Tired of the daily grind, I suddenly felt like calling him one night. It wasn’t difficult at all; his number was in my phone, and all I had to do was look it up and press the button. Though we were worlds apart, we were right next to each other.

Every time I want to call him, I hesitate for a long time. It feels like an actor who needs to find a corner to calm down and rehearse his lines before going on stage. At this point, I usually give up the idea of ​​making the call.

There are two types of people you can call without any reservations: one is a friend, someone you can chat with casually, laughing heartily or crying your eyes out; the other is a stranger, someone you can call with a completely formulaic tone, not caring whether you leave a good impression.

If only things could be calm and peaceful, but alas, I can’t seem to control myself. When I have a moment of peace, I often think of the person who stayed up all night with me, hugging a cushion, watching “Crayon Shin-chan.” The person who would call out of the blue and ask, “You haven’t been invaded by those little beans lately, have you? What, what, what, what, what, are you?” It seems there’s always someone lingering in some corner of your heart, like the rheumatism on a cloudy day, seeping into your bones, pulling out a faint, lingering pain.

One day, I was sitting in a coffee shop with a friend, and she told me a story.

A young man had to have half of his left arm amputated due to atrophy. Although he was extremely unwilling, he had no choice but to comply. Several years later, the young man suddenly felt excruciating pain in his left arm. Later, an Indian doctor solved the problem for him.

“Do you know how you did it?” my friend asked me.

I shook my head.

The friend continued, saying that the Indian doctor made a wooden box that could fit a pair of hands, with a mirror inside. He then asked the young man to imagine putting “a pair of hands” inside. At that moment, the young man saw his two healthy hands, and from then on, his left hand no longer hurt.

The Indian doctor explained that the image of the young man’s fingers curling into his palm during the amputation was deeply imprinted in his mind. Over time, he would feel that his nails were growing long and embedded in the flesh, causing him pain. However, when he saw his “left hand” intact in the mirror inside the wooden box, he no longer felt the pain.

It turns out that the severed hand had never left the young man’s heart; many years later, he still cared about it.

Interpersonal relationships are also quite peculiar. A chance encounter, a brief conversation, a silent farewell, and then the sound of someone sneaking into your dreams at midnight—this feeling, though beautiful, disrupts a simple and unpretentious life. A heart filled with longing is always caught between love and hate, slowly changing under the test of time.

There are too many temptations in reality, and it’s normal not to get what you want. It’s better to cherish the time together and forget about it afterward. So-called fate isn’t something you deliberately seek, but rather something that comes naturally. Perhaps that’s what romance is all about!

This time, I pressed the delete key very gently, hoping for a fresh feeling when we meet again…