Chapter 77
Unexpectedly, when Sheng Huaixi heard Jiang Chao ask that question, she felt herself grow eerily calm. It was as if all the blood in her body had stopped moving, everything freezing in that instant.
Her lips parted slightly. Holding the phone, Sheng Huaixi steadied her rising and falling breath and said, word for word:
“If you don’t come back, I’ll wait for you. I’ll look for you. In the end, there will only be reunion or death.”
There were no grand vows of everlasting devotion, no repetition of her usual wild, reckless words. Sheng Huaixi simply said the one thing she was most certain of in that moment, the same certainty Jiang Chao had already seen before.
This was what liking someone looked like for her: stubborn, unshaken, and pushing relentlessly forward.
Sheng Huaixi had never measured how much she liked someone. There was no scale for her feelings; there was only 0 and 100.
For Jiang Chao, that liking had gone from a cold 1 to a pounding 100 in an instant.
The moment Sheng Huaixi’s heartbeat quickened and thrilled because of Jiang Chao, she had already been certain: she wanted all of Jiang Chao.
If Jiang Chao did not come back, then she would go looking. She would search with everything she had until the day of death or reunion.
From the day Sheng Huaixi decided she wanted Jiang Chao, she had never once considered the possibility that Jiang Chao did not belong to her.
Even during the time they were unexpectedly apart, when Sheng Huaixi went from anger at the beginning to coldness later on, all she had ever done was wait and struggle.
Trapped unwillingly in a cocoon, Sheng Huaixi fought again and again for the chance to see Jiang Chao, until the shell enclosing her finally broke and a crack appeared.
Jiang Chao, just as in their first meeting, stepped in front of her. Her arm was stretched straight out, her slender body forming a solid line of protection for her.
This belated reunion was like fireworks smothered inside a shell; the fuse wound round and round, burying a long wick deep into Sheng Huaixi’s heart, until the faint sparks quietly caught.
The brilliant burst of fireworks exploded against Sheng Huaixi’s chest, scattering the gloom of waiting.
Sheng Huaixi would always accept love that arrived late, so long as the one who came was Jiang Chao.
“Do you like my answer?”
Sheng Huaixi gave a muffled laugh. The smile rippled from her throat through the phone screen to Jiang Chao, clear and unmistakable.
Her smile was gentle, yet her expression remained still. Only the corners of Sheng Huaixi’s mouth lifted slightly, the curve faint and restrained.
Her emotions settled back into balance. Sheng Huaixi quietly gazed at the phone screen, a dim light flickering in the depths of her eyes as she remained motionless for a long time.
Breathing out slowly and evenly, Sheng Huaixi’s scattered thoughts were forcibly gathered back by Jiang Chao’s single sentence. The question had come so abruptly that it compelled her to calm down.
In her heart, Sheng Huaixi still remembered what Jiang Chao had said to her before leaving.
“The things you want to hear; maybe, I only mean maybe, I might tell you after I come back from England.” Jiang Chao had once smiled and promised this while looping a strand of Sheng Huaixi’s hair around her finger.
When Jiang Chao returned, she would tell her the words she had been waiting so long to hear.
Since this was something that might happen after she came back, then before Jiang Chao returned, everything Sheng Huaixi did and every question she asked could be a fork in the road.
What Sheng Huaixi could do right now was to, within the scope Jiang Chao had raised, steer the outcome toward the moment she wanted to happen.
“Jiang Chao.” Sheng Huaixi called softly.
There was still no answer from the other end. It seemed Jiang Chao had already sunk into her own world.
Sheng Huaixi did not press her. She let the ethereal silence hang between them, giving Jiang Chao enough time to struggle and hesitate.
Her long lashes blinked once after another; a leaden gray shadow fell over her eyelids. Sheng Huaixi half-lowered her eyes, watching the seconds slide across the screen as she counted each beat of her heart.
Through the screen, Sheng Huaixi quietly felt Jiang Chao’s presence on the other end of the line.
Light or heavy, the sound of breathing by her ear was like a small hammer tapping at her heart.
The lightest was what she liked; Jiang Chao perhaps giving in to her. The heaviest was what made her happy; Jiang Chao’s emotions, stirred by her, rising into stormy waves.
It did not matter how much. So long as it was Jiang Chao, Sheng Huaixi would be delighted.
Following the words she had just said, Sheng Huaixi waited patiently and quietly for Jiang Chao’s answer, or perhaps her next question.
A phone call across half the globe, their first real contact in a week; whatever Jiang Chao wanted to talk about, or even if she asked one question and hung up after that, Sheng Huaixi would wait.
Jiang Chao’s breathing would keep her company.
“Sheng Huaixi, do you believe this world can be manipulated by human hands?”
The sudden question landed softly. Jiang Chao’s voice was light, as if afraid of startling something. Slowly, she spoke, laying out her doubt point by point to Sheng Huaixi.
“Just a normal blink, and when you open your eyes again, it feels like the whole world has inexplicably changed.”
Sheng Huaixi lowered her lashes, concealing the complicated emotions in her eyes, and answered with a firm denial: “I don’t believe it.”
“Why?” Jiang Chao pressed.
“Because that would be too painful. Too painful.”
Sheng Huaixi repeated her thoughts. Her voice was low, her tone calm, but her expression suddenly flushed with emotion because of those words, turning bright red.
Half-bent over the tabletop, her long arm resting quietly, a faint whiteness showed at Sheng Huaixi’s wrist as the vein beneath it tightened under the force she used.
Before Jiang Chao could ask why, Sheng Huaixi offered the explanation with a smile caught between her teeth. The tendons on the back of her hand tightened and loosened in turn, pain surging through her in waves.
“Obviously you’re only throwing a little tantrum at her as usual, and then when you open your eyes again, the living, breathing person in your mind has completely vanished from your life.”
“Why should anyone believe in a world that can so arbitrarily take away what is beautiful in someone else’s life?”
Sheng Huaixi’s words hit the ground with an almost imperceptible resentment.
Her gaze slowly lifted. Sheng Huaixi stared fixedly at her own tense hand, the numb ache from her palm spreading outward.
Her curled palm gradually opened. Sheng Huaixi saw the marks in her palm; one crescent after another had seeped a faint red, and above the scattered scars, painful flowers bloomed.
This was her past; painful memories remembered by no one but her alone.
“...” The two of them fell silent again.
The breaths trapped in her chest piled up again and again; the rise and fall of her chest grew more and more pronounced. Sheng Huaixi drew in soft breaths, her fingertips hovering for a long time before finally tapping mute.
“Ha... ha... huh...”
The moment mute was turned on, the silent room was suddenly shattered by breaths that turned ragged all at once, urgent and fierce, as though she had snatched oxygen back from the brink of suffocation.
Sheng Huaixi’s body hunched forward. Her hand pushed the phone out in front of her, while the back of that hand pressed against her forehead, supporting her violently trembling body.
Her eyes were bloodshot. Sheng Huaixi’s breathing was completely in chaos; the inhales and exhales in her lungs came fast in alternating bursts, and the flush on her face only deepened with each breath.
This small, torn-open scar; the wound Sheng Huaixi had thought had long since healed—only now did she understand that it had never truly recovered.
Amid those gasps, Jiang Chao still sounded confused, yet hesitant, as she said:
“Then, Sheng Huaixi—”
“If a relationship is destined to be snatched away like this, then maybe it would have been best not to begin at all.”
Sheng Huaixi’s rapid breathing was suddenly strangled by those words. Her slender, fair neck stiffened in the air; even her tongue went numb.
“You mean... what..."
Could it be that she herself had cut off Jiang Chao’s liking for her?