After a while, Su Qing retracted her gaze from where the noodle stall used to be and turned her head to look at Qin Jiayan, who remained in the same position he had been in while he was driving and was now staring out the car window.
It was deep into the night, and not a single person could be seen on the school grounds. The entire world seemed utterly silent.
Su Qing could vaguely hear her heart beating progressively faster. She quietly stared at Qin Jiayan's profile for some time before she looked away and said, "Jiayan, can you tell me now why you need to talk to me?"
As she spoke, Qin Jiayan's long, curled eyelashes fluttered lightly, and he continued to fix his gaze on the empty spot outside the window.
Subsequently, he finally said, "Back then, you insisted on breaking up with me. You said that I was poor and that my family's situation would only be a burden on you. You said that it was very tiring for you to be with me and that you could not see our future together. You said you didn't want to waste your youth on me. You even said that you regretted being so foolish to have actually wasted so much time on me over a bowl of noodles..."
As Su Qing listened to Qin Jiayan's narration of their past, she didn't speak and merely lowered her head.
"Toward the end, you even told me that you had met someone else who was wealthy and whose family background was much better than mine. He would allow you to be a young mistress and live a lavish lifestyle.
"I begged you to give me a little more time. I knew I would also be able to provide you with an extravagant life where you would get to feast on the most delectable dishes and wear the most expensive clothes, but you didn't believe me. You said that I was lying to you, and you insisted on breaking up with me.
"Then you abandoned me and got into that luxury car that was worth a few hundred thousand dollars. Do you have any idea how much I hated you as I watched you drive farther and farther away in that car?"
Even after so many years had passed, Qin Jiayan's tone of voice still sounded aggrieved as he talked about the past yet again.
Su Qing subconsciously clutched her clothes, and her fingers began to quiver lightly from the sheer amount of force that she was exerting.
"And for all these years, I had always thought that you must be leading a great life and that you probably already had kids and..."
After she left me, I missed her more than once, but I hated her numerous times.
I had always assumed that her life was wonderful… I never could have imagined that her life was as bad as it is.
I would have thought that knowing what I know now, I would have silently gloated in my heart upon seeing her in the awkward state that she's in… Instead, my heart aches, and I miss her.
And people did question why I never liked any of my blind dates despite having been set up with so many young and pretty women.
I told them that it was probably just my fate that the right one hadn't arrived, but actually it wasn't that fate hadn't brought me the right one but that, many years ago, I had used up all my fate on a girl named Su Qing.
Only I knew that, even though she had married another man, I remained paralyzed in the same spot, waiting foolishly with the hope that she would return to me some day.
As these thoughts ran through Qin Jiayan's mind, tears of sadness suddenly fogged up in his eyes.
"Su Qing."
Qin Jiayan suddenly spoke again and, after he said her name, he slowly turned his gaze away from the view outside the window to stare at Su Qing's face.