Quién tomó ese par de botas para la nieve

Chapter 1

Ah Zheng and I broke up three years ago. The night before the breakup, we got into a fight.

I was the first to pull him out of bed. He pushed me away, and I pulled his hair and ripped off his glasses. He got angry and pushed me to the ground. I grabbed a wooden stool from in front of the dressing table and threw it at him wildly. I hit him on the forehead, and blood flowed out. He was furious. He jumped out of bed, grabbed my hands, pulled me up, and threw me back onto the bed.

We were all astonished by our own barbarity and brutality; a well-educated couple ultimately resorted to violence to resolve their conflict. Perhaps the only way to vent resentment towards someone is to beat them up.

Ah-Zheng and I met through work. Ten years ago, we worked at the same newspaper. I had just graduated from university with a degree in journalism and joined that daily newspaper as a reporter; it was a very prestigious newspaper. Ah-Zheng was my editor; he had been in the industry for six years longer than me and was my senior colleague.

I admired A-Zheng very much. He was an excellent journalist and taught me a lot. However, at that time, he had a girlfriend. That girl was a reporter at another newspaper; they were classmates, and she was also a very good journalist.

I didn't dare confess my feelings to A-Zheng. A few months later, he broke up with his girlfriend. I heard she had fallen in love with a foreign news agency reporter and was getting married. A-Zheng didn't have time to be sad. Just then, the deputy editor-in-chief sent me and him to London, England for an interview.

When we arrived in London, the weather was exceptionally cold that year, and it snowed. I brought all sorts of warm clothing, including a pair of snow boots. Experienced friends told me that wearing regular leather shoes in the snow wouldn't be enough; you'd get frostbite on your feet and it would be easy to slip on the snow. But Ah Zheng was only wearing a pair of ordinary sneakers, and I saw him slip twice on the snow.

"Are you alright?" I helped him up.

"It's okay, it's okay." He was embarrassed.

I think his feet must have been covered in chilblains during those days, and I saw that he was having more and more difficulty walking each day.

"What shoe size do you wear?" I asked him during an interview one day.

"Number Seven. Why are you asking these questions at this time?" he asked me.

"It's nothing," I said.

The next day, before heading off to the interview, I went to the department store and bought him a pair of size 7 snow boots.

When I got back to the hotel, he was waiting for me in the lobby.

"Where have you been? We're going to be late," he said sternly.

"Put these shoes on first, otherwise your feet will freeze." I handed him the snow boots.

He was deeply moved when he saw the pair of snow boots.

"You...you don't need to be so polite, how much is it?" he asked me shyly.

"It's a gift, hurry up and put it on, we're going to be late," I urged him.

He took off his sneakers, and I saw that his ankles were covered in chilblains.

"Sometimes, I suspect you're deliberately making yourself suffer to forget the pain of heartbreak," I told him.

He threw the pair of sneakers into the trash can and ignored me.

I felt a sense of satisfaction when I saw him walking on the snow in those snow boots.

On our last day in England, instead of doing any interviews, we went for a cruise on the Thames.

"Ah Zheng, can you forget about her?" I asked him.

"Why?" he asked me.

"It's nothing." I didn't have the courage to tell him I liked him. "I didn't want to see you so upset!"

He took a dark blue scarf out of his pocket and said to me, "This is for you."

I didn't expect him to give me

……