Hello, Mr Li: The Christmas Trip

Sara stood outside Heya's room and kept knocking on the door. She knew Heya was inside so she didn't stop knocking even though she wasn't getting any response. 

"Please open the door. It's Sara." Sara pleaded. 

She had also seen Zhu Liang and heard about his unofficial engagement with a girl named Yan Suyin. She couldn't just leave Heya like that when she could imagine what she was going through. 

"Please Heya. I won't leave until you open this door." She continued to knock until she was tired. Just when she was almost giving up, the door opened slightly. 

Sara immediately pushed it open and saw Heya with puffy eyes return to her bed. She was still wearing the gown she wore to the hall earlier. Only thing different was that she was barefooted and her make up was ruined. 

Heya wouldn't have opened the door for anyone else but she had a feeling that Sara was the only person in the world who at least tried to understand her. She didn't want to keep her emotions bottled up and if she wanted to speak with someone, it would he Sara. Everyone knew so which was probably why they were not all outside her room, trying to get in.

"Li Heya." Sara called her gently just as she was about to lay on the bed. 

Heya turned around to look at her. Her face was red, eyes swollen and face covered with tears. Sara sighed before moving closer to embrace her. 

"I am so sorry Heya. I really am." 

Heya hugged her back and began to cry on her shoulder. "I feel... like... I am suffocating." She said in between her tears. "I can't... breathe." She gasped. 

"I know." That was a lie. She didn't know. She knew nothing about what Heya was going through. She didn't even know why the two of them broke up or who broke up with whom. But she knew Heya had been hurting since then. 

"It's okay to cry if it makes you feel better. But if it doesn't, then stop crying and talk to me. You need to speak up unless you'll keep being sad which is not good for your health." Sara advised just like she had always done when they were younger. 

It seemed her words set off her emotion because Heya began to cry even more. As she cried, she remembered all the fun times with Zhu Liang. The times he held a bouquet and stood at the back, waiting for her to leave the stage and come to him. The times he made her giggle like a little girl. She remembered those times and felt like she was being stabbed in her heart repeatedly. The same person looked at her coldly and held another woman. 

"I shouldn't have let him go." She cried. "I shouldn't have... I can't forget him.. I can't.. what am I going to do?" Heya's body shook. 

Sara could feel her shoulder was getting soaked with Heya's tears as Heya continued to berate herself. 

"I should have held onto him. I should have. I pushed him away now he is with another woman." 

"Calm down. Calm down Li Heya." Sara patted her back gently and slowly released her from the hug before helping Heya sit on the bed. 

Heya sat there but buried her face in her hands and cried louder. 

"Things would have been easy if he was dating someone else. I cannot even bring myself to hate Yan Suyin when she has been nothing but good to me. I wish I could hate her. Why did he give his love to someone else? Why am I the only one unhappy?!" 

Sara realized there was nothing she could say to make her feel better. All she could do was to hug Heya as they sat on her bed. 

It took a while before Heya could control her emotion. When she became calm, she began to tell Sara about all that happened between them.

"I loved him a lot. Maybe I wasn't sure about how I felt at first, but I found myself falling for him really hard. I got scared. I kept wondering what would happen if he broke my heart. Those thoughts kept filling my head every single moment we spent together. It was as if I was walking on eggshells." 

"Another thing that made me scared and wary was his love for me. I realised he loved me a lot. He got me gifts, always called me, told me I was pretty, asked me to not lose weight because I was perfect, always remembered every event of mine." She sniffled. "I don't know why doubt began to creep into my mind. I began to wonder if he was so nice to me because he was cheating on me. I mean, there were a lot of pretty girls who wanted him. Girls who were far prettier and more confident than I could ever be. Girls who weren't fat like me." She began to cry again. 

"I don't know. I really don't know! The thought just kept coming and things became worse when he began to call me less. He would tell me it was because of work. I became paranoid. I wondered whether he was seeing someone else and even accused him a couple of times. He told me I was too insecure and got mad at me. We quarrelled a lot and for a week, we didn't speak to each other. I thought he was the one at wrong so he had to apologize. I didn't bother to call him. But he came to see me after a week and apologized to me. He begged me to stop fighting with him because work was stressing him out and I shouldn't also stress him out." 

Sara continued to pat her back because Heya was crying again. With every word that left her lips, tears followed. 

"I took note of a particular number that was always calling him. Whenever we were together, he always ignored the call. The number wasn't saved but I was able to recognize the number whenever the call came in. I became more insecure because the number wasn't saved, but I had a hunch it was a woman."

"I pressured him to tell me who it was but he refused. He told me it was nothing which got me even angrier. I accused him again of cheating and he told me he hated the insecure part of me that always imagined nonsense. He got really angry and we quarreled again. I broke up with him that day but he returned the next day to apologize."

"A picture of him and a girl began to circulate on the internet and rumour began to spread that she was his girlfriend. When she was asked during an interview, she didn't confirm the rumour, neither did she deny it. You should remember it right?" 

Sara nodded. She remembered watching it and called Heya to ask her about it. 

"I got angry but I was scared to raise the issue because I didn't want it to turn out to be true. I didn't want to imagine he had fallen out of love with me and was with that woman who was obviously prettier and sexier." 

"We got back together. I felt I needed to be in shape to keep my man so I began to work out again. I knew he didn't like it so I kept it from him. When he found out, he got angry and asked why I was trying to kill myself because of my stupid inferiority complex."

"I got angry again and raised the issue of the unsaved number that always called him and the picture on the internet. When he slipped up and told me it was the same girl, I almost collapsed from heartbreak. I asked him to stay away from her but he refused. He said they were running a business project together and her family had the delusion that their daughter was going to marry him. He swore it was all business and promised he would come clean to the girl about me after the project was finalized."

"I didn't believe him. I told him I needed space and he left."

"Everything about us dwindled. But we spoke on the phone once in a while. On my birthday, I waited for his call but it didn't come. That had never happened before so I knew for a fact that I had lost him. And I confirmed it when I called in the evening and a lady picked it up. She asked me if I had any message for 'Liang' because he was unavailable." Heya laughed. "Even I, have never answered any of his calls before." 

"He came the next morning and apologized. He said work was eating him up and promised to make it up to me. But...." She choked on her words and began to sob. 

"I... couldn't. I was getting really depressed. I imagined he didn't love me anymore and I didn't want him to keep forcing himself to be with me. I wanted to free myself and I wanted to free him too. So I... I..."

"It's okay." Sara hugged her tightly. It must have been hard on her. 

Sara didn't know whether Liang had really cheated with that girl or whether his love had been fake. She didn't know how to address the issue. 

"I feel so stupid! He really didn't end up with that girl. But there is another one and that one lives on the door opposite mine. I hate myself!" 

"I knew he was eventually going to break up with me but I should have waited." She said with regret. 

They heard a knock on the door but ignored it. They hoped whoever was there would return, but the door was knocked again,

"Are you inside Heya? It's Yan Suyin." 

****

NEXT EPISODE ON HELLO, MR LI: THE CHRISTMAS TRIP.

"Be sincere with me... do you like her as a woman?" 

Silence filled the air for a moment before the answer came, "Yes."