From the beginning of their meeting this time, Fire still had yet to ask He Jin about the reason he suddenly went offline before, as if he was deliberately avoiding this problem. Instead, he was now considering about possible problems that He Jin might encounter later, seriously thinking of their future, giving He Jin both gifts and promises…
In face of such warmth, of course He Jin would feel touched. He finally couldn’t hold himself back from asking: “Fire, if I still didn’t come online, would you continue to wait?”
Fire was silent for a moment, before answering softly “Yes”.
Sure enough, this would be his answer…
“Why?” He Jin asked, “Are you really so sure that I’ll still want to continue playing this game? ”
“You don’t want to play? Then what are you doing here? ”
He Jin, who was asked, suddenly felt choked. Indeed, he wanted to play… But he asked that because he was also curious about what was Fire thinking ah, why would he do this for such an ordinary netizen!
Xiao Xian-Jin: “So many years have passed, did it never cross your mind that maybe I’m not going to come online ever again?”
At the other end of the network connection, Qin Yu was looking at the dialog box thoughtfully… To be honest, he also felt strange, because he did never thought of that.
Everyone in the game could see his “married” status, but few people knew that his wife had not been online for years. Dead Water was one of them. He had inadvertently asked Fire once whether he was still waiting for his wife, and after hearing Fire’s affirmative answer, he would occasionally use this matter to ridicule him, and even advised him to forget his so called wife once, to find another new one. But Qin Yu never took him seriously, he was used to it.
Qin Yu said lightly: “If I think about it, then I’ll probably stop waiting.”
Yes, because thinking about it, in a way, had already represented a feeling of hesitation and withdrawal.
So, he simply stopped thinking about it.
Fire’s answer caused a heat to bloom in He Jin’s heart. He Jin was originally a calm person, but meeting this type of people, to hear such words being said to him, he couldn’t help but feel a bit overwhelmed.
Pressing down the uneasiness that had risen within him, He Jin carefully chose his words, hinting tactfully: “But after all these years, what if that person you’ve been waiting for has changed, and become different from your original impression of them?”
Ah Jin no longer online, Qin Yu indeed became depressed for a period of time. He felt so lonely, so frustrated, but without Ah Jin, he also could not simply stop playing the game. So he imagined that Ah Jin was still there accompanying him, staying by his side… After that, every time he met interesting things, or saw new scenery, he would try his best to remember it all, always thinking about waiting for He Jin to come back so that he could show them to her later, to accompany her to see these new things once she returned.
Some things, he did remember, while some others, he ended up forgetting. The world would continue to change and the game was always evolving, but he had never once forgotten the feeling of playing the game with Ah Jin… to be protected, but also wanting to protect each other, as long as they were together, he was very happy. Especially after their in-game wedding, whenever he thought of Ah Jin then, he could not restrain the sudden skipping of his heartbeat.
This heartbeat, except for Ah Jin, no one else has ever made him feel so.
In this way, unconsciously, eight years had passed, and then Ah Jin was online once again. The moment he saw that name, Qin Yu’s heart almost jumped out of his chest…
It was like magic, allowing him to confirm, that this person really is the only one.
Qin Yu: “Why should it be a problem? You are you, even if at the other end of the computer the real you are actually a dog, I wouldn’t care, you are still my wife. ”
The tone used by Fire, so vulgar with a hint of intimate tenderness, numbed He Jin’s ears, making his whole face flushed hot. And his “perfect” answer, somehow made He Jin feel flattered, as if the tangled mess of his gender issue had become meaningless.
In this moment, He Jin had a sudden urge of wanting to continue being like this with Fire, to not say anything else to him, to make up for this eight years of debt, and to meet all of his expectations…
However, before he had the chance to answer, Fire suddenly changed the topic: “However, I indeed feel you have changed a little.”
He Jin: “….!!” Did Fire realize it?
Fire: “I think you have become even more lovely.”
He Jin: “…”
Fire continued mischievously: “Don’t tell me you were frightened by my last sentence before… So scared that you immediately went offline, huh? ”
Xiao Xian Ajin: “I … There was a power outage in the dorm.”
This time, Fire burst out laughing, apparently did not believe in He Jin’s “excuse”, but he still said: “I guess so.”
He Jin: “…” Why do I have a feeling that I’m being teased? (=_=)
Having had enough fun, Fire calmed himself and explained: “I did not deliberately wait for you, you don’t have to feel sorry for me. I have played a good game these years, and also have gained many friends. I’m playing very happily.”
He Jin was stunned, is this true? He was still doubtful, however, Fire’s as-cool-as-the-wind attitude did help a lot in easing He Jin’s mind.
Fire: “Of course, with you here, I am also feeling more happy… However, if you don’t want to play anymore, just tell me, don’t leave without any notice. We can say goodbye properly then, I promise I won’t prevent you from leaving. What do you think?”
He Jin: “…”
That might be as well, although He Jin’s feeling about playing this game was a bit complicated. He did want to continue to play. How could he not? He had just received a wonderful gift from this person! And now he even got to hear him saying, “With you here, I’m also feeling more happy,” so, how could he refuse? It’s just…
Xiao Xian-Jin: “Before, when we did the husband and wife task, there was a question asking whether you’d want to develop a realistic relationship with me, and you answered ‘will’… Are you serious about this? ”
Qin Yu frowned and asked, “What, you have someone special in reality?”
Xiao Xian-Jin: “No…”
The corner of Qin Yu’s mouth lifted up: “I see, you don’t want to involve real life in playing this game?”
Xiao Xian-Jin: “Yes.”
Qin Yu promised: “Fine, I promise you, what happens in the game stays in the game. I will not be noisy about how you looked like in real life, whether you are tall or thin, man or woman, beautiful or ugly, healthy or have disability… As long as you stay as my wife in the game, I don’t care about the other things. If you don’t want to say it, then I won’t ask. How about it? Do you still have anymore questions? ”
He Jin sighed and said,” No.”
What else did he have to say? It almost felt as if Fire could read his mind, because every words. he said, almost all of them were what He Jin had been thinking in his heart. They were exactly as he wanted.
Fire Ruthless: “Since you no longer have any problem, then I also have a request for you.”
Xiao Xian-Jin: “What is it?”
Fire Ruthless: “Later when we play the game, call me husband.”
He Jin: “…”
Fire Ruthlwss: “Can you do it?”
Qin Yu’s request was actually not that weird, after all they were “husband and wife” in the game. But for He Jin, a normal boy, to suddenly have to call someone of the same gender as “husband”… It always made him feel very embarrassed ah!
He Jin tried to negotiate: “Can you give me some time to adapt?”
Fire teased him: “To adapt to what, the more you call the more you will become used to it. Not to mention, you are also only typing now, not even speaking with your mouth.”
He Jin: “…” (=_=)
Xiao Xian-Jin: “We haven’t seen each other for so many years, I’m not used to it.”
Fire Ruthless: “Ah, so shy…”
He Jin: “…….” Orz….
Fire: “Fine, then I’ll give you three days.”
***
※ The Past in the Spirit Fairy ※ (vii)
Ah Jin no longer in the game, Qin Yu who was initially feeling lost and sad, slowly began to accept this reality. It took a full three years for him to do this.
For the past three years, he had refused to send friend request to anyone, and deleted other passers-by who inadvertently added him. Only leaving one name, “Xiao Xian-Jin”, in his friends list, because he did not want to see the system prompting “your friend xx-and xx is online”, or see his friend’s column lit up. If it did not come from this one name, then he felt more happy to leave it empty.
Every time he felt lonely, Qin Yu would point his cursor to open Ah Jin’s name, and sent an offline message to the other player.
“Ah Jin, while you are not online, I’m almost at level 40!”
“Yesterday I did a dungeon task in Fairy Island, luckily got a crane, I now can fly ah. When you come back, don’t be too envious of me hehe.”
“I’m only teasing you!…When you come, I will take you to upgrade, wait until you reaches the same level as me, then we’ll continue to play! ^_^ ”
“Ah Jin, Celestial is so beautiful!”
“There are many high level players in Celestial, I died several times …”
“Apparently if you jump down from Celestial, you will fall directly to the boundary and die, I fell for a full 20 seconds … But the scenery is so beautiful …”
“Ah Jin, I have began to study seriously, learning seems to be very interesting.”
“Ah Jin, I’m almost at full level!”
————-
Of course, it wasn’t always messages like these, Qin Yu would also fantasize sometimes, about something like what should he say to He Jin when he came back.
“Ah Jin, you finally come, I’ve waited for you for so long, I feel bitter!”
Okay, as a husband, that’s not cool enough! (=_=)
“Ah Jin, I miss you …”
-It’s disgusting! Can’t say that! (=_=#)
“Ah Jin, long time no see …”
–So proper and polite! Just be an actor instead! (/= _ =)/~┴┴
————
Once, Qin Yu accidentally found his name appeared on “Spirit Fairy” ranking list, the first person he wanted to share his excitement with was Ah Jin-
“Ah Jin! I’m on the charts! Ha ha! [Cool] When you come online, you can call me big God! [Cool]”
“Ah Jin, I’m ranked 37 today, this game is getting more and more fun!”
Of course, there are times when things were not going well.
“Today met a very powerful guy, every time was killed by him … [Anger]”
“He was ranked 30 … [Anger]”
While there were optimist times, there were also times of depression –
“Ah Jin, because I’m not strong enough, that’s why you don’t come back …”
“Maybe you are waiting for me to become first rank, become the real great God, if I do, will you come back?”
“I will take the exam too, just like you …”
————
The leaderboards in the game became another big motivation for Qin Yu to keep playing. He tried his best to practice his technique and PK skill.
In this way, two years later, Qin Yu with excellent results was also admitted to a popular high school, however the “Xiao Xian-Jin” name in the game remained gray. Qin Yu kept on sending news about himself to Ah Jin, but as if he was talking with a tree, he never got a reply.
Slowly, the number of messages Qin Yu sent to Ah Jin became less and less. It’s not like he forgot about Ah Jin, but he felt that his messages were too stupid, sometimes when he looked over the previous record, he would scold himself … How can you be so childish!
For example, when he climbed to the top ten in ranking list, and then looked back to see his excited message to Ah Jin when he first entered the list, it was so unbearable to look at. Qin Yu felt shy, he did not want Ah Jin to see so many of his nonsense once he came back.
After another year, “Fire Ruthless” name got more and more high on the ranking list, more and more players also began to know about him, and even female players began to openly confess to him. But Qin Yu had been accustomed to playing the game alone, for him, he only needed opponents on the game, not wives.
In the third year, the game officially announced that “Spirit Fairy” was about to be revised into “Demon God”. In the revision, the game company would clean up all the players chat records, including the offline player’s cached offline messages.
Seeing this news, Qin Yu felt both relieved and sad.
On the night of the game revision, the 17-Year-old Qin Yu stole his father’s secret stack of whiskey, sitting drunkenly in front of his computer, staring at all the past messages he had shared with Ah Jin. Going back to 1175 days ago when they first met… Even if 1100 days of those were filled with only his one-man monologues.
He looked at each of them one by one, grinning for one moment, then crying for another, while also pessimistically wondering if Ah Jin had forgotten about him.
Just before the clock turned to 12, Qin Yu silently entered one last sentence in the dialog box-
“Ah Jin, I like you.”
The countdown became zero , and the server connection was cut off, all chats data from the previous version would be cleared, and along with it, Qin Yu’s silly “First Love Diary” would also disappear…
Since then, “Xiao Xian-Jin” in Fire’s friends list stayed gray, remained only a hollow name.
But Qin Yu would continue to wait, even if his connection with that name was only a short-lived dream, he was willing to indulge himself in it, never wanting to wake up.
The author has something to say:
(This is written by the original author, not me, but I feel this is somehow important.)
I see a lot of readers discussing about why He Jin did not just confess about his gender, and so I want to explain.
Because He Jin knew Fire had waited for along time, he felt guilty, and also would like to compensate him, but he felt that the way to compensate is not to immediately told Fire about his gender frankly, because Fire might become “devastated” (it might also make him angry), but to do as he had always been doing, to meet Fire’s fantasies and expectations. This way of thinking was caused by his childhood education and upbringing character, so his sub-consciousness would persuade himself to play the “wife” role, even if he wasn’t used to it at first, he would do it (He Jin never really fell in love, so he didn’t know that emotional problems aren’t something that could be solved rationally), but in his mind it would never going to be real, because in his opinion, a wife could only be “females”, so when he got Qin Yu’s “what happens in the game stays in the game” commitment, needless to say, He Jin felt relieved.
Before I made this story, when writing He Jin’s character set up, I wanted to create a self-contradictory role, a depressed and boring one. The “rebellion” mentioned in the previous chapters is a beginning of his attempt to break through. But it does not mean that he would suddenly undergo a “big change of temperament”. I see many readers are anxious, using normal “moral” to standardize and judge Ah Jin, as if the fact that he did not confess about his gender was a sin that could not be forgiven … But Ah Jin is not a moral role model, he has his human weakness, he may be selfish, may be despicable, may be hypocritical… but I hope you will patiently wait for his growth and transformation.
I may or may not have expressed this well, so there might be some misunderstanding, so today I’ll repeatedly look over and over again and change some psychological description details. But I have limited capacity, if at my current state I can’t meet all of your expectations, I can only apologize here. (／＿＼)