If unrequited love were a silent downpour, I would have drowned in Jiang Wang’s gaze years ago.
The eraser under my desk always seemed to roll over to his side, and the wind by the basketball court always lifted the hem of my clothes when I watched him shoot. We walked side by side through countless dusks, but his hands stayed in his pockets, as if hiding a secret he didn’t dare uncover. Then, at a university club gathering, I heard him laugh and say, “There’s no one I like.” My heart crumpled like a ball of paper and sank into a night no one could reach.
Act One: I was trapped in a cage of silence, with love as the weakness I could never confess. Act Two: After my confession went nowhere, I chose to distance myself, forgetting that once some gaps widen, they’re hard to bridge again. Act Three: When he asked me by the lake, “Do you hate me?” I finally realized that we had both been hiding our true feelings so carefully, afraid that one “I like you” might startle the other away.
The price was time, and one missed possibility after another.
Now, standing at the crossroads of a long-distance relationship, I look at the new city listed on my résumé and remember him saying, “However far you go, I’ll follow.”
When fate places love and reality on opposite sides of the scales, how should we choose?
