Desk-mate, Do You Like Me? - Chapter 75

Chapter 75

The hot water washed over his body. The rising steam fogged the mirror.

Li Mo stood under the shower, eyes closed, letting the water beat against his face and body, as if trying to wash away something.

It was only then that he suddenly processed what had just happened.

Two months ago, on April 16th, Xu Qing had sent those two breakup messages.

But before that, Xu Qing had sent him messages on WeChat almost every day.

The more he thought about it, the more his head hurt.

Li Mo turned off the shower, grabbed a towel to roughly dry himself, and put on his clothes before stepping out of the bathroom.

The shower seemed to have sobered and calmed him considerably. He sat back down at the desk and opened his laptop.

He clicked on Xu Qing’s avatar and quickly scrolled through the chat history.

Two years, 730 days, 17,520 hours.

On his birthday, shortly after he had been taken away, Xu Qing had asked what had happened and how he was doing.

But he received no reply.

Initially, Xu Qing persistently asked what had happened. Seeing Li Mo’s continued silence, Xu Qing eventually gave up on questioning.

Slowly, Xu Qing started sending greetings every morning, noon, and night, sharing what happened in his daily life. For example, the little stray cat behind the dorm building got fat again, Shen Shuyi was being harassed by Jian Anxun again, Yang Di recommended a really good novel… and so on.

These trivial, everyday matters were sent one by one by Xu Qing to the person who would not reply. He did so tirelessly.

The messages were interrupted for a month, and when they resumed, it was the “let’s break up” message from two months ago.

Something major must have happened during that month.

He stared at those three words, his fingertip unconsciously gliding across the touchpad.

Let’s break up.

Like a blunt knife, the belated pain only now, two months later, slowly began to cut.

Xu Qing was not someone who would easily give up. Li Mo knew him as well as the lines on his own palm. How could Xu Qing, who had persistently sent messages for two years, sharing sunrises and sunsets, fat cats and thin cats with a silent dialogue box, suddenly let go?

That one month. Li Mo’s finger stopped on that blank time gap. One month before April 16th was roughly mid-March.

He suddenly sat up straight and opened “X-Book” (a stand-in for a social media platform like Xiao Hongshu or similar), searching for the account “Qingping_X.”

The account’s avatar, name, and background image hadn’t changed, but the bio had been modified:

【”The wind rises from the tip of the green duckweed, and the wave forms from the smallest ripple.”

I have been waiting for you.】

Li Mo’s fingertip paused at the last sentence.

He continued scrolling down.

The “Qingping” account’s follower count had ballooned from around thirty thousand to over a million.

The number of notes (posts) was less than a hundred.

Among them, 52 posts shared a common title: 【17 Years Old】

Each post garnered hundreds of thousands of likes.

Li Mo silently read through these 52 posts detailing the secret unexpressed feelings of a 17-year-old boy. He couldn’t imagine how much effort it took to write them, or how much courage it took to make them public, laying bare the boy’s youthful spirit and hidden love for all to see.

The first post of 【17 Years Old】 was from two years ago, with just a simple sentence:

【Bai Yue Sheng, I don’t like you anymore.】

The last post of 【17 Years Old】 was from two months ago, half an hour after Xu Qing sent the breakup message:

【Li Hei Hei, I can no longer like you.】

【I’m sorry.】

Xu Qing had transformed the feelings of these two years into vivid text, every word coming from the deepest part of his heart.

This secret crush titled 【17 Years Old】 was full of genuine emotion, sweetness, and complexity. Their intense love, which had not even truly begun, was drowned by unanswered messages and consigned to the passing years. It quickly exploded in popularity online.

Everyone looked forward to the continuation, either hoping to see them reconcile or wanting to see Qingping expose the “scumbag.”

Li Mo’s gaze was fixed on the last lines of text.

Li Hei Hei, I can no longer like you.

I’m sorry.

Li Hei Hei. He knew without a doubt that it was his nickname. And that familiar, affectionate, teasing address, like a red-hot needle, unexpectedly pierced the softest part of his heart, leaving a tiny but excruciatingly painful wound.

With 52 posts, Xu Qing had built a memorial hall for the crush of his seventeenth year, and he, Li Mo, the person who should have been the sole protagonist, had only just burst in with an expired ticket at the moment the memorial hall closed and drew its curtain.

He looked at the words “I’m sorry,” and his throat felt clogged with a piece of burning charcoal—unable to swallow, unable to spit out.

Who should be apologizing? Was it himself, who was absent when the other person needed him most, or was it that… fool, who apologized even when giving up?

He scrolled down to the comments section with a trembling hand.

Beneath the notes, the likes and comments were still growing. Countless unfamiliar IDs left messages of comfort, encouragement, or condemnation of that “Li Hei Hei.”

They felt sorry for the blogger named “Qingping” and cursed the bastard who had made the blogger wait so long and hurt him so deeply.

Li Mo read them one by one. The words struck him like dense, stinging icicles.

【Hugs, Qingqing, he’s not worth it!】

【I’m crying, that man has no heart!】

【Waiting for a response is too exhausting for a person. Leaving is the right choice, you’ll meet someone better!!! (Hugs.JPG)】

【So who is ‘Li Hei Hei’ anyway? Let him come out and take a beating!】

【Is it the Fox Boy that Qingqing posted about before? Damn, they seemed so sweet… Fox Boy, come out and face judgment.**

He closed the page.

Only the cold light reflecting off the screen remained in the room.

The room was dead silent, save for the faint hum of the laptop’s cooling fan.

Li Mo leaned back in the chair, staring up at the blurry light and shadows on the ceiling. His chest felt crushed by something, and every breath was a heavy, dull ache.

He hadn’t been oblivious to the fact that Xu Qing must have been sad and waiting for two years, but he never imagined it would be like this. How could Xu Qing, such a proud and cool-headed person, choose to use writing to lay bare those secret, passionate, and perhaps painful feelings to countless strangers?

This was not like Xu Qing’s personality.

Unless… unless this was the only voice he had left, his final outpouring of despair and… a cry for help?

This thought made Li Mo sit up abruptly, his heart gripped by a cold hand.

What exactly happened during that one-month gap? What made Xu Qing go from persistent daily contact to suddenly writing those 52 notes, and then decisively saying goodbye?

It was definitely not just being tired of waiting.

Li Mo pulled out his phone and found the 315 dorm group chat.

Unexpectedly, they hadn’t kicked him out yet…

Li Mo opened the long-silent chat box. The history was mostly the four of them bickering daily.

After the college entrance exam, the four had celebrated wildly in the group, and then gone their separate ways for fun.

Li Mo took a deep breath and slowly typed into the chat box:

【Does anyone… know what happened to Xu Qing?】

The message was sent.

After a moment of silence, Tang Dawei’s tentative message popped up:

Tang Dawei: 【Are you Li Mo? The real Li Mo or a fake one?】

Li Mo: 【It’s me, the genuine article.】

With this message, the other three also chimed in.

Lin Yi: 【Holy crap, it’s really Brother Mo. I thought this account was long dead.**

Yang Di: 【Whoa!!! Holy crap!!! It really is Brother Mo! Brother Mo, what happened to you??】

Shen Shuyi: 【Too much has happened. I think you should tell us first, why did you suddenly transfer?】

Li Mo typed silently, recounting everything that had happened from after the birthday party until now.

These four were different; Li Mo could tell them all this.

The group went quiet for a while.

Lin Yi: 【Brother Mo, if we tell you the truth, will your heart shatter and will you jump out the window right now?**

Tang Dawei: 【Big Lin isn’t exaggerating, these things… are really something.**

Yang Di: 【Yeah, even though men shouldn’t say they can’t handle it, it’s a matter of the heart after all…**

Li Mo typed directly: 【@ShenShuyiRoastedGrassJelly, you speak. These three are so damn slow.】

Tang Dawei: 【…】

Lin Yi: 【…】

Yang Di: 【…】

Shen Shuyi didn’t waste words and summarized the events of the past two years in very concise text:

【Your mom kept requesting long-term leave for you. You didn’t reply to our messages. When we asked Xu Qing, he wouldn’t say anything. Later, you transferred, and everything went on as before.

The thing is, Xu Qing’s father and presumably his older brother often came to school looking for him. Xu Qing seems to have a lot of family issues, and since he didn’t want to talk about it, we didn’t press.

Two months ago, Xu Qing was taken away by those two people, and he hasn’t been to school since.】

Lin Yi added: 【This is the more important thing. I checked Xu Qing’s exam room number, and a friend of mine was in the same session, but my friend said Xu Qing didn’t show up.】

Stop, stop, stop.

Li Mo: 【?】

Li Mo: 【Are you saying Xu Qing didn’t go to the college entrance exam????!!】

“Fucking hell…” Li Mo threw his phone onto the desk, aggressively running his hands through his hair. “Do those two jerks have no end…”

Messages popped up one after another in the group:

Yang Di: 【Brother Mo, calm down! Don’t do anything impulsive!**

Tang Dawei: 【It’s broken, and he’s not replying. Call 911!** (Using 911 as a general emergency number replacement)

Shen Shuyi: 【How can we call if we don’t know where he is…】

Lin Yi: 【We can’t just stand by and watch him die!!! Brother Mo, how can I live without you!】

Li Mo: 【Get lost, I’m annoyed, not jumping, not self-harming. Do not disturb.】

【…】

Li Mo’s intuition was right after all.

Do those two jerks have to completely destroy Xu Qing to be satisfied?

As he was thinking, a phone call interrupted his thoughts.

It was Yu Wenxiu.

Remembering the dinner engagement that evening, Li Mo took several deep breaths and, just seconds before the call would automatically hang up, pressed the connect button: “Hello, Mom.”

He had already adjusted his emotions; his tone was perfectly normal.

“Mo Mo, are you ready? The car is downstairs. Come down.”

Li Mo acknowledged: “Okay.”