Since the Green Mountains Can't Keep You

[First-person short story]

I rolled down the car window and calmly looked at the pretty girl in my fiance's passenger seat.

"Excuse me, could you get out? I need to talk to him."

The girl's provocative expression froze at my unruffled manner, and she climbed out of the car awkwardly.

Meng Xun sat inside, his face unruffled, though he looked thoroughly irritated behind the hazy smoke.

I got straight to the point. "Meng Xun, let's call off the wedding."

I opened the car door, but Meng Xun suddenly grabbed my hand.

His voice was full of anger and resentment. "It's been ten years. Couldn't you even pretend to love me? What does Chen Jiqing have that I don't?"

I turned to look him in the eye and gently cut him off. "We can't keep acting like children, Meng Xun."

"I've paid you back everything I owed you. Let's call it even."

Later, Meng Xun got drunk in the middle of the night and called me.

He cried like a child over the phone.

"Li Lehui, if I could, I'd want to be Chen Jiqing for once too. I want you to love me like that."

But you will never be Chen Jiqing, and there will never be another Chen Jiqing.

Theme: The past cannot be reclaimed