A Sense of Crisis

"I'm right behind you."

Hearing those words, Liang Zhirou froze on the spot. For a moment, she didn't know what she was thinking.

Her eyes suddenly reddened, and she clutched the hem of her clothes, anxious because she didn't know how to respond.

She was willing to believe Chen Lu, and suddenly, she was willing to believe in the future too.

Seeing the girl struggle to hold back her tears, Chen Lu panicked.

"Hey, don't cry! Is my singing really that bad?"

Now it was Chen Lu's turn to be baffled. He didn't think his singing could be that bad, and he'd practiced the guitar for years.

Was she moved?

That couldn't be it either...

If that was enough to move someone, he would have won Mo Yuqing over long ago.

After all, Mo Yuqing had never shown much reaction when she listened to him sing and play.

He couldn't imagine what ripples his words and actions had stirred in the girl's heart.

"Really?" Liang Zhirou asked, her voice thick with tears.

She hadn't noticed at all that she'd already asked him once.

"Of course." He slowly held out his pinky and made a pinky promise with the girl. "I'll always be watching you. So you can't let me down."

Chen Lu glanced at the time, then asked, "Don't you have to go to your part-time job around now?"

Liang Zhirou nodded. There seemed to be a hint of reluctance in her eyes, but it vanished in an instant.

"I'll play one last song, then take you there."

"I can go by myself..."

"Shh~ listen carefully."

Mo Yuqing and the members of the dance club were walking side by side toward the athletic field.

They had just finished rehearsing and were planning to stroll around before going out for hot pot.

With their slender figures and long legs, the girls made a beautiful sight as they walked together across the athletic field that evening.

"Yuqing, has that guy who confessed to you just now liked you for a long time? It didn't look like it was his first time confessing," one of the dance club girls asked, leaning in beside Mo Yuqing, eager for gossip.

The guy was quite handsome; back in high school, he would have been a class heartthrob at the very least. They really hadn't expected Mo Yuqing to turn him down so cleanly, without even a change in expression.

"I don't know. I don't remember him," Mo Yuqing said truthfully. She'd racked her brains but still couldn't remember who he was.

She hadn't even known his name until she received his WeChat message and checked the contact name.

"...Looks like you really do have a lot of guys chasing you. I'm so jealous. I want to know what it feels like to have so many people pursuing me too."

"Speaking of which, I saw a video of your performance on our school's official website! You dance so beautifully! Are you really not going to join us?"

The junior from the dance club beside her was chatting away when she suddenly realized that Mo Yuqing, who had been walking beside her the whole time, was gone.

Only when she looked back did she see Mo Yuqing standing motionless where she was.

"Senior, what's wrong?"

When Mo Yuqing didn't respond, the girl followed her gaze and saw Chen Lu playing the guitar for a girl dressed in perfectly ordinary clothes.

Her opinion of him rose considerably, but for now, everyone's curiosity was fixed on Mo Yuqing.

Could there be some story between those two?

That can't be, right?

Didn't they fail to exchange a single word back then?

Mo Yuqing's long eyelashes fluttered up and down like butterfly wings as she blinked.

She didn't notice that her hands had clenched into fists.

She recognized the girl beside Chen Lu at once. She was the same one who had eaten with him before.

Chen Lu was still singing and playing with complete focus, glancing at the girl beside him from time to time. He wasn't looking in their direction at all.

Mo Yuqing felt deeply uncomfortable, with an inexplicable sense that a treasure she'd had all to herself had been snatched away.

He learned the guitar for me...

He only learned because I liked it...

I should be the one sitting next to him. What gives you the right to listen?

Scenes from the past kept flashing before Mo Yuqing's eyes. Back then, she'd merely remarked while watching videos that she thought guys who could play guitar were handsome, and Chen Lu had started learning the very next day.

He seemed unused to playing with a pick, and during that period, she often saw bandages wrapped around his fingers.

Later, during a high school study period when their homeroom teacher was absent, Chen Lu had produced a guitar from who knew where and run up to the front of the classroom. Amid everyone's cheers, he'd shouted for Mo Yuqing to listen carefully...

From then on, whenever she found a song she liked, she would forward it straight to Chen Lu, and he could usually learn it by the next day.

But now he had started playing for another girl...

If their encounter in the cafeteria had merely made her uncomfortable, this time she had a very real premonition that someone was going to snatch Chen Lu away.

For the first time in her life, she felt what a certain phrase meant, and for the first time, she felt it because of Chen Lu.

It was a phrase that had never appeared in her heart before-

A sense of crisis.

Chen Lu was far more determined than she'd thought. Ever since she rejected his confession for the second time that day, she hadn't received another message from him.

He hadn't taken the initiative to back down and admit he was wrong, as he had every time she'd lost her temper before.

Would Chen Lu, who had stayed by her side almost every step of the way since they were children, really leave her?

"Yuqing, are you okay?" a girl asked in confusion, waving a hand in front of her eyes.

Mo Yuqing finally came to her senses. "...I'm fine. Let's go."

Seeing that Mo Yuqing didn't look quite right, the others didn't press her and changed the subject. "What should we eat tonight? A new Haidilao opened nearby. Want to try it?"

"Isn't Haidilao just an idiot tax?" another girl couldn't help grumbling.

"You go ahead. I need to go home," Mo Yuqing said, turning and walking quickly toward the school gate. She didn't want Chen Lu to notice her.

"Aren't you coming with us?"

"Next time. My mom's coming back from abroad today. I was only planning to walk around with you for a bit before leaving anyway."

The girls watched her graceful figure and looked at one another.

Mo Yuqing returned to her front door, composed herself, and knocked.

She hadn't lied. Her mother really had told her she was coming back from abroad today.

It had been a year.

Ever since her parents divorced when she was little, her mother had been constantly traveling abroad.

She wanted to experience what it was like to come home and have her mother open the door for her, like other people did.

It was something she'd barely experienced since childhood.

Knock, knock, knock.

No one answered.

Her already gloomy mood plunged to freezing point.

After knocking a few more times, she had no choice but to enter the code and open the door herself.

The lights weren't on inside as she'd imagined, and there was no one waiting for her.

As usual, the light from the sound-activated lamp outside slipped in ahead of her.

Mo Yuqing bit her lower lip and collapsed listlessly onto the sofa without even stopping to change her shoes, like a deflated ball.

After a long while, she seemed to regain a little strength at last. She took out her phone and called her mother.