"Can you draw him for me?"
Yaxi nodded and began sketching a beautiful profile on the paper.
She didn't overthink it, drawing from memory and blending it with her current impressions of Chen Ling.
Finally, she added a red mole at the corner of his eye.
Afterward, she felt something was still missing.
Under Dr. Zhou's gaze, she drew a tiny, gnawed apple core next to the mole, with its seed replaced by the red dot.
"What's this?" Dr. Zhou immediately asked. "A chewed apple core?"
"Yes, an apple core."
"Does it have anything to do with the boy you like?"
"Yes."
"Can you tell me about it?"
"…"
Yaxi pulled the blanket up slightly, sinking deeper into the sofa. "Well, he used to play in a band at a bar. The bar owner was also the band's drummer. When the owner was opening the bar, he wanted to name it. My crush asked him what the most memorable thing that had happened to him recently was, and they could use that as inspiration.
The owner said it was definitely the time he passed out and was hospitalized. Tests showed he had cyanide poisoning. He was baffled, and it took him and the doctor a long time to figure out the cause. The cyanide came from the apples he'd been eating since childhood.
You know the saying, 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away.' His mom had made it a habit for him to eat an apple every day. And since he was a kid, he'd always eaten the core along with the apple. Who would've thought that something as seemingly safe as an apple could have a toxic core?
My crush suggested naming the bar 'Apple Core.'
He also proposed designing cups shaped like apple cores, hollow inside with the core represented. When customers drank, the alcohol would always avoid the core, symbolically avoiding 'poison.' Urbanites loved using this metaphor for love or self-reflection. Soon, the Apple Core bar became popular, and their band gained traction in the underground scene."
"Are you using the apple core as a metaphor too? Or is there a direct connection between the apple core and your crush?" Dr. Zhou dissected her words, trying to pinpoint the key.
"There's a connection. He's the kind of person everyone loves—a darling of fate. He excels at everything, so I idolize him. He has the family, personality, and talent I lack. His beauty is something I don't possess either."
At this, Dr. Zhou's smile faded slightly.
"But when he chose 'Apple Core' as the bar's name, it made me feel like there's still some 'poison' in him. Or rather—"
Yaxi paused, looking at Dr. Zhou, summoning the courage to voice a thought she'd never shared with anyone: "He's using the apple core to represent himself: someone destined for ruin."
Sometimes, Yaxi inexplicably felt that picking up Chen Ling hadn't saved him. Making him her "dog" might have been what truly saved him.
Giving him a reason—however forced—to live, preventing his downfall.
But these were just vague feelings, intuitive and without any concrete basis.
Dr. Zhou nodded. "You're the one who knows best. These are your feelings for now. Have you tried to verify them?"
Yaxi shook her head. "Don't you think these adolescent musings are trivial? To adults, they hold no value."
"How could they be trivial?" Dr. Zhou said seriously. "The troubles in life vary in weight, but they're not to be compared or measured by whether they're highbrow or lowbrow, whether they occur in youth or old age, or whether they're in the realm of consciousness or reality. Suffering can't be easily ranked. You came here not just to chat, but to seek help."