8
That evening, just after class, my phone buzzed
It was a short message from my old roommate.
(Leo’s here. He found you.]
I froze for a few seconds.
Then she sent a video.
In the frame, outside the main building by the sea, stood Leo. He was wearing a black overcoat, his hair was a wreck, and his eyes
12.19
Chapter 2
were terrifyingly red.
He was just standing at the school gate, asking every student who walked by like a man possessed, “Have you seen a girl named
Mia?”
“She’s not very tall, slouches a little when she walks, and has a little snaggletooth when she smiles…”
“She likes to sit by the window, she doesn’t eat celery, and she chews on her pen when she writes…”
The comments exploded:
[AHHHHHH HE REALLY CAME! HE CROSSED THE COUNTRY TO FIND HER!]
[He’s memorized all her habits! He’s crazy, he’s truly gone crazy!]
[Please, just see him once, Mia! He’s been standing there all day without eating…]
I stood by the window of the lecture hall, watching that distant figure from afar. He looked like a lost, soulless child.
But I didn’t go down.
I looked down and slowly closed my laptop.
At 8:30 p.m., I went to the cafeteria.
Through the floor–to–ceiling windows, I saw him sitting on the library steps, holding a cup of hot soy milk that had long gone cold.
It was the brand I used to drink all the time.
The comments persisted:
[He’s been looking for you for three whole days. He hasn’t changed his clothes, hasn’t even been back to a hotel.]
[He said he won’t leave until you show up.]
[He bought your favorite soy milk, getting a new one every hour so it wouldn’t be cold when you arrived…]
But in the end, I left through the back door of the cafeteria.
I didn’t want to see him in that pathetic state.
And I didn’t want to let my heart soften.
At midnight, I saw him from my balcony.
He was sitting on a bench below my dorm building, his face buried in his arms, completely still.
The lamplight stretched his shadow long across the pavement, just like the shadow I used to chase all those years ago while he never once looked back.
In that moment, I actually felt a sense of release.
Maybe, in the end, he was the one who pushed me away.
And now…
He was the one who could never get me back.
The next morning. I went to the campus health clinic as usual to do my volunteer translation work.
As I reached the office, I saw Leo sitting outside, a bandage on his forehead and gauze wrapped around his arm.
He saw me and shot to his feet.
