Ch17 - A failure

Trigger warning: Attempted suicide

After the Chinese New Years celebration was over, Wei Shi initially wanted me to continue resting for a few days but I refused, and on the eighth day of the Chinese new year I returned back to work. 

I didn’t go to look for Sheng Min Ou again, and obviously he wouldn’t initiate any contact and come looking for me.

This worked out anyways, as long as I could resist it, no matter how alluring Sheng Min Ou was to me and how deeply I had fallen for him, if ten years wasn’t enough then I’d use twenty years. If twenty wasn’t enough I’d use thirty, eventually I’d be able to cut him off.

 

 

Days passed by plainly as I attended my shifts at the shop. My routine consisted of two things: daily life and work. If I felt bored I would go out with my friends to grab food. If I was tired, I would knock out immediately as soon as my head touched the pillow once I got home. Sometimes, on rare occasions, I’d go out to watch a movie, and this was how I lived my simple, ordinary life.

I thought that the rest of my life would pass by like so, but who would have imagined that on one late night in March, this simple, ordinary life would be abruptly shattered by someone, and I would be caught wholly unprepared. 

The sound of my phone buzzing interrupted my dreams and forcibly woke me from my slumber. Still slightly disoriented, I reached for my phone on the drawer next to my bed and took a look at the contents displayed. Mo Qiu in one breath sent me ten or so messages in a row, each part lengthy and detailed.

 

I rubbed my eyes as I continued scrolling down, not understanding what he was getting at so late at night. At one point he was saying he was grateful for having met me in junior high, and he was extremely grateful as without me he wouldn’t be able to be the illustrator he had always aspired to be. Then later, he would say that he was extremely happy to have met me again after not having seen me in so long, and if it was possible, then he would really like to have a long, genuine conversation with me. In his texts, he rambled a lot and spoke of many things, and in the end he said if I didn’t mind, he hoped I could attend his funeral, and be with him on the last part of his journey.

“What the fuck, what’s going on?” In an instant, I was fully awake, completely astounded at what I was reading.

When Chinese New Years came by, Mo QIu reached out to me then and arranged for us to meet up at a cafe to catch up over coffee. The two of us spoke in an unfamiliar and awkward manner for about only an hour. I saw that there really wasn’t much more to talk about so I told him that I had something to do in the afternoon and had to leave first.

 

That time when I spoke to him, he didn’t show any hint of being pessimistic and weary towards this world. When I asked if he had married, his face turned a shade of red as he shook his head and responded that although he hadn’t married, he was in a serious relationship with someone.

I politely congratulated him and out of courtesy asked him to bring his partner with him next time we met.

Back then, what did he say again to that?

 

“We… haven’t met yet.” Mo Qiu held his coffee cup, and with a hint of nervousness stared at the table top, not meeting my eye. 

“You haven’t met them?” I was perplexed for a second, then quickly came to understand his words, “You met them online?”

He blushed even harder and shyly affirmed with a soft ‘en’ at my words.

Online dating could be a legitimate thing, however Mo Qiu with his personality honestly was very similar to the type of naive and foolish victim who was scammed of their money, their feelings, and in the end was left with absolutely nothing.

Seeing that we were friends in junior high, I briefly threw in a word of advice, “Then you should try to meet up with them, don’t be foolish and not know whether the person you’re talking to is even the gender they claim to be.” 

Mo Qiu’s body went rigid at my words as his eyes shot up to gaze at me for a split second before his line of sight dropped again, “I know, their appearance, surname, age, and occupation, I know it all.” Perhaps he saw that I was dubious towards his online relationship so he explained, “The other person is a lot more wealthy than I am, they’re not a scammer.”

Why couldn’t they be a scammer if they were well off, they could still cheat you of your feelings.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

However, Mo Qiu at that time seemed excited about it and I figured that no matter what I said he wouldn’t listen. Instead, if I continued insisting, it would seem like I was insensitive and unable to read the room. Therefore, I held onto my bucket of cold water, and in the end I didn’t dish it out.

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“Hey, Feng Ge, what’s up?”

“Do you have Mo Qiu’s address?” Since Mo Qiu added the store’s WeChat account, then perhaps he had purchased or pawned off items before in the store and left a delivery address. 

“Mo Qiu?” Sounds of ruffled pages were heard on the other side of the line, “Wait a second, let me see.”

Two minutes later, Shen Xiao Shi confirmed he had found it and read out the address.

“Send it over to my phone,” I said as I got up and raced to get changed, before rushing out the door.

“What’s going on, Feng Ge?” Shen Xiao Shi only thought now to ask if something had happened. 

My phone vibrated and I saw the text message he had sent over. I replied, “Mo Qiu seems to be attempting suicide, I’m going to head over, hopefully there’s nothing going on.”

“Fuck me, suicide?” Shen Xiao Shi was also shocked, “Then do we need to get the police involved?”

It was due to his comment that I was reminded of the police and realised we should also call them to get help.

The beginning of spring was still slightly chilly, so I tucked my neck deeper into my clothing and walked out as I continued talking, “I’m going to hang up first and call the police, they should move out faster than me, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to find a taxi at this time.” 

After I hung up my call with Shen Xiao Shi, for the first time in my life I called ‘110’, the operator on the line asked me to detail what had happened and inquired what Mo Qiu’s address was. She said that the police would be there soon and they would also simultaneously dispatch an ambulance over.

My luck was pretty good, as soon as I walked to the side of the road there was an empty taxi. I sat down and told the taxi driver that I was on my way to save someone and asked him to drive faster if he could. The taxi driver having heard this slammed the gas pedal and I was almost sent flying into the dashboard. Just by looking at the moves of the gear changes and the drifting, it was like we were racing on a Formula 1 circuit in the middle of the night.

Usually it was a half an hour drive, but due to the driver’s endeavours and partially because the roads were empty at this time, we arrived in a short fifteen minutes.

After I got out of the car, I sprinted towards the neighbourhood. I didn’t even need to really search for it, under the street lights dimly illuminating the roads, the blinding lights of the police cars in the distance was exactly where I needed to be. 

In front of the old residential building, a police car and an ambulance were stopped there. I was just about to head up when from the narrow staircases two paramedics came down, one on either side of a stretcher, and trailing behind them were two police officers.

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In an instant my breathing almost came to a still, as I feared that on the stretcher I would see a corpse that was covered by a white cloth.

As they came down, I could only retreat backwards, past the main entrance. The stretcher passed by me, and Mo Qiu’s pale face was on there, although he looked like he was only a hair’s breadth away from dying, the fact remained that he was not dead.

What a relief… 

I was able to wholly allow myself to relax, as I leaned against the entrance and let out a long breath.

A young police officer walked towards me and asked if I knew Mo Qiu.

 

“He’s my friend, it was me who called the police.”

The officer had both hands on his hips and sighed just as I did moments earlier, “He was burning coal in his room and had slit his wrist, it looked like he was truly determined to die. Talk to him and try to persuade him, he’s still so young, what kind of problem can’t be solved?” 

I also wanted to know how bad the problem had to be to have forced him to choose such a path for himself.

The door to Mo Qiu’s house had been broken from when the police forcibly entered his house, and until it was fixed it wouldn’t be able to be closed properly. I still had to follow the ambulance to go to the hospital, and for lack of a better method, to prevent Mo Qiu from suffering an even bigger loss than what he did already to his body, I could only call Shen Xiao Shi again to ask if he could go to Mo Qiu’s house for the night to prevent anyone from intruding and stealing his property. I then asked if tomorrow he could help contact a locksmith to repair the door.

“Sure, well no matter where I rest I’ll still be getting sleep.” Shen Xiao Shi accepted without any objections.

Once I arrived at the hospital it was another round of chaos, I had to pay the outstanding fees, fill out the forms and wait for the doctors to finish checking up on Mo Qiu. When things had settled down, the sky was already lightening up. 

Mo Qiu’s parents seemed to have divorced when he was very young, and after heading their separate ways neither of them seemed to pay too much attention to him. He grew up with his grandparents and now both of them had passed away, so he lived alone in their old apartment.

This was my second time entering the emergency unit. Due to my first experience being honestly not that great, I especially detested this place, and after staying here for a while I started feeling sick in my stomach and broke out in cold sweat.

Mo Qiu hadn’t woken up anyways, so I spoke to the nurse letting her know I was leaving for a short while, then headed out the hospital for a smoke break.

While I was smoking, Shen Xiao Shi suddenly called me. 

“Feng Ge, I saw that your friend didn’t close his computer, so I wanted to turn it off for him. I ended up accidentally taking a longer look… “ Shen Xiao Shi spoke and then stopped.

“And then?”

“And then I saw some things I shouldn’t have seen, I called upon my smart brain cells and thought about it, then I pretty much pieced together what happened with your friend.”

Shen Xiao Shi explained his discovery to me and at first I didn’t care much about it, but near the end I became more apprehensive towards the situation as my brows became more furrowed, until I couldn’t even continue smoking anymore. My stomach felt like it was doing flip flops, as if I had eaten a meal that was left out overnight and had gone bad. 

“Are you sure?”

Shen Xiao Shi replied, “I was scared that I was jumping to conclusions, so I flicked through almost a year’s worth of his conversation history, and found some video recordings that he wasn’t able to delete yet… did you want to see it?”

“What the fuck, no!” I cursed at him, “Turn off the computer and pretend you never saw anything.”

At this moment, a nurse came to the entrance and asked, “Is Mo Qiu’s guardian here? He’s woken up.” 

I hurriedly hung up the phone and returned to the emergency room.

Mo Qiu’s eyes were half open, and it appeared that he wasn’t completely lucid yet. I wasn’t sure if it was because he initially didn’t wear his glasses or if they took it off him while attempting to rescue him, but his glasses weren’t there anymore. His eyes were lost and glistened slightly, and his lips were faintly bruised. Suddenly looking at him like this, there was a trace of fragile, sickly beauty there.

 

“How come you had to resort to this, back when I saw you weren’t you doing fine?” I asked as I sat beside him.

Mo Qiu turned his head to look my way and without saying a word two streams of tears silently flowed down from his eyes. 

My head hurt, “Don’t be like this…”

“Lu Feng…” Mo Qiu’s eyes were full of sadness as he asked with a hoarse voice, “A person who is a failure can never be successful, right? No matter whether it’s with family, friends or in a romantic relationship, they’d be a failure at all these aspects, right?”

I looked at him and withdrew all expressions from my face, “Right my fucking ass, no way.”

Mo Qiu stared at the ceiling, “That’s true… someone like you, you wouldn’t.. wouldn’t understand someone who is a failure like me.” 

“Someone like me? What kind of person am I?” I started laughing, at this point, I felt there was no need to hide anything anymore, “Half a year ago, I just came out from serving my sentence at prison. If you had to categorise me into a type, then I would be an ex-con.”

Mo Qiu’s whole body trembled at my words, as he turned his head to look at me in disbelief, “You…”

“In the summer holidays of 10th grade I killed a person and was sentenced to ten years.” Since I already opened my mouth to speak, the rest wasn’t as hard to say as I imagined, “If you’re comparing us in terms of failure, then aren’t I a bigger failure than you? Plus, you didn’t even fail that bad in terms of friendship, didn’t I come to save you?”

Mo Qiu stared at me still in shock for a long moment, then muttered, “Thank you.” After saying so, his expression crumpled and he started bawling even more unstoppably than before, “Thank you for always protecting me…” 

I initially wanted to close the tap, however I didn’t imagine that I would have instead swung a sledgehammer onto the pipe and bursted the whole thing. I hurriedly asked the nurse for some tissues, then I pressed it onto the tears and helped him clean his face.

“What did you have to go through? You should just let it out, don’t always keep it all in, perhaps I can help you?”

“You can’t help me.” His nose appeared red after I rubbed it with the tissues.

I patiently responded, keeping my tone gentle, “If you don’t say anything, then how do you know I can’t help you?” 

He was quiet for a long moment, throughout which he would just silently shed tears.

Just when I couldn’t hold back anymore and was about to reveal what I knew to him he slowly opened his mouth, “Someone filmed… a video of me that’s not good, and the other person threatened me, if I didn’t comply with their demands, then they’ll upload the video… on the internet, and everyone will know that I’m… that I’m a slut… like that.”

His eyelashes were stained with tiny orbs of his tears, as they slid down the corners of his eyes and to his temples, creating little damp patches on the sides of his pillow.

“I’m not, I really am not…” He shook his head, his eyes reflecting a sliver of hope he held for me, but more than that, it will filled with utter despair. 

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