Chapter 12 — The Bed of Your Own Choosing

The restaurant is about to close, the waiter takes the next table. We keep our voices low, arguing is more annoying than talking loudly. Shen Nianchu's tears fell, she quickly wiped them away. "Zhou Yanxuan, have you been waiting for this day?" "What do you mean?" "You're waiting for me to do something big enough to prove that you haven't been mistaken since the day you entered school. So you don't need to trust me anymore, nor do you need to take the risk of believing wrongly." My chest tightened. "I'm not waiting." "You are." She took a breath: "I admit it."
"Tonight I'm sorry I hurt you, but I don't feel that looking for Gu Cheng itself was wrong. Even if I did it again, I would still confirm that he is safe first." "Do it again." Those five words pierced my heart. I actually did it again. Even without the old dorm room, without my promise to care for her on Gu Cheng's behalf, and without years of accumulated debts between us, she had made the same choice at the critical moment. It was not because she did not love me. She needed to be someone who would never abandon Gu Cheng. That identity had supported her for years, appeared before any love, and ran deeper. I suddenly didn't want to fight about who was right and who was wrong anymore. "Nianchu, let's break up." She froze on the spot. The sound of the waiter collecting the plate was very soft, each sound hitting the ears. "For this one meal?" She asked. "No." "So it's because of Gu Cheng?" "Not completely." I looked at her: "I can't accept that when he needs you, you always push other things for later. I also could not accept that I kept treating those choices as betrayals of our relationship. If we continue like this, we will turn every incident into a trial." She stared at me, tears no longer falling. "Didn't you say you only talked about what happened?" "Tonight happened." "So I made a mistake once, you don't need me anymore?" "Not once." I stopped: "I finally admit that there are things that cannot disappear just by you not doing it, or me forcing myself to understand." Shen Nianchu's face went pale. "So what about your previous crush?" "It's true." "What about now?" I didn't say. She laughed, a very ugly smile: "You see, you still won. From the beginning, you expected me to choose him; now I have finally proved you right." "This is not about winning or losing." "For you, it's not. You're just walking away from a risk." She picked up the fruit bag and put it down again. "I'm sorry for you." After two steps, she turned around and asked: "Zhou Yanxuan, was there ever a moment when you were serious?"
trust me?" I would have said yes. When she shared an umbrella on a rainy night, when she was burned to tears in a grilled fish restaurant, when she refused to go with Gu Cheng for an interview, I believed it all. But trust is not a one-time choice. It needs two people to protect it at countless turns. "I believed you once," I said. Shen Nianchu nodded. "That's enough." She left the restaurant without turning back. The next day, Gu Cheng came to Room 407 to find me. He stood at the door, fire in his eyes: "You broke up with Nianchu?" Han Dongming and Du Hang were both there, and the room fell silent. "Yes." "Because she came looking for me?" "This is between us." Gu Cheng punched the door frame: "If you don't want her to leave, you can tell me. What's the point of forcing her to break up?" I looked at him: "Do you think she was forced by me?" He was stunned. "Gu Cheng, every time something happens you look for her first. Every time she leaves, you feel like it was her own will. Neither of you are wrong, the wrong person will always be the one who cannot accept it."
accept." "I didn't tell her to break up with you." "I also didn't tell her to leave." His expression changed several times, and in the end he said nothing and turned away. In the evening, Han Dongming gave me a can of beer. "I don't really understand your relationship." He said, "But today you don't look like you've been liberated, you look like you've had your limbs amputated." I took the beer and didn't drink it. The room next door is very quiet. I changed beds, changed dorms, changed the way we got to know each other. In the end, I still let go of her hand first. The difference was that this time I didn't wait until after getting married.

After breaking up, Shen Nianchu withdrew from the project. She organized all the books and user data, without taking anything away. Her final handover email contained only two lines and not a single personal sentence. When we met in class, we nodded and said hello. Gu Cheng and her did not immediately get together. He still changed girlfriends and still sought her out from time to time. Shen Nianchu was no longer as readily available, but whenever something happens to Gu Cheng's house, she still appears. I don't continue to observe. Before our fourth year, the project was sold to a training center near the school. Not a big deal. The opponent targeted our student user base and documentary channel, offering one hundred and twenty thousand yuan. Minus the expenses and Boss Qiang's share, the four people each received more than twenty thousand.