“Love what? This lousy man—even if you married him, he’d chase other women the moment you turned around.” She grabbed her wrist and dragged her out of bed. “Get up!”
“Why? Just let me die here.”
“Not a chance!” Qing Yan had a plan. “How much pocket money do you have left?”
“I don’t want to calculate.”
“You must calculate.” She forcefully handed her paper and pen.
Then sat down to calculate. “Give me the final bill. I need to convert it.”
“Convert what?” Yu Jingwei was confused, her tears forgotten.
Qing Yan spoke with determination, then grabbed the indoor phone. “Our shared money can cover a three-hour international call. We’ll call to curse him out! After that, we’ll forget about it.”
Under her coercion, Yu Jingwei made the call. Initially pleading for her boyfriend to reconsider, when he became impatient, she also erupted, hurling every insult she knew, screaming about his heartlessness, cursing him to be bald, crooked-mouthed, and ear-rotted. She called back repeatedly, only stopping after six hours of cathartic cursing.
The next week, Qing Yan dragged her to work as a café waitress and dishwasher at a Chinese restaurant, working so hard they were sore, finally earning back the phone money.
“Come to think of it, we should thank that lousy man. If not for him, we wouldn’t have become friends.”
Yu Jingwei might have recovered from her pain, but Qing Yan was still indignant.
“Never be fooled by those lousy men again!”
During those four years, they never returned to Taiwan, studying thick books daily, wandering libraries, researching international situations with diplomats, reading numerous newspapers and publications, expanding their professional knowledge. Every holiday, they had to intern at news centers.
That kind of busy was extremely busy—so busy it was suffocating.
She had no extra time or energy to think about people back in Taiwan, including the one she loved and the one who loved her.
They never exchanged phone numbers, and she naturally never called. Gratifyingly, she had achieved her initial goal of participating in the scholarship program. She learned to be patient, feeling herself improving daily, her perspective broadening, her heart becoming more expansive, and her temper smoothed by challenges.
Coming to the United States for the third Valentine’s Day, Yu Jingwei suddenly asked:
“Don’t you want to see Wei Zhanyi?”
