I'm nineteen, and she's twenty-five. She rented a house from my family.
I told her, "Sis, I'll waive your rent. Just stop flirting with me."
She said, "No. I'll pay the rent, and you still have to let me flirt with you."
She was tiny, with a few flecks of starlight on her face, and wore high-necked undershirts all year round. She taught me one thing: if you don't like rainy days, silently repeat her name three times in your heart.
That day, the rain really did stop.
Later, I was the one who lost her.
An old Daoist told me I was the God of the Kitchen in the Celestial Palace, banished to the mortal world for stealing peaches of immortality. He said my book of fate had only two lines: one was a recipe, the other a love debt. There was no third line. I listened to him in front of the red cloth, then stood up and said two words: "What bullshit."
It began: Hello, my name is Song Yuting
It ended: Yu Xunlin knelt before the Crooked-Necked Goddess and made his vow, word by word: "Your believer, Yu Xunlin, is willing to offer himself as the sacrifice, seal the vow with his blood, and swear by his surname. She and I will be entangled for a hundred lifetimes, without end."
It began: Hello, my name is Kang Xiaoxi
It ended: Yu Xunlin, I, Kang Xiaoxi, swear here in the Hall of Love at Yonghe Temple that we will never have anything to do with each other again, and will never meet again. May you die a miserable death.
It began: Hello, my name is Chen Xiuxiu
It ended: What I swallowed was the Love-Forgetting Gu. From now on, I will turn a blind eye to your birth, aging, sickness, and death, and to your love, hatred, anger, and obsession. But what I gave you was the Heart-Testing Gu. You can seek someone new, embrace her, even kiss her. But if your lips meet and she doesn't love you, you'll bleed from every orifice, your heart and guts will break, and you'll die a miserable death.
It began: Hello, my name is...
Ten years later, after I finished writing all this, I realized that of the two lines in my book of fate, I'd had one in my hands all along.
