Yan Zhen didn't know how long he had been lying on the icy ground. He only felt that his heart seemed to have lost the ability to beat, and every part of his body was icy cold.
He opened his eyes and stared at the pitch - black night sky, as dark as thick ink. He thought it might be better to just die like this. His life seemed like a complete failure. He had been fooled like a fool for four years. He couldn't hold onto what he wanted, and even his family was disappointed in him. There seemed to be nothing left for him to be attached to in this world.
It would be good if he died, for then he could go and see Xiaoxi.
Suddenly, something fluttered down from the sky. It gradually grew larger in his sight and finally landed in his pupil. The icy feeling spread in his eye socket and then turned into scalding tears that rolled down from the corners of his eyes.
It was snowing.
More white snowflakes drifted down from the sky, landing on his hair, face, and clothes. Then, his tears could no longer be held back and gushed out like a broken dam.
He raised his hand to try to wipe away his tears, and his fingertips touched a hard object. He suddenly remembered that Xu Zixi had thrown something at him before leaving. He struggled to sit up from the ground and, with the help of the light, examined the thing in his hand.
It was a broken phone with the screen completely shattered. But Yan Zhen recognized it at a glance. It was the phone that Yuan Xi had once used. On the back of the phone, there was a cartoon sticker of a hazelnut that he had personally pasted on.
[Brother Yan Zhen, we're going on an external training session with our teacher again. But I don't want to go. I won't be able to turn on my phone and contact the outside world there. I don't want to be separated from you.]
[How long will this training last?]
[Ten days.]
[I'll paste this hazelnut on your phone. It'll be my avatar. It'll accompany you in my place. Be good and train hard. You'll surely become the world's best dancer in the future.]
He quickly got up from the ground, tightly clutching the phone, and rushed outside. The road was a bit icy because of the snow. He fell again and again while running and even rolled down the stairs. But he seemed not to feel any pain at all and quickly got up from the ground.
He searched like a madman for a phone repair shop near the police station. But it was already two o'clock in the morning, and all the shops on the street had their doors tightly shut. None of them were open. At each repair shop, he banged on the door hard. Finally, after running through countless streets and banging until his two palms had lost all feeling, he finally managed to knock open the door of a repair shop.
When the shop owner opened the door, Yan Zhen could hear a baby crying and a woman trying to soothe the child coming from inside.
The shop owner must have been woken up by the baby's cries. Hearing the knocking, he thought something serious had happened. When he opened the door and saw only Yan Zhen, his tone was very unfriendly:
"What are you knocking on the door for in the middle of the night? Don't you know what time it is? I'll call the police and report you for disturbing the peace!"
Yan Zhen rushed forward, grabbed the man, and held out the broken phone. "Fix it for me! I'll pay you no matter how much it costs!"
"Get out! I'm not fixing it." The shop owner impatiently waved away his hand and tried to push him out of the door.
Yan Zhen knelt directly in front of the shop owner and said,
"Please. This is... this is my late wife's phone. There's something very important to me in it. Please, you must fix it for me!"
The baby's crying finally stopped. A woman holding a baby walked out from the inner room and said to the shop owner,
"Since it's something of his late wife's, just fix it for him. It's like doing good deeds for our child."
Since his wife had spoken, and seeing that Yan Zhen's expression was truly grief - stricken, the shop owner had no choice but to take the phone from his hand and resignedly turn around and sit down at the operating table.
After the shop owner turned on the light, he picked up the phone and examined it carefully, frowning tightly. Yan Zhen felt so nervous that his hands and feet went weak. He asked, "Can you fix it?"
The shop owner glanced at him and said, "Wait."
The waiting time was long and agonizing. Yan Zhen looked towards the operating table countless times, only seeing the shop owner's back. He would sometimes look at his watch, sometimes at the swirling snow outside, and sometimes at the photo of a family of three that the shop owner had placed on the table.
The baby's crying gradually stopped, the woman's soothing voice also faded away, the snow outside stopped, and the hour hand had unknowingly moved a long way. The sky gradually turned from dark to bright. Finally, the shop owner turned off the work lamp on the table, picked up the phone with a replaced screen and charged battery, turned around, and said to Yan Zhen,
"It's fixed."
Yan Zhen was overjoyed. He took the phone, took out his wallet, and pulled out all the money in it, intending to give it to the shop owner. The shop owner only took out two bills and said, "Hurry up and go. I need to go back and catch up on my sleep."
After being driven out of the shop by the shop owner, Yan Zhen didn't care how dirty the ground was. He just sat down on the ground in front of the repair shop, holding the phone and flipping through it. His two hands were trembling uncontrollably.
The wallpaper on the phone's desktop was still the one he was familiar with four years ago. Tears welled up in his eyes again and dripped onto the phone screen. He quickly wiped them away with his sleeve and, with trembling fingers, opened the phone's photo album.
Almost all the photos in the album were group photos of him and Yuan Xi. The second - last photo was a selfie of Yuan Xi. Her smile was so sweet, and behind her was the background wall that he had had someone set up in the bar for her birthday four years ago. He had originally planned to propose to her in front of this flower wall.
The fifth photo was a very beautiful three - tiered cake. On top of the cake was a cute cartoon fondant little girl in a white dance costume. Next to it was written: Happy 18th birthday, Yuan Xi.
He had also had this cake made.
Did she take the selfie and the photo of the cake because he never showed up, planning to show them to him later?
Even after being jilted by him and humiliated in front of so many people, did she still keep these photos?
More and more tears dripped down, and he quickly wiped them away.
[The day she took the overdose and committed suicide was your engagement day with Yuan Ya'er.]
Suddenly remembering this sentence, he quickly exited the photo album and rummaged through the phone.
Why was it such a coincidence that she committed suicide on the day of his engagement with Yuan Ya'er?
Yan Zhen soon found the answer.
On the day of his engagement, Yuan Xi's email inbox received an email. The content of the email was a group photo of him and Yuan Ya'er at the engagement banquet.
In that photo, he was smiling happily with his arm around Yuan Ya'er's waist, and there was a shiny engagement ring on his finger.
Besides that, there was also a sentence that made his blood run cold.
[Elder sister Xiaoxi, Brother Yan Zhen told me today that I'm the wife he's always dreamed of. We got engaged today in front of our parents. Can you bless us?]