My Healing Games

Chapter 972 Two Love Affairs
"My love?" Zhang Mingli's excited emotions calmed down a little. Love was a turning point in his life, and also the beginning of his alienation.

The smoke was blown away by the night wind, and Zhang Mingli remained silent for a while before speaking: "I have had two relationships. The first one was my first love. We've known each other since junior high school."

"Childhood sweetheart?"

“No, it was her who called me a loser from the same village.” Zhang Mingli, a cigarette dangling from his lips, drove through the night, the fire axe on the passenger seat occasionally twitching as the car swayed. “We were very poor when we were kids, but we both did very well in school. We went to the only junior high school in town, and later got into the best high school in the city. I was always first in my class, and she was always second. I always liked her. Back then, my feelings for her were pure and unadulterated. Thinking about it now, I don’t even know what I liked about her. I just felt happy being near her, and I felt safe when I saw her.”

"Did you confess your feelings?" Huang Ying also turned her head.

“I had a crush on her, and I tried to express it subtly once.” Zhang Mingli’s fingers rested on the steering wheel: “I know she is very competitive, so in the midterm exam of my junior year, I deliberately did fewer questions, hoping to give her first place.”

"Is this the romance of a top student?" Han Fei asked, intrigued. "And then?"

“Damn it, the questions were pretty easy that time. Some clueless bastard got first place, and she still came in second. I failed to control my score and got sixth, which made me even further behind her.” Zhang Mingli slammed his fist on the steering wheel. “Later, I studied hard and we ended up going to the same university in the same city. We met again in a provincial competition, and it felt like we were old friends.”

“I didn’t date in college. She was the only woman I talked to the most. I don’t know what kind of life she leads. I’m curious about everything about her, but I don’t want to ask her anything, since we have no relationship.”

"The real change happened before graduation. During that time, she was extremely depressed and even started drinking. She seemed to have no friends, which is similar to me."

When Zhang Mingli talked about love, he used far less profanity and seemed more normal: "She invited me on our first date. She said she wanted to have a drink, and I didn't think much of it. We talked a lot that day. Maybe it's because we've grown up, so we talked about many topics that we'd never discussed before, like plans for our future work, our desire to realize our life's value, and our yearning for a better life."

"Actually, I don't drink at all. That was the first time I ever drank. I stupidly followed her and kept drinking, one glass after another."

“I was very naive back then. After drinking, I couldn’t stop the words from flowing out. Her future was all about herself, but my future was all about her.”

"What is the meaning of hard work? Isn't it so that when you meet someone you like, you can disregard material things, work, and reality, and have a passionate love affair?"

“Most people don’t have this qualification; they just take it one step at a time. But I started planning my life very early on and began to give it my all very early on.”

Amidst the swirling smoke, Zhang Mingli's speech slowed down: "The time I spent near graduation from university was very happy for me. We were together every day, but after graduation, she went to work in another city."

"Aren't you two together?" Huang Ying also asked Zhang Mingli for a cigarette, and the man in his thirties seemed to be enjoying the conversation.

“She didn’t give me an answer.” Zhang Mingli stared at the pitch-black night road: “Ninety percent of a person’s suffering comes from obsession. Even knowing that you are holding a rose full of thorns, you still can’t bear to let go, even if your palms are full of blood. That’s the kind of person I am. When I was a child, I would scratch lottery tickets, and even if I only got the word ‘thank you’, I would still scratch all four words of ‘thank you for your patronage’ before I gave up. I’m still the same now that I’m an adult.”

"Wouldn't it be impolite to keep knocking on a closed door?" Huang Ying rested one hand on the car window; this nightmare felt like a solo trip for three men.

"Yes, I hesitated too, but in the end, the door opened for me."

The night bus sped along the dark road, and it seemed that no one knew where the final destination was.

“We got together. I was aiming to get married from the beginning because I knew I had nothing, so I worked hard. I didn’t want her to suffer, and I didn’t want her to feel that being with me was a mistake.”

"I would meet all her needs. During that period, I was like a superman. Maybe that's the power of love."

"She is also a very good person. In terms of work ability, she is no worse than me. She is also very caring, gentle and virtuous, and very polite to everyone. In her spare time, she will also volunteer at the welfare home."

“In my eyes, her life seemed to be shining, illuminating me like a flame.”

This should have been a perfect story, but as the ash fell, Zhang Mingli slowly emerged from his memories: "She was exceptionally talented, with every inch of her being a virtue, but I don't understand why someone like her would deceive me?"

Did she cheat on her husband?

“It’s not exactly cheating, it’s just that being with me was too boring for her, and she couldn’t bear to give up this stability.” Zhang Mingli lit another cigarette: “Maybe she has another side to her, a side that only she knows. I don’t want to think about her from that negative perspective. It was like this when we were together, and it’s like this now that we’re apart.”

"You two broke up?" Huang Ying, who had taken over from Han Fei, asked curiously.

“Yes, a few days before the wedding.” Zhang Mingli spoke calmly about his first relationship: “My love for her did not teach me what love is. To me, she was like someone who had been chasing the sun in my life. One day, when I finally embraced her, I found that besides being dazzling, she could also burn my soul and consume me. Maybe that’s not love.”

"Looking back now, most of my memories of her are blurry. Perhaps I didn't love her that much. What I regret is the version of myself that went through mountains and oceans, exhausted."

“After we broke up, I went to teach in a rural area. I come from a poor family and know the difficulties of children in those mountainous areas. I wanted to help them change their fate, or at least not follow my old path.”

"Actually, I am a very insecure person. No matter how outstanding such a person is, he will be timid and hesitant when it comes to love, and in the end, he will only be left with pain."

"So in my view, love is equivalent to pain. My first relationship gave me this idea, and my second relationship proved it to be true..."

Just as Zhang Mingli finished speaking, a "thump-thump" sound suddenly came from the trunk of the car, as if someone was knocking on the car body.

Han Fei and Huang Ying in the back seat heard it clearly: the trunk of the car was opened by some force, and something was crawling outside the car!

Black, foul blood flowed down the car window, and the sound of fingernails scraping against the roof came from behind. A few seconds later, a bloody human face suddenly appeared!
A female corpse that had been dead for a long time was lying on the roof of the car, looking down at Zhang Mingli through the windshield.

"Fuck!"

With a slam on the brakes, Zhang Mingli stopped the car. By the time he recovered from his shock, the female corpse that had been lying on the roof of the car was gone.

"Have you seen a female corpse?!" Zhang Mingli shouted.

Huang Ying did not answer immediately, but looked at Han Fei. Whether he saw it or not depended on Han Fei's opinion.

“We saw it too, she…it looks like she crawled out of your trunk.” Han Fei stared at Zhang Mingli, waiting for Zhang Mingli to give an explanation.

"Impossible! How could there be a body in my trunk!" Zhang Mingli didn't seem to be lying. He got out of the car and opened the trunk: "There's nothing there! There's not even a drop of blood in my trunk! How could there be a body hidden there!"

"Should we go down and take a look?" Huang Ying grabbed the car door.

Han Fei was about to open the car door, but as soon as he opened it a crack, the blood-red ghost pattern on his body was triggered, and it seemed that something very dangerous was waiting for them outside the car!

"Don't go down, this nightmare is a bit unusual..." Han Fei said softly, "Zhang Mingli's tablet computer has a lot of photos of a woman. Although the faces of those photos are covered, judging from the body shape, the woman in the tablet should not be the female corpse."

"Could it be that Zhang Mingli killed his first love with his own hands? But he forgot about it?" Huang Ying suggested.

“If Zhang Mingli is the master of the nightmare, then this night road is his life. The burned-down house, the old man who staged three accidents to extort money from him, and the female corpse should all be symbols of something. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the female corpse represents a dead person.” After Han Fei and Huang Ying exchanged a few words, Zhang Mingli, who had checked the trunk, returned to the car.

"I feel like those evil things are deliberately trying to stop me! They don't want me to keep going, but I refuse to believe it and I'm going to keep going today!" Zhang Mingli is not afraid of ghosts, and he seems to care about real ghosts and fake ghosts.

After securing the fire axe, Zhang Mingli turned back to reassure Han Fei and Huang Ying: "Don't be afraid, either of you. If that female corpse comes out again, I'll chop it to death with this axe!"

"What if it doesn't kill him?"

"Then drag it into the car! Tie it to the passenger seat! And recite the Tao Te Ching to it!" Zhang Mingli said viciously.

The car started, and the night breeze blew into the car. The group seemed to slowly forget what had just happened and resumed their previous conversation.

"Teacher Zhang, your second relationship seems to be even more unforgettable?"

"My second relationship was true love. I met the person who changed my life. I understood happiness, joy, and the meaning of life. That girl became my wife." Zhang Mingli's eyes softened. Just thinking of his wife melted away all his madness.

"It seems she is your true love." Huang Ying asked Zhang Mingli for another cigarette and listened patiently.

“Actually, the reason I went out this time was to find her.” Zhang Mingli gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands: “No matter what I encounter along the way, I will keep driving until I meet her.”

"Your wife left you too? What kind of conflict happened between you?" Huang Ying is almost forty and still unmarried, and he also wants to know what married life is like.

“I love her very much, and she loves me very much too, but she feels that we can’t be together anymore.” As Zhang Mingli was saying this, he suddenly saw a child squatting next to an abandoned phone booth by the roadside. The child was only three or four years old.

The car had already driven past when Zhang Mingli suddenly reversed and stopped next to the phone booth: "Wait for me a moment. It's late at night, and it's not safe for that kid to be alone on the roadside."

"He may not be a child; he might be a ghost baby."

"He must be very sad, all alone as a ghost." Zhang Mingli didn't bring the fire axe, but grabbed a handful of candy from the car and went out.

A child, dressed in pure white, stood with his head down next to the phone booth, letting out a plaintive cry.

"Little brat, don't cry, uncle will give you candy." Zhang Mingli seemed worried that the smell of his cigarette smoke would choke the child, so he waited for the wind to blow over before going over: "Where are your parents?"

The boy looked up, and surprisingly, he bore a slight resemblance to Zhang Mingli.

"Speak up! You have to tell me what trouble you're in before I can help you." Zhang Mingli stuffed the candy into the little boy's mouth. He could feel that the boy's body was like an ice cube, devoid of any warmth.

(End of this chapter)