Suddenly, two robbers burst into the post office, shouting, "This is a robbery! Don't move!"

  I was petrified.

  He immediately wrapped his arms tightly around me from behind.

  Half a minute ter, I heard a deafening bang, like a firecracker exploding. Then the sound of shattering gss and people screaming.

  "Are you okay? Are you hurt? Does anything hurt?"

  He grabbed my shoulders in a panic, spinning me around to check for injuries. I quickly shook my head to reassure him that I was fine.

  "You scared me to death," he sighed in relief. But then I saw the blood soaking his right sleeve.

  Outside the emergency room, I kept praying to the heavens, begging them not to take him away from me.

  As long as he could still smile at me and still serve me a warm cup of coffee, I was willing to give us a chance.

  Two hours ter, the red light above the emergency room door switched off.

  Laughing and crying at the same time, I wiped the tears from my face, inserted a phone card into the payphone, and told my senior I wanted to break up.

  After the university entrance exams, because his right hand had not yet fully healed and he was a little slower when calcuting answers, he didn't get into a national university. So, he chose Tunghai University in Taichung.

  When I helped him submit his application card, I secretly erased "NTU Psychology" from the first choice on my application—without telling my father—and repced it with a number that symbolized opportunity.

  And so began my colorful university life.

  But I was still foolish, even as I grew to like him more and more.

  For four years, I was deeply afraid that if he finally won me over, he would become like so many other men in real life—losing the passion of love, forgetting the energy he had when pursuing me, neglecting to add that little something special into the coffee that meant so much to me.

  So, I never accepted his advances.

  I stood by and watched as he held hands with a younger schoolmate, walking down the beautiful boulevard of our campus.

  I cried. I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for days.

  I had personally let go of something precious, never considering the bitterness he must have felt after being rejected again and again.

  I was only concerned with preserving the joy of his pursuit, yet too afraid to take his hand and face an uncertain future.

  Only when my heart ached as if it were being torn apart did I finally realize how selfish I had been, thinking I had given so much when, in truth, I had only taken.

  At the graduation ceremony, he stood on the vast wn in front of the Luce Chapel, wearing his bck gown, looking somewhat lonely as he took pictures with cssmates and younger students.

  I finally gathered the courage to cry out my confession to him.

  Tunghai University's graduation day.

  A grand wn.

  Hundreds of people are witnessing a spectacle.

  He walked toward me and said he wanted to take a picture together.

  "Go to hell! I never want to see you again!"

  I burst into tears and pushed his camera away.

  "If anyone should be saying that, it's me!" He suddenly exploded with emotion.

  "How could you leave me—making coffee for me, reading Jingcheng aloud for me, studying with me, dragging me to skip css and watch movies, shielding me—shielding me from a bullet—wuuhh—it was all a lie!"

  I threw the bouquet to the ground and broke down, sobbing uncontrolbly.

  "My efforts have never mattered! Never! I chased you for so long, and you still wouldn't be with me. But the moment someone else holds your hand, you run off with them! What does that make me?! And st month, when that online friend of yours said he wanted to pursue you, you actually said you'd seriously consider it?! Damn it! Am I not even worth more than someone you've never even met?!"

  He threw his camera to the ground and roared in fury.

  "Wuuhhh—" I squatted down, throwing a tantrum and crying my heart out.

  He had never seen me act so irrationally before, and his anger actually subsided a little.

  "I'm sorry," he sighed.

  "Don't say sorry to me!" I bit my lip, staring at the little wild daisies on the grass.

  "'m sorry… I really can't win you over."

  He turned to leave.

  He was leaving. Leaving my life.

  "Don't go!" I shouted, finally making up my mind.

  He didn't understand but stopped in his tracks.

  "I—I'm not refusing to be your girlfriend—I just want you to keep chasing me!" My eyes were red as I shouted, "I just really, really love the feeling of you chasing me! I was so scared… scared that if we got together, you'd suddenly stop wanting me—wuuhhh—"

  I kept crying. And he kept crying too.

  The hundreds of onlookers around us also started crying.

  "Don't leave me alone… Do you even know how hard it is these days to find someone whotruly willing to take a bullet for me—how incredibly difficult it is—"

  My tears and snot were all mixed together.