Refusal

That answer carried a lot of information. Wei Yin had no idea she’d been involved in something like that when she was in university. Her diary said very little about college; when it did, it usually just recorded a few plain lines about her mood.

For example: on a certain year, month, and day, there was a torrential downpour. I felt wonderful, ran out to get soaked, and didn’t catch a cold.

As for why she’d felt wonderful, or what it had been like to be drenched, nothing was written down.

So Wei Yin had no way to guess what kind of person she had been back then. She didn’t know what she would have done when faced with an alpha in forced heat.

Left with nothing to go on, her mind went blank. Wei Yin could only keep her eyes wide open, staring unblinkingly at Hua Yu while she tried to project confidence: “I don’t know.”

Hua Yu lifted a hand and pressed it to her forehead, blocking that gaze. Her voice was low.

“Because there was an omega in heat nearby. Under her influence, that alpha was forced into heat.”

Forced heat was different from voluntary heat. It mainly depended on whether the person being forced usually had regular sex.

Alphas with partners and regular pheromone release usually didn’t lose their reason. At most, they’d feel a little dazed, like they’d had too much to drink. They’d still have desire, but they could control it.

The opposite was true for alphas who relied on suppressants to get through every heat cycle. If they were forced into heat, the situation could become very serious.

Basically, rationality was out of the question.

Wei Yin’s expression softened with sympathy. She couldn’t see Hua Yu’s face, but from her tone alone she could tell Hua Yu was in a bad mood.

Wei Yin asked, worried, “Then how did she deal with it?”

Hua Yu withdrew her hand. Her voice turned hoarse, as if she were remembering something—or mocking it. “She couldn’t accept doing anything sexual while she’d lost her reason. She locked herself in the equipment room and threw the key out the window.”

“She was an upper-tier alpha. Her pheromone concentration and intensity were both strong, and she did everything she could to minimize the impact. She locked herself in, hoping someone would come rescue her.”

“But the ambulance was very slow that day. So slow that by the time her glands were so congested they nearly burst, she thought she was going to die.”

“She had never been in pain like that before. No one knew she had pheromone sensitivity; the omega pheromones were like a pot of molten iron brought to a boil, pouring into her veins. It was unbearable.”

Wei Yin felt it as if it were happening to her. Waiting through an illness was torture; every second felt like an ordeal. “That’s awful. If I’d been there, that would’ve been great. I wouldn’t have been affected, and I could’ve gotten her settled in time.”

Hua Yu stopped and turned to look at her. Her gaze was strange and deeply unreadable.

Wei Yin frowned in confusion. “What’s wrong?”

Hua Yu said nothing. She just kept looking at her.

Wei Yin caught reluctance in that look.

“Oh~~,” Wei Yin’s eyes widened. “Oh! You mean I rescued her, right?”

Hua Yu looked away and gave a very soft “Mm.”

Wei Yin still didn’t understand. “Then what does that have to do with you advancing the medical fees?”

Hua Yu’s gaze was calm.

Wei Yin thought for more than ten seconds, then blurted out in shock, “I saved you!?”

From Hua Yu’s expression, Wei Yin knew she’d finally guessed right.

“So that’s it,” Wei Yin said, as though she’d just pieced together a sliver of the truth. “I was basically a hero saving a beauty. No, wait... a beauty saving a hero? No, no... beauty saving beauty... no, that’s not right either—beauty saving beauty?”

Hua Yu let out a long sigh. “What are you even saying?” The melancholy she’d just been feeling had been scattered by Wei Yin.

Wei Yin grabbed Hua Yu’s arm. “Come on, tell me what happened back then.”

Hua Yu lowered her eyes. “You’re that excited?”

“I don’t know, okay?” Wei Yin bounced once in excitement, her voice bright and airy. “How did I get in to save you? Did I climb through the window? Or pry the door open? What was your condition at the time? Was it really bad? I remember from physiology class that alphas in heat can get aggressive; did you hit me? ...No, wait, you wouldn’t even let yourself go into heat. You’re so strict with yourself, you definitely wouldn’t hit people. Ah, am I making it too obvious how excited I am? I should be showing sympathy for what you went through. Sorry about that... So I really did save you?”

A whole string of questions burst out at once. Wei Yin spoke as fast as she could, her gossiping instincts blazing.

Every time Hua Yu tried to speak, Wei Yin’s next question cut her off.

In the end, Hua Yu simply closed her mouth and waited for Wei Yin to run out of steam. Only then did she pull her hand free from Wei Yin’s grasp and look her over from head to toe. “Looks like you really have recovered.”

There was no trace of the physiological depressive state caused by low hormone levels and malnutrition that she’d had when she was first admitted; that included, but was not limited to, slow speech, sluggish reactions, and little interest in the outside world.

Now she could only be described as lively, animated, chatty, and full of energy.

Hua Yu’s earlier melancholy had vanished. She really didn’t want to talk, but Wei Yin refused to let it go and kept pressing her for details from the past.

Wei Yin said, “So that means we had a really good relationship?”

Hua Yu said, “I don’t agree.”

Wei Yin said, “Then we had a bad relationship?”

Hua Yu said, “Not exactly.”

Wei Yin said, “I get it. We used to be close, but then we fell out.”

Hua Yu’s brow twitched at the words “used to be close.” “...You can interpret it that way.”

Wei Yin had a sense of it now and said nothing more. She fell quiet, thinking hard about something.

Her relentless questioning wasn’t because she was especially curious and wanted to pry into someone else’s past. It was only that, after she found out Hua Yu really was special to her and had actual, concrete evidence, a trace of hope had risen in her heart.

She hadn’t had a relationship like this with anyone in a very long time. It was as if she were severed from society; she had no friends, no connections reaching from the past into the present.

That made her feel, whenever she looked back, as if the ground beneath her feet were hollow.

Now it was different. Wei Yin knew that Hua Yu and her past were tied together by a thread; that thread connected Hua Yu to her, connected Hua Yu to her past, and was standing right in front of her eyes.

A few strands of expectation surfaced in Wei Yin’s eyes. “Our relationship... was it really that bad?”

She had already asked once; asking again made it obvious she didn’t believe Hua Yu’s answer.

Wei Yin was smiling. She had a tiny pear-shaped dimple on the left side of her face; just a slight curve of her lips made her look bright and lovely. In her eyes, a fierce hope was hidden, burning hot as it reached Hua Yu.

Hua Yu immediately understood the unspoken meaning.

Wei Yin was saying that she hoped there had been a past between them.

She hoped they’d had a very good past.

She hoped they had been good.

Yet at that moment, Hua Yu hesitated.

Wei Yin could only say something like that because she didn’t remember the past.

Hua Yu, who had always answered every request, avoided Wei Yin’s eyes instead. A chill rose from the soles of her feet and washed her into bleakness.

After a moment of silence, Hua Yu said, “What answer do you want?”

Wei Yin shook her head. She didn’t know what she was hoping for.

Hua Yu said, “If I say we had a decent relationship, can you give up repaying the debt?”

Wei Yin opened her mouth, but no words came out.

At this point, repaying the debt looked more and more like drawing a line between them.

That thread connecting them to the past suddenly trembled.

The air quietly cooled.

Hua Yu tugged at her collar. Her chest felt tight. She lowered her head and looked at the swirl of hair on top of Wei Yin’s head, her voice very light. “You once saved me and stopped me from going into heat. I owe you once.”

Wei Yin lowered her head a little more, and the thread trembled violently.

Hua Yu said, “Other than that, there’s nothing else between us.”

The thread snapped.

Wei Yin took half a step back.

Hua Yu’s heart gave a soft jolt as well.

She looked at Wei Yin, a sour feeling spreading through her chest and boiling it into a pot of thick, acidic soup.

The past between her and Wei Yin was not something that could be explained clearly in just one or two sentences.

Just as she would never betray her own heart and leave Wei Yin uncared for, she also couldn’t abandon the past and tell Wei Yin, “We had a very good relationship.”

That would be betraying herself.

The harsh words Wei Yin had thrown at her back then, her resolute expression, and the retreating figure as she turned and left had been hidden in Hua Yu’s heart for many years.

Once, it had been a thorn and a nail that kept her awake at night and left her unable to eat or sleep in peace. Now it had only just faded, and Wei Yin had come back to stir up her life again.

The more she cared, the more she hated.

It was only that Hua Yu couldn’t bear it; most of that hatred had gone elsewhere, with only a little flowing toward Wei Yin, coming together to make the Hua Yu she was now.

“Wei Yin, you’ve thought too well of the past between us.”

“Take good care of yourself. Stop overthinking.”

“If there’s nothing else, go out.”