Chapter Ninety-Six: Because I’m Love-Struck, It Doesn’t Matter Even If My Boyfriend Is a Freak (28)

Bai Yao seemed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sometimes, even after Lu Sheng coaxed her to sleep, she would wake in the middle of the night for no reason and be unable to stop herself from crying in secret.

It was not only at bedtime. When Lu Sheng went into the kitchen to make her something delicious, even if they were apart for only a few minutes, she would sit on the sofa watching television, and before long tears would begin to fall without her willing them.

And even more so, when Lu Sheng was with her in an attempt to distract her, she would still stare at him uncontrollably, and little by little her eyes would turn red.

Just like now.

Lu Sheng could not go on. He lifted Bai Yao into his arms, sat down on the bed, and folded her entire body against his chest, gently kissing her cheek. “Yao Yao, I am right here.”

Bai Yao buried her face in his chest and let out a muffled sound in reply.

Lu Sheng stroked the back of her head with tenderness. Every time he saw Bai Yao like this, the corners of his own eyes would redden.

Bai Yao had once loved soaking in the bathtub. It was comfortable, and it made her relax. But now, the moment she saw a bathtub, every muscle in her body would stiffen. Not long ago, Lu Sheng had removed the tub entirely.

In truth, long ago he had secretly filled in the basement beneath Bai Yao’s home and sealed it so completely that nothing could enter. But there were far too many things in this world that could not be explained.

What was fated to happen still happened in the end.

Everything Bai Yao endured on that stormy night had taken only a few hours, yet those few hours cast a shadow over her entire life.

It was not because she herself had nearly been buried alive, but because of the shattered child in the bathtub that kept rising in her mind.

Lu Sheng lifted her face with one hand and kissed the corner of her lips. “I am very happy now. Every day with you here, I am happy.”

He meant it.

The pain of the past had long since faded with time.

For these twenty years, he had not lived in hatred, but in anticipation of her. Day after day, he had carried the most beautiful hopes in his heart.

Twenty years ago, he who came later was still buried by Chen Yan amid the flowerbeds strewn with bones. His flesh and blood melted into the earth, spreading endlessly along the roots of the plants.

Perhaps because too much resentment from too many children had gathered upon him, after a long stretch of darkness, one day he suddenly became aware.

By then, Chen Yan was nearly due. She stared in terror at the figure of the child that had appeared in the bathroom and stumbled backward to the floor.

She was already in the dangerous stage of pregnancy. Fear and the fall caused her to hemorrhage heavily, but no one besides her cared whether the child in her belly lived or died.

The boy was already broken apart. When he crawled out from underground, he had pieced together whatever limbs he could find at random, so every step he took was grotesquely uncoordinated.

He retrieved the strawberry pendant and the Death doll from the trash, then asked in the most innocent voice, “Mommy, where is the big sister?”

While he had been buried in the soil, the flowers and grass that had devoured his flesh had told him that Bai Yao had also been buried in earth by Chen Yan. Yet she had survived with an immense will to live, crawled out of the dirt, and walked back into the house.

And then there had been no more news of Bai Yao.

Chen Yan desperately braced herself with her hands and crawled backward. The blood gushing from beneath her stained the floor, leaving a long trail. “Ghost... ghost...”

Her eyes widened in terror, her fear of the unknown reaching its peak. This was not the weak child she could casually destroy, but something eerie beyond the bounds of human comprehension.

The boy’s foot stepped on the hem of her dress, and rotting flesh and clumps of soil fell away together.

His young face was crisscrossed with knife wounds. In those eyes that had once looked upon his mother with childlike devotion, there was now only manic danger.

He asked again, “Where did the big sister go?”

The blood beneath Chen Yan would not stop no matter what she did. She could feel the life of the child in her womb slipping away. In panic, she screamed, “I don’t know! She disappeared all of a sudden! I didn’t kill her!”

Her whole body shaking, she sobbed until she could hardly breathe. “I’m telling the truth, please let me go, let me go... I need to go to the hospital, I need to save my child...”

“That’s right, the child in my belly is your little brother too!” Chen Yan seemed to grasp a lifesaving straw and said excitedly, “Let me go to the hospital, to save your brother...”

His gaze lowered to her belly.

Doctor Song was already dead. Chen Yan had failed so many times; the child in her womb might be her only hope now. She absolutely could not allow anything to happen to this baby.

The boy suddenly smiled. “Mommy is dying to see her little brother, then I’ll help you.”

Chen Yan watched as the boy’s hands, marked with jagged knife wounds, slowly rested upon her stomach. In an instant, she let out a shriek.

—

Lu Sheng held Bai Yao in his arms on the bed, a thin quilt wrapping the two bodies together without the slightest gap between them.

The moon was especially beautiful tonight. Outside the glass window, beneath the clear moonlight, unfamiliar flowers and grass greedily absorbed the radiance of stars and moon.

Bai Yao leaned in Lu Sheng’s embrace, staring blankly at the flowers outside the window, silent for a long time.

Lu Sheng kissed her forehead. “I searched for a very, very long time and still could not find you. Then I remembered the photo you showed me.”

Bai Yao lifted her damp eyes. “The photo?”

He smiled. “I found that I was looking more and more like the person in your photo, so I guessed that if I were patient enough, I would surely see you again.”

He lowered his eyes, saying with quiet satisfaction, “Yao Yao, we were always destined to be together.”

That was why, on that day, when Bai Yao followed the agent into the Rain Blossom Community and stood outside the basketball court, he took the initiative and walked toward her.

She thought it was love at first sight, but for him, it was a reunion with fate after twenty years apart.

The name Lu Sheng was one he had chosen himself. Lu Sheng, road to life, flowers blooming along the way. It was truly a fine meaning: the road of life filled with flowers and hope.

He had once longed for family, yet in the end he died beneath his mother’s knife. Buried in the earth, he slowly decayed, enduring endless loneliness and darkness. The word “hope” ought never to have had anything to do with him.

And yet she had said that she hoped that one day he, too, could become the kind of person who moved forward with brightness and courage.

He had prepared for a long time before he finally succeeded in appearing before her in the form she liked. But he had never truly been an optimistic, forward-looking person, and in the long years they spent together, he would always reveal his flaws.

He feared that she would discover his true nature, yet he had never considered that she could actually accept all his forms. Even the most unsightly parts of him, in her eyes, were nothing worth fearing.