Feng Ping, University of Warsaw

Just to let him read it.

I wrote in my novel, “I loved the sea in Barcelona most. There was unfathomable sadness in the sea. Someone in your heart is so close, yet so far.”

He eagerly finished reading my novel. He wrote to me, “Ying Ying, are you willing to take one step further? I wanted to meet you behind the computer.”

My heart throbbed quickly. How I wished I could say “I am willing to.” However, something stopped me. I smiled, “I am afraid not.”

He didn’t give up. He wrote, “Let’s make an appointment. Next year, this time, on December 2, let’s meet by the Barcelona seaside. I will bring your novel with me.”

Okay!

For one year, I was like someone who caught a fever, wishing that December 2 could arrive early. I could hardly sleep, or sit, being always absentminded. The pages of the calendar turned. Finally that day was coming. To go or not to go? Anxiety tortured me. I sighed. I made an excuse not to go.

I dared not open the computer, afraid to see his message. One week later, I opened the computer.

He had gone to Barcelona, and sent me the photos. He blamed me for breaking the promise.

“Why didn’t you come? I felt we two were just like two people standing by the two edges of the Mediterranean Sea. I stood in the South, and you were in the north.”

I cried, crying hard. The tears were dropping down on the ground like beads. My eyes were swollen with weeping. I knew I had made a big mistake.

That was why seven years later, I have found time to come to Barcelona again. I have come with my friend Zhi Gang.

The waves beat the beach and seawater splashed by the seaside, as if it wanted to take every dirty thing into the heart of the sea and bury them in the bottom. Zhi Gang was walking beside me on the wet sand, while I walked on the dry land. There was always one person’s distance between us.

“Ying Ying, you still can’t give him up?” Zhi Gang asked. “Now we are in Barcelona. Let’s shout at the sea and forget everything.” He waved his arms, and his voice submerged into the sea.

“How do you feel,” he asked me successively.

I smiled silently, without speaking a word.

“Shout at the sea, just like me.”

“Ahhh!” I indeed shouted at the sea. I smiled.