“Rumors?”


  Su Qi became interested.

  “What rumors?”


  “There are rumors about you. People say you skip classes, smoke, drink, get into fights, and had girls who had an abortion for you. Are all these true?”


  When Su Qi heard this, he first laughed mockingly then said, “Oh, these. I was wondering what sort of rumors!”


  “Are these rumors true?”


  “Half-truths.”


  “Half-truths?”


  That got me confused. I did not understand what he meant.

  “It’s either real or fake. What do you mean, half-truths?”


  “Sometimes, what you see with your eyes might not be true. What you hear with your ears might not be true either. For example, I smoke, I drink, and I get into fights. These are all true. But the rumor about the girl who went for an abortion—the truth is that I did accompany her to get an abortion, but I wasn’t the one who got her pregnant.”


  “Who did it then?”


  “Well, I can’t tell you.” Su Qi smiled. “I promised to keep it a secret.”


  “Petty!”


  I muttered, “You have so many secrets.”


  “Who doesn’t have secrets? If you really want to know, why don’t we trade?”


  Su Qi rode around me and stopped in front of me. He sized me up. “I’m sure you have a little secret, too. You tell me your secret, and I’ll tell you mine. That’s only fair.”


  I looked at him seriously.

  After a while, I smiled at him and pretended to be mysterious. “I can’t tell you!”


  “Pffft!” Su Qi put on a nonchalant expression.

  Turning around, I bit my lip and clutched the spot on my chest, my heart racing.

  After returning home with a heavy heart, I pushed open the door to the study and saw Dongyu’s desk. The books on it were neatly arranged like always. Obviously he hadn’t come home from school.

  I stood there for a long time, thinking about Su Qi’s words.

  It was as he had said, everyone has their own unspeakable secrets.

  And mine is related only to Dongyu.

  …


  I liked him.

  When did I realize my feelings for him were not normal?

  Was it the time when I was being bullied and he showered me, and then went to beat up that person who bullied me?

  Or was it when I saw other children around him, and felt for the first time that he should belong to only me?

  Or was it when Menglan said that he and I were unable to be together?

  Or was it when I saw him throwing out the many gifts that he had received, and felt rather gleeful about it?

  …


  Who knows.

  From the time I was born, how I felt towards Dongyu was unique.

  It wasn’t the intimacy one would feel towards family, or the adoration towards a lover. It was a feeling that with him in my world, I didn’t need anyone else.

  Would this count as liking someone?

  I was a little confused about this but as much as I wanted to understand it, I wasn’t in a hurry to.

  I felt that some decisions would only become difficult when there was too much clarity.

  But these unusual feelings increasingly took over after one particular incident.

  I remember once, at an annual sports meet, I had sneaked into Dongyu’s school to play. I found my way to Dongyu’s classroom with familiarity and just as I walked in, I saw a girl milling around Dongyu’s seat with an envelope in her hand. It looked like she was trying to slip it into his desk.

  I rushed over and grabbed the envelope from the girl. Holding it in my hand, I interrogated her, “What are you trying to do?!”