Bright sunlight pierced through the thin curtains, casting a glow on her graceful body, making her seem almost radiant.
With her eyes closed in shame, she waited for his touch, for his exploration, every hair on her body tensed to a quiver.
“Let’s break up.”
She thought she had heard wrong. In her daze, the door of the dorm creaked open and then slammed shut.
She opened her eyes to find herself alone in the empty dorm room.
He had fled.
He didn’t dare touch her, afraid of the responsibility. They say if a man likes a woman, he wants to possess her.
There was no question about it; he simply did not like her.
But why accept her confession then? She couldn’t understand.
The following three days were the most painful of her life—unable to eat, sleepless nights, his image haunting her every moment. She fought the urge to see him every second of every day.
She spied on his dorm window from a distance, his silhouette briefly crossing the curtains—a fleeting shadow that seemed like a miraculous cure that momentarily healed her wounds, but the more his shadow vanished, the deeper and more painful her wounds grew.
Without him, she felt she might die.
Saturday came, and knowing he would be going home, she followed him secretly, feeling alive again just from seeing his back.
She watched him enter his house and stayed outside, unwilling to leave as she peered through the window at his silhouette. This was her first glimpse of him outside of school, and she wanted to know more, to understand deeper—an attitude uncharacteristic of someone who had been dumped.
She was still in love with him, she painfully realized.
Back at school, she went out of her way to manufacture coincidental meetings, waiting outside the cafeteria for an hour just to not miss seeing him eat. She mustered the courage to make eye contact, and he responded with a shallow smile. Her heart soared like a swing thrown high, only for him to walk past her as if she were invisible, sending her crashing down.
She felt like she was going insane, elated one moment and despondent the next, completely at Lin Kun’s mercy.
Determined to make one last effort, she waited for Lin Kun after evening self-study and followed him quietly.
Suddenly, a book fell to the ground. Lin Kun, unaware, continued walking. Seizing the opportunity, Li Feiya picked up the book, intending to catch up with him, but she realized it wasn’t a book—it was a delicate notebook.
Curiosity got the better of her, and amidst a mix of trepidation and guilt, she opened the diary. She wanted to know if he had been heartbroken after their breakup.
The contents of the diary shocked her; it detailed all of Lin Kun’s inner thoughts.
The mysteries of the past finally made sense. He wasn’t interested in women.
No wonder he never touched her. No wonder he remained indifferent even when she stripped. No wonder he had accepted her confession—it was all to hide who he truly was.
Over the next three days, she watched Lin Kun frantically search for his diary, taking pleasure in his distress.
On the fourth day, she slipped a note into one of Lin Kun’s textbooks: “I have the diary,” with a time and place to meet.
In a cheap hotel room, when Lin Kun walked in and saw her, a flicker of surprise crossed his face.
In the second before he arrived, she hesitated, but the moment she saw him, she made up her mind.
He asked her to hand over the diary and keep his secret, promising to be grateful for life.
Instead, she threatened him, demanding that he continue being her boyfriend or she would make the diary contents public.
His eyes widened in disbelief. “Did you read the diary?” He couldn’t believe his ears. If she hadn’t read it, she wouldn’t use its contents to threaten him. If she had, why would she still want to be his girlfriend? He was confused.
Her logic was twisted. She loved Lin Kun too much to let him go and feared that he might seek a girlfriend to cover his secrets. She couldn’t bear the thought of him being with other girls.
Lin Kun gave her three days to think it over, promising to agree if she didn’t change her mind.
Three days later, her mind was unchanged; they reconciled as if nothing had happened.
To outsiders, it seemed they had merely had a big fight but had now made up.
Whenever people praised their matched looks, Li Feiya’s smile was sweet on the surface but bitter inside. She had chosen this path, and she would endure its bitterness.
Her classmates joked, asking if she had been to Lin Kun’s house or met his parents. Li Feiya, hiding her embarrassment, deflected with a joke.
She suggested visiting Lin Kun’s home, which he diplomatically declined. She thought he was worried about parental misunderstandings and offered to go as just a classmate, but he still refused. Her pride hurt, she never brought it up again.
One weekend, she saw Lin Kun enter a store. She followed, planning to greet him, but he acted guilty and hid something in his bag as if afraid she would see.
Quietly, after he left, she learned from a clerk that he had bought a toy car and some candy—items for children, perhaps for a relative’s child. But why was he so nervous?
She wanted to know everything about him and, after a brief hesitation, boarded a bus to Yao City.
Afraid of being discovered, she waited until dark before approaching his house, where she saw Lin Kun’s mother holding a few-months-old baby. Lin Kun was playing with the child, teaching him to say “daddy.”
She couldn’t describe her shock. Was the child Lin Kun’s? He wasn’t supposed to like women, so where did the child come from?
She wanted to storm in and demand answers, but she knew that would end everything between her and Lin Kun for good.
After calming down, her anger and suspicion were slowly replaced by hope. If the child was indeed Lin Kun’s, it meant he had lied to her about his preferences, and there might still be hope for her.
Years later, reflecting on this absurd love, she realized how foolish she had been. A man who deceived her and a man who didn’t like women were hardly different; in her naive youth, she actually thought the former was better.
She waited until the next day, staying near Lin Kun’s house until he came out. His shock at her sudden appearance was palpable.
She confronted him directly about the child.
Lin Kun explained that the child was adopted because he would never have children of his own, so he claimed the child as his.
She couldn’t understand and refused to believe. She wanted to ask Lin Kun’s parents for the truth.
The normally gentle Lin Kun suddenly turned stern, warning her sharply not to harm the child. If she did anything to hurt the child, he would never forgive her.
She restrained herself, but her questions tormented her every night, keeping her awake.
She knew that blood types could indicate paternity. The problem was getting samples. Lin Kun’s blood was easy to obtain, but the child’s was not.
She pretended to be dutiful and sweet, winning Lin Kun’s affection on the surface while appearing loving to others.
Taking advantage of Lin Kun’s good mood, she cautiously suggested visiting the child and even proposed a sham marriage in the future to accept the child.
She felt she had debased herself to the dust, but whenever she mentioned the child, Lin Kun’s face darkened as if she were a kidnapper.
Maybe it was her stubborn and extreme nature, or perhaps prolonged resentment had bred a rebellious streak in her. The more Lin Kun tried to hide something, the more she wanted to uncover the truth.
Whenever she had the chance, she secretly visited Lin Kun’s house, of course, avoiding him. Lin Kun’s mother, having moved from the countryside to the town with the child, faced local gossip, which only fueled Li Feiya’s curiosity.
She dared not harm the child directly, knowing that if Lin Kun found out, it would be the end of everything.
Pretending to be a passerby, she loitered near Lin Kun’s home until a little boy on a bicycle circled around her. Suddenly, she had an idea.
With just a candy, she befriended the boy on the bicycle, encouraging him to ride faster for more candy.
Lin Kun’s mother returned home from shopping with the child, who was indeed beautiful and bore a slight resemblance to Lin Kun.
She egged the bicycling boy on to speed past them, then heard two screams as expected—Lin Dongzhi was knocked down, his arm scraped and bleeding.
Wearing a mask and pretending to be a passerby, she helped the child up, secretly collecting his blood with a prepared medical tube.
As the boy’s parents and Lin Kun’s mother argued, she felt a sour twist in her heart, more convinced than ever that Lin Dongzhi was Lin Kun’s biological child.
Amidst the chaos, she quietly left the scene.
“Miss, wait a moment,” Lin Kun’s mother suddenly called out to her.
Heart pounding, she lowered her head, pulling up her mask and covering half her face with her hair.
“Thank you for your help just now,” Lin Kun’s mother said sincerely.
Li Feiya breathed a sigh of relief, nodded hastily, and fled the scene.
She sent the blood sample for testing at the hospital.
She had consulted a junior at the medical school about possible blood types based on the father’s blood type. The junior asked about the mother’s blood type, which she said she didn’t know. Without knowing the mother’s blood type, knowing only the father’s was nearly meaningless.
If the father was type A or B, the son could be any type. If the father was AB, the son could be A, B, or AB, but not O. If the father was O, the son could be A, B, or O, but not AB.
Previously, under the guise of donating blood, she had persuaded Lin Kun to go to the hospital with her, and that’s when she learned his blood type was O.
If Lin Dongzhi’s blood type was AB, then they couldn’t possibly be father and son. If it was any of the other three types, it would be inconclusive.
The test results came back quickly, and she opened the report eagerly. Seeing the result, she smiled.
