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Chapter 9: Xiao Xia’s Confession

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Xia Mingxiu shouldn’t have taken this path.

For Luo Yuchen and I, we reaped what we sowed for where we are today. But for Xia Mingxiu, he was only an innocent victim that we dragged into this mess.

He never did anything wrong from the beginning to the end.

The ones who were wrong were Luo Yuchen and I.

Yet, he never complained when he had to pay for the price of our mistakes.

He looked deep into Luo Yuchen’s eyes and said, “Let’s slowly forget about him together.”

“I can wait. Xiao Heng could wait ten years. I can too.”

I finally understood that I could never be Xia Mingxiu’s opponent.

He really was too perfect. He wasn’t doing it on purpose, and his action was completely genuine. Someone like me could never hope to reach his perfection.

The reason why I was able to retain that little amount of pride and persistence in front of Xia Mingxiu was because I had the advantage of time and wealth. I got to know Luo Yuchen before Xia Mingxiu for more than ten years. I was friends with Luo Yuchen for more than ten years, and I waited silently by his side for ten years. I know that Xia Mingxiu was better than me. I know that he liked Luo Yuchen a lot as well. But I always reassured myself that I could do it. I felt that Xia Mingxiu couldn’t beat what I have done.

But now, it seemed like Xia Mingxiu was also able to do the only thing I was able to do for Luo Yuchen.

He could wait too, and I believed he could wait even longer than me.

Waiting was a slow form of torture. One would feel hopeful, then disappointment, and finally despair.

However, Xia Mingxiu was different. Maybe he would be able to see the rainbow after the storm.

Luo Yuchen might soon realize that his yearning for me was only due to his feeling of guilt and obligation.

I’ve seen many such examples. It wasn’t a realization of his true feelings. It wasn’t truly love.

Perhaps everything was just my wishful thinking. My wishful, selfish, stubborn thinking that Luo Yuchen had suddenly realized that he liked me.

This is exactly what I am now. While I felt heartache watching Luo Yuchen like this, I also felt a despicable delight. I really was pathetic.

I looked at Luo Yuchen and Xia Mingxiu again. They looked like a match made in heaven.

Why was I so arrogant to think that he would look past such a bright person before him and instead land his gaze on me, an old speck of dust in a corner?

No one would be able to reject Xia Mingxiu. I knew that.

But Luo Yuchen remained unmoved. Ignoring everyone’s words, he said, “Xiao Heng is still alive…”

He thought that I was still alive.

He wasn’t rejecting Xia Mingxiu. He just truly and simply felt that I was still alive.

However, if it wasn’t for that night, if it wasn’t for the fact that he truly felt that I was alive, would he have accepted Xia Mingxiu already?

I didn’t know the answer.

I only knew that Luo Yuchen had hurt Xia Mingxiu. I knew that his stubborn persistence had cruelly hurt Xia Mingxiu.

Xia Mingxiu’s face visibly paled. He stared at Luo Yuchen’s absent-minded face, and an expression of despair and unwillingness finally broke through,an expression that I’ve never seen before.

That’s right, he wasn’t resigned to it.

Of course he wouldn’t be resigned to it. In the end, Xia Mingxiu was still an ordinary person.

He also wished to be protected and loved.

I lost to him because he was much better than me. Although I wasn’t resigned to it, I could only ultimately surrender.

But he lost to me so ridiculously that it was absurd. Even I didn’t know what he had done wrong and what I had done right for him to lose.

He was supposed to be a normal lover by Luo Yuchen’s side, but then he suddenly became an outsider. If I was him, I would have already turned mad.

Xia Mingxiu was still as calm and gentle as usual, but I could see that the perfectly harmonious relationship they once had was now gone.

I saw Luo Yuchen destroy it bit by bit with my own eyes.

Because of the undeserving me.

But I could no longer scold Luo Yuchen for not cherishing what he had. I could no longer blame Xia Mingxiu for his unlucky timing. I also could no longer give them my hypocritical well wishes anymore.

I saw Luo Yuchen ruin everything. It was shocking and incomprehensible, but all I felt was heartache.

Luo Yuchen was as straightforward as usual. He did whatever he wanted to do without caring about what others felt.

What else would he do from now on?

I didn’t dare to think about it.

In the end, Luo Yuchen was dragged to a psychiatrist by Xia Mingxiu. The result was Luo Yuchen subconsciously escaping reality because the blow was too huge, and he had a slight delusional disorder as a result of his excessive guilt.

Luo Yuchen’s reaction to the result was only four words: He was speaking nonsense.

I knew that Luo Yuchen might not be able to accept the truth. But he wasn’t at the point of being delusional.

Only the two of us could ascertain the real sense of touch that we had on the night that I hugged him tightly for the last time.

The hugging truly happened, and he remembered it clearly.

Luo Yuchen was insistent on not letting the psychiatrist, who he sees as a muddle-headed liar, give him any more psychological suggestions or hypnosis. Even Xia Mingxiu was unable to force him this time.

Because of work, Xia Mingxiu had to leave for a period of time once again.

Xia Mingxiu was worried about Luo Yuchen, but Luo Yuchen only smiled and said, “I’m not a kid. What can happen?”

We both knew that many things could happen with the current state Luo Yuchen was in, but Xia Mingxiu’s work was arranged by the company. Unlike Luo Yuchen, Xia Mingxiu wasn’t a “big shot”, and he couldn’t push the job away whenever he wanted to.

Before Xia Mingxiu left, he asked, “Are you planning to give Xiao Heng the present you prepared for him personally?”

Luo Yuchen’s face brightened, and he nodded with a smile.

I knew that Xia Mingxiu was only trying to make sure Luo Yuchen would still be alive before he came back in April.

After Xia Mingxiu left, no one was around to listen to Luo Yuchen’s self-deceiving words. He became quieter and looked more normal.

He would still look at the photo of him and Xia Mingxiu on the carousel during that Christmas night, smiling faintly when he did so. I finally found something strange about it. I stood close behind him and looked carefully at what he was looking at, only to see the area that was caressed by his finger.

I sat on the wooden horse behind the two of them while they smiled happily.

Although I was just part of the background covered up by the radiance of the two beauties, the background me had nowhere to hide at this moment.

It was so embarrassing. My envious and lonely expression when I was secretly glancing at them was fully exposed.

The sour mood which only I knew about back then was also captured by the sharp camera and left behind forever.

Luo Yuchen kept looking at it yearningly and caressed the person I was from many years ago.

It turned out that the person he had been yearning for when he looked at this photo was actually me, not Xia Mingxiu.

Although they were the main characters of the photo, and I was only someone at a corner, Luo Yuchen kept looking at me.

Because this was the only photo of me left. Because I saw him burn the rest of the photos with my own eyes. Such irony. Now, even that small corner of the photo was so precious. And it was him who had burned all my photos back then without leaving any behind.

But I didn’t want to fuss about this anymore.

I only saw Luo Yuchen’s heartlessness when I looked at him throw all those memories into the incinerator.

I never realized that his vile and cruel actions were sometimes because he cared.

Ever since a long time ago, he never really knew how to express his feelings correctly. He was also unable to understand his own heart clearly.

He was very good at doing things according to his feelings, just like his love-at-first-sight for Xia Mingxiu. But there were times when even he didn’t know what his feelings truly meant.

Although I knew that I might be deceiving myself for thinking this way, I still wanted to believe that Luo Yuchen had fallen in love with me unknowingly. But love and hate had always been two sides of the same coin, and he had been foolishly confused over it.

When a feeling was so strong to the point of making one afraid, they would deliberately avoid it. 

Both hate and love were strong feelings that made one think of another everyday. Maybe he hated me so much everyday that he suddenly realized that I was actually quite a decent person.

Regardless, I felt that he did enough by looking infatuatedly at the corner of the photo where I was pictured. 

No matter what he did before and what he was going to do in the future, whether what he felt for me was love or guilt, he had done enough.

I was greedy and was never content. I was unable to wish for Luo Yuchen to be happy with another person from the bottom of my heart. However, I truly wished for him to be happy.

A long time ago, I selfishly wished that I would be the one to personally make him happy.

This was my original wish and intention a long time ago. Why did I forget about it?

Back when Luo Yuchen agreed to my condition and he moved into this house with me, didn’t I pull his hand and make this promise?

That no matter how much effort I had to put in and how much time I had to spend, I would make Luo Yuchen fall in love with me one day? That I would make him the happiest person in the world?

From then on, I only felt scared that I hadn’t done enough. I was scared that I had to ultimately let him go because I wasn’t able to keep him.

What happened in the end? I was actually the first one to think that he would definitely leave me.

It was actually me who had forgotten the promise that I would definitely make Luo Yuchen happy even if it took my entire lifetime.

In the end, it was me who cut the ‘entire lifetime’ with my knife.

I never expected that I would be the one who broke the promise in the end.

When I held the knife, all I felt were despair, grievance, and peace before death.

At that time, what happened to my promise of making Luo Yuchen happy?

Where was the promised happiness that I would personally give him?

How was I supposed to account to him for whatever was happening now?

Luo Yuchen was still looking at the photo, but his thoughts seemed to have flown far away.

I didn’t know if he was reminiscing about the things that happened between us.

All of a sudden, he jumped up from the sofa, seeming to have remembered something. He quickly walked towards the picture frame above the small cabinet.

Inside the frame was a photo of him and Xia Mingxiu, looking warm and lovely with their cat and dog outfit.

With slender trembling fingers, he took out a photo that was pressed behind theirs.

He took the photo out with bright and happy eyes.

I foolishly looked at the photo from behind him, and I could only smile wryly in shock. When Luo Yuchen did his photo purging, he had actually let one slip.

Because of Luo Yuchen’s laziness, he took another photo to cover up this one and it ended up being forgotten and left behind inside.

The place that had been forgotten had become the safest place.

This was a photo that had been placed in the house for ten years. In the photo, he and I were still 17. We were sitting among the flowers, laughing and looking at the sunflowers together.

That was something that happened a long time ago. At that time, nothing had happened yet, and nothing had changed.

Nothing started and mistakes weren’t made. Even if a mistake was made, it was still a time when things could recover.

At that time, we were still smiling brightly without any worries.

If there was anything that could make time stop in this world, I wished for our time to stop at that moment and never change. I could stay by his side and be his good friend and buddy. We could watch the flower bloom and wilt together, and let everything run its course.

He would treat me well and smile at me forever. He would never have to guard against me and feel sad because of me.

Now, the only thing that never changed was this photo. The photo still showed the smiles we once had, but it could only make people sigh. Time would always go on and only items would remain unchanged, not humans.

That was also good. From now on, our memories would stop at that moment.

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