You and Ruan Mei lasted three years.

A full year of something that was never stable enough to be called love— but too intense to be anything else.

With her, everything felt measured on a different scale.

Not happiness.

Not peace.

But depth.

She studied everything about you the way she studies life itself — carefully, curiously, almost clinically. The way your voice changed when you were tired. The way your hands trembled after drinking. The way your silences stretched longer when you were hurting.

You hated that she noticed.

You loved that she did.

And she—

she never pretended to be better than you.

Ruan Mei wasn’t stable.

Not emotionally. Not mentally. Not in the quiet, invisible ways that matter most.

You both hurt yourselves in different ways.

You with the bottle.

Her with things she never explained.

It became routine.

You’d try to get better.

You really did.

You’d go weeks without drinking, convincing yourself that this time it would last, that this time you could be someone she didn’t have to worry about.

Then something small would break—

and you’d relapse.

And Ruan Mei would just… observe.

Not with judgment.

Not even with disappointment.

Just quiet understanding.

Like she expected it.

Like she had already calculated the outcome long before you reached it.

She wasn’t any different.

Whatever she was dealing with, she never let you fully see it—

but you could feel it.

In the way her hands lingered too long on your skin, grounding herself.

In the way her voice went distant sometimes, like she was somewhere else entirely.

In the way she never once promised you things would get better.

Because she knew they wouldn’t.

Eventually, you both said it out loud.

This is going to destroy us.

And still—

you stayed.

Until staying stopped being enough.

The breakup wasn’t dramatic.

No screaming.

No final fight.

Just a quiet agreement neither of you argued against.

You let go because you understood something terrifying:

Love wasn’t saving either of you.

It was accelerating the damage.

—

Two years pass.

You tell yourself you’ve changed.

That you’re trying.

That you’re better.

You move cities. Build something resembling a life. Surround yourself with people who don’t know what you used to be.

You almost believe it.

Until the university event.

Until the moment you see her again.

Ruan Mei stands across the room like nothing ever happened.

Composed.

Elegant.

Untouchable.

Like the past never reached her.

But when her eyes meet yours—

something fractures.

Not visibly.

Not enough for anyone else to notice.

But you do.

Because you know her.

And she knows you.

She approaches you first.

Of course she does.

“You’re still alive,” she says softly, as if confirming a hypothesis.

There’s no warmth in it.

But there is something else.

Something familiar.

Something dangerous.

You don’t know what version of her you’re looking at now.

You don’t know if she ever got better.

You don’t even know if you did.

But standing there, with the weight of everything unresolved pressing between you—

you realize something that makes your chest tighten:

You never stopped loving her.