Back Then, I Adored You

After some time, Xu Wennuan said, “I’m a little tired. If there’s nothing else—”

Wu Hao knew that she was chasing him away. He also knew that if he wanted to start fresh with her, he should not be overly anxious to succeed. At the very least, she was as resistant toward him as before so, when she was halfway through her sentence, he stood up and said, “Have a good rest then. I’ll head off and visit you again tomorrow.”

“It’s alright. I’m fine,” she said, rejecting his offer. “The doctor merely wants me under observation in the hospital for a few days to see how the medication affects me.”

Wu Hao nodded his head, said his goodbyes, and left the room. After closing the door, he stood in the corridor and stared out the window at the sky, which had already darkened. After a moment, he raised his hand to reach for his phone in his pocket.

Last night, the police searched for and arrested the people involved. If Lu Bancheng had truly met with a mishap, they should have found his corpse by now. Since they haven’t, he might still be alive but who knows what his condition might be…

…

After Wu Hao left, Xu Wennuan leaned against the headboard and spaced out for some time before she held her phone up, glanced at the screen, and saw that it was fully charged. She turned it on and entered the game. She had expected to see several messages from Zero; however, since their conversation yesterday afternoon, he had not sent her any message. She hadn’t even received the joke that he always sent to her at three in the morning.

Unable to take in everything that had happened within such a brief period, Xu Wennuan spaced out for a long time as she stared at the screen of her phone. Finally, she lifted her finger, typed, “You weren’t on the game server last night…” and sent her message. She then collected her daily game gift but, not being in the mood to play, only hung around for some time and, when Zero still hadn’t come online, she finally exited the game.

Seeing that she had overlooked some notifications, Xu Wennuan clicked them to find that she had several unanswered calls from the same 11-digit number, which she recognized at one glance as Lu Bancheng’s phone number. She gaped for a moment in shock at the realization that she had unwittingly memorized Lu Bancheng’s number because of how she could not resist from constantly texting and calling him lately. She never remembered phone numbers, not even that of her best friend, Qin Zhi’ai, nor those of her parents. She had only ever memorized one phone number in her life, and that was Wu Hao’s number.

Wu Hao’s number…

Xu Wennuan frowned slightly. She realized that she didn’t remember it anymore. She tried hard to recall it but, beyond the first six digits, she could not remember any of the subsequent numbers.

How strange… Back then, I could even recite it backward, which made me think I’d always remember it. How could it have vanished from my memories?

Unable to rest, Xu Wennuan logged in and out of the game several times. In the past, Zero had always logged in at least once a day, but today his profile picture had never once lit up.

The sky gradually turned dark, and Xu Wennuan closed her eyes shut as she laid in bed, but she couldn’t fall asleep. She didn’t know how many times she had picked up her phone to check the time but, when it was one minute before 3:00 a.m., she opened the game again.