sinovels Chapter 24 – Price of growth
Chapter 24 – Price of growth
I have already left that old neighborhood far behind. I walked on the streets of the city with my luggage for a long time before finding a stone bench in a square where I could rest.
I placed my luggage on one side of the stone bench, lit a cigarette, and sat down, looking at the neon lights flickering on the tall buildings. A wave of panic surged in my heart, unsure of where to go.
Hastily avoiding the lights and shadows of the city, I looked up at the sky,
I pulled out a photo of Jian Wei from my wallet and handed it to Robben. We were both reluctant to forget the past because it was too precious!
The light from the opposite side was dim, Robben lit a lighter, examining Jian Wei's photo in the flickering flame.
"Your girlfriend is beautiful, not just ordinarily beautiful!"
Hearing the word 'beautiful', the face of my female tenant suddenly appeared in my mind. But it didn't surprise me, because I had never seen a woman more beautiful than Mi Cai in my life. In just a moment, I was back to reality, looking at Jian Wei's familiar yet strange face in the photo by the dying flame, my heart ached. I thought: It won't be long before she marries Xiang Chen.
Robben returned Jian Wei's photo to me, and asked, "What about you guys, why did you break up?"
I recalled, after a long while, I said, "She called me a year after she went to America and proposed the breakup."
"Why did she want to break up with you?" Robben asked further.
"I don't know, she didn't say." I replied with a smile similar to Robben's earlier.
"Didn't you ask?"
I nodded, I indeed didn't ask Jian Wei why she wanted to break up with me, because I thought: If Jian Wei wanted to tell me, she would, without me asking. Or perhaps, deep down, I didn't believe we could make it to the end, that a breakup was inevitable. What's the point of seeking an answer for something expected?
"Aren't you afraid there might be some misunderstanding between you two?" Robben reminded me.
I was taken aback, "What misunderstanding could there be?... Love is just a fleeting cloud. Let's not talk about this anymore! Go get the guitar, let's play a song, forget all these mess!"
Robben fetched the guitar from the room, tested the sound and asked me, "Your key or mine?"
"Whatever."
Robben strummed the guitar strings, a melody wafted into the night air, it was Jonathan Lee's "The Price of Love".
"Let's go, let's go, one must learn to grow up. Let's go, let's go, life is inevitably filled with pain and struggle. Let's go, let's go, find a home for your heart. There were times when I cried, times when I was heartbroken, that's the price of love. Maybe I still think of her occasionally, inevitably missing her. Just treat her as an old friend, she makes me worry, she makes me care. But there's no spark in my heart anymore, let the past go with the wind..."
The song floated out from our mouths, filled with vicissitudes. I didn't quite understand if the price of love was just tears and heartbreak, but I knew: the price of growth was the love that had faded away with the passage of time.
In this deep night when I should have seen through everything, I still regretted the love that had passed away, for Robben and that Beijing girl whose name I didn't know!
...
The next morning, I caught a train heading to Yiwu. After arriving in Yiwu, I had to transfer to Hengdian. I knew, I had to do something for myself. If Le Yao could agree to come back and shoot the opening poster for GUCCI, my career would take its first step forward.
Promoted to the team leader of the planning and copywriting team, my monthly salary would exceed ten thousand, perhaps life could stabilize.
Sitting on the southbound train, I said to myself for the first time, "Work hard, Zhao Yang!... Don't let anyone look down on you!"