Chapter 6 — Turns Out You Actually Like Me

For instance, by the end of our second weekend of driving practice together, he started showing classic signs of oversleeping. We had agreed on ten o'clock in the morning. At five past ten, his message popped up on my screen: "Just woke up, give me ten minutes okay?"

And all I could think was... Oh my goodness, he is unbearably adorable! I had always envisioned bright Clear as a pristine moon suspended high in the heavens. But now, that very moonlight was sitting right in my passenger seat, casually spinning the most delightfully lame jokes. Oh well. I found myself growing even fonder of him.

Then came another Friday. I was excitedly preparing to invite Clear out for our usual weekend ritual when his text arrived first: [Jade, I am afraid I cannot make it to our driving practice this weekend. I have some personal matters I need to attend to.]

I froze for a few seconds, reluctantly deleting the sentence I had just typed out, and replaced it with: [That is completely fine, please take care of your business first.]

The message went off into the ether. A faint hollow ache settled deep within my chest. Yet, he actually had real obligations to deal with; there was simply nothing I could do.

The next day, Miss Blossom came over to our house to sweep my older brother away on a date. I was curled up cross-legged on the sofa, blankly swiping through my phone while my mind wandered off to some distant, desolate realm.

"Jade? What is the matter?" She walked over, sitting beside me as the gentle warmth of her palm pressed against my forehead. "Are you feeling unwell?"

"Not at all." I rested my chin upon a throw pillow, emitting a soft, feeble whimper. "I am just terribly bored."

She smoothed down my hair, a tender smile touching her lips. "Well, how fortunate. Why don't you come out for a stroll with us? Shutting yourself up in the house like a hermit all day is far too dreary."

Before I even had a chance to open my mouth, my brother lunged forward with an indignant protest: "You cannot be serious. The two of us are going on a date, why on earth would we drag along a human lightbulb—"

"Shut your mouth." Miss Blossom effortlessly deployed a single, breezy sentence that completely subdued him. Then, turning back to me, she coaxed with a warm smile: "Do come along, we are simply trying out a newly opened restaurant."

And so, I found myself trailing obediently in their wake as we stepped out of the house. During the meal, to avoid playing the unwanted third wheel to their affectionate exchanges—and just as importantly, to prevent my brother and me from tearing into each other over the last piece of meat—Miss Blossom wisely chose to wedge herself right between the two of us. For the most part, the conversation belonged exclusively to them. I was too preoccupied to pay close attention, merely offering the occasional absent-minded nod or murmur to keep up appearances.

Until they happened to bring up Clear. Miss Blossom addressed my brother first: "Has Clear been exceptionally busy lately? We haven't seen him in over a month. Didn't he used to spend every single weekend out and about?"

At the sound of that name, my guilty conscience flared, and I sharply lifted my gaze to dart a look at them. Neither of them noticed my reaction. My brother clicked his tongue in mild annoyance. "He has probably been tearing his hair out over his old man these past few days."

To my surprise, Miss Blossom echoed with a puzzled tone: "He still has a father?"

What was that supposed to mean? Curiosity overriding my caution, I shifted slightly forward. "What do you mean by that, brother?"

My brother let out a heavy sigh, setting his chopsticks down as a rare, serious expression settled over his features. "I only just found out myself. Back when the two of us first befriended Clear, wasn't he already working part-time jobs to support himself? Over all these years, we never once heard him utter a single word about his family, so I always assumed he was an orphan. Who would have guessed that this biological father of his must have caught wind of his recent success and suddenly decided to crawl out from the woodwork? He didn't go into the gritty details, but from what I saw, Clear looked absolutely wretched lately. It is bound to be a messy ordeal."

"So how is he now..." Miss Blossom trailed off, hesitating.

"He has probably managed to patch things up well enough. You know what he is like; no matter how much suffering he has to endure, he insists on carrying it all entirely on his own shoulders."

Those few sparse sentences left me feeling suffocated, the air suddenly far too thin to breathe. Was he bearing all of those wretched burdens completely by himself right now? And here I had been foolishly nursing a grievance, imagining he simply did not want to see me.

My brother suddenly shifted his gaze toward me, his tone carrying a deeply meaningful weight: "Jade, let me tell you something. Clear may bicker with me like cats and dogs on a normal day, but as a person, he is genuinely faultless. You need to treat him just like your own older brother and look out for him."