My Online Girlfriend Has a Twin Sister - Chapter 186 125: Bygone Days, Her Guilt and Regret (Part 2)

“How thoughtless!”

Mrs. Ke’s expression immediately turned serious. She was especially close with Mr. and Mrs. Chen; they had all worked at the same school for many years. She was even there for Mrs. Chen’s wedding, bustling about to help with everything.

Then, Mrs. Ke took out her phone, found the number, and made the call.

Once it connected, her tone immediately became warm and enthusiastic.

“Hello? Hello! Is that He?”

“Oh my, why didn’t you tell me Yuan was in Sanya? If Bingbing hadn’t run into him while she was out, I would’ve had no idea the boy was here on vacation!”

Seeing them start to exchange pleasantries, Ke Bing knew there was nothing left for her to do.

She had come home today just to tell her parents about this. Otherwise, if it came up later, she would definitely be scolded for being thoughtless again.

As true northerners, her family placed great importance on playing the part of a good host when they ran into acquaintances from back home. Since the message had been delivered, she headed for her bedroom.

She turned on the light and tidied up a bit.

Then she sat down at her desk.

Ke Bing sighed. Even now, no notification had popped up on her phone accepting her friend request.

From their encounter today to the dinner afterward, how could someone as perceptive as her not see it? The adorable little Yuan of the past, the little brother who always used to trail after her, was now a stranger.

The mirror on her desk reflected her slightly furrowed brows and her melancholic expression.

Since her laptop was back at school, she was forced to use a rather old desktop computer. She opened her unfinished thesis and stared at it for a long time, her chin in her hand.

Ke Bing was an engineering major, specifically in pharmaceutical engineering.

She was about to graduate, so this whole semester had actually been quite relaxed. The only thing to worry about was her thesis. She had also sent out many resumes for internships, but with the second half of the year still to go, there was no need to be too anxious.

After being a student for so many years, she was finally growing up and leaving the ivory tower of school.

Ke Bing had never imagined what her life would be like after entering the workforce. It would probably involve finding a satisfactory job, slowly building up seniority, and then, when she was old enough, finding someone she liked and getting married.

After that, she would have children and raise them. She would enjoy the warmth of family life, experience the daily grind, and when she met up with her best friends again, they would probably complain about all the trivial annoyances.

When she was a child, she often fantasized about what a magnificent, epic life she would have.

Just like the heroines in the literary works she had read.

Pain, struggle, striving, heartbreak, parting the clouds to see the light again… Writers always depicted a poetic world. In middle school, the author she read the most was Yasunari Kawabata.

“Through the long tunnel at the county border, was the snow country.”

“Beneath the night sky, a vast expanse of white.”

“The train stopped before a signal.”

An exquisitely beautiful opening. Every time Ke Bing savored it, she would become immersed in the world Kawabata described.

But life is very different from literature.

Now, on the verge of graduating from university, she was only just discovering that life was so mundane it could pass in a flash, without one even noticing the passage of time.

Following the prescribed path, living according to her parents’ arrangements, she had even started to develop a mindset of just getting by.

Ke Bing gradually came to realize it too. She was just an ordinary girl from an ordinary family. Her only slightly outstanding feature was her looks, which earned her a bit more attention on campus. Beyond that, there seemed to be nothing else remarkable about her.

But she really couldn’t let go of her pickiness, which was why she still hadn’t found a boyfriend.

Call her picky, call her unrealistic—she was still unwilling to settle. She was reluctant to give away her first relationship, her most sincere feelings, not just because she was worried about getting hurt, but also because she was afraid of investing too much only for it to end in nothing.

She spaced out for a long time.

Ke Bing came back to her senses and yawned.

She fiddled with her phone, opening Green Bubble every few seconds. Nights like these were destined to be lonely. There were messages from underclassmen and rambling texts from her best friend.

Even though she saw them, Ke Bing didn’t feel like replying.

She just kept checking the “Pending Approval” status on her friend request.

After a long while, she leaned back in her chair and stared blankly at the ceiling.

‘Yuan… he can’t be mad at me, can he?’

Back then, she had left without a word, deliberately hiding it from Chen Yuan.

When he came back, he found the apartment next door empty and deserted. All the furniture had been moved out. Only the pictures still stuck to the wall hadn’t been taken down, and a few pens and small toys were scattered on the floor, buried in a thick layer of dust.

All grimy and gray.

They were probably discovered only after the bed was moved—the pens that had mysteriously gone missing and the little toys that could never be found, all hidden in the crack under the bed.

Ke Bing didn’t know how long a twelve-year-old Chen Yuan had stood there, stunned, staring at a room full of dust.

In just a few days, he had completely and utterly lost his best, most cherished friend.

She had left nothing behind, not even a single word. Just a pile of junk.

He might have thought about it for a long time. He might have felt betrayed. He might have spent the entire vacation angry and sad.

Just as Chen Yuan had once thought, he longed to be walking down an unfamiliar street and suddenly run into a familiar figure—who would turn out to be Ke Bing, the very person who had left without a word.

Such fantasies only existed in his youth.

Before long, the idea drowned in his mind for good.

Chen Yuan would never again foolishly hope to meet her.

‘Leaving without a word is always a cruel, selfish, and irresponsible thing to do!’

‘The one who is absent has no reason to return to their rightful place, because they are no longer needed. And it’s ridiculous to hope for something like, “He’ll miss me forever after I’m gone.” No one deserves a young boy’s long-lasting affection.’

Ke Bing was lost in thought for a long time. Suddenly, she got up, walked to her bedside, and squatted down to pull open a drawer.

She rummaged around.

A graduation photo kept for many years, a middle school autograph book, a tattered and misshapen cloth doll, a box full of raffia grass…

One by one, she took the items out and placed them on the floor.

Until, at the very bottom, she found an MP3 player.

The yellow, beetle-shaped MP3 player wasn’t expensive, only a few dozen yuan each. It needed an SD card to play music. Students would usually go to a phone store first to download a lot of music onto the card, then plug in their headphones to listen.

It was a very old thing now.

Beneath the beetle, there was also a letter.

Ke Bing held the letter and studied it for a long time. She was silent, her gaze lowered, lacking the courage to open the envelope and see what was written inside.

Back then, when she was leaving, she had spent a long, sleepless night writing this letter as a farewell.

She had also bought this gift, intending to give it to Chen Yuan along with the letter.

Now that she was grown up, she knew, of course, that the letter must have been childish and ridiculous. It probably said things like, “Never forget Rourou,” “Study hard, maybe we’ll have a chance to meet again,” and “I look forward to seeing what you’re like when you grow up.”

It would surely be cringey enough to make her toes curl.

But that letter held the most sincere feelings, containing an innocence that could never be reclaimed.

Ke Bing put the two items down and rubbed her delicate cheeks hard. She slumped onto the floor and hugged her knees.

‘Humans are such childish, conflicted creatures.’

‘Why didn’t I have the courage to leave this letter back then?’

She knew why.

The truth was, she had been full of hope, rushing toward a new life and dreaming of a wider world. About to escape her poor, remote little county, she had felt that her daily companion from the past wasn’t so important after all.

‘If I lay bare my most despicable inner thoughts, it was simply because I didn’t care enough.’

‘Regret is the most useless thing in the world.’

Now, Chen Yuan had grown into a young man—it was no exaggeration to call him dazzling. He had a stunningly beautiful girlfriend, a rich and colorful university life, and countless girls who would endure his cold shoulder just to get his contact info and be his friend.

The signs had already started to show in high school.

A crowd of fangirls would pretend to visit friends in his class, standing in the hallway while their gazes casually swept over Chen Yuan inside the classroom.

He was no longer that little tagalong.

He was no longer the poor little thing whose only good friend was Rourou.