The Moon Will Always Come to You - CH 13

Chapter 13: Depression

Although the sky cleared up the next day, the air was still saturated with the smell of rain and dampness. Since she had already experienced the charm of Shi Yan’s lectures previously, she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to find a seat this time. So Ruan Zhizhi took the black umbrella and set off from home early.

By the time she called a taxi and reached A University’s campus gates, it was just half-past four. Shi Yan’s class started at five o’clock in the same lecture hall as last time.

She didn’t know why, but she actually felt a little nervous going into Shi Yan’s lecture. Ruan Zhizhi, who had been away from campus for three years already, carried a school bag again. Furthermore, she’d earnestly prepared a notebook and pen. She planned to attend class and conscientiously listen to the lecture. She would record many notes and then go back to revise her manuscript.

Carrying her school bag, she walked through the campus. As she listened to the sound of students laughing and playing around her, she also reminisced about her own school days a little.

When she arrived at the lecture hall, there were still about twenty minutes before class. Even though she’d already arrived much earlier, the huge lecture hall was almost 80% packed with people.

Ruan Zhizhi casually found a seat in the back row and sat down. At the same time, a continuous flow of people kept entering from outside the classroom door. The seats around her were quickly filled by students. In an instant, the entire lecture hall was crowded.

Ruan Zhizhi was somewhat bothered by the noisy voices in her ears, so she took out her headphones from her school bag and listened to a song. In front of her was an empty notebook and a black pen. Ruan Zhizhi lay on the table and listened to music while resting. In a trance, she felt as if she really had returned to her university campus days.

In those days, the sky was bright blue every day. Ruan Zhizhi thought that she could quietly accompany Li Sichen forever and never ask for anything in return.

But later, she found out she was wrong. In this world, how could there be so many fools willing to invest emotions without demanding something in return? One year, two years, three years, inevitably there would be a day that she would fall apart from the inexhaustible, endless wait.

Therefore, in her senior year at Li Sichen’s birthday party, she drank an entire bottle of 60% vodka. At last, she could no longer hold back and declared her secret love all along.

Not wanting to recall the memories that followed, Ruan Zhizhi’s memory only extended to there. The rest, she forcibly suppressed.

Likely because of yesterday night’s insomnia and the fact that she had to get up early for work today, Ruan Zhizhi felt a little sleepy while waiting for class. She subconsciously told herself that she couldn’t fall asleep at this time. Ultimately, however, she was no match for the drowsiness surging forth. She struggled in vain for a while, but in the end she closed her eyes and entered a light sleep.

……

“Student Ruan Zhizhi, are you awake?”

A familiar voice suddenly sounded beside her ear. The tone was chilly, and the sound was neither light nor heavy as it resounded in the air. In an instant, she quivered and jolted her head up from the desk.

Sure enough, she saw Shi Yan standing one metre away from her in the classroom aisle, watching her. He was holding a stack of lesson plans in his hands. His black, translucent eyes were looking at her with an unknown meaning.

Currently, Ruan Zhizhi couldn’t wait to dig a hole and get in. She deeply felt that this was the highest loss of face…Yesterday, she had agreed to attend his class, and now she had fallen asleep before the lecture even started.

The crowd around her was whispering, and the faint laughing voices of other students could be heard.

Even someone as unperturbed as Ruan Zhizhi couldn’t help but blush.

“…I’m awake.” She cleared her throat and spoke in shame.

Shi Yan nodded. He looked at her expressionlessly, then said as if it was no big deal, “Listen to class diligently.”

Ruan Zhizhi nodded promptly, taking on the appearance of someone humbly seeking instruction.

While Shi Yan returned to the podium and began preparing the presentation for today’s class, Ruan Zhizhi clearly heard a few girls sitting beside her discussing in low voices. They were talking about how Shi Yan could know her name.

Ruan Zhizhi made a “囧” face and silently bowed her head a little lower.

Due to this little episode, Ruan Zhizhi remained in a state of high concentration for the next hour. She was more serious than the days where she studied for final exams in university.

Shi Yan stood nonchalantly in front of the podium. He used his remote to change the presentation slide to the next page: “Next, let’s focus on the symptoms and causes of schizophrenia.”

Hearing this phrase, Ruan Zhizhi’s spirit became even more invigorated. But contrary to her attitude, when the other students heard Shi Yan’s words, they distinctly revealed surprised looks. Now there was whispering in the quiet classroom.

“Didn’t we just discuss schizophrenia a few days ago? Why do we have to talk about it again today?”

“Right, did Professor Shi remember wrong?”

“Impossible…when it comes to these things, Professor Shi never remembers wrong.”

……

As the crowd discussed it privately, some people soon lifted their hands and brought forth their shared doubts. Regarding this, Shi Yan simply raised his eyelids and responded indifferently: “The exam is soon, I’m helping you review in advance.”

The students: “……”

Ruan Zhizhi: “……”

“There are many clinical manifestations of schizophrenia. Among them, one of the principal types is paranoid schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenia involves severe hallucinations, delusions, and insecurities. These patients typically believe that they are physically and mentally healthy, while the people in their lives possess a hostility towards them and want to harm them. This is what we usually call persecutory delusions.”

Persecutory delusions?

Ruan Zhizhi recalled the contents of the case while taking notes. The suspect in the case had made repeated accusations to the police, saying that her in-laws wanted to unite with her husband to murder her. Her testimony had been so precise, down to the tools and methods of operation they were going to use to commit the murder. Afterwards, the police really did go to her home many times to investigate, but they came up empty-handed.

These were probably all delusions that came from the suspect suffering from schizophrenia. She must have felt that she was in an extremely dangerous situation at all times—one that no one understood and no one could save her from. So in the end, she reached the extreme and chose to kill her in-laws. She had used this method to escape her own subjective sense of threat.

Ruan Zhizhi wrote incessantly. She felt more and more that choosing to attend this lecture was the correct decision.

The one-hour class ended quickly. Since there were too many people in the classroom, Ruan Zhizhi unhurriedly packed her school bag, then sat in her seat for a while. After avoiding the rush hour, she stood up and walked towards the door of the classroom.

Who would have imagined that as soon as she went out, she heard a voice she knew all too well. There was a faint, lingering scent of tobacco, and he leaned against the door frame, waiting for her.

“Awake now?”

Ruan Zhizhi blushed. Not to be outdone, she retorted in the next second: “Professor Shi, I only slept for a moment before class. Didn’t you see me taking notes the entire class afterwards? I bet I was the most diligent student today.”

Shi Yan didn’t speak. He lowered his eyes slightly and looked at her with a smile that was actually very tender.

Tender. Indeed, this word wasn’t harmonious with someone like him. And yet she didn’t know why, but when he smiled at her and spoke to her softly, Ruan Zhizhi felt that this person ought to be described this way.

Perhaps he was a complicated and strange person. He could be gentle for one second, then cold the next.

Ruan Zhizhi looked at him and was inexplicably stupefied.

Shi Yan extended a hand and waved it before her eyes. “Looks like you still haven’t woken up yet.”

Ruan Zhizhi followed his voice and came back to her senses. She was just about to speak but seemed to remember something instead. Without delay, she took the school bag off her shoulders, pulled open the zipper, and fumbled around for a moment. Then, she pulled out a carefully folded black umbrella, as well as a pack of banlangen that had not been opened.

“This is the umbrella you lent me yesterday.” Ruan Zhizhi reached out and handed him the umbrella, then paused. She seemed a little embarrassed as she took out the banlangen with her other hand. “This…is because I was worried you would catch a cold after getting wet in the rain. I think it’s best if you take some medicine to prevent it. Otherwise, if you catch a cold now, it’ll be very uncomfortable in this weather.”

Time seemed to stand still at this moment. Shi Yan didn’t know if he was listening to her or if his mind was wandering. He didn’t respond, still leaning on the door frame and lowering his eyes to look at her.

In his eyes, there seemed to be the light of fireflies flickering, glowing then dying out. Impossible to unravel, it made people shiver in their hearts.

Shi Yan’s thoughts had always been difficult to guess. Ruan Zhizhi didn’t understand what his reaction meant. Her outstretched hand remained frozen mid-air. She couldn’t take it back, nor could she not give it to him.

At last, Shi Yan raised his head and asked her very calmly, “Are you this good to all your friends?”

Friends. This was the word Ruan Zhizhi had used when she texted him yesterday.

Not understanding the meaning of his words, Ruan Zhizhi thought about it and told it like it was: “It’s not like that…I actually don’t have any friends, so I’ve always felt that if someone treats me well, I must treat them well, too.”

At this time, the hour hand already pointed towards six o’clock in the evening. Twilight was emerging around them, and the sun was setting to the west. A red haze diffused from all directions in the sky. Even the colour of his pupils darkened, nearly drowning her.

The students that just finished class had urgently scrambled to the cafeteria to grab a seat for dinner. Therefore, they were all long gone. The teaching building that was overcrowded ten minutes ago was now sparsely populated. Reflecting the afterglow of the setting sun, it was cold and cheerless.

“Then what do you think, am I good to you?” Due to his long-term smoking, Shi Yan’s voice always contained a hint of hoarseness.

When Ruan Zhizhi heard such a question, she nodded without any hesitation. In passing, she gave a lengthy speech to express her gratitude: “In fact, I have always wanted to thank you properly. During our trip to Yunnan, you and Chen Jiayan always took good care of me. Even in the few times that we’ve run into each other, you’ve also helped me a lot. All in all, I’m really fortunate to be able to know you as a friend.”

“Friend?” Shi Yan spoke in a low tone. His voice was awfully light, as if he was talking to himself.

She subconsciously didn’t want to continue this topic. Ruan Zhizhi pursed her lips and quickly found a new subject. “Right, the content you taught in today’s lecture will be really helpful for revising my press release. Just now in class, I was thinking about how fortunate it was to come today.” After a pause, she asked a little curiously, “Shi Yan, do you think that people like you, who have studied psychology so thoroughly, are less likely to develop mental illness?”

Shi Yan shook his head and replied in a downplayed manner, “When I was in university, I suffered from depression.” Saying so, he looked down at her and smiled without any emotion. And yet there was still a trace of sadness in his smiling expression. “A doctor that can’t heal himself, what do you say, isn’t that very ironic?”

Depression…

When he said it like this, it reminded Ruan Zhizhi of that night at the bar in Lijiang. Shi Yan seemed to have already mentioned it. At that time, her reaction had been the same as Yan Rui and the other young ladies’. They believed he was merely speaking without thinking. How could a successful person like him be depressed?

She wanted to ask about the cause, but she was afraid that she would unmask the other party’s scars, so she dropped it.

“I’ll send you downstairs.”

He straightened up from the classroom door frame and took the initiative to close the subject. Walking on her left, he accompanied her step by step down the teaching building’s stairs.

Shi Yan sent her all the way to the campus gates before stopping in his tracks.

Ruan Zhizhi turned around and waved at him. “It’s okay to see me off here. I’ll call a taxi to go back. You’ve been tired all day, so hurry back and pack your things.”

The wind rose and blew the hair on his forehead. Shi Yan quietly stood a few steps away from her. For some reason, Ruan Zhizhi felt that the distance between the two of them seemed very far at this moment.

He began to speak, his slightly raspy voice mixing with the sound of the wind and whistling cars. Overall, it seemed somewhat indistinct.

“Ruan Zhizhi, do you know what is even more foolish than your own wishful thinking? It’s when you clearly know it’s foolish, and yet you can’t stop.”

Translator’s Note: I can’t guarantee updates for the next couple days, sorry :’( They’ll probably resume on the weekend though. I’m just super busy with school again T^T (Anyway, if you want immediate notifications for new chapters, you can join the Discord server!)