"To Miss Su, everything is fine now. Take your medication on time and rest well when you get back." On the other side of the wooden table, the doctor smiled at Su Mei and handed her a prescription.
Su Mei thanked him and got up to leave the consultation room. As the door closed, a hint of strangeness flashed in the doctor's eyes. He sighed slowly and muttered to himself, "I'd rather you not remember."
In the past few weeks, Su Mei had been seeing a blurry figure in her dreams. Sometimes they would go to the movies together, sometimes they would hold hands and take a walk in the park, and sometimes they would even embrace and kiss. This figure would sometimes say to her, "You must not forget me." Every time she heard this, her dream self would start crying. She couldn't see the face of this figure clearly, but she always felt a strong sense of familiarity. So for Su Mei, the consultation room felt more like a place for her to release stress. She could speak freely in front of the doctor, and even if she talked about these absurd things that had happened recently, the doctor wouldn't be surprised. This made her feel relieved. After their conversation, she could also sleep well with the scent of lilies in the room, which was the best thing for her recent mental exhaustion.
These strange dreams had been troubling Su Mei a lot. Her boyfriend would be coming back to see her in a few days, and at this critical moment, she kept dreaming of herself doing intimate things with a stranger, which was clearly inappropriate. Su Mei tried to comfort herself by thinking that the figure in her dreams was actually her boyfriend, but her subconscious told her that this comfort was just self-deception.
What made her even more puzzled was that when she mentioned this to her best friend, she could clearly sense a strange emotion from her friend, but when she asked for the reason, her friend hesitated and didn't want to answer. In her opinion, her friend must think that she was being too promiscuous, which made her very frustrated but helpless.
Later, her friend introduced her to a doctor, and she went for psychological therapy. Although she had someone to confide in and the doctor had helped her a lot, Su Mei felt that her problem seemed to be getting worse day by day. If this continued, it would not only affect her work, but also her relationship with her boyfriend. After expressing her concerns to the doctor one day, the doctor said quite casually, "The person who can solve the problem is yourself. If you want to understand the meaning of your dreams, you have to rely on yourself. But personally, I suggest not to pay too much attention to it. I will try my best to help you forget slowly."
After hearing the doctor's words, Su Mei felt somewhat relieved, but she also suddenly started to worry. If she couldn't forget it for a long time, she would still be troubled by the figure in her dreams. Thinking about this, Su Mei felt guilty towards her boyfriend.
On this day, Su Mei went to work as usual. Her colleague Yu Ting leaned over and said mysteriously, "Su Su, are you in a relationship?"
Su Mei was very surprised. She had joined this company after her boyfriend was sent on a business trip, and she had never mentioned it herself, so very few people should know. Although Yu Ting was one of the colleagues she had a better relationship with, she shouldn't know either. Su Mei calmed herself down for a moment and asked in a low voice, "How did you know?"
Yu Ting immediately showed a knowing expression and explained to Su Mei, "I came early today and wanted to bring you a cup of coffee, and then I saw the letters on the cup. But let me make it clear, I didn't intentionally peek, it was just an accident..." Yu Ting smirked, as if she had achieved some kind of conspiracy.
Upon hearing this, Su Mei picked up her own cup and indeed saw the letters "LCD" on it. Maybe it could only be seen when hot water was added, and Su Mei had never noticed this detail. She only remembered using this cup before she changed companies, but she couldn't remember what the letters represented. After looking at it for a while, she opened her Taobao app, hoping to find the source of this cup from her orders, maybe then she could explain the meaning of the letters.
"It turns out it was customized." Su Mei murmured to herself, her gaze lingering on an order from a year ago. And before and after this order, she also found that she had bought clothes and sneakers, but judging from the sizes, it was obviously not Su Mei buying them for herself, and at that time she hadn't even met her boyfriend yet.
"Could it be a gift for a friend?" Su Mei recalled the birthdays of her opposite-sex friends, and it seemed that they were significantly different from the time of the order. Unable to figure it out, she simply stopped thinking about it, but the seed of doubt had clearly been planted, and Su Mei couldn't ignore it.
On the way home, Su Mei pondered over what had happened in the morning, trying to find some useful information from her memory, but she still couldn't find anything. Su Mei shook her head, no longer thinking about it. Changing direction, she walked towards the park near her home. She used to come to the park often to relax, but since she started dating, most of her free time belonged to her boyfriend. Now that she was back here, it felt like her first time.
"Oh? Is that noodle shop still open?" Su Mei noticed a small shop that she used to frequent, and she felt a sense of joy, so she walked in.
"Little Su is here, is everything the same as before?" The kind-hearted shop owner asked gently.
Su Mei replied and observed the furnishings in the shop. It seemed that there hadn't been much change, which made her feel familiar and at ease.
After the owner brought the noodles, her lips moved, as if she wanted to say something but stopped.
"What's wrong, uncle?" Su Mei asked with a smile.
"Little Su, do you... still remember me?" The owner stammered, seeming very nervous.
"Cough, cough."
Su Mei was about to answer when the shop owner suddenly coughed a few times and closed his mouth, quickly walking away.
"This is strange..." Su Mei was puzzled, but seeing the owner's appearance, she didn't feel comfortable asking more questions. After finishing her meal, she paid and left. Walking on the stone path in the park, Su Mei sighed. She felt that everyone seemed to be keeping a secret from her, which made her very uncomfortable. And those strange dreams made her even more restless. Her mind was in chaos, and she didn't pay attention to the basketball flying towards her.
"We didn't mean to, we're sorry!" Two high school students quickly ran over and apologized to Su Mei.
Su Mei was in pain from being hit by the ball, her eyebrows furrowed tightly, and she was about to criticize the two children in front of her, but suddenly she felt as if she had seen this scene in her dream, as if the scene from her dream was replaying in reality. The only difference was that in her dream, there was a blurry figure beside her. The two students saw Su Mei standing still and quickly picked up the basketball and ran away. Su Mei felt dazed, unable to distinguish whether she was in reality or in a dream.
A gust of wind blew, and Su Mei regained some clarity. She recalled the scenes in her dreams related to the park. In her dream, she and the blurry figure went to a noodle shop, then took a walk in the park, and then she went home...
"Diary!" Su Mei exclaimed, attracting the attention of many passersby. She realized her outburst and quickly covered her mouth. But her mind was filled with excitement because the ending of her dream was stuck in her memory, as if the image of herself writing in her diary was still fresh. She got up and left the park, heading towards her home. A bold but absurd idea surfaced in her mind.
Su Mei did have a habit of keeping a diary in the past, but as she got busier with work, she didn't write as often. After returning home, Su Mei found her several diaries in a miscellaneous box. The covers of the notebooks were all in her favorite pink color, which now seemed somewhat childish. Su Mei thought about reading her own diary, feeling a bit embarrassed, but in order to solve the doubts in her heart, she couldn't care about anything else. She flipped through the pages one by one, trying to find content related to the park, and found that the diary stopped at a certain day last year, with the rest seemingly torn off, leaving only the rough edges of the pages. And on the last page of the diary, there was a number written in red ink,
"So it's 1217?" What does this mean, Su Mei felt confused, she didn't remember tearing up her diary, nor did she understand what the number represented. She thought of her mother who had stayed with her for a few days and helped her clean up her room, so Su Mei called her mother. When she received her daughter's call, Su's mother seemed very happy. After a few pleasantries, Su Mei got to the point,
"Mom, did you tidy up the miscellaneous box in my room? There were several diaries of mine inside, but some pages were torn off. Do you know what happened?"
"... "There was suddenly silence on the other end of the phone, and the excitement disappeared.
"Mom?" Su Mei looked at her phone and saw that it hadn't been hung up.
"Oh, you mean those diaries. Mom needed to write something down at that time, but couldn't find any paper, so she tore off a few pages from there. You're not mad at Mom, right?"
"But..."
"Also, in a few days, it will be a hundred days since your grandfather passed away. You and your dad should go and pay respects at the grave. He loved you the most before."
Su Mei wanted to ask more questions, but the call had already been hung up. Although she wasn't completely convinced by her mother's explanation, it sounded reasonable, so she didn't delve into it further. She lay on the carpet, staring at the ceiling, thinking about her grandfather who had died of a heart attack. Her family said that her grandfather had suffered a great blow before he passed away. It had always been a knot in her heart, and even now she couldn't imagine what kind of blow could make her naturally optimistic grandfather leave so suddenly. Su Mei felt sad, went straight to bed, and stopped thinking about the diary and the strange number.
...
"What are you thinking about?" Across the table, her best friend waved at Su Mei.
"Ah... nothing." Su Mei snapped out of her thoughts, "I wanted to ask you, do you know anyone with the name LCD?" Su Mei stared at her friend's eyes intently.
"No... I don't know anyone with that name, how could I?" Her friend hesitated for a moment, her eyes avoiding contact.
"Do you know what the number 1217 means?" Su Mei, unwilling to give up, continued to question.
"Maybe it's a birthday or an apartment number?" Her friend replied, seeming uncertain.
"I see..." Su Mei thought for a moment, feeling that she had some clues, "I have something to do, let's meet next time." After saying that, Su Mei grabbed her bag and left.
"It's not that I'm hiding something from you, it's just..." Her friend watched Su Mei's figure, her eyes flickering.
Su Mei was busy until midnight, verifying the birthdays of her friends and relatives, but none of them were born in December, and none of them lived in apartment 1217. Su Mei was in a dilemma, and the whole situation suddenly became even more confusing.
"If it's not someone I know, how could I have written it in my diary..." Su Mei thought, slowly closing her eyes and falling asleep.
...
Today was the day to visit her grandfather's grave, and Su Mei woke up early. She still remembered the day her grandfather was buried, her father hugged her with red eyes, not shedding a single tear. This was one of her most vivid memories of this cemetery.
"Grandpa, I've come to see you." Su Mei held back her tears and placed a bouquet of chrysanthemums in front of the tombstone.
Su Mei looked at her grandfather's photo, feeling a sourness in her heart.
"I'll take a break for a while, and I'll be back soon." Su Mei walked towards a small platform near the stairs and squatted down to take a few deep breaths before barely holding back her tears.
"Miss, please accept my condolences."
Su Mei looked up and found an old man wearing a straw hat speaking to her.
"You... " The old man's face showed surprise, followed by a fleeting sadness.
Su Mei was about to ask something, but the old man hurriedly walked into the elevator and closed the door.
Su Mei's doubts grew larger, she looked at the door of room 801, feeling that all the questions would be answered after opening the door. She clenched her fist and inserted the key.
To her surprise, it seemed that no one lived in room 801, and there was already a thick layer of dust on the floor, and the furniture was covered with white cloth. Su Mei walked around the room in a daze, and found that the clothes and sneakers she had bought a year ago were placed in the walk-in closet. Everything felt familiar, as if she had lived here for a long time. She had a thought and turned to the bedroom. A dark red box was neatly placed on the bed, and Su Mei walked over carefully, slowly opening the lid, and found a wedding invitation and her torn diary inside. She looked at the contents of the diary and felt that the figure in her dreams was becoming clearer and clearer, as if a blurry memory was gradually being awakened.
"...Uncle and Aunt have been very good to me, they didn't blame me. Your friends have also come to see me, I'm very happy. Everyone is comforting me, but I know my illness can't be cured. I'm taking more and more medicine, the doctor said amitriptyline can relieve it, so I've been taking it in handfuls, but it doesn't seem to help much. My mental state is getting worse. My memory is not as good as before. But I remember you said you wanted to marry me, but you were gone right after we got engaged. I tried hard to adapt to the days without you, I've been holding on for three months, but I feel like I can't hold on much longer. I bought a lot of sleeping pills for myself, and I even bought a grave, the number is the date you left. I kept the key to the house in the cemetery, and it will be buried with me when I'm buried. Oh, by the way, the wedding invitation, I secretly kept a copy, I'll show it to you when I see you..."
Su Mei trembled as she unfolded the bright red wedding invitation, unable to hold back her tears.
To Mr./Ms. [Recipient's Name],
We hereby invite you to the wedding ceremony of Mr. Lin Chengdong and Ms. Su Mei on March 17th.
Please honor us with your presence.
Su Mei cordially invites you.