Tantai, Lock Your Heart to Me

People always stumble in the same place. A love that has come to nothing, two lovers who have gone their separate ways, two intersecting lines that should never cross again. One can't let go, and the other is hurting. The little thread connecting them, which should have snapped, still hangs on by a thread. Two years later, they can still exchange a few everyday messages in peace, then quietly watch their lively chat icons fall silent again. Their emotions seem to rise and fall even more than those of the people involved.

Tantai Che thought that from then on, there would be no more romance between them. All that remained was for her to chew over the regret of not being able to let go, like some gloomy female ghost, rotting among the living where she could never see the light of day.

It was an ordinary morning when messages suddenly poured in: “Good morning, sis!” “Sis, get up already~” “(Shared a video) I like this kind of story too!” ... “There's a cute little dog here!”

Tantai Che always seemed to be sleep-deprived and loved sleeping in, so she turned off her phone before bed. When she woke up, she was greeted by a barrage of more than a dozen messages. After staring blankly for a moment, she replied to them one by one, her hair a mess: “Morning. I'm up. I have a meeting today, so I can't sleep in. This one's good, I like it. I like this one too...” When she was done, she didn't know what else to say. She turned off the screen and got up to go to work like a ghost.

The meeting dragged on. Under her notebook, her phone screen kept lighting up. Worried she might miss an urgent work message, Tantai Che kept sneaking glances at it. It was just an ordinary meeting, yet it brought about a scene she'd imagined countless times before: her little sister, Jun Songsheng, seemed to have forgotten that they'd broken up and was chattering around her whenever she had a free moment, just like in the past.

At an inappropriate moment, Tantai Che thought of that joke: All lesbians say sweet things when they meet, when they're dating, when they're arguing, when they're in bed, and when they break up.

“Sis, you're so cold today!” The other end sent an adorable catgirl sticker in protest.

Tantai Che hesitated for a moment. It was almost like putting her own neck in a noose as she typed the two words she'd always avoided: “We broke up. There are a lot of things I should avoid saying now.” Besides, they'd been cold toward each other for two whole years... Then she mocked herself: Who was that gloomy female ghost who clung to her and refused to let go?

“What!!!!!!” Before Tantai Che could finish imagining the judgment that was about to come, Jun Songsheng seemed to be stunned. One voice message after another came flying in. Before Tantai Che could react, a call request appeared too. She declined it and typed: “In a meeting.”

“Go outside and take the call! When did we ever break up? I don't agree! Explain yourself!!!” One of them had already given in to despair and accepted it, while the other had just learned the truth and couldn't accept what was happening, like a trapped beast.

“More than two years ago, in mid-December. You brought it up.” Without particles or stickers to soften the blow, the coldness of the words came through in full. Tantai Che seized a moment to step outside and carefully typed each word: “You asked to start. You asked to end it. Let's see it through.” The messages from the other end stopped abruptly.

Tantai Che looked at herself in the restroom mirror. People looked young these days. The woman in the mirror was already thirty, still with a youthful look in her eyes, but also with the fatigue and indifference that adults carried at certain moments. Her little sister was only twenty-six, in the prime of her life. She took a breath and thought that maybe even this connection wouldn't last.

The screen lit up again: “I'll recover all our chat history. You can't just leave me like this.”

Tantai Che smiled at her reflection in self-mockery. Still smiling, she replied, “Did you lose your memory? I've been the one clinging to you all along. I hope reading our chat history doesn't make you sad all over again.”

Her eyes reddened, but she didn't cry.

A broken mirror is hard to put back together. They'd already broken up because they could no longer meet each other's emotional needs. If they forced things to continue now, how much longer could they really last?

(I made a cover but really won't upload it.)

Theme: Becoming a better person and a more suitable partner.