Wavering

An Ruxin listened to Bai Miaoqing recount the entire story with an almost expressionless, numb face.

Bai Miaoqing took a deep breath and looked at her seriously. “The ghost is real. That part is the truth. I said Chen Anran’s wish came true because, when I was a freshman in high school, there was a boy in her middle school class who was close to her. He drowned while swimming in a wild river. That boy must have been the one Chen Anran liked… If you don’t believe me, the newspaper clipping about his drowning is still at my house—I can take you to find it. Chen Anran must’ve wished to be with the person she liked, so he died—drowned, just like her. And me… I became a completely different person in high school. Both of our wishes came true, but because it’s a ghost, of course it used the worst possible method.”

An Ruxin didn’t respond immediately.

…Even with everything Bai Miaoqing had just said, the story still couldn’t convince her that it was a ghost who had killed Chen Anran.

“…That doesn’t prove anything,” she said slowly. “If, like you said, everyone liked Chen Anran, and she had a crush on that boy and wished to be with him, then she could’ve just gathered the courage to confess. She must have been a brave girl. Even—whatever, let me use myself as an example. Back in high school, I was a coward who didn’t dare confess my crush either. But even so, before the college entrance exam, I still confessed, didn’t I? There was no need for two people to die just to fulfill her wish… As for your wish, you wanted to become someone like Chen Anran. But your wish came true only because she turned into a ghost and possessed you out of resentment. It has nothing to do with that so-called ghost girl who died for love in the reservoir.”

Come to think of it, when An Ruxin first discovered the hidden truth—that the radiant girl she’d admired had been the ghost of Chen Anran possessing someone—she had gone nearly mad with fury, realizing she’d been infatuated with Chen Anran all along. Saying she wanted to tear Bai Miaoqing to pieces would’ve been an understatement…

But faced with the reality that Bai Miaoqing had killed someone, instead of raging, she felt oddly calm. It was as if her mind had gone blank, too overwhelmed to think about anything else.

“That’s not it,” Bai Miaoqing insisted earnestly. “I wanted to become Chen Anran, but under normal circumstances, that wish could never come true. So the ghost had to kill Chen Anran and use my body to do all of it. After Chen Anran died and turned into a ghost, she resented me and possessed me. That’s how my wish could be fulfilled. For my wish to come true, Chen Anran had to die. And if her wish was to be with the boy she liked, then he had to die too.”

…Her logic was completely airtight—twisted into a closed loop that had trapped her. She must believe, even now, that her only crime was failing to save someone in time. No—if she believed even running away was under the ghost’s control, then maybe she didn’t even feel guilty about that. At most, she probably only felt guilty for not telling the police the truth.

With this mindset, the fact that Chen Anran had ruined her life and continued to haunt her to this day made Bai Miaoqing feel confused, angry, even desperate.

Yes, An Ruxin could more or less guess now what had happened during their high school days—the destroyed photos, the spiraling chaos.

She also pretty much understood Bai Miaoqing’s mental state.

The real Bai Miaoqing was a… timid, weak person.

Someone who had killed, but couldn’t even accept that “murder” had taken place.

An Ruxin felt a mix of disgust, fury, helplessness, and even pity toward her.

But one thing remained unchanged—

The ghost of Chen Anran, who kept haunting Bai Miaoqing, would never accept such an absurd explanation for her death. That’s why she continued her relentless pursuit of revenge, determined to destroy Bai Miaoqing’s life.

Likewise, if Bai Miaoqing never realized there had been no ghost involved in the reservoir incident, then Chen Anran would haunt her forever.

So, strangely enough, An Ruxin didn’t leave. Instead, she numbly kept analyzing, “Ah… let’s not talk about anything else. Let’s just look at the simplest fact—you don’t even know who Chen Anran had a crush on, right? You don’t even know what her actual wish was, do you? All you know is that it had something to do with the person she liked. If the drowned boy wasn’t the one she liked, then his death was just an unrelated accident. After all, swimming in wild rivers is dangerous. Even if he was the one she liked, what if her wish wasn’t ‘to be with him forever,’ but ‘I hope he likes me too’? Then whether he lived or died wouldn’t matter. If he liked her, the wish would’ve been fulfilled from the start. If he didn’t, then even death couldn’t make the wish come true.”

Bai Miaoqing faltered for a moment before countering, “…But there’s no evidence proving that the boy wasn’t the one she liked, or that her wish wasn’t to be with him forever, right?”

…That’s just sophistry, isn’t it?

It’s like proving the devil’s existence—if the devil shows up, case closed. But proving the devil doesn’t exist? That’s impossible.

No matter how many possibilities An Ruxin presented regarding Chen Anran’s crush and her wish, without evidence, Bai Miaoqing could cling to her version of the story forever. That newspaper clipping of the boy’s drowning probably existed just so she could keep convincing herself that ghosts were real.

But where could she find evidence? Chen Anran never wrote a single word about her crush or her wish in her diary. That proved how cautious she was. The only one who might know the truth now was the ghost of Chen Anran—but even her words wouldn’t convince Bai Miaoqing. In fact, even An Ruxin wasn’t sure: based on what they’d seen, the ghost seemed solely driven by revenge. Did she even still care about who she liked when she was alive?

So An Ruxin simply said, “But, just like I said, your only ‘evidence’ for the ghost’s existence is that your wishes came true and that you believe you’d never commit murder, right? I can give you a dozen other explanations for each of those. Don’t you think your version of things is just… absurd?”

“No!” Bai Miaoqing shouted immediately. “Ruxin, you promised! You swore you’d believe me! I didn’t lie!”

“I believe you’re telling the truth. I believe every word you’re saying,” An Ruxin didn’t want her to spiral again. “I haven’t walked away, have I? But just because you’re telling the truth doesn’t mean you’re telling the truth, you know? It’s like an unreliable narrator in a detective novel—you’re just telling me the version you believe is true… You understand that, right? Just calm down, okay?”

Thinking back on it, if this had been earlier—before she’d realized the truth—when An Ruxin had nearly lost her mind with joy upon learning that Bai Miaoqing might love her too, she probably would have believed every word she said, and gladly accepted that version of the truth.

It was only after suspecting that she had actually been infatuated with Chen Anran all along that she started doubting Bai Miaoqing.

An Ruxin couldn’t help but feel a little disgusted with herself for that.

But… it couldn’t be helped.

Because what An Ruxin loved most deeply—what she’d always loved—was that perfect “Bai Miaoqing” from high school. All her emotions and reason were tied to that image. Whether that Bai Miaoqing loved her back didn’t matter at all. If she did, it was the best kind of ecstasy. If she didn’t, it wouldn’t affect An Ruxin’s feelings for her one bit.

Therefore, if she couldn’t determine whether the one she liked was Bai Miaoqing or Chen Anran, An Ruxin would instead become neutral and rational.

She had to admit, if she could be sure who it was… An Ruxin made a judgment about herself: for the one I love the most…whether it means exorcising ghosts or even killing someone…

An Ruxin believed she was capable of doing it.

Her words seemed to have some effect. Bai Miaoqing bit her lip, thinking hard, then said again, “When Chen Anran fell, she kept screaming that something had grabbed her. Doesn’t that also prove ghosts exist? Her body never floated back up either—that’s also proof of ghosts!”

At that, An Ruxin could only let out a long sigh. “…I already tried explaining why her body wasn’t found floating. I said from the beginning, it’s very possible something underwater got her stuck, so she couldn’t float up. You said it yourself, right? The reservoir water is dark green, you can’t see the bottom, and there’s a lot of trash. You don’t even know what’s under there… Okay, take water weeds, for example. Maybe Chen Anran’s foot got tangled in them. Or maybe there was nothing, she just cramped up, and after sinking, got stuck on something. Chen Anran was always interested in the reservoir legends, and because she wanted to make a wish, she believed more in the ghost stories. Then she suddenly fell into the water, probably panicked. No matter what she was tangled in, her first reaction would’ve been, ‘something grabbed me.’ And it’s exactly because she was tangled up that her body never floated back up…”

If Bai Miaoqing hadn’t run away at the time, but instead helped Chen Anran calm down, untangled whatever had caught her, and actively tried to save her—would Chen Anran have survived?

If Bai Miaoqing had told the police what happened afterward, if the police had dived in or drained the reservoir, could they have found Chen Anran’s body so that her family wouldn’t have had to wait in vain for so many years?

…An Ruxin suddenly thought: if it really happened the way Bai Miaoqing imagined it, and there was no ghost involved in Chen Anran’s death—then just how great was the sin that Bai Miaoqing had committed?

Is that why she couldn’t face the truth?

But weren’t all of An Ruxin’s explanations just possibilities too?

Did she have any definitive proof that ghosts didn’t exist?

And if the person she loved was actually Bai Miaoqing—how could she let Bai Miaoqing bear the pain of realizing “I killed someone, I killed my only friend”?

For the rest of the day, An Ruxin was like a soul adrift, going over the details of each event with Bai Miaoqing, discussing whether ghosts existed. As her doubts about who she truly had a crush on grew, An Ruxin’s feelings about proving the nonexistence of ghosts also became ambivalent and conflicted.

At one point, she even had the thought: it would be best if the three of us all just disappeared—or if Bai Miaoqing and Chen Anran could fuse into one person.

The dark emotions churning in her heart made An Ruxin understand herself a little better.

She was, without a doubt, a lunatic driven entirely by love. That realization came to her, vaguely but clearly.

As the sky gradually dimmed, she bid farewell to an utterly exhausted Bai Miaoqing and drove home.

Most of the time, the girl she’d always had a crush on was undoubtedly Chen Anran. Even Bai Miaoqing admitted that.

But—were there a few moments when An Ruxin truly did like the real Bai Miaoqing?

For instance, when she caught Bai Miaoqing secretly crying—that must have made her heart ache, right? After that, because of that moment, she felt she had a special place in Bai Miaoqing’s heart, and her feelings for her slowly deepened. In the end, it was because she was first accepted by Bai Miaoqing and then cruelly rejected by Chen Anran that she kept this feeling buried to this day, wasn’t it?

But then again, if not for the glow that Chen Anran radiated, if not for Chen Anran encouraging her to step on stage—would she have even had such deep interest in Bai Miaoqing in the first place?

Without that premise, Bai Miaoqing’s fragility might’ve only stirred her sympathy—not her love, right?

But from another angle—it was Chen Anran’s brilliance, Bai Miaoqing’s appearance, Bai Miaoqing’s occasional vulnerability that she witnessed, being confessed to by Bai Miaoqing, being rejected by Chen Anran… All of these together made up the girl An Ruxin loved the most. So, who was she really in love with? What exactly was she in love with?

Did the girl she loved even truly exist?

That already sounded like a question for philosophy…

Exhausted, An Ruxin couldn’t think anymore. After washing up, she quickly drifted off to sleep.

Author’s Note:

Back to An Ruxin’s perspective.