Chapter 3 — I Won't Wait for You to Return

Seven years of devotion, yet in their eyes, it had ultimately amounted to nothing more than a hush-money settlement to be bartered away. My phone buzzed with a notification from WeChat. It was from Chu Dien, bearing only a cold, clipped message:

"Do not dare cause a scene at the university. It will jeopardize the thesis defense next week for me and my junior colleague. If you have even a shred of conscience left, delete those ambiguous posts from our past yourself."

Ha Nhan thrust her phone screen directly into my face. "Look at this. This is the man I wasted eight years of my life loving."

I pulled out my old handset and unlocked a hidden folder. Inside, there were thousands of photos. There were shots of Co Trach Vu as a lowly extra, the two of us huddled together in a damp basement apartment, splitting a single ten-yuan meal box. There were receipts from the night I stood in line until three in the morning to register him for emergency care after he broke his leg performing a stunt. There was even a video from the day he landed his first significant role; he was stumbling drunk, clinging to me as he wept. In the footage, he buried his face in the crook of my neck, his voice thick and slurred: "Tranh Tranh, one day I will show the whole world that you are the foundation upon which I stand."

Now, his contact status for me had been reduced to the cold, clinical label of "Ordinary Friend."

Ha Nhan opened her own cloud storage. Within it lay a folder preserving every memory of Chu Dien from his undergraduate days through his doctoral studies. There was the rental contract for the dilapidated shanty near campus that she had co-signed during their senior year. There was a history of therapy appointments she had booked for him when the stress of his PhD program caused him to lose his hair in patches. Then, there was a yellowed, fragile scrap of paper—a life plan Chu Dien had drafted during his second year of graduate school. Point one: Graduate with a doctorate. Point two: Secure a position in Beijing. Point three: Purchase a home. The final line was scrawled in bold, aggressive red ink: "Marry Ha Nhan. I cannot let her wait any longer."

Today, he was parading his junior colleague before his parents, the accompanying caption reading: "Finally waited for the right person."

The hostess of the homestay approached, carrying a bowl of freshly washed bayberries. Seeing us hunched over our old phones, she raised an eyebrow. "What’s this? Gathering evidence for a public expose?"

I plucked a bayberry and took a bite; it was so sour it made my eyes squint. "Not going back."

Ha Nhan tossed one into her own mouth, mumbling as she chewed, "Exactly. We’ll expose them right here. The internet in Dali is surprisingly fast."

A local man passed by carrying a bucket of freshly caught fish, craning his neck in curiosity. "Did your ex-boyfriends owe you a lot of money?"

Ha Nhan pondered for a moment before answering with grim seriousness, "They didn't owe us money. They owed us our youth."

I flicked the bayberry pit into the trash. "And they owe us a human apology."

The man scratched his head, clearly failing to grasp the nuance, and carried his fish into the kitchen. We exported the evidence from our old phones, carefully categorizing and organizing the files. We created two distinct folders: one labeled "Seven Years" and the other "Eight Years." Ha Nhan looked at the laptop screen, then turned to me. "Everything is ready. Which one should we release first?"

I looked at the trending search results, where headlines screamed about us "shamelessly seeking clout," and offered a thin smile. I snapped the laptop shut. "No rush. Let them keep their dignity for just a little while longer."

"Where are you? Stop this nonsense and come back here so we can talk."

The moment the call connected, the voice of Co Trach Vu vibrated through the receiver, his tone strained with suppressed irritation. I sat on the second-floor balcony of the homestay, gazing blankly at the distant peaks of the Cangshan Mountains. The Dali breeze swept past, carrying the scent of mist and earth.

"I am not causing a scene." My voice was so calm that even I was surprised by it.

"Not causing a scene? You emptied out the entire apartment in the middle of the night!" His voice spiked an octave, carrying that familiar, controlling cadence I knew too well. "Tan Tranh Tranh, the incident during the Dragon Boat Festival program was just a script arranged by the organizers. Can you stop overthinking everything and making it complicated?"