“I don’t even deserve the right to confess my feelings to you.”
“Pathetic.”
“Someone like you will never get back on your feet.”
As Zeng Changhong crouched beside the pigeon coop counting feathers, he would stare blankly at the bicycle belonging to the girl he secretly adored, parked at the mouth of the alley. His fingers would rub the cuffs of his faded sleeves over and over. “I wish I could look a little cleaner,” he had told himself a hundred times, yet he couldn’t even muster the courage to offer her a bottle of water.
Insecurity, tinged with the stench of pigeon droppings, seeped into his bones. He hid behind an online romance, pretending to be considerate, while in real life he could barely meet the admissions standards of an ordinary college. When his girlfriend slammed the door on him, her words cut like shards of glass: “What can you do besides put on an act? You’ll never hold your head up for the rest of your life!”
Bitter over being abandoned, he saw red and secretly posted her private information online. Watching her get drowned in abuse, he actually felt satisfied. Later, using his “woman-pleasing tricks” to curry favor and climb the ladder, he finally made his way into an office tower and became what others called a “phoenix man,” thinking he could leave his past behind for good.
But years later, his ex-girlfriend’s retaliation came like a thunderbolt: “You ground me into the dirt back then. Now it’s your turn to find out what that feels like.” His career and reputation collapsed overnight. In the end, he could only return to the empty pigeon coop, finally seeing that from beginning to end, he had been crushing his own life with his own hands, until not even the last shred of dignity remained.
