Chapter 6: The Old Sweater
1875 Words
After coming home from the hospital, Cheng Yu left the bag by the entryway without opening it.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to.
He just wasn’t ready.
“These are the clothes Shen Zhiyuan wore during his hospital stay,” Lin Xu had said.
Hospital stay.
The words alone made his throat tighten.
Shen Zhiyuan had walked into that hospital wearing his own clothes. Then he left them behind in a plain brown paper bag, never to wear them again.
The clothes had waited there for a month.
But the person who came to collect them wasn’t Shen Zhiyuan.
It was Cheng Yu.
He set the paper bag beside the shoe cabinet, next to a row of dusty leather shoes.
When Shen Zhiyuan left home for the hospital, he had worn the brown Oxfords. The black leather pair still sat quietly in the cabinet, untouched ever since.
Every time Cheng Yu changed his shoes before leaving the house, he saw them.
And every time, he stepped around them carefully, like there was a place there he wasn’t allowed to touch.
Now the paper bag sat beside them too.
He changed into slippers and walked into the living room, stopping in the middle of it.
The apartment was too quiet.
Not ordinary quiet.
Outside, life was still moving. The neighbors’ television murmured faintly through the walls. Children downstairs screamed while playing some game. Cars occasionally passed by on the street outside.
All those sounds still existed.
But inside the apartment itself, there was silence.
A heavy, suffocating silence that seemed to seep out from the walls themselves, as though the apartment knew half of it was missing and had decided to hold its breath.
Cheng Yu sat down on the sofa.
Then stood up again.
He went to the kitchen, poured himself a glass of water, took a sip, then left it forgotten on the counter.
He walked to the bedroom doorway and glanced inside.
The shoebox still lay on the floor. Photos and old ticket stubs remained scattered around it exactly the way he had left them before dawn that morning.
He didn’t go in.
Instead, he returned to the living room and sat back down.
That was when he noticed the sweater.
Part of a dark gray sleeve peeked out from the gap between the sofa cushion and the armrest, like a hand hanging limply there.
He pulled it free.
The sweater was old.
The elbows were worn thin. The neckline had loosened over time. Near the hem was a tiny oil stain from the hot pot they’d eaten during Spring Festival last year.
Back then, Cheng Yu had told Shen Zhiyuan to take it off immediately so he could wash it.
Shen Zhiyuan had laughed and said it didn’t matter since he only wore it at home anyway.
Cheng Yu unfolded the sweater slowly.
It was an ordinary dark gray wool sweater with a simple round neck.
They had bought it together three years ago.
No... maybe four?
Back then, they had just moved into this apartment.
One weekend, they’d been shopping for household items when Cheng Yu spotted the sweater hanging in the clothing section.
“This would look good on you,” he’d said casually.
So Shen Zhiyuan tried it on.
When he stepped out of the fitting room, Cheng Yu had been looking at scarves nearby. He turned around and saw Shen Zhiyuan standing there in that dark gray sweater.
The sleeves were slightly too long, covering the base of his thumbs.
“It looks good,” Cheng Yu had said immediately. “Buy it.”
But Shen Zhiyuan glanced at the price tag and hesitated.
At the time, he had just become a senior partner at the law firm. His salary had increased, but so had his workload. Every paycheck he earned ended up in Cheng Yu’s hands for safekeeping, and he never liked spending money on himself.
So Cheng Yu told him to consider it an early birthday gift.
Even though his birthday was still four months away.
After that, the sweater became Shen Zhiyuan’s favorite thing to wear at home during winter.
He wore it while reviewing case files on the sofa.
While washing dishes in the kitchen.
While curling up beside Cheng Yu to watch movies late at night.
One winter, the apartment heating barely worked.
Cheng Yu had wrapped himself in a blanket and still complained about being cold, so Shen Zhiyuan took off the sweater and pulled it over his head.
The sweater hung loosely on Cheng Yu’s smaller frame, the sleeves drooping past his hands.
Shen Zhiyuan laughed and said, “You look like a kid who stole an adult’s clothes.”
Cheng Yu rolled up the sleeves and smacked him playfully.
That winter...
No, wait.
They were already married by then.
Five years married.
It must have been their first winter after the wedding—the year the heating broke down completely.
Shen Zhiyuan had called property management three separate times, but they insisted the pipes were too old and repairs would have to wait until spring.
So they spread an electric blanket across the living room floor, wrapped themselves in a thick comforter, and balanced a laptop on the coffee table while watching a terrible sci-fi movie together.
Cheng Yu leaned against Shen Zhiyuan’s shoulder.
Shen Zhiyuan was wearing that same dark gray sweater.
Cheng Yu slipped his freezing hands into the sweater sleeves to warm them.
“Why are your hands always so cold?” Shen Zhiyuan had asked helplessly before taking his hands and holding them between his palms.
He never let go the entire movie.
Cheng Yu slowly lifted the sweater to his face.
The scent of detergent had almost faded completely.
But underneath it, there was still Shen Zhiyuan’s scent.
Not cologne.
Not aftershave.
Just... him.
Clean. Warm. Familiar enough to make Cheng Yu want to bury himself inside it forever.
He couldn’t explain the smell.
But even blindfolded, he would have recognized it instantly.
His fingers tightened around the fabric until his knuckles turned white.
Then, before he could stop himself, he pulled the sweater over his head.
The sleeves still hung too long, covering his fingertips.
The loose neckline exposed part of his collarbone.
The wool was soft from years of wear and countless washes, the fabric worn smooth against his skin like a layer of down.
Cheng Yu looked down at himself wearing Shen Zhiyuan’s sweater.
You look like a kid who stole an adult’s clothes.
His lips twitched slightly.
But he didn’t smile.
That night, he never took the sweater off.
He wore it while cooking dinner.
A simple bowl of noodles made exactly the way Shen Zhiyuan used to make them—boiling the noodles, adding cold water twice while cooking, draining them carefully, then tossing them with soy sauce and sesame oil.
He sat on the sofa eating from the bowl while the television played in the background.
He didn’t absorb a single second of it.
Afterward, he left the empty bowl on the coffee table and curled up on the sofa.
The sleeves covered his hands.
Instinctively, he lifted one sleeve and pressed it to his nose.
Then again.
And again.
The scent made it feel like Shen Zhiyuan was still nearby.
Maybe in the kitchen washing dishes.
Maybe working late in the study.
Maybe showering in the bathroom.
Anywhere.
As long as he wasn’t too far away.
Eventually, Cheng Yu fell asleep on the sofa.
The television flickered silently against the ceiling.
Sometime in the middle of the night, he woke from the cold and instinctively shifted toward the other side of the couch.
That side was empty.
Cold.
Still half-asleep, he reached out in the darkness.
His fingers touched nothing except cool leather.
Shen Zhiyuan wasn’t there.
Shen Zhiyuan was in the hospital.
No.
Shen Zhiyuan wasn’t anywhere anymore.
The realization hit him at three in the morning like ice water dumped over his head.
His eyes snapped open.
He lay there in the darkness wearing Shen Zhiyuan’s old sweater, arms wrapped tightly around himself.
The sweater still carried traces of Shen Zhiyuan’s scent.
But it was fading.
Every time he smelled it, it became weaker.
Every time he held it close, the scent disappeared a little more.
Little by little, he was using up the last traces Shen Zhiyuan had left behind in this world.
But he couldn’t stop.
For the next several days, Cheng Yu wore the sweater constantly.
When he went to work, he hid it beneath his coat.
“Engineer Cheng, you don’t look too good lately,” coworkers would say.
“I’m fine,” he always answered. “Just haven’t been sleeping well.”
No one noticed the oversized sweater beneath his overcoat.
When he made coffee in the break room, he unconsciously lowered his head and inhaled the scent near the collar.
At his desk, while reviewing blueprints, he curled his fingers into the sleeves and pressed them lightly against his face.
At night, after returning home, he folded the sweater carefully and placed it beside his pillow.
If he woke in the middle of the night and touched it, he would pull it into his arms beneath the blankets.
But gradually, the scent disappeared completely.
No matter how hard he inhaled, all he could smell was himself now. Dust. Wool. Old fabric.
Nothing else.
The scent vanished far faster than he had expected.
Less than a week.
After that, it was only an old sweater.
The night he realized this, Cheng Yu sat on the edge of the bed clutching the sweater tightly and felt absurdly pathetic.
He had cried for an entire week.
He had dug out movie ticket stubs from eight years ago.
Read the letter Shen Zhiyuan wrote before their wedding.
Gone to the hospital to collect the clothes he died in.
He thought he had already survived the worst of it.
He thought grief would slowly heal, like a wound scabbing over layer by layer.
But grief didn’t work that way.
Every day, it became clearer.
The first day, you can’t believe it’s real.
The second day, you know it’s true, but part of you still thinks he’ll come home.
By the third and fourth and fifth day, the scent fades from the sweater little by little until you finally understand—
He isn’t away on a business trip.
He didn’t leave temporarily.
He’s dead.
And he’s never coming back.
Cheng Yu folded the sweater carefully and tucked it beneath his pillow.
Then he turned off the light and lay there awake in the darkness.
Somewhere in the neighboring apartment complex, a dog barked.
Outside, someone locked their car, headlights briefly sweeping across the ceiling.
Everything sounded exactly the same as before.
Exactly the same as when Shen Zhiyuan was still alive.
The world hadn’t changed at all just because one person disappeared.
Dogs still barked.
Cars still locked.
Neighbors still lived their ordinary lives.
Slowly, Cheng Yu reached beneath the pillow and touched the sweater.
It was cold.
His fingers tightened around the wool desperately, refusing to let go.
Shen Zhiyuan, he thought silently.
You couldn’t even leave your scent with me a little longer.
- Writer
