The airport expressway stretched on endlessly. What she feared most was that she’d run out of things to say before they’d even reached the end of the road.
Because the partition was raised, Lin Cunkang and Junyi in the front cabin had no idea how long the silence in the back had already lasted.
“‘Enough’ means you’ve accepted every possible ending,” Shang Shao said slowly. “But the one ending you won’t accept – is the possibility of you and me having a happy one.”
“There’s no happy ending for us.” Ying Yin almost laughed through her tears. “Shang Shao, I’m sick. You already know that.”
What kind of sickness was it? In her manic phases, she felt like the whole world was in the palm of her hand, beneath her feet. She could go three days and nights without sleep – as if she’d smoked weed, popped ecstasy, snorted coke, or had a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart – creating, reciting lines obsessively, immersed in her roles, laughing and crying, spinning through twenty-five thousand brilliant but useless thoughts a minute like cheap fireworks, hugging a jar of peanut butter as a dance partner, cracking a whip and twirling around the room until she collapsed.
When that mania subsided from her brain – like all the dust in the air falling deathly still – her spirit, her senses, would sink into a dark slumber. She could lie motionless on the sofa for three days and nights, her eyes moving sluggishly only once every five minutes, with nothing but thoughts of how to die.
Bipolar disorder. Manic depression.
For those two years, her life cycled between the Big Bang and a black hole. She had completely lost the ability – and the capacity – to live like a normal person. She couldn’t work, couldn’t attend events, couldn’t interact with people normally. She was ugly: in her manic rage, she’d slam her head against walls, kneel on the floor sobbing; in her depression, she’d lie like a dead fish, indifferent to whoever came and went beside her.
One day, she was plucking her eyebrows in front of the mirror, and on some inexplicable impulse, she moved the razor blade to her soft, collagen-filled cheek.
A gentle cut – and blood welled up.
A voice said, cut deeper. Cut a little deeper, it’s okay – otherwise, something bad will happen.
That was her face. Her priceless, one-of-a-kind face.
But she made a second cut – her finger pressed against the handle, her wrist sinking slightly, trembling. The blade sliced through the epidermis, through the dermis, nearly reaching the muscle beneath.
By the time blood trickled from her cheek down to her neck, Junyi had burst through the bathroom door. She snatched the eyebrow razor away, staring at Ying Yin with terror, as if she were looking at a ghost.
It was from that day onward that Ying Yin realized she had to see a doctor. She also had to see a plastic surgeon and a scar specialist. She’d come that close to being permanently scarred.
During those two years of illness, Ying Yin had no one by her side but Mai Anyan and Cheng Junyi. She didn’t tell anyone – not even Ying Fan. To all her friends, she said she was taking a sabbatical to study abroad. When filming Goodbye, Angela, she told Ke Yu, in a breezy tone, “Who in showbiz doesn’t have some issue?”
The illness came and went, wearing her down to exhaustion. But she wanted so badly to get better, so badly to live, so badly to step out under the blue sky and laugh freely, to bask in the sun. Her doctor said her recovery speed was a miracle. But bipolar disorder is rarely 100% curable. Perhaps the only saving grace was that she’d developed it later in life – there was no family history of it.
Before she met Shang Shao, she had already lived five hundred and seventy-one days of normal life. How many more remained? She didn’t know.
Her life was like an hourglass, each grain a falling star. Every extra grain, every extra day – was a gain. But the countdown always had an end. She couldn’t see it; she didn’t know if it would come tomorrow or the day after.
And when that end came, she didn’t want to see Shang Shao waiting there for her.
She was an unlucky flower. She shouldn’t be passed hand to hand, drum-roll style, into Shang Shao’s keeping.
“So what?” Shang Shao asked.
He made no attempt to gloss things over – he simply looked at her steadily. “You have bipolar disorder. You’ve attempted suicide. So what?”
“Mr. Shang – you investors love to say, ‘Think long-term.’ But with this illness, I don’t have a long-term. There’s no happy ending for us. Maybe tomorrow I go home with you to meet your family, you’re willing to marry me, I’m willing to have your children – but what about ten, twenty, thirty years from now? You’ll be in agony.”
“I don’t mind.”
“You really don’t mind? Maybe one day, you come home after a long day of work, and instead of your wife’s smiling face, you’re greeted by shattered plates all over the floor, your servants trembling in fear, too afraid to speak. You go to soothe her, using the most practiced method, your heart already feeling nothing. She slaps you, tells you to get lost, says she’s sick of the sight of you. None of it is what she truly means – but she’s in an episode, and she has to say it, has to hurt the person she loves most, has to destroy the best life she has.
“Maybe one day, after you’ve been busy the entire year and finally have time for a proper vacation, you take your wife and the housekeeper abroad, to the seaside. The sun is beautiful, you’re sitting on the beach together, and your wife says, ‘Why aren’t I dead yet?’ Every second, every minute after that, you’ll be terrified that she’ll silently walk into the ocean without a word.
“Maybe many, many years later – your parents are gone, your siblings all have their own families – on an ordinary afternoon, you push open the door and find your wife lying in the bathtub, no longer breathing. In that instant, you know that the person you love most in this world, and the person who loves you most, are both gone – cleanly, completely. And you’re left alone in this world, with no one.
“Of course, you’ll also have happy, peaceful days. When she’s not in an episode, she’s your little girl – you love each other every single moment. But it’s precisely those moments of love, those moments of happiness, that will make every single day of the rest of your life more agonizing, more excruciating.”
Ying Yin narrated all this calmly, her bright gaze fixed on his face without a flicker of evasion. “Don’t you mind?”
“I don’t mind.” Shang Shao’s response was equally calm.
From the very moment he’d learned of her illness, he had already fully imagined every scene, every possibility.
“But I mind… I mind.”
She minded that his inherently good life would be buried with her. Maybe the probability of her having an episode was only one percent, while the chance of them growing old together happily was ninety-nine percent. But for that one percent possibility of dragging him into an abyss from which he could never recover – she would rather not gamble on the ninety-nine percent.
Ying Yin’s fingertips rested on the smooth collar of his shirt, her gaze dropping. “No meeting your parents. No marriage. Okay? I can be your girlfriend for life – you can end it whenever you want. I’ll accept it willingly, until the day you grow tired of me.”
Shang Shao was silent for a long moment, then looked at her with an unfamiliar expression. “Ying Yin, you think you’re being generous, don’t you?”
“No. I’m very selfish. I only want to have happiness with you.” Ying Yin pressed her lips together, a little sadly. “Even just one year.”
“What was your original plan…”
“One year, then break up. After a year, I’d tell you I never wanted to get married. If you could accept that, we’d keep dating – until the day you found someone you actually wanted to marry. I hid my illness from you. I’m sorry – because I didn’t want to seem like a crazy woman in your eyes. Besides…” She paused. “For a relationship not built on marriage, there’s no need to lay out all your most shameful sides, is there?”
She forced the muscles of her face into a smile, but the corners of her mouth trembled uncontrollably downward.
Know when to stop – that was a creed etched into the very gears of Ying Yin’s life. No matter where fate carried her, her tire tracks were always engraved with the words: a full moon wanes. She had calculated everything well – a fling, a good time, full satisfaction. The one thing she hadn’t calculated was that Shang Shao would actually want to marry her.
He actually wanted to marry her – in just a few short months.
A man like him should be pleased that his girlfriend knew her place. Should be relieved that she was sensible – could play along as long as it lasted. It was always the women chasing after men for status, for commitment, even using pregnancy to lock in child support – but here he was, doing the reverse.
The snow on her high mountain had melted for her far too quickly.
“One year, then break up.” Shang Shao repeated it, nodding once.
In that instant, he understood – Shang Qingye had beaten him again.
He saw through it all with perfect clarity. He knew she had concealed her illness because she had never truly intended to build a future with him. That was why he had only “suspended” his position – because he knew that one day, they would reach an end, or a moment of reckoning.
And by “reckoning,” he meant – he would come to understand, would be clearly and unmistakably told by Ying Yin, that there would be no “them” going forward.
“I’m sorry. I’ve ruined the mood.” He raised a hand to caress Ying Yin’s face. “Don’t cry anymore. Are you this tearful because of the illness too?”
Ying Yin laughed and cried at the same time, tears sliding down to warm and dampen his fingertip. “Why are you apologizing? You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Blame me for being too impatient. I’m getting older, and it’s not easy to come across someone as wonderful as you – I just wanted to marry you and bring you home as soon as possible.” He let out a nearly inaudible laugh, curling his finger and brushing it beneath her wet lashes.
Ying Yin tilted her face up to look at him.
Such a calm gaze held for only a few seconds before Shang Shao suddenly pulled her back into his arms. He held her with such desperate force – as if he hated that his arms couldn’t press harder, couldn’t crush her into his very bones.
Whether it was her imagination or not, the man she had always looked up to – always composed, always unruffled – seemed at this moment to have had his very spine broken. His breath was cold, the body beneath his suit already taut to its limit, yet he still couldn’t stop the fine, relentless trembling that ran through him.
She couldn’t see it. She had no way of knowing that this man, who found the whole world utterly dull, had a single line of hot tears tracing down his closed eyes.
“But I still have to get married eventually – do you understand?” Shang Shao’s jaw was clenched so tight it looked carved from stone, yet his tone betrayed nothing unusual. “I still have to have children – do you understand?”
He sounded like he was patiently reasoning with her. But this was a truth Ying Yin had always understood – it was he who hadn’t. So perhaps this reasoning was really for his own ears.
“I know.”
“I don’t have the right to date you for a lifetime. When the time comes, I’ll have to find another woman to love again, to build a life with, to bear children with.” He gritted his teeth. “I will love her. I’m capable of that.”
“Mm.” Ying Yin’s eyes were wide open, afraid to blink – because they were brimming with tears.
She lay against Shang Shao’s shoulder, and that “mm” came out with a smile, soft and obedient, carrying straight into his ears and into his heart.
“So – one year and done, or two years, or three – isn’t that too cruel for both of us? If we already know there’s no ending, why walk this road at all? Ying Yin, people can’t knowingly play the fool.”
Ying Yin seemed to gradually realize what he was about to say.
“You said you’d go all the way with me, even at the cost of your life. Now I understand. I don’t want your life.” Shang Shao stroked her hair.
She had cut her hair short for a role, but in Shang Shao’s mind, the image of their first meeting still lingered. Her long curly hair had been so beautiful – beneath the orange sunset glow, she’d turned around, the evening breeze brushing her face, her white dress catching the twilight light.
He also still saw the scene of their first dinner together. She’d swept her hair up with a jade hairpin. When he saw her to the car afterward, he’d pulled the pin out – her long hair cascaded down, releasing the fresh scent of green mountain fruit into the air.
But now, her hair was short, neatly tucked behind her ears like a schoolgirl’s. Shang Shao tilted his head slightly, pressing his cheek against her dark hair. The tear that slid from his right eye disappeared soundlessly into her locks.
“The breakup – ends today.” His palm pressed firmly against the back of her head, holding her face tightly against his chest. “It ends right here, on this road.”
A surge of unbearable heartache pierced through – who could say which of them it struck.
Only the worst screenwriter would have crammed so many clichéd scenes into their story in just a few short months. Only the worst story would have so many out-of-control twists and turns. For most people in this world, love is no more than “you like me, I like you.” For a smaller few, it’s “I give it my all, you give it your best.” But for her and him – it was mountains upon seas. The view on the other side of those mountains was so beautiful – but they couldn’t fly over.
If only they could pray to God to hear them – to give some of the wounds he’d carried to her, some of the illness she’d endured to him; or to exchange his wealth and fortune for her equivalent courage, and her starlit path for fearless freedom – give her a sliver of desperate bravery, give him the time to have known the truth earlier. He would have walked each step well, and she would have walked each step toward him. They would have been two whole people, effortlessly crossing the first hurdle hand in hand, their days ahead both good and long.
But it was useless now. He was who he was, and she was who she had become.
The fault, perhaps, was that they shouldn’t have been drawn to each other in the first place.
On normal trips to and from the airport, the road always felt interminable – even taking a nap felt like time wasted. But today it felt short – dozens of kilometers, the car racing so fast, the scenery outside becoming nothing but fleeting reflections, rushing past before she could make sense of it. The trees lining the road were lush and thriving – what kind of trees stay in spring all year round, blooming all year round? The sunlight was so beautiful. If she could stay in this car forever, that wouldn’t be so bad.
But the road always comes to an end.
Lin Cunkang knew the two of them were heading home, so the Hong Kong-plated car drove straight toward that small suburban villa.
The tires scuffed against the patterned brick road – they were going uphill. Beneath the thick shade of the mahogany trees, the car came to a smooth stop. Junyi pushed the door open and jumped out, stretching her arms in a long, languid stretch, then turned back to watch Ying Yin step out of the back seat.
She knew not to intrude on Ying Yin and Shang Shao, so she sensibly kept her distance, standing close to Lin Cunkang.
“The shawl you gave me last time is so comfortable and warm – it’s been a lifesaver on this set,” Junyi said lightheartedly. “When this one gets worn out, can you get me a new one?”
Lin Cunkang nodded, his gaze fixed on Shang Shao as he walked Ying Yin to the gate.
He sensed something was off – but what exactly, he couldn’t say. Surely nothing could have changed in the span of a car ride.
“I’m not coming in.” Shang Shao stood by the black wrought-iron gate, just as he had that long-ago day when he’d first dropped by unannounced – polite and proper, ringing the doorbell, waiting for her to welcome him.
Ying Yin nodded. “Goodbye.”
“Were you happy?”
Ying Yin’s hot tears nearly welled up again. In the warm breeze, she turned her face slightly away, quietly gazing at the tall mahogany tree for a moment, then turned back and said with a smile, “Every single day.”
“I didn’t do well,” he said. “Next time…”
There wouldn’t be a next time.
He stopped mid-sentence, and Ying Yin fell silent too. The warm afternoon breeze drifted gently between them.
“Rich…”
“I really like him, but I can’t take care of him.” Ying Yin gripped the chain of her handbag tightly. “I hope he lives to a hundred.”
Shang Shao let out an inexplicable little laugh. “You too.”
“You too.”
Ying Yin and Shang Shao gazed at each other, both wearing smiles – as warm and gentle as the breeze itself.
After a long pause, she pressed her lips together. “I’ve held on to my life. I’ll live a long time.”
Separating now – it had to be better than ending things two or three years down the road. She understood that, truly. If she’d actually had a year of happiness, could she have survived letting go? Look at her now – still able to smile, still standing here without feeling like it was too much – that meant she was still functioning. The tightening ache beneath her heart, wave after wave – she could sleep it off.
“For anything at all – you can come to me,” Shang Shao said.
“I will.” Ying Yin answered quickly.
The metal chain of her bag grew slick with the sweat from her palm, so slippery, so heavy – she could barely hold on.
There should be no more words said, or else this farewell would drag on too long. Shang Shao stepped forward and took her in his arms, his embrace tightening from loose to firm.
“I thought about what we’d name our children,” he said finally, his voice strained, so hoarse.
Ying Yin’s tears slid down without warning.
She, too, had imagined them at eighty years old.
