You Don't Always Have to Eat a Piece of Candy When You're Sad

Liang Zhirou watched Chen Lu walk slowly toward her and asked nervously, "W-what's wrong?"

Chen Lu held his phone up in front of her. The girl in the picture looked a little shy, but it was clear she was in a good mood. Standing in a sea of illuminated flowers, she wore a pale green, waist-cinching long dress, her hair falling straight around her. The picture had a sense of peaceful, untroubled days.

But it seemed to be missing something.

Chen Lu put his phone back in his pocket and looked at the girl blinking blankly before him. After a moment's hesitation, he pressed both thumbs into her cheeks, forcing the corners of her mouth upward, and asked softly, "Haven't you been happy these past few days?"

"I have," Liang Zhirou said earnestly, her words a little indistinct with Chen Lu pressing her cheeks. "I've been really happy."

Every day since I met you has been like a dream.

Like the first time Chen Lu sent her a message, the first time he drank the congee she made, the first time he played the guitar for her, and the first time he told her, "I'm here for you."

Even just now, when she had put on the dress Chen Lu bought her.

She had been happy every time.

"You never showed it. Ever since I met you, I haven't really been able to tell when you're happy." Chen Lu withdrew his hands and let out a breath. "Have you been bottling up your feelings for too long?"

"I've never thought about bottling them up."

Liang Zhirou was a little puzzled herself. "I just didn't want to cry."

Chen Lu couldn't help letting out a chuckle. "And in the end, you couldn't really hold back your tears, but you ended up forgetting how to smile, is that it?"

As soon as he said it, he frowned slightly.

On closer thought, although Liang Zhirou's eyes often welled up with tears, she rarely actually cried.

At least, given how she had grown up, she was already not much different from someone who couldn't cry.

"Take your time." Chen Lu looked at the girl, who had lowered her head, and spoke gently.

At that moment, he seemed to see once again the girl at the school gate, who had kept her tears in her eyes and hadn't dared to cry even as she was being scolded.

"From now on, don't suppress your feelings so much. Laugh when you want to laugh, and cry when you want to cry."

As he spoke, he gently poked her cheek. "Anyway, when you laugh, I'll laugh with you, and when you cry, I'll wipe your tears. Why hold them back?"

"Things are different now, you know? Maybe before, you only had a mom who worried about you being bullied, so you didn't dare cry."

"But now you have me. I can share your sadness."

"When you're sad, you don't always have to eat a piece of candy."

The moment he finished speaking, Chen Lu suddenly felt what seemed to be a drop of warm liquid slide over his finger and fall before his eyes.

When he turned his attention back to the girl's face, it was already streaked with tears.

Chen Lu said nothing, only gently wiping Liang Zhirou's tears away.

Although he looked perfectly calm on the surface,

he was freaking the hell out inside.

Holy crap! Why?!

Why did she suddenly start crying when everything was fine? I wasn't mentally prepared for this at all.

If other people see us, will they think I'm bullying an innocent young lady?

Forget it. Let them misunderstand. As long as I'm not embarrassed, they'll be the ones who are.

Unfortunately, in the two seconds Chen Lu spent looking at the passersby, he happened to miss the corners of the girl's mouth lifting ever so slightly, unnoticed, as she cried.

Perhaps tired of standing and crying, the girl rested her forehead against Chen Lu's shoulder and continued wiping her tears.

After a long while, the utterly endearing girl finally wiped her tears dry.

Chen Lu chuckled softly, thinking that girls really were made of water, if they could cry for so long.

As for why she had cried, he wasn't sure, and there was no need to ask.

Perhaps she had been moved, or perhaps she had wanted to cry out all the grievances she had suffered before. It was hard to say.

In any case, it was a good thing she could let it out.

Under cover of night, the two walked toward the place where they had parked.

"You leaned on my shoulder for ages just now. You'll have to pay me back for that, I'm telling you," Chen Lu joked, looking up at the moon that had just emerged from between the clouds.

"Then... next time, you can lean on me and cry too?"

"...No need."

When the car stopped at the entrance to the alley, Liang Zhirou didn't rush to get out because her eyes were still a little swollen.

Chen Lu even went to a pharmacy to buy her an ice pack for a cold compress.

After all, at the very least, this would worry Liang Zhirou's mother. At worst, his lifelong reputation for innocence was at stake.

"Remember to send me the photos you took," Liang Zhirou said with her eyes closed.

Chen Lu slowly shook his head. "The ones I took this time aren't good enough."

"I thought they were pretty good." Liang Zhirou took the ice pack away and looked at him curiously.

But she saw that Chen Lu had a grave look on his face.

For some reason, he gave a wry smile. "That's just how it is with a phone. It would've been better if I'd had a decent DSLR."

His own DSLR was broken, and he didn't want to use the one Mo Yuqing had given him. He was thinking about when to buy another one.

Liang Zhirou looked at Chen Lu's gloomy expression and blinked thoughtfully.

At the entrance to the women's dormitory area.

Mo Yuqing looked helplessly at the boy kneeling on one knee before her, holding a bouquet of flowers.

He had to be a freshman who hadn't asked around about her family background. Otherwise, he wouldn't have "casually" parked his sports car nearby.

He had probably fallen for her after seeing her performance at the evening show...

"Thank you for liking me, but I'm sorry. There's someone I like," she said earnestly.

These days, whenever Mo Yuqing rejected someone's confession, she would thank them for liking her.

But the person she most wanted to thank had already been driven away by her own hand.

The boy looked utterly bewildered, as if he had just heard something out of the Arabian Nights.

"There's someone you like? Then why isn't he with you? Surely no one could turn you down?"

Mo Yuqing's lips curved into a somewhat bitter smile, but she said nothing.

He wouldn't have turned me down before...

If I hadn't made one mistake after another.

The boy still didn't seem willing to give up. He slowly got to his feet and gazed at the prettiest girl he had ever seen.

He really had never been rejected before. After seeing Mo Yuqing perform, he had dumped his girlfriend on the spot, never once considering that his confession might fail.

"Do I really not have a chance?" he asked, unwilling to accept it and confused.

Mo Yuqing remained indifferent, as ruthless as ever. "You'd be better off spending your energy on someone who loves you. Don't waste your time on me."

No one will ever have a chance again.

Mo Yuqing had never paid other boys any mind to begin with, and now there was even less room in her eyes for anyone else.

With that, she turned and walked toward her dormitory.

On the way, the voices of a boy and a girl suddenly reached her ears.

"It's so late! Why did you come all the way over here?" The girl sounded a little reproachful, but more than that, she sounded touched.

"I... I was worried your stomach would hurt. Your period cramps are so bad." The boy kept scratching his head, clearly unable to tell whether his girlfriend was angry or touched.

"Actually, period cramps can be cured," the girl said quietly.

Her boyfriend was so excited to hear that, it seemed he would have been willing to gather all seven Dragon Balls if that was what it took. He hurriedly asked, "How?"

The girl leaned close to him with her hands behind her back, her eyes curving like crescent moons. "It'll be fine once I have a baby someday."

Mo Yuqing stopped where she was and watched them quietly.

Whether or not they had feelings for her, probably no one would have imagined that Mo Yuqing could envy a couple.

The exceptionally beautiful, aloof girl gazed at the lovely scene before her, her eyes full of envy. The corners of her mouth curved upward without her noticing, happy for someone else's happiness.

Yet glistening tears gathered at the corners of her own eyes.

She took out her phone and looked at the last message she had sent Chen Lu.

As she had expected, there was still no reply.

Mo Yuqing bit her lip hard.

If our parents weren't so close, you would have deleted me long ago, wouldn't you...

She knew very well that if she posted on Moments, plenty of people would line up to send her some.

But none of that was what she wanted.

She tilted her head up to look at the streetlight beside her. Its bright light grew increasingly blurry in her eyes, as though seen through a layer of mist.

Two round moons hung in the night sky, one white and one yellow. For a moment, she couldn't tell which was the moon.

"I really do miss you, Chen Lu..."