26. Lost, Both Ways

Outside the window it was raining, a fine, continuous drizzle rarely seen in southern Taiwan's winters. The northeast monsoon up north didn't have enough force to push past the Taoyuan-Hsinchu-Miaoli region, so that the winter climate showed a stark divide between north and south. If even a small island like Taiwan could have such striking climate differences within it, how much more so with every single person being such a distinct individual — needless to say, the gap in ideas and beliefs between people.

But once in a while, an illusion of uniformity would surface anyway. A uniform view, a uniform nightmare, a uniform imagined scenario.

Take, for instance, the shared assumption that Wen Mingjuan and Gao Weizhao being together would mean ruining her own future, pushing herself toward an abyss of no return. When enough people repeat something enough times, even a lie becomes truth — and there was no way Wen Mingjuan could keep from bowing her head under that weight.

Gao Weizhao had already been gone for a while now; the semester was drawing to a close, and everyone was busy tallying grades and wrapping up various loose ends, yet no matter what, Wen Mingjuan simply couldn't muster any energy for it. Every day she felt groggy and heavy-limbed, often startled awake at night. Whenever Zhang Tingyu had fallen asleep, she would secretly cry for a while, crying until she was exhausted enough to drift off without realizing it.

If a convicted criminal's prison cell was a visible kind of confinement, then what she was suffering through now was every bit its invisible counterpart.

She walked into the music building, into the music room.

Playing the piano.

This had always been her way of working through her worries.

Only lately, the moment she stepped inside, she would find herself overtaken by that faint, lingering trace of longing.

Not long ago, Gao Weizhao had come here too, over the matter of Lan Yunmei.

Sitting at the piano, she couldn't manage to get a single note right. Again and again she'd drift into a daze, then sigh. Gao Weizhao's silhouette kept projecting itself over and over across the polished surface of the piano's fallboard, unsettling her heart.

Why?

Why, out of everyone she could have loved, did she have to fall for a hoodlum of all people?

A hoodlum who looked the least like a hoodlum of anyone.

The rain outside pattered down steadily, just like it had that time in Taipei when she'd rushed around getting medicine for Gao Weizhao's wound. Now her every thought, every notion, had become impossible to pry loose from him. She never could have imagined that the name Gao Weizhao had already, long ago, laid siege to her heart and claimed it entirely as his own territory.

The rain didn't ease up until evening, falling for no particular reason yet leaving people unsettled all the same. After work, she wandered back to the apartment in a daze; Zhang Tingyu still wasn't back yet.

She'd been coming home late a lot recently.

But since Wen Mingjuan's own mood had sunk to rock bottom, she had no spare thought to give to what Zhang Tingyu might be busy with, and so day after day slipped by just the same.

Wen Mingjuan sat there in a listless daze; her students' final grades were still waiting for her to tally up, but she simply couldn't bring herself to do it. She didn't want to shower, didn't want to eat, didn't even feel like moving at all — the vitality of her life seemed to be fading away day by day, like someone gravely ill.

Gao Weizhao had thrown her whole life's order into chaos, and had utterly shattered the steady pace of the life she'd already set for herself.

After zoning out for a good while longer, she suddenly noticed the note pinned down on the desk, a string of crooked, uneven digits scrawled across it — Gao Weizhao's own handwriting, as twisted as a grade-schooler's. Ugly as those characters were, she now found herself utterly haunted by them, unable to let go.

Stroking that string of numbers, Wen Mingjuan cried for a while longer before finally deciding to dial the phone.

After waiting quite a while, the answering machine picked up.

He wasn't home?

Where could he have gone?

Well, of course — how could someone like him possibly stay quietly at home like a law-abiding citizen at all times?

He was the one they called the young head of the gang — how many matters within the organization were waiting on him to handle?

"Gao Weizhao, it's me, I..." She'd only managed to get out a couple of sentences before she couldn't help herself and began sobbing again; truthfully she hadn't really stopped crying at all this whole time, and now it came pouring out like a dam bursting open, impossible to hold back.

"I'm... it's... Mingjuan..." she said, choked with tears.

At that point, she couldn't go on any further, collapsing over the desk in tears, even forgetting to hang up the receiver.

"Mingjuan?" Suddenly, the receiver on the other end was picked up — it was Gao Weizhao's voice.

"You're home?" Wen Mingjuan was utterly astonished; she had never once imagined Gao Weizhao would actually be there.

"I am. I haven't gone out in days — I didn't want to be disturbed, so I let the answering machine screen my calls." he said.

"I..." Hearing Gao Weizhao's voice, Wen Mingjuan's tears burst forth like a breached dam, impossible to hold back any longer. "I've lost myself somewhere in your world, and I can't find my way back to where I was before. What do I do?"

What should she do?

So it turned out she wasn't the only one who'd lost her way?

Gao Weizhao's heart churned with a hundred mixed feelings. These past several days he too had been unable to sleep soundly or eat properly because of this very problem, never once stepping outside his front door — and hearing Wen Mingjuan say this now, he found himself stunned into silence...

He had once told her, "If the sky comes falling down, I'll hold it up for you." But now, faced with a Wen Mingjuan this utterly helpless, what was there left for him to do for her?

* * *

Just two days later, the school was set to hold its closing ceremony. After that, this semester would officially come to an end, passing into history, and Wen Mingjuan and Zhang Tingyu would each return to their own family homes to rest for a few days, before coming back to the apartment once winter tutoring session began.

In the auditorium, everything was ready. Wen Mingjuan and Zhang Tingyu were walking side by side toward the auditorium; they were less than five steps away from it when a voice called out to her from behind.

"Teacher Wen Mingjuan, someone's looking for you at the front gate." It was the gate guard calling out to her.

"Someone's looking for me?" Wen Mingjuan blinked in surprise.

Who could be looking for her at a time like this?

Handing her class over to Zhang Tingyu, Wen Mingjuan made her way to the front gate, her face full of suspicion, to see what this was about.

That person turned out to be none other than Sun Mengwei? She'd seen him once before, when he'd come to the school with Gao Weizhao looking for her, but they hadn't spoken then, let alone had any real connection.

Why would he come looking for her now? Could it be that Gao Weizhao had sent him?

But there was a faint trace of sorrow on Sun Mengwei's face, and even more than that, urgency.

"Sister-in-law Wei." The moment he saw Wen Mingjuan, Sun Mengwei hurried right up to her, which let Wen Mingjuan see the worry etched on his face all the more clearly.

"Why are you here?" Wen Mingjuan asked.

"Sister-in-law Wei, please come to Taipei with me right away. I've come to take you to see Brother Wei — he's in the ICU right now." Sun Mengwei begged Wen Mingjuan, his tone almost pleading.

"The ICU? What... what happened?" Wen Mingjuan froze. What had happened? She'd only spoken with him on the phone two days ago — how could he already be in intensive care by now?

"What happened to him?" she asked, deeply worried.

"The day before yesterday, the boss flew into a rage, and got into it badly with Brother Wei — it seems it was over you. Brother Wei absolutely refused to take over as gang leader, and he even wanted to leave the underworld entirely, wash his hands of it for good. The boss put in a huge amount of effort but couldn't talk him out of it. Brother Wei is the boss's most prized protégé — the boss trained him, valued him, had such high hopes riding on him — and now, to see Brother Wei throw away all these years of the boss's investment and effort, all for your sake, of course the boss was furious."

"Gao Weizhao's skills are that good, and he still couldn't hold his own against your boss?" Hearing Sun Mengwei say this, Wen Mingjuan's mind was instantly thrown into panic.

"Brother Wei didn't fight back at all. He'd made up his mind, decided to walk away, and just let the boss punish him as he saw fit." Sun Mengwei said.

"Besides, fighting back against the boss would only have gotten him killed even worse. Rising up against a superior — heaven itself won't tolerate it, and everyone would have the right to strike him down!"

"I..." Just as she started to say something, Sun Mengwei cut her off.

"Sister-in-law Wei, are you going to go see Brother Wei or not? He's still unconscious — if it weren't for the boss still holding onto some old affection for him, he'd probably be dead already, there's no way he'd have made it this far."

"I..." Wen Mingjuan tried to suppress her own tangled emotions; her heart had already been thrown into complete disarray, anxiously worrying over Gao Weizhao's safety. But her parents' warnings still rang in her ears, and her colleagues' strange, judging looks still lurked all around her — what else could she possibly do?

"What exactly did your boss do to him? Why is Gao Weizhao hurt so badly? Was it really necessary to try to put someone to death like that?" Wen Mingjuan was both furious and anxious. Shouldn't a person's individual will be respected? In this civilized age, how could there still be such barbaric behavior, using violence to control someone else's free will?

"This isn't something you'd understand — you're a teacher, you have no idea about the rules and ways of our organization. Brother Wei never wanted you to know too much; that was his own consideration, not wanting to drag you into it, and I'm not about to go against his wishes. Don't ask any more — even if you do, there's nothing more I can tell you. In the end, a gang has its own rules, and staking his life to buy his way out was his own choice. I'm just asking you to go see him — Brother Wei still hasn't woken up." As he spoke, Sun Mengwei's eyes reddened. "Aren't you afraid you might not get to see Brother Wei one last time? Whatever else, he did all this for you."

"One last time?" Those words pierced deep into Wen Mingjuan's heart.

No, please, no!

Even if she went, she absolutely refused to let it be a last goodbye.

She wanted to gaze at him for a lifetime, to hear him speak!

"I'll go." Suddenly, Wen Mingjuan spoke with firm resolve.

Gao Weizhao, so that she — lost and wandering — could finally settle down for good in his world, no longer helpless and adrift, had been willing to endure the harshest trial of all, staking his very life as the price, giving up everything he'd once had. Faced with all this, how could she still hesitate?

No matter what anyone else thought, if she didn't go, she would regret it for the rest of her life.

* * *

The smell of hospital disinfectant was nothing unfamiliar to Wen Mingjuan; not long ago, escorted by Gao Weizhao, she herself had spent time in a hospital emergency room. Now the roles had reversed — it was Gao Weizhao lying in the hospital bed, and the setting had shifted to the intensive care unit.

Making the most of that brief visiting window, Wen Mingjuan was left alone inside; the rest of his men waited quietly and by unspoken agreement outside the ICU, not following her in.

Gao Weizhao — this name that caused her such heartache — now, with him gravely wounded and unconscious, made her heart ache all the more.

Wiping away her tears, Wen Mingjuan took out her ID card.

"It's me, Mingjuan, Wen Mingjuan — can you hear me?" She leaned in close and whispered by Gao Weizhao's ear. "It was this that opened up our connection to each other. You were the one who picked it up, so it was destined to be yours... to be yours." She pressed the ID card into Gao Weizhao's palm.

Holding Gao Weizhao's hand, just as he had held hers that day she lay in the emergency room with pneumonia — except now, there was one more thing held between their two palms: Wen Mingjuan's ID card.

"As long as you're willing to wake up, I'll follow you to the ends of the earth."

Before she knew it, her tears had begun to fall once more.