I snapped back from my thoughts as I realized I was already home. I locked the car and stepped into the elevator. When I got to my door, I took out a wet wipe from my bag and wiped my face—I didn't want anyone to notice that I had been crying. I opened the door and saw my girlfriend, Chen Yili, sitting in the living room watching TV.
"Are you ready to eat? Everything's ready," she said, gesturing for me to join her for dinner.
I nodded and said, "Sure," then headed straight to the bedroom to change my clothes.
During dinner, I was distracted, barely paying attention. Noticing something was off, Chen Yili softly asked, "What's wrong? You don't seem yourself today."
Forcing a smile, I replied, "It's nothing, probably just tired from work." I didn't want to tell her what had happened today.
"Do you want to rest early? You don't look so good," she said with concern.
"Yeah, maybe later." I kept my head down, poking at my food, feeling no appetite.
After dinner, Chen Yili went to wash the dishes while I sat on the couch, staring blankly. The familiar opening tune of the evening news began to play on the TV, and in a split second, the same old news anchors appeared. I didn't even let a second pass before I forcefully turned off the TV with a sharp "click," tossing the remote onto the table.
I pulled out my phone and opened a locked album. It was full of pictures of Lü Xiaoran. She loved taking pictures, and sometimes she'd even send me a few sexy ones over the years. As I scrolled through the photos of her posing in different styles, I couldn't help but find it all ironic. Then, I opened our old WeChat chat history, guessing that her last post might've been on the day she ended her life. Sure enough, there was a photo she posted, along with a caption. In the picture, she was smiling, lying on what looked like a bed, her eyes gently closed. The caption read: It's time to have a beautiful sleep.
It looked like she had held the phone up herself and closed her eyes for the photo. That "beautiful sleep" turned out to be her last. She was prepared for it.
"What are you looking at?" Chen Yili's voice suddenly came from behind me, and I quickly locked my phone.
"Nothing, just some design sketches," I said, trying to sound nonchalant.
Luckily, she didn't press further and went back to working on her computer. Once she left, I pulled out my phone again and started going through all of the photos she had sent me over the years. I scrolled back further and further, wanting to start from the very first picture. Since I never deleted our chat history, I realized we had met before WeChat existed, so I opened up QQ to look at our older messages.
The first picture I found was of her in the same work outfit she wore the day we first met. The background looked like a café. Immediately, I was transported back to that memory.
That was probably our first time meeting alone. After exchanging numbers at the bubble tea shop, we started messaging each other frequently within about a week. At the time, I didn't have a girlfriend, and honestly, I liked her. But there was always something a bit mysterious about her. Her responses in our chats seemed far more mature than her age, and naturally, I tried to appear even more mature.
So, we kept chatting back and forth on QQ, and eventually, we agreed to meet for drinks one weekend. She said Saturday afternoon worked for her because she worked shifts at a jewelry store. She didn't have weekends off, but she finished at 2 PM on Saturdays and didn't have to be back until the next morning. We decided to meet at a café nearby.
When we sat down, we picked up our conversation from QQ, and I started to learn more about her. She told me she had started working when she was 15, right after middle school. Her first job was at a cosmetics store, and later she worked at a big local restaurant before bouncing around various jobs. Throughout our conversation, she spoke in a big-sister tone, even though I was six years older than her. But that didn't really matter; I felt a real connection with her, and it seemed like she was open to something more as well.
Since I was an interior designer, we talked about professional stuff, and I was impressed by how much she knew. At least she wasn't talking nonsense.
"You seem to know quite a bit, even about CAD," I remarked.
"I went to a vocational school for a while. My major was computers. I learned some CAD, and I'm also good with basic Office programs. Back at the cosmetics store, I was the one who made the inventory spreadsheets," she said proudly.
"Wow! You even made those spreadsheets? That's impressive!" I said.
"Well, the boss gave me a template, but no one else could figure out how to use the computer, so I ended up doing all the data entry," she laughed.
"Pfft… I thought you were some kind of expert. Entering data isn't that hard," I teased.
"I'll smack you! I was the only one in the entire store who could do it," she playfully pretended to be upset, laughing.
As we chatted, her phone rang. She glanced at the screen, then at me, looking like she wanted to say something but hesitated. Finally, she answered the call: "Hey, Zhao."
"I'm at the Xifu Café on Nanjing Road. Uh-huh… with a friend. Are you coming over? Oh… alright, give me a call tonight." She hung up and turned to me. "That was my former boss from the restaurant. Also, my ex."