Rong Yi is working at her desk.
She appears to be working at her desk, but her eyes occasionally drift towards the large floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the office corridor.
Mo Yuning sits on the sofa sipping coffee, her gaze moving back and forth between Rong Yi and the windows.
“Rong Rong,” she finally couldn’t contain herself and asked cautiously, “What are you really looking at?”
“Looking at scumbags,” Rong Yi said angrily, then lowered her head to resume her work.
Mo Yuning was puzzled, but seeing Rong Yi so engrossed, she decided not to disturb her further: “How about, when you’re free another day, I’ll…”
It dawned on Rong Yi that she was preoccupied with Fan Xingze’s matters, neglecting her friend. She quickly pushed aside less important tasks, sat next to Mo Yuning, and sadly unwrapped a lollipop.
Mo Yuning found it intriguing, “You never used to like sweets.”
The lollipop was cola-flavored, but Rong Yi thought the strawberry one tasted better.
“I’m quitting smoking lately.” Due to some twists of fate, she had gotten used to having a lollipop when the urge to smoke came.
Mo Yuning set her coffee cup on the table, clearly eager for gossip: “As I mentioned last time, Fan Xingze was the boy who secretly admired you in high school. What do you feel now that you know?”
“…Feelings?” Rong Yi evaded, “Perhaps after all this time, he’s probably forgotten…”
“Impossible,” Mo Yuning asserted, “Judging by his attitude towards you at the reunion, I bet he still has feelings for you!”
That’s exactly what was troubling Rong Yi.
Fan Xingze not only had unresolved feelings, but had ended up engaging in an anonymous online relationship with her after accidentally acquiring a third identity. Mo Yuning found this tale too fantastical to believe.
So she changed her approach, “Regarding the accident some time back, I was with Fan Xingze.”
Mo Yuning nodded, indicating she had heard something about it.
“Do you think it’s possible that he hit his head and lost some memories?”
Mo Yuning’s boyfriend was a doctor, so she had some knowledge in this area: “In cases like yours, with extensive hospitalization, they would definitely have done a brain CT scan. If there was brain damage from an impact, it would have been detected during your stay.”
“But recently, he’s really acting strange.” Rong Yi frowned, “His attitude towards me is as if I’m just a regular colleague.”
Unexpectedly, this conversation took a serious turn, and Mo Yuning became somber: “Sister, joking aside, you’re not really having an emotional affair, are you?”
“Not…,” Rong Yi hesitated, “How do I put it…”
“My online boyfriend… is Fan Xingze.”
Mo Yuning: “???”
She gaped in surprise, “What?! So you mean he’s been in a three-year online relationship with you, and you didn’t realize his true identity?”
“Strictly speaking, neither of us discovered the true identity of this online boyfriend,” Rong Yi pondered, “You could say, his other persona had the online relationship with me.”
“Now, his other persona suddenly disappeared, and there has been a significant change in his attitude towards me in the Fan Xingze persona. And because of various coincidences, I found out that my boyfriend is him, and I wanted to confront him in reality. But he suddenly started ignoring me.”
“Did I explain it clearly?”
Mo Yuning nodded, then shook her head, “In that case, you both probably need a psychologist! I heard merging personalities is very dangerous!”
“No, no, no, it’s not merging personalities, that was just an analogy,” Rong Yi rubbed her head, then her eyes lit up – Fan Xingze was walking past her office!
“Look!” she hurriedly nudged Mo Yuning, “Did you see that? Indifferent gaze, no eye contact, quick pace. Oh, he dropped something.”
Rong Yi stood up, cleared her throat, and opened the office door, “Zoe, you dropped something.”
Fan Xingze turned around, picked up the documents on the ground, nodded slightly to Rong Yi as a gesture, then turned and left.
“Wait!” she called out to him, “Are you okay—have you gone to the hospital for a follow-up?” She deliberately tapped her head, “Like a brain CT or something, pay close attention, after all, we both hit our heads. It would be troublesome if you accidentally forget something.”
“Thank you for your concern, Manager Rong.” Fan Xingze adjusted his golden-rimmed glasses, “Everything is normal with the follow-up.”
With that said, he walked away without looking back.
Once his tall figure turned the corner of the corridor, Rong Yi immediately retreated back into her office and slammed the door shut, exclaiming to Mo Yuning in frustration, “See that? This is the attitude he has! He didn’t even ask me to go with him for the follow-up!”
Mo Yuning calmed her down and made her sit, “Rong Rong, I have a speculation. From the initial unrequited love to being in a relationship with you, was it all initiated by him?”
Rong Yi was taken aback.
Indeed, starting from the unrequited love phase, she didn’t even realize it for three years. Later on, when she started dating Emerson, it was Emerson who added her on WeChat first, initiated conversations every day, learned about her preferences, arranged their communication schedule, step by step entering her life, confessing, finding topics, daily gifting…
Almost everything was pushed forward by him in their relationship.
So now, once this driving force is gone, Rong Yi starts to feel lost. Even if she knows Fan Xingze is Emerson, she has no clue on how to continue their relationship, unsure how to proceed without his active involvement.
This was what X meant in the previous scenario, ”You mustn’t forget” and ”You must remember for me”.
No wonder he felt like crying. He knew Rong Yi was not good at these things. If he allowed Fan Xingze to lose his feelings for Rong Yi, it might very well mean their relationship would reach a dead end.
Seeing her realization, Mo Yuning felt he hit the nail on the head and continued, “Relationships require mutual efforts. You always stand still and wait for him. Doesn’t he get tired?”
“I’ve said in school before, the person who can make you fall in love must be persistent and affectionate, to make you feel moved. While you are usually passionate and proactive in other matters, in matters of the heart, you are very passive. Even as mere friends, when we meet at school reunions, did you ever reach out to me first?”
Feeling ashamed, Rong Yi lowered her head. She was used to people coming to her and her life being overwhelmingly busy, she indeed didn’t pay much attention to nurturing relationships.
“I’m sorry…” she sincerely apologized to Mo Yuning, “I will pay more attention in the future…”
Mo Yuning wasn’t bothered, “I’m not asking for an apology from you. I want you to learn from this. Think about whether you have been too passive in this relationship. Perhaps Fan Xingze also thinks the same. He has been taking the lead from thirteen years ago up until now. He might be feeling tired and wanting to experience the beauty of being approached by a beloved one.”
Rong Yi lifted her head abruptly, “Yes! That’s it! I need your help with something!”
The topic transition caught Mo Yuning off guard, “Me?”
Rong Yi nodded, “Just like in school, I’m asking you to be our messenger again!”
After waking up from a long coma, Fan Xingze felt his life suddenly returning to normal.
He vaguely remembered that before the coma, he had been in a semi-conscious state for a long time. Especially after work every day, he would forget what he had done, closing his eyes and opening them only to find it was already time to go to work.
The AI doctor had always assured him that his body was fine, and the results of his hospital check-ups were all good. He felt like he had some kind of incurable disease that only he could know, not fatal but leaving him feeling out of control.
Fortunately, after the long coma, this state disappeared. Although it seemed like something else had also disappeared, at the moment, the missing things didn’t affect his life, so he didn’t pay much attention to it.
What bothered him more was the odd behavior of his colleague, Rong Yi.
He knew that he was in the accident with her, but he couldn’t remember what they were talking about in the car at the time of the accident.
Currently, it seemed that the conversation was unrelated to work. Because once he returned to work, everything went smoothly.
Among colleagues, besides work-related discussions, what else could there be? Since it was unrelated to work, it must have been trivial gossip, so he paid even less attention to it.
Although at first, Rong Yi found his actions a bit excessive, she later understood the boundaries in their interactions, and there were no more inappropriate behaviors.
Besides often catching him gazing blankly or getting unreasonably angry at himself, asking strange questions to which he didn’t know the answers — but these did not affect his research and work, so he didn’t bother about them.
Recently, his focus at work shifted to a collaboration project with his teacher. The teacher had been handling his position in the government project group since he was unconscious from the accident. He was very grateful for the teacher’s dedication.
Rong Yi mentioned to him before that his relationship with the teacher wasn’t good? That was his past self being immature; with a teacher who dedicated so much for him, how could he nitpick?
As he pondered, Rong Yi seemed more like a troublemaker interfering in their teacher-student relationship. He became more distant with her in daily interactions.
After all, they were just colleagues; besides work, there was no need for any other interactions.
On this day, engrossed in project research as usual, he inadvertently took the route past Rong Yi’s office door.
Normally, he would deliberately avoid this path because Rong Yi’s gaze from her office always made him uncomfortable.
That discomfort was inexplicable, like sensing something alarming was about to happen — something with serious consequences once he found out.
Oddly, while Rong Yi’s office wasn’t a necessary route to take, he still found himself walking that way whenever he wasn’t paying attention.
Like his body remembered it on its own.
Today was no different. A bit distracted by work, he turned and ended up outside her office.
Today, she wasn’t sitting as usual in front of her office but chatting with a woman who seemed familiar.
Who was this woman? He racked his brain and vaguely remembered her from a previous alumni gathering. Perhaps an unfamiliar high school classmate.
However, he wasn’t close to any high school classmates. His high school memories were vague, remembering being unpopular and focused on studying all day. There were no happy memories. So he likely just left any memorabilia from alumni gatherings lying around at home, probably taken by the AI butler.
But he recalled seeing Rong Yi at the alumni gathering too? They were classmates?
For some reason, this thought made his heart flutter slightly. However, his rational side reasoned that it was typical since there were only a few good high schools in the city, and chances were high to have former schoolmates among the company employees.
Lost in his jumble of thoughts, he accidentally dropped a document outside Rong Yi’s office, and she stopped him to pick it up.
He actually spoke to her. He couldn’t quite understand how he felt at the moment — his heart pounding fast, yet his rational side disgusted by the incident.
Rong Yi was just a colleague; she must understand that, he had to be clear about it.
There couldn’t be any feelings beyond colleagues between them.
Absolutely not.
Filled with a guilt akin to doing something wrong, he quickly left and as he headed back to his office met a project team member seeking advice on some technical issues, delaying him for over thirty minutes.
It was those thirty minutes that allowed Yuning to catch up with him.
“I’m Yuning, do you remember me?” The woman who was in Rong Yi’s office caught up with him and introduced herself with a gentle smile.
He, of course, didn’t remember, but out of social courtesy, he still nodded: “Hello. What can I help you with?”
“Why can’t we catch up with old friends when there’s nothing going on?” Mo Yuning was clearly the type who was very familiar with people. Can’t you see he’s busy now? He didn’t want to waste time on meaningless socializing.
“I was in the class next to yours,” Mo Yuning said. During high school, I even helped you send things to Rong Rong. I didn’t expect that now you two are colleagues in the same company. It’s interesting how things turned out. It’s all about being in the right place at the right time!” She teased, mentioning things that Fan Xingze had no recollection of.
“I… helped Rong Yi send things?” He asked, puzzled. “Why?”
Mo Yuning was extremely surprised, “Don’t you remember? Judging from your behavior at the class reunion, I thought you had a crush on Rong Rong all this time!”
Fan Xingze furrowed his brows, “I never liked her. Besides, she has a boyfriend.”
“You still remember she has a boyfriend…” Mo Yuning mumbled softly to herself, tilted her head, then looked at him. “But you don’t remember secretly admiring her for three years?”
This left Fan Xingze completely dumbfounded, dropping things from his hands all over the floor. Mo Yuning quickly crouched down to help pick them up.
“…I… what?” He furrowed his brows. “I admired Rong Yi secretly? For three years? When?”
“During high school!” Mo Yuning knocked the files on the ground flat, then handed them to him. “Isn’t something like this unforgettable? Think about what else you might have forgotten. I suggest you get a comprehensive brain check-up at the hospital. Sometimes, even if your head didn’t hit anything, severe shaking can cause repercussions like brain trauma and memory loss. Don’t ignore it!”
She waved at the still dumbfounded Fan Xingze, “I’m meeting Rong Rong for a meal. We’ll chat next time. Bye!”
Mo Yuning was like a little bombshell, disappearing without a trace, leaving Fan Xingze with his mind in a whirlwind.
