CH 144

Chapter 144 Cruel

Jian Chi struggled to open his eyes, and the endless, borderless white reminded him of the weirdness around him. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t feel the existence of his body and lips, his soul seemed to have left his body and came to an unknown area.

Where was this place?

Jian Chi recalled everything that happened before he lost consciousness – the dance party, the strange words Bai Xiyu left with him and Ji Huaisi, and then the car, Ji Huaisi, Ji Huaisi… the car accident.

There was a tingling pain in his temple, and Jian Chi felt that he was covering it with his hand, but in fact he didn’t make any movement, and the feeling came from the hallucination of his mind. This kind of weirdness swept through Jian Chi, and he wanted to shout out loudly to break the silence to the terrifying space.

“I’m here.”

A man came from out of nowhere in the pure white field, with long and narrow eyes, a familiar face, and his hands leisurely in the pockets of his white coat. Jian Chi almost shouted the name ‘Qin Chuxu’.

“Qin Chuxu.”

Qin Chuxu repeated it again, in a soothing way: “I’m here.”

Jian Chi found that he could speak, and he didn’t need to think about it. He knew that it must be related to Qin Chuxu’s appearance, and he couldn’t wait to ask : “Where is this place? I remember that I had a car accident with Ji Huaisi, why am I here? What about Ji Huaisi, is he okay?”

“You have too many questions, time is limited, I can only tell you what I know,” Qin Chuxu snapped his fingers, “you will understand everything when I finish speaking.”

Qin Chuxu’s words brought a certain degree of peace of mind, Jian Chi understood that he would leave here soon. He slowed down: “I just want to ask one question, did the car accident really happen?”

His heart sank.

Qin Chuxu continued: “You will be fine, and Ji Huaisi will be fine. This incident exceeded my expectations. The story had completely changed. It stands to reason that this car accident should not have happened.” 

The same was true for Jian Chi’s original thought.

The butterfly effect he brought changed everything, except that Ji Huaisi did not escape this ending.

“It’s Bai Shuyun,” Jian Chi breathed slowly, “his target was me, and I’ve implicated Ji Huaisi.”

“Are you going to start blaming yourself?” 

The rhetorical question contained consolation and a hint of complexity. Slowly tightening his hands in his pockets, he was silent for a few seconds, “Jian Chi, I originally planned to leave. The work here has been completed, no matter what happens in the future, it is not within my jurisdiction, now is the best time for me to leave, but at this point, an accident happened.” Qin Chuxu laughed, laughing at his bad luck.

Jian Chi faintly heard a trace of unusual meaning.

Qin Chuxu suddenly asked: “When you first learned about the whole story, what was your biggest question?”

Without any thought, Jian Chi answered almost subconsciously, “That car accident.”

“There’s one thing I shouldn’t tell you, also I never wanted to tell you, but now I think you need to know.”

Qin Chuxu’s voice led Jian Chi’s heart to sink in an unknown direction.

“The story you see is not a complete story.”

Jian Chi felt a kind of confusion even more blank than this space that overwhelmed him, and his thoughts froze in place.

“What…”

Qin Chuxu walked towards him, although he couldn’t feel his entity, Jian Chi still knew that he was getting closer and closer, so close that he could touch him by just raising his hand.

“Sometimes, the truth is more cruel than what you see.”

When Qin Chuxu finished these words in a low voice, Jian Chi felt a familiar shock, just like the bizarre dream he had in the infirmary for the first time. He once again lost consciousness and fell into a web of fantasy and reality.

Jian Chi saw Bai Xiyu.

Not the words in the book, not the background of Sainston, he had come to Jiangcheng, a small backward county town, in a dilapidated and old-fashioned rental house, a beautiful but poor woman with a young child, that was the former Bai Xiyu.

This was a ‘dream’ from Bai Xiyu’s perspective, not the Bai Xiyu in the book, but the real Bai Xiyu he knew.

Everything was more terrifying than Jian Chi imagined.

After giving birth to Bai Xiyu, perhaps the motherhood in her bones was stimulated, or she really realized the mistakes of the past, Yu Litu began to look for a job, learn to be a competent mother, and maintain the family’s livelihood. However, this situation only lasted for two years. She once again chose to sell herself and exchanged her body for expensive purses, the rent of the house, and her alcohol money. After squandering all of this, she squeezed out the remaining squeeze for milk powder and baby supplies that Bai Xiyu needed.

Yu Litu would feel guilty at first. Whenever she woke up drunk and saw Bai Xiyu crying because he was starving in the crib, she brewed milk powder in a panic, and cried while feeding. This was always the case, every time. Not a single time had changed. It was from here that Bai Xiyu’s stature, who never grew taller, started.

He didn’t know if it was the child or the life, or the pressure of both which gradually destroyed Yu Litu’s mind. Ever since Bai Xiyu had a memory, his mother was moody, often beating and apologizing for no reason, and was hated by the neighbors, a lunatic.

Bai Xiyu, who grew up in such an environment, was destined to have an unfortunate childhood. The county town was very small, and no one could hide secrets. His classmates in the school nicknamed him ‘little madman’ because his mother was a big madman. Bai Xiyu often lost things, and his classmates often broke his books and pens. Every time he looked for a teacher, the teacher just comforted him and then there was no more. Until one time, Bai Xiyu heard the teacher sitting in the office talking about his mother to others, saying ‘that crazy woman’ in a contemptuous and pitiful tone, Bai Xiyu never walked into the office again.

At the beginning of junior high school, people around him gradually understood the difference between beauty and ugliness, and Bai Xiyu’s delicate facial features gradually grew. This may be the only gift he got from his mother. The neighbors saw him with less strange eyes and more sympathy – how could such a good child have such a bad mother? Bai Xiyu knew what they thought every time they saw him.

The first time he realized the advantage of his appearance was when Yu Litu was drunk and locked the door of his house. Bai Xiyu, who came home from school, could only sit at the entrance and endure hunger. The neighbor had just come back with vegetables. Bai Xiyu had never spoken to her, but this time, he suddenly remembered that his mother once said that he had beautiful eyes, just like her when she was young.

So Bai Xiyu raised his tearful eyes, trembling and begging in a very soft voice: “Auntie, can I come to your house for dinner? My mother won’t let me in.” 

The neighbor took him into her house, Bai Xiyu then had a hot dinner for the first time.

Since then, Bai Xiyu had learned how to get what he wanted in a way that was not annoying, and he knew which angle was best to look at when crying, and what kind of words to say were the most softening. He had friends at school. Even if he was bullied, there were people who were willing to stand up for him. Neighbors around him have commented on him from ‘silent’, and ‘pitiful’ to ‘it was his mother who ruined this good boy’. Bai Xiyu never took Yu Litu’s money again, because the neighbors were willing to give Bai Xiyu their son’s old clothes and books, and they often let him eat together with them.

Bai Xiyu told himself that it was enough, he got what he wanted most now-the attention and love of others. But when he saw the old photo Yu Littu locked in the drawer, another voice told Bai Xiyu: It’s not enough.

At the age of seventeen, Bai Xiyu knew his identity. Yu Litu drank too much that day and vomited on the toilet. Bai Xiyu could only clean up the mess while taking care of his drunk mother. It was unsure what Yu Litu was thinking, she laughed strangely, and suddenly covered her face and started to cry, crying louder and louder, every sound was like scratching a fingernail across a blackboard. Bai Xiyu didn’t feel anything, he was used to seeing this picture.

“How can I be so stupid, how can I be so stupid… It was he who ruined me, if it wasn’t for him…”

Bai Xiyu knew that this ‘he’ was his father. He was curious, asked and begged, but Yu Litu was always reluctant to tell him. Bai Xiyu looked at his crying mother, squatted down, “The floor is cold, I’ll take you to bed, okay?”

Yu Litu shrugged her shoulders, tears made her fine-wrinkled face look even older, no longer young and beautiful, “He was very good to me, you know? At that time, I kept lying to myself. He promised to divorce and marry me, I believed it. I was too greedy, I wanted his love and also wanted his money. He didn’t give me anything, nothing…”

Bai Xiyu knew that his mother would not listen to him at this time, so he leaned over and picked her up onto the bed in the bedroom, pressing down the quilt gently. Yu Litu was still crying and talking nonsense, and she slapped the half-open drawer beside the bed with her waving hand. Bai Xiyu wanted to close it, but suddenly remembered that it was always locked by a lock.

For Bai Xiyu that night, he opened Pandora’s box.

There were photos of Bai Shengying in it, as well as a token of love that Bai Shengying once gave to Yu Litu, a gemstone ring. At her most sorry time in her life, it still had not been pawned by Yu Litu. What made Bai Xiyu understand everything was the diary and letters under the ring, all from his mother, who wrote all her love and resentment for Bai Shengying over the years.

Bai Xiyu had heard the name of Bai Shengying, a successful entrepreneur living in TV media and surrounded by people.

After seventeen years of silence, his world shone a faint light for the first time.

Bai Xiyu put everything back in place, closed the drawer, and went back to his room, as if nothing had happened, and life continued.

On an ordinary morning, Bai Xiyu went out to buy breakfast as usual. He still remembered buying a cup of soy milk and two sugar packets. Apart from alcohol, Yu Litu liked sweets the most. He took out a bottle of disinfectant from the cupboard, unscrewed the lid with a napkin, pressed the fingerprint on it with Yu Litu’s fingers in her sleep, and put the disinfectant in the middle of the alcohol bottles, closest to Yu Litu, making it easy for her to get.

After doing all this, Bai Xiyu went back to the bedroom and dropped a kiss on Yu Litu’s forehead.

This was the last memory of his mother.