”

“Piglet Bei, go watch your TV obediently. Don’t make a mess for me.”

“Ah... sister... cursed Lele, I’m older than you, all right! And I’m your husband, you know...”

“You... go find a cool place and stay there. Keep talking and I’ll make you kneel on the chopping board...”

...

Perhaps I would never taste Lele’s cooking again in this lifetime. At that thought, it felt as though something had stabbed straight into my heart.

So this was how pain could feel.

From beginning to end, Lin Hui had remained leaning against the wall in the corner of the living room, watching me with a thoughtful expression.

“Can I go in and take a look?” I asked, pointing toward Lele’s room.

“The door isn’t locked. Do as you please.” Lin Hui seemed deliberately avoiding my eyes. She gave a bitter smile, then lowered her head and turned her gaze to the floor.

I bit my lip and pushed the door open. The room was eerily quiet. After switching on the light and glancing around, I saw that the photo of Lele as a child, sitting with her mother in a bumper car, was still on the bedside table. So I sat down by the bed, careful and cautious, fearing I might accidentally wake the sleeping “Lele.”

I picked up the frame and held it tightly against my chest. Suddenly, all I wanted was to cry my heart out; perhaps only then could the pain I had been suppressing finally be released in full.

I sat there motionless, letting tears soak my clothes, drop by drop sliding onto the glass of the frame.

Every moment of five years, every bitterness and sweetness of five years, every joy and sorrow of five years, all of it melted into the cold air with my tears at that very instant.

“Piglet Bei, in the future... in the future, will you always stay with me?”

“Yes. If I can’t give you happiness, I would rather die.”

...

Those promises once made still circled endlessly in my ears, yet I no longer had the strength to fulfill a single one. Perhaps we were simply too young for so many things.

By the window, the dressing table stood lonely, with a small bottle of lip oil lying on its side, already used up. It was still that familiar green-apple scent, like the innocence of our love. I rose and walked to the dressing table, picked up the bottle at random, and gently twisted off the cap. A faint fragrance immediately drifted out, the scent belonging solely to Lele.

I greedily breathed in the fragrance lingering in the air, missing not the smallest trace, then screwed the cap back on and quietly slipped it into my pocket. Perhaps only this way could I keep Lele’s scent beside me forever.

Exhausted, I lay face down on the bed, not wanting to move at all. I do not know how long I lay there before, in a daze, I turned my head and saw the empty corner beside the bookshelf. In truth, from the moment I entered the room, I had faintly felt that something was missing, yet I could never remember what it was. Only then did I realize that what I had been looking for all along was the Snoopy plush toy with my name on it. The last time I saw it, it had been in Lele’s dormitory at school.

I guess Lele didn’t bring it back, I told myself.

Lying flat again, I stared blankly at the ceiling. Perhaps on some day in some year, Lele had once lain on this bed as I did now, absent-minded in the very same way...

“Lele, I want to be with you so badly!” An inexplicable impulse surged through my whole body.

The blade moved back and forth along the inside of my wrist, but it left only shallow red scratches. Only then did I realize that I did not even have the courage to die. Lele, you would laugh at me again, wouldn’t you? Laugh at my uselessness...

At last, blood did flow out—only a few drops, pale and thin, sliding slowly down my outstretched arm before falling onto the white bedsheet. That faint smear of red stabbed at my eyes until they ached.

At that moment, Lin Hui pushed the door open and came in.

The chapter was revised on October 10, 2010.