Zhou Ge and Ellen had been waiting by the entrance for ages. Impatiently, Zhou Ge called to Mai Ding, who was still staring blankly at the university. “What are you still doing? Fantasizing about screwing the school?” Such filthy language made Mai Ding turn around unhappily. He saw Zhou Ge dressed in an eye-catching riot of colors.
“What are you rushing me for?”
“You two are way too slow.” After waiting so long, Zhou Ge could not help complaining, and Ellen nodded in agreement with her sweetheart.
“I’m a respectable person. Obviously I have lots of respectable things to do, unlike people as idle as you.” The implication in Mai Ding’s words was obvious: out of the four of them, everyone except him was disreputable. He opened the car door and climbed in without ceremony. Zhou Ge and Ellen had been the first friends An Zi Yan introduced to Mai Ding back when Mai Ding complained that he had no friends. By now, they had become Mai Ding’s friends too.
They had not driven far when Ellen’s phone chimed with a new message. Unlocking it, she said to Zhou Ge, “My friend sent me a video. She said somebody filmed this crazy guy on a bus today. He’s from our city, and the clip has already been reposted everywhere…” Ellen was still talking when Mai Ding’s own voice came blasting from the video: “What is it this time? Tell me! Are you going to arrest me for molesting a child again? Say it!”
All three people in the car turned toward Mai Ding. He nearly opened the door and threw himself out. An Zi Yan’s comment stripped away what little dignity remained. “So this is how respectable people behave? I’ve learned something today.” Mai Ding reached for Ellen’s phone in the front seat, but she dodged him. Zhou Ge kept glancing at the video while driving and burst into grating laughter. “Mai Ding, what the hell were you doing? Hahaha! Are you planning to become a comedian after graduation? Honey, hurry and rub my stomach. I’m going to cramp from laughing. Hahahaha!”
“What the hell are you laughing at? What’s so funny? It was an accident!” Mai Ding shouted loudly enough for people outside the car to hear.
The car slowly pulled up outside Tingxiang Pavilion. Mai Ding could not escape the laughter-filled car quickly enough. He looked up at the sign. Wasn’t this the restaurant Bai Xiao Si had brought him to before? He went in first. It had been a while since his last visit, but almost nothing inside had changed. Just as the server led him to the private room, Mai Ding heard Li Ming’s sleazy laughter from inside.
“You’re here too?” Mai Ding said as he pushed open the door. Then he saw An Su, Cao Cheng Yi, and Bai Xiao Si! He no longer had the energy to ask when Xiao Si had returned or why An Su and Cao Cheng Yi were there, because every single one of them was holding a phone, and every phone was playing a certain video. Mai Ding knew the voice in that video all too well. It was his. Several people looked at him. Mai Ding knew those looks all too well too.
“Well, well. Who’s this? Isn’t it today’s internet celebrity, Mai Ding?” An Su said sarcastically. Mai Ding wished aliens would abduct everyone whose surname was An.
“I have to repost this so my friends can see it.” Li Ming bent over his phone. Cao Cheng Yi said nothing, but the mockery on his face hurt even more than words.
“Mai Mai, don’t take it to heart. It’s really nothing.” Bai Xiao Si stood up. Xiao Si was still the considerate one after all. Mai Ding was just about to reach out and shake her hand when Bai Xiao Si walked straight past him toward An Zi Yan, who had just entered behind him. “Ex-husband, did you see the video? Tsk, tsk. Regretting it yet? Look what you ended up with after abandoning me.”
“Saw it ages ago,” Ellen answered for An Zi Yan as she came in behind him. Suddenly Mai Ding felt terribly alone in this world, lonely, empty, and cold. He stared fiercely at An Zi Yan. “If it weren’t for you, I never would have become everybody’s laughingstock.”
“What did I do?”
“You’re still refusing to admit it?”
“Admit what? Did I hold a gun to your head and force you to make yourself a laughingstock?”
“But…” Mai Ding had no rebuttal. Other than making that phone call to Uncle Fu, An Zi Yan truly had done nothing. An Zi Yan walked past Mai Ding while he struggled to find words and quietly added, “The tragedy of humanity.”
“There’s no need to elevate it to the tragedy of the entire human race! My hatred for you is growing deeper by the minute. You’d better watch yourself!” Mai Ding ground the words out as he sat beside An Zi Yan. Bai Xiao Si pretended she was going to squeeze between them. “Mai Mai, since you hate him so much, I’ll sit in the middle and block the person you hate.”
“I…” He had really picked up a rock and smashed his own foot with it. Unwilling as he was, Mai Ding had no way out and was about to move his chair to the right when An Zi Yan grabbed the backrest. “Did you ask for my opinion? Sit still.”
“Ex-husband, he already hates you.”
“Then he can hate me from right beside me.” Mai Ding could not tell what exactly An Zi Yan had said so casually, but his heart understood perfectly.
“Are you two finished? Are we eating or not?” An Su said impatiently before calling a server over to order. Li Ming had come solely for free food and drink, and he cast An Su the hungry stare of a shut-in looking at a woman. Cao Cheng Yi leaned back in his chair. “I thought there’d at least be some guys here who suited my taste.”
“This isn’t a mixer!”
The crystal-clear wineglasses looked like elegant women in high heels, red liquid swaying inside their bodies. The young faces talking and laughing around the table belonged to the people who had walked beside Mai Ding through these four years. Four years seemed long when you looked at them from the beginning, but once you looked back from the end, you understood just how short they had been.
There had been the Mai Ding who secretly followed An Zi Yan and Cao Cheng Yi because he suspected the two of them had some unspeakable secret.
The Mai Ding who lied to Li Ming about his age and claimed he expected nothing from university life.
The Mai Ding who was so terrified by An Su’s appearance at Christmas that he fled through a window in panic.
The Mai Ding who felt nervous while Zhou Ge and Ellen flirted shamelessly outside his door.
The Mai Ding who was both worried and curious when Bai Xiao Si came running through the airport shouting “Ex-husband!”
Was the Mai Ding from back then still the same Mai Ding he was now? Perhaps even he would have trouble answering. People could never remain exactly as they had been at the beginning, and that was not necessarily something to regret. Maybe we could grow into people better than the ones we started as.
When we were children, a piece of candy or a single toy was enough to satisfy us.
When we grew up, even if someone gave us piles of candy and piles of toys, who could still be satisfied so easily?
So there was no need to regret or agonize over where that innocent original self had gone. It was not only the body that grew, but the heart too, and the heart needed more things to fill it. Material things could fill desire. The only thing, the only thing, that could fill emptiness was feeling.
Had Mai Ding forgotten to remember the most important person of all? Maybe not. He had already replayed the scene of their first meeting countless times, so many that even the memory itself seemed to complain that Mai Ding had exhausted it.