Chapter 51

*Crush: A Glimpse of Dawnlight*
Xie Yuncheng was right—the old house really didn’t have good soundproofing. The space was cramped too. The bed was a narrow single; when they lay down, it gave an obvious creak that sounded especially loud in the quiet night.
She silently loosened the fist that had been gripping his shirt front. As he kissed her in small, careful pecks, she couldn’t help laughing. “It sounds so… lively.”
Xie Yuncheng seemed helpless as well. He pressed his forehead to hers and chuckled softly. Seeing her eyes curve with a smile, his gaze softened even more. He only kissed her cheek and said in a hoarse voice, “Mm. Next time, we’ll换掉.”
Qin Sang’s face instantly went red. “What ‘next time’? I’m not coming again. In your dreams.”
“Really not coming?” Xie Yuncheng sounded a little regretful. “Or is it that Sang-sang thinks I didn’t do well enough… and I need to go study more?”
“Study?” Qin Sang was genuinely curious. “Where would you even study?”
She poked his shoulder, raised a brow, and said, “Is there something you haven’t confessed? Or are you tricking me because you’re afraid I’ll settle accounts afterward? Don’t tell me you secretly dated before and you’re worried I’ll find out, so you’re pretending to be all pure and innocent with me.”
Qin Sang toyed with the buttons at his collar. Her bright brows and eyes carried a lazy, casual air. Her long hair spread out carelessly; her sweater was rumpled into a mess. The apricot fabric pressed against the dark sheets, and the springtime at the corners of her eyes and brows didn’t look fake at all—only making her more alluring.
“I’m not as petty as you think. It wouldn’t be strange if you’d dated.”
Xie Yuncheng smiled, unable to resist kissing the brows she’d lifted. “You really don’t mind?”
“Okay.” Qin Sang was honest. “I’d be a little sad, sure. But I believe that no matter what, the choice you made back then might not have been the best possible answer, but for the you of that time, it must have been the right one. And that person must have been a good person. Because you’re good—so the one you chose couldn’t have been bad.”
Even if she’d feel a tiny bit sad, she truly wouldn’t get angry or anything. After all, for him, in those ten years they were strangers—at most, former classmates. If during those ten years someone had walked with him, shared a stretch of scenery, even if the ending wasn’t beautiful—
She believed that person must have been a very good, very outstanding woman, worthy of his liking. And the breakup might simply have been because the road they chose in the end was different.
She even lifted her brows with delight and said, “If you look at it another way, that just proves their taste is as good as mine. It’s just that…”
It was just that her cowardice and timidity made her arrive a little later. Those ten missed years were a complete blank for both of them.
“So I really won’t be angry. I just want to understand those ten years—how you lived, whether you lived well.”
“There was no one else.” Xie Yuncheng’s eyes were deep; what lay hidden at the bottom was heartache. “These ten years, no one was like you—no one chose me without hesitation. Sang-sang, these ten years I lived well. I did what I wanted to do and became who I wanted to become. I only regret that I didn’t reunite with you sooner. If those ten years were years we spent together, I think I would have lived even better.”
He regretted that he hadn’t understood Qin Sang deeply enough, that he’d even been ignoring her existence. He had had many chances to make up for that regret, but he hadn’t cared.
The scattered bits he’d learned from others were far from enough to piece together a complete past.
The only thing he was grateful for, perhaps, was that his coldness had preserved the most insignificant kind of “faithfulness.” At least—his firsts were all connected to her.
“And you?” he asked. “Did you live well?”
He knew life hadn’t been easy for her. So he wanted to know whether she had encountered even a little something that made her happy, that offered her comfort.
“Do you want the truth?”
Curled in his arms in a posture that looked like she badly needed a sense of security, Qin Sang hugged him. “Honestly, I’ve always felt these years weren’t that good for me. But thinking back now… it also feels like maybe it wasn’t as terrible as I imagined.”
“I’m not someone with big ambitions. I’m different from you. I never thought about what I’d do in the future. I only felt that if I just followed the steps and lived a plain life, that would be enough.”
People like Xie Yuncheng and Song Peini—people who, from the very beginning, knew what they wanted and what they should do—were probably the minority.
Most people were like her: lost, ignorant, facing a far-off future with nothing but helpless waiting.
Everything she had had been given by her parents.
In comparison, she seemed happier than Xie Yuncheng. He had been fighting for his future, while her future had been paved out by her parents.
Qin Sang laughed. “Don’t laugh at me. Before graduation, my only dream was to be a parasite—thinking about nothing, worrying about nothing. A pest is a pest, fine—as long as life is easy and comfortable.”
“I didn’t want to live that tired. I didn’t want to plan for some distant future.”
Compared to Xie Yuncheng, her family environment was much worse, but it wasn’t terrible. Before anything happened, her parents were loving. Qin Dahai had the ability to support the expenses of their family of three. He even waved a hand and bought her a small apartment in the capital. It was second-hand, but after renovations it wasn’t much different from new.
Qin Dahai didn’t have particularly big expectations for her. Their whole family was pretty “laid-back,” without grand dreams. There was no ‘hoping my daughter becomes a phoenix’ kind of thing. He truly used the best of his ability to give her and her mother the best life possible.
Later…
Qin Sang thought maybe she was too laid-back. That kind of giving-up, lying-flat mentality must have offended the heavens, so they waved a hand and decided to show her some color.
The future she had naturally assumed she would reach, the calm, ordinary life she wanted to pursue, turned into a bubble overnight.
The people she loved most, the ones she cared about most, left her without a sound.
Qin Sang smiled bitterly. “Maybe seventeen-year-old me never imagined that one day I’d stand on that stage. The process was a bit hard, but it’s like you said—how can chasing a dream be smooth sailing? Only the fruit that comes from what I’ve paid, from hard cultivation, is the sweetest—right?”
“I’m already luckier than many people. Xiaoyan’s hearing still needs hearing aids, but now she’s found someone she likes and is doing what she wants. Mom still gets sad sometimes when she misses Dad, but she’s come out of that darkness. And Wen-jie… Wen-jie lost her partner, but now she’s started a stray cat-and-dog rescue center. Her partner had once wanted to be a pet doctor, but his family disagreed so he didn’t study veterinary medicine. Now she pours her remaining time into the cats and dogs—maybe that’s a kind of solace.”
“Oh, right—have you met Xiaoxiao? My little assistant.”
Xie Yuncheng remembered. “I have.”
Qin Sang lay in his arms, smiling brightly. “Don’t let her dazed look fool you—she’s amazing. She’s already a new graduate student in Peking University’s Juris Master program, and she’ll be going to register soon.”
Everyone around her was living well. Maybe they had once endured a long nightmare, but no matter how long a nightmare is, you wake up eventually. The dark clouds will disperse. When you wake, it’s clear sky.
“What about you?”
Xie Yuncheng already knew her life hadn’t been easy, but hearing her say it herself felt different from what he’d learned on his own. In her words, it was always the people around her—everyone but herself.
“Sang-sang, are you happy? Have you gotten the outcome you wanted?”
Qin Sang was silent for a long time—so long the pendulum of the wall clock ticked, ticked, inching forward bit by bit—so long he thought she wouldn’t answer. Then Qin Sang spoke softly:
“I’m not happy. Every night when I close my eyes, I’m terrified that when I wake up the next day, I’ll find that what I have now… was just another dream.”
For a long time, she couldn’t sleep. She was afraid that once she fell asleep, she would wake up the way she used to—only to find the world turned upside down, her life completely wrecked.
She didn’t know about others, but she herself knew clearly that she was sick. Her ways of thinking and acting were contrary to common sense.
She was in pain, so she wanted to be freed.
But on countless nights when she wanted to go to extremes, she would open her door and see Wen Shuyu sleeping on the living-room sofa, keeping watch over her. She only felt more guilty, more ashamed.
Wen Shuyu had already lost the person who loved her most. If Qin Sang left too, Wen Shuyu wouldn’t be able to bear the blow.
She couldn’t collapse. There were still so many people she wanted to protect.
So she forced herself to get better and cooperated actively with treatment. As Doctor Chen said, she changed her lifestyle little by little.
“I’ve experienced loss. Because I’m so afraid of losing again, I never dare laugh loudly. I never dare let people think I’m happy—like I’m doing well.”
She was truly afraid. What if she got too carried away? What if everything she had now was taken back—then what?
“Sang-sang—”
Before Xie Yuncheng could speak, Qin Sang pressed her lips to his, smiling as she looked at him. “You don’t have to say it. I know what you want to say. I don’t need comfort. You don’t need to feel guilty, and you really don’t need to pity me.”
“When I was young, I used to fantasize about a savior. But later I realized—I’m my own savior. The only person who can truly pull me out of suffering is me.”
“Living is hard by default. Misfortune has ten thousand shapes. I once went to teach for a short time in a poor mountain area. That was when I realized: hardship is the norm in this world. I clearly already had so much—yet I was too greedy.”
“Do you know? When they face poverty, when illness strikes, they still smile—because they can only smile. Because they’re powerless to solve it. You have to face it whether you cry or smile, so why make yourself look so miserable?”
That place wasn’t exactly hell on earth, but it was close. Everyone’s suffering was different.
It was only after she returned that she fully understood. And it was then that she thought: she should give up. Her life was still long. She couldn’t be trapped by a vague, illusory dream for another ten years.
“But I’m happy now.” Qin Sang’s smile was bright, as if there wasn’t a trace of gloom. “Because I’ve already gotten what I wanted most.”