Mai Ding cursed An Zi Yan viciously over the phone. After his parents had seen that photograph, his mother had nearly twisted his ears off, and it had taken several days before Mai Ding finally convinced them that the picture was fake.
“An Zi Yan, you’re absolutely forbidden from doing something like that again. What if my parents start suspecting something?” Mai Ding paced back and forth around his bedroom with the phone in his hand, scratching at the wall one moment and crumpling paper the next.
An Zi Yan did not answer Mai Ding’s question. “Hey, when are you planning to tell your parents about us?”
“What? Didn’t you say you could wait?”
“I don’t like hiding everything.”
“This kind of thing has to happen naturally.”
“Why does it very obviously feel like you’re stalling?”
“I’m not.” Truthfully, even Mai Ding himself was uncertain. He knew dragging things out like this was unfair to An Zi Yan, but this was not some kind of competition. No matter how much Mai Ding encouraged himself and gathered his courage every day, when he imagined actually standing in front of his parents and telling them the truth, he still had no idea where to begin. He was afraid—there were simply too many things to be afraid of.
“Really?”
“Really. Anyway, let’s not talk about this right now. I won’t be coming over for the next few days. I’ll see you when school starts.”
“Mm.” An Zi Yan was just about to hang up when Mai Ding stopped him. “An Zi Yan.”
“What now?”
“Um… remember to think about me for at least one hour every day. Okay, that’s all. Bye-bye.” Mai Ding hurriedly ended the call, then looked in the mirror and patted his cheeks, trying to make the blush disappear.
Suddenly, he felt that something was wrong. Very wrong. Something seemed to be missing. In the mirror, his finger was completely bare. The ring! The ring An Zi Yan had given him was gone. When had it disappeared? He remembered seeing it only a few days ago. Mai Ding panicked and tore his entire room apart without finding it, then went to his mother. “Mom, have you seen my ring?”
“That fake diamond ring of yours? No.”
Mai Ding had lied to his mother and told her that it was merely a fake ring he had bought from an accessories shop.
“How could you not have seen it? Did you secretly hide it somewhere?”
“Why would I do something like that? How much could that thing possibly be worth? What, you lost it? Then it’s lost.” Mai Ding’s mother did not care in the slightest.
Mai Ding, however, could not accept that. He began searching everywhere again, then reconstructed every place he had gone since returning from An Zi Yan’s home and retraced the route over and over. After searching for an entire day, his heart felt heavier and heavier. Even if the ring had fallen somewhere outside, somebody would probably have picked it up already. How could he possibly find it now? He understood that perfectly well, yet he still could not bring himself to give up. The image kept appearing in his mind of An Zi Yan kneeling in front of him and slipping the ring onto his finger. How had Mai Ding managed to lose something that precious? If An Zi Yan discovered it, he would definitely scold him. Being scolded was not the worst part, though—Mai Ding would feel terrible. It was not merely a ring. It was a promise.
Mai Ding searched for several days in a row, so preoccupied that he barely even remembered to call An Zi Yan. By the time school started, he still had not found the ring. He clung to one final hope: perhaps it had simply fallen into some corner of his bedroom that he had not found yet. As long as he could find it before An Zi Yan noticed, everything would be fine.
On the first day of school, An Zi Yan could immediately tell that Mai Ding was distracted. Whenever An Zi Yan spoke to him, Mai Ding merely gave a few perfunctory replies, leaving An Zi Yan increasingly uncomfortable. When classes finally ended, An Zi Yan turned his head and asked, “Coming to my place today?”
Mai Ding avoided his eyes. “I-I still have something to do.”
“What could you possibly have to do?”
“I just have something. I’m leaving.” Mai Ding desperately wanted to continue searching for the ring.
An Zi Yan caught Mai Ding’s hand, but the instant he touched him, Mai Ding hurriedly pulled it back. His heart was in chaos because he was terrified An Zi Yan would notice that the ring was missing from his finger. If An Zi Yan discovered it, would he think Mai Ding had never regarded the ring as important at all and had simply lost it carelessly? Would An Zi Yan stop making promises to him in the future? Mai Ding suddenly hated himself. How could he have lost the ring? Anything else could be lost, but nothing An Zi Yan gave him could be.
An Zi Yan saw that disgusted, anxious expression and frowned, slowly clenching his own hand. He was about to say something, but Mai Ding was already impatient to escape. “Anyway, that’s it. My mom is waiting for me at home.” With that, he hurried away. An Zi Yan watched Mai Ding’s retreating figure, and for once a trace of loss passed through his usually indifferent eyes.
Mai Ding, do you really want to get away from me that badly?
Mai Ding returned home and continued searching. He looked inside the washing machine, inside his shoes, beneath the bed, and used a flashlight to inspect every inch under the furniture until his entire face was covered with dust. The longer he searched, the more disappointed he became. Lying flat on the floor, he wondered whether he should simply buy an identical ring. Perhaps An Zi Yan would never notice. But where could Mai Ding possibly get that much money? And even if he bought another one himself, what meaning would it have? He genuinely had no idea what to do.
Mai Ding avoided An Zi Yan for almost an entire week. An Zi Yan did not say anything, but his expression became colder and colder. On Saturday, the moment classes ended, Mai Ding picked up his bag and was preparing to leave when An Zi Yan said, “Sit down.”
“I-I have something going on at home.” Mai Ding used the same excuse every time, and even he no longer sounded convincing. He held his bag tightly in front of his hand and slowly backed away.
“Take one more step and see what happens.” An Zi Yan narrowed his eyes.
Why is he this angry? Mai Ding stared at him, his feet seeming to nail themselves to the floor so he could no longer move. The classroom gradually emptied. An Zi Yan kicked a chair directly in front of Mai Ding. “I told you to sit.”
“But…”
Mai Ding did not dare continue because An Zi Yan’s expression was genuinely frightening. He slowly sat down, still hugging the bag tightly against himself. An Zi Yan irritably snatched it away and threw it onto the floor, then dragged the chair—with Mai Ding still sitting on it—directly in front of himself. “Why are you avoiding me?”
“I’m not. You’re imagining things.” Oh no. Did he find out?
“And you still say you aren’t? Look at me when you talk!” An Zi Yan caught Mai Ding by the chin and turned his face toward him.
“I really haven’t been avoiding you. Things have just been busy at home.”
An Zi Yan gave a cold laugh and stood with an exhausted expression, shoving both hands into his pockets. “If you feel like I’m pushing you too hard, if you don’t want to tell your parents, then fucking say so. What is all this supposed to mean?” Ever since the day An Zi Yan had casually asked when Mai Ding planned to tell his parents, Mai Ding had started acting strangely. He stopped calling, and worse, he would not even let An Zi Yan touch him. An Zi Yan had assumed Mai Ding could no longer bear the pressure. Mai Ding could not bring himself to face his parents and tell them the truth, so the only thing he was capable of doing was distancing himself from An Zi Yan.
An Zi Yan was furious, and he felt miserable.
Mai Ding, meanwhile, listened in complete confusion. “Y-you really misunderstood.”
“Then explain it.”
“I can’t say it.”
“You think I really care that much whether you tell your parents? I’ll make this clear to you: even if you decide to hide it from them for the rest of your life, I’ll accept it. Who told me I want to be with you?” An Zi Yan fell silent for a moment before continuing, this time in a softer voice. “But if you can let go of me this easily, if this is all your love amounts to, then I have nothing else to say.” With that, An Zi Yan stepped around the stunned Mai Ding and prepared to leave.
Mai Ding’s muddled mind could not think about anything except stopping An Zi Yan. He jumped to his feet and grabbed An Zi Yan’s clothes, forcing him to stop. “I don’t want to tell my parents because I only want to stay with you like this. I don’t want it destroyed. I don’t want anything interrupting us. Even if I can only have this for a little while, I want that little while to last just a little longer. So please don’t ever say again that this is all my love amounts to. My love stopped belonging to me a long time ago. It follows you around all day. And if I made you misunderstand these past few days, that was my fault. It’s because I lost the ring you gave me. I lost the promise you gave me, and I was afraid you’d find out.”
When An Zi Yan heard that this was the reason, he suddenly wanted to crush Mai Ding to death right there. He turned around. “All this over something that stupid?”
“How is that stupid? It’s important! That was a diamond ring.”
“So what? I can buy you another hundred.”
“But that was the promise you made me.”
“So what? I can make the promise another hundred times.”
Hearing An Zi Yan say that, Mai Ding suddenly felt relieved. He could not believe how simple it had been to say everything aloud. Once again, he had taken a straightforward problem and made it unbearably complicated all by himself. “I was afraid you’d yell at me.”
“Why would I yell at you if you didn’t do anything wrong?”
“You mess with me for no reason even when I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Messing with you is messing with you. Yelling at you is yelling at you. Those are two different things.”
“I think they’re exactly the same thing.”
An Zi Yan viciously pinched Mai Ding’s cheek. “Don’t ever do this again.”
“If you buy me another hundred diamond rings.”
“I was joking about that.”
“Hey, you—” Mai Ding had not finished speaking when An Zi Yan gently kissed him on the lips, then took Mai Ding’s hand. “Come on. You talk too much.”
“Then I’m staying at your place tonight.”
“You kept saying you were busy, so I threw all your things away.”
“Seriously? Where did you throw them? I’ll go pick them back up.”
As for allowing things to take their natural course, that happened very soon. Elsewhere, Wu Xin rose from the sofa in Mai Ding’s home and straightened her clothes. Then, wearing a polite smile, she gave the solemn-looking couple sitting opposite her a slight nod. “I won’t disturb you any longer. I hope you can keep your son under control and stop him from pestering our Zi Yan. Children may behave recklessly, but parents cannot simply stand aside and do nothing.” With that, she walked out of the house, leaving the room in complete silence.
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