XR CH69
Chapter 69: P. Desolate Snowy Night
A few days after his mother’s passing, Ning Yixiao received a call from Xu Zhi.
He had learned of the news from somewhere and offered a few words of comfort over the phone. But because of what had happened with Su Hui, Ning Yixiao’s impression of him was poor, and he received the condolences with cold indifference.
“Your mother worked hard her whole life — who would have thought that in the end she still… Ah, I should have done more to repay her kindness. I haven’t gone back to see her these past two years. I owe everything I have today to her.”
Ning Yixiao had no patience for empty pleasantries. “Is there anything else?”
“Nothing much — I just didn’t want you carrying too much pain alone. Don’t be too sad. If you ever need anything, come find me.” Xu Zhi continued, “I’m in a position now where I can offer some help. Did your mother leave you any last words? If there were wishes she never got to fulfill, tell me — I’ll help her see them through.”
Ning Yixiao sensed something vaguely off about all this, but things had been hectic lately, and a colleague was calling for him from behind. He wrapped it up quickly. “She didn’t leave anything. Thanks for your concern. I need to get back to work.”
What Ning Yixiao never expected was that his internship evaluation would come back as a failure.
Among all the students assessed alongside him, he ranked first — in academic credentials, in ability, even in total workload during the internship period. Yet when he pressed his supervisor for an explanation, the answer he received was: some things simply have no reason.
Ning Yixiao despised that kind of non-answer, and yet he was powerless against it. He walked out of the office building carrying a cardboard box, thinking it was an ending. He didn’t realize it was only the beginning.
Applications rejected. Visa denied. One setback arrived on the heels of another. By the time he recognized that none of this was normal and went back to demand an explanation, he was met with a closed door he hadn’t anticipated.
Coming out, he bumped into someone — a familiar face. It took him a moment to place it: Feng Cheng, someone he’d briefly crossed paths with before, who had also attended the academic conference in New York.
Ning Yixiao bowed his head and apologized. Feng Cheng shook his head and said it was fine. Ning Yixiao walked around him and moved on.
Walking through the empty campus, Ning Yixiao suddenly missed Su Hui — missed him with a piercing clarity, wanted to see him, wanted to hold him. He had worked so hard for so many years, and for the first time, he understood that pushing yourself to the very limit didn’t guarantee you’d get what you wanted.
The night before, he had let slip a wish from the bottom of his heart. The truth was, in so many moments with Su Hui, the thought of running away together had crossed his mind. The distance between them was vast — too vast to easily bridge. And if it couldn’t be bridged, it seemed the only way they could be together was to drag Su Hui down from his heights and pull him into the same mud he himself stood in.
Ning Yixiao refused to do that. He didn’t want Su Hui to suffer even a little.
He instinctively dialed Su Hui’s number, but no one answered. He remembered then that Su Hui didn’t have his phone with him, and decided to head back to be with him first and figure out the rest later.
On the way back, Ning Yixiao’s mind was in turmoil. He sat on the bus in a daze, swaying with the motion of the road, and then without cause or warning, a sharp pain hit his chest — as though something had stabbed deep into him.
But the pain didn’t last long. About a minute.
The hand clutching his chest slowly relaxed. He noticed something in the inner chest pocket of his cotton coat — something hard, flat, rectangular. He unzipped the pocket and reached inside. He pulled out a Buddhist amulet he had never seen before.
The faint light of the grey sky outside the glass window fell upon the amulet’s gilded surface, and it shone brilliantly.
Su Hui had caused a scene at the hospital — a real one, the kind that looked like something out of a ward for the severely unwell. Hysterical. When the psychiatrists and nurses came running, they were startled by the blood on the floor.
They tried to calm him down, and enlisted his family to help. Once Su Hui’s emotions had quieted slightly, a broad-shouldered young doctor moved around behind him and wrenched the fruit knife from his hand. A male nurse, seeing his chance, stepped forward immediately and injected the Su Hui pinned to the floor with a sedative.
While taking down the patient’s history, the doctor asked, “Has the patient ever displayed this kind of hysteria, self-harm, or aggression during previous manic episodes?”
His grandmother shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “No… Xiao Hui has never been like this…”
They moved Su Hui to the psychiatric ward. They also diagnosed him with malnutrition and severe sleep deprivation, and put him on an IV drip while he was unconscious.
He didn’t wake up until the following afternoon. His grandmother had been keeping watch in his room, and had dozed off sideways on the sofa, looking utterly worn down.
Su Hui felt both resentment and tenderness. He knew he wasn’t a good grandson. Not a good partner, either. Not much of anything.
He pulled the IV needle from his hand, got out of bed in his hospital gown, and found that the sedatives had hit him hard — he was dizzy, weak-legged, barely able to stay upright. He braced himself against the wall.
He shuffled to the door of his room, only to find it locked. He was trapped inside.
Su Hui tried to force it — and promptly lost his balance and fell.
The sound jolted his grandmother awake. She rushed over, terrified, and helped him up. “Xiao Hui, what happened? What hurts? Come on — let Grandma help you back to bed.”
Su Hui shook his head and quietly knelt in front of her. His complexion was ashen, his lips colorless, his neck wrapped in gauze. He looked utterly devoid of life.
“Grandma…” His voice was hoarse from all the screaming the day before, and he had no strength left to speak. “Let me out… please…”
His grandmother couldn’t bear to look at him like this. She was frantic, and the moment she opened her mouth, she began to cry. “Xiao Hui — in the state you’re in, how could Grandma possibly let you go?!”
Su Hui kept his eyes downcast, his expression desolate. “I won’t make trouble anymore. I want to see Grandfather — I need to apologize. Let me go to him…”
His grandmother looked at him, heartbroken, but there was nothing else she could do. She found a nurse and had the door unlocked.
Su Hui no longer had the energy to cause another scene. Supported by his grandmother, he made his way from his room to his grandfather’s, every step an effort.
It was only after going mad that Su Hui realized — going mad didn’t change anything. Nothing did. No matter what he did, it was never going to shake their decision.
After a full night of unconsciousness, he hadn’t dreamed at all. Only in the moment of waking had something surfaced — Ning Yixiao’s hometown; Ning Yixiao in that crumbling earthen house, eating tangyuan, crying quietly against his chest.
In that instant, Su Hui stopped expecting anything at all.
He arrived at Ji Tailu’s room to find his mother pouring water for the old man’s medication. Xu Zhi was there too, chatting beside him. Something struck Su Hui then — a quiet suspicion: that this family might actually be better off without him.
Ji Ya’nan was the first to notice Su Hui. She quickly set down the glass and hurried over to let him in.
“You’re awake? Why did you come over on your own like this?” She turned anxiously to his grandmother. “Has the doctor checked on him?”
Su Hui didn’t answer. He walked into the room and stopped in front of Ji Tailu.
He looked like a different person from the day before — utterly calm, running on what felt like his last thread of breath, thin as a sheet of paper.
Su Hui noticed how old Ji Tailu actually looked. The face was all creases and lines. In a hospital gown, there was no trace of the formidable figure he had been in his younger years — just a stubborn old man, unremarkable as anyone.
“What are you doing back here?” Ji Tailu’s lips trembled slightly as he recalled the events of the day before. “Come to take the last of my years along with everything else?”
He broke into a cough. Ji Ya’nan moved behind him and patted his back. “Please, don’t.”
“Don’t? Look at the son you raised — pulling a knife on people in a hospital, in front of everyone. Why didn’t you just stab me through the heart?!”
Su Hui’s face remained blank. His hands hung at his sides. He spoke in a ruined voice: “Grandfather. I’m sorry.”
Ji Tailu looked at him and said nothing.
“I know you’re furious with me. You can be. I was wrong — and this time I genuinely know it.” Su Hui said each word against his own will, forcing a deep breath between each sentence to keep going.
“I… I’ll do as you say. All of it. Shanghai. Treatment. I’m willing. I’ll end things with him. No more contact. I mean it. I swear.”
Ji Tailu studied his face in silence.
Su Hui felt there were no tears left in him, and his heart had gone numb. He just needed to finish saying what he’d come to say — to win, at the very end, one small thing that had always rightfully belonged to Ning Yixiao.
“Grandfather, I have one request. Just one, very small one. Can you let him go abroad without interference? You believe in Buddha too — consider it an act of merit. Let him leave. Once he’s overseas, we won’t be able to see each other anyway — a cleaner break that way, isn’t it?”
The silence in the room lasted ten full minutes. To Su Hui, it felt like ten years.
After days of standoff, Ji Tailu finally relented — slightly, and still in the manner of someone issuing a command.
“End it quickly. We start preparing to move to Shanghai tomorrow. I gave you time, and you didn’t use it wisely.”
Su Hui nodded. “Alright. Just keep your word.”
He turned to leave. At the threshold, he heard his grandfather’s voice once more.
“I never intended to destroy anyone’s future. But Su Hui — look at yourself yesterday. You were a complete madman. What kind of future does he have, being with someone like you?”
Su Hui stopped walking. He stood still for a moment, and when he spoke, his tone was almost revelatory. “You’re right.”
Ji Ya’nan followed him out and took hold of his arm, walking with him down the corridor.
After a few steps, Su Hui halted. “Mom — can you do one more thing for me?”
“What is it?”
“I want to borrow 200,000 yuan. Right now. I’ll pay you back.” His eyes were shot through with red, full of pleading. “Please.”
Ji Ya’nan had seen Xu Zhi’s report on Ning Yixiao. She understood exactly what Su Hui intended to do with the money. She didn’t object. She didn’t ask a single question. She simply agreed. “Okay. Mom will take care of it. I’ll have it transferred to your account shortly — handle it yourself.”
“Thank you, Mom.”
Su Hui was helped back to his own room, but he had no intention of lying down. He slowly pulled on his down jacket, changed his shoes, and looked ready to leave.
Outside, heavy snow had fallen. Ji Ya’nan didn’t want him going out. “Xiao Hui, don’t go — it’s freezing, and the doctor said your body is completely run down. You need rest. If you go out in this and catch a cold, what if you develop a fever?”
Su Hui bent over his shoelaces. “I just need to see him once. To say things properly.”
Ji Ya’nan’s heart ached to see him like this. “Call him instead — use my phone.”
Su Hui shook his head, stubborn. “No. It has to be in person. A phone call or a message won’t do.”
His eyes were unfocused. He stood up, steadied his breathing, borrowed his mother’s phone, and sent Ning Yixiao a message — asking him to meet at the back gate of the park near the rental apartment at nine o’clock.
Seemingly not trusting that he wouldn’t spiral again, Ji Tailu sent several people along with him. They packed into a car — a full load. Ji Ya’nan sat in the passenger seat and kept turning to look at him. Su Hui stared out at the snow, motionless. And she was suddenly reminded of the day Su Hui’s father died — thirteen-year-old Su Hui had sat in the car exactly like this, expressionless, holding his father’s urn in both hands.
But the Su Hui of today had nothing in his hands. Nothing at all. As though what he was losing had never truly belonged to him to begin with — leaving no mark, no trace.
They parked in the lot behind the park’s rear entrance, swallowed by darkness. Su Hui walked alone to a bench about ten meters away, sat down, and waited quietly for twenty minutes.
Soon, a tall figure came running from the distance. Ji Ya’nan knew it was Ning Yixiao. She found she couldn’t bear to watch and turned her face away.
By the time Ning Yixiao arrived, the snow was falling heavily. Worried it wasn’t safe to ride, he had waited for a bus instead — but the night buses ran so infrequently that he ended up arriving close to nine-thirty.
Still, when he came — there was Su Hui under the lamplight, and the knot in his chest slowly eased. Su Hui sat quietly on the snow-covered bench in a white down jacket, looking as though he might dissolve into the swirling flurries and disappear.
“Su Hui?”
Ning Yixiao walked toward him, breath misting white in the cold air, a smile on his face. Of all the days he could remember, this felt to Su Hui like the most alive — the most real.
Su Hui looked up at him. He rose to his feet a beat too late. Under the lamplight, Ning Yixiao’s shadow stretched long across the snow, heavy and still.
Tonight is so beautiful. Why does it have to be tonight.
For a fleeting, fractured moment, Su Hui was seized by a thought — mad and cruel. He wanted to set this whole city on fire, burn everyone in it down before dawn broke, leave mountains of ash and bone, so that no one would mind if he and Ning Yixiao were buried together.
“Coming back with me?” Ning Yixiao reached out and touched Su Hui’s face, felt how cold it was — he must have been sitting in the snow for too long. “You’re frozen. Let me warm you up.”
He cupped Su Hui’s face in both hands, very gently.
Never mind. Su Hui let go of those terrible thoughts and reminded himself to hold onto something kind instead.
Through all the haze of these past weeks, the one thing he had tracked with precision was the date — because he had wanted so much to celebrate Ning Yixiao’s birthday. To buy him a cake. To sit with him while he made a wish and blew out the candles. To kiss him after the wish was made. To give him a gift made by hand.
Such small wishes. Such ordinary ones.
Su Hui knew now that he wouldn’t get to do any of them. Maybe not ever. And the moment that realization fully landed, something enormous and crushing pressed down on him, squeezing the air from his lungs.
“What’s wrong?” Ning Yixiao looked down at him and pulled him close. “Are you feeling unwell? Depressive episode coming on? Let’s go home first, okay?”
“Ning Yixiao.”
Su Hui finally opened his mouth. Every word dragged something heavy behind it.
He looked at Ning Yixiao, and let Ning Yixiao look back at him. Their gazes held in one long, unbroken moment.
Su Hui found that the old saying was wrong. Even two people in love, if they stare at each other for twenty seconds, don’t necessarily cry.
“I’m sorry.” He knew this was the thing Ning Yixiao hated most to hear — but there was no other way to begin.
Ning Yixiao gave a small smile. “What’s actually going on?”
Su Hui didn’t answer. He just kept talking in that wrecked voice, almost to himself, the way someone does when a storm is moving through their mind: “The thing I do most, actually, is regret things. Because of this illness, I’m not really myself most of the time. Sometimes it feels like my brain is being shaken around by an invisible hand, and I just drift — buying things, approaching strangers, talking, doing things that make no sense. Then, when everything suddenly goes still again, the regret comes. I regret buying all those things I didn’t need. I regret talking to so many people. I regret performing myself for the world.”
A large snowflake drifted down and settled on top of Su Hui’s head, and began to slowly melt.
“When I’m in an episode I love making promises, which is why I break them all the time. In high school — a manic episode — a girl in my class asked me to meet her at a café on Saturday to study. I agreed without thinking, and stood her up the next day. Oh, and once — on the way home — I found a stray kitten and brought him back with me. He was lovely. I told him I’d buy him a little house. When I came home the next day, he was gone. I asked Chen Ma, and she told me Grandfather had spotted him, thought he was dirty, and threw him out. I never found him again.”
Ning Yixiao had always believed he understood Su Hui deeply — that they had an almost uncanny attunement, like people who had known each other for years rather than months. He could read Su Hui’s emotions quickly, feel his pain clearly.
But now, his mind kept rejecting what he was sensing.
Su Hui seemed to realize he’d been talking in circles. He smiled faintly, looked up at Ning Yixiao, and said — without any apparent logic: “Ning Yixiao. Let’s stop here.”
Ning Yixiao didn’t freeze. He met Su Hui’s eyes directly. He let out a small laugh first, then raised a hand to press against Su Hui’s forehead. “Do you have a fever?”
Su Hui took one step back and didn’t answer.
It was only then that Ning Yixiao understood — he was serious.
“Why?” He didn’t notice his own hand trembling slightly. “At least give me a reason. Otherwise I won’t accept it.”
“There’s no particular reason.” Su Hui dropped his gaze, refusing to meet his eyes. “We just… don’t fit, I suppose.”
Ning Yixiao stepped forward and pulled him into his arms, holding him tightly. “Don’t lie to me. Did they force you into this? I know the gap between us is huge, but I’ll work harder — can’t we fight for this? How do we know it’s impossible if we don’t try?”
I’ve tried, Ning Yixiao. I’ve already tried everything.
“Su Hui, I don’t want to break up with you.”
Su Hui pulled himself free. His neck throbbed painfully; he pressed a hand to it and felt moisture seeping through — blood. He pulled his zipper all the way up to his chin.
“But I do.”
Su Hui closed his bloodstained hand into a fist and looked at Ning Yixiao. And he finally said the words he had never wanted to say: “I want to break up.”
Ning Yixiao went quiet.
“Once you get to America…” Su Hui felt his voice going out completely, but pushed on. “…you’ll meet someone better. I’m not good for you. Forget me.”
With that, Su Hui turned and walked away. Through the white expanse of snow, footprint by footprint, never looking back. He poured every last bit of strength he had into moving fast — terrified that if he slowed down for even a moment, he would lose his nerve, turn around, run back to him, and hold on.
So Su Hui didn’t allow himself to stop, not for a second. And as he walked, his vision began to fracture. The city around him dissolved. He was no longer in a snow-blanketed capital — he was in Iceland, standing on blue glaciers, utterly alone.
He didn’t know how long he walked through that hallucination. Eventually, the glaciers crumbled, and Su Hui collapsed into the snow, sending a white cloud rising around him.
