[Angsty romance + irreparable breakup + reunion after years apart + BE aesthetic + first person]
I died in the year Xie Baixun made a name for himself.
I died at twenty-seven, seven years after we broke up.
I died that winter, when he could finally afford the most expensive apartment overlooking the river in South City, and could finally give me a home.
*
Everyone said I was a gold digger.
That I'd dumped him when he was at his poorest and gone off with a rich older man.
He hated me too, for seven years, until he was driven mad by it.
He spent seven years going from a penniless student to a rising star in the tech world.
All so that one day he could stand before me, slap a bank card against my face,
and ask, “Wen Zhixia, do you regret it?”
*
But no one knew that back then, I sat by the river all night with my diagnosis in hand.
Crying, I said, “Axun, I can't bear to make you suffer with me.”
And no one knew that my last words before I died were:
“Don't let him find out. Let him hate me. Hate is easier to let go of than love.”
*
But I was wrong. Hate lasts longer than love.
On the day Xie Baixun finally had money,
he knelt before my gravestone.
Just like the poor boy he'd once been, he cried so hard that his whole body shook.
“Xiaxia, I have money now. Won't you come back to me?”
