Chapter 491: You can hate me
Dong Xiaoye finally gave up staying with me, because she knew that Ziyuan wouldn’t say anything as long as she was around.
Ziyuan didn’t want to take taxis. She kept her head down and walked in front in silence.
Eventually, I broke the silence, “Is there any restaurant you want to go to?”
“With people like me, do you still have the mood to eat?” Unclear whether she was laughing at herself or venting her resentment, she faintly sighed, “I can’t eat anyway. I just want to go back and be alone for a while.”
After so many things happened, Ziyuan’s heart must be in a mess. Now it was indeed not suitable for me to force her to tell me her secret. It might not be a bad choice to give her some time to calm down. I smiled: “Alright… So where are we going now?”
Ziyuan paused, and then slowly turned around. Under the dim light of the street lamp, I could still see the redness and swelling of her eyes, “Are you trying to mock me?”
I immediately realized what she meant. She definitely knew that I had been to the hotel yesterday and found out the secret that she only rented a room but did not stay at the hotel. I smiled faintly and asked, “Do I look like I’m mocking you?”
Ziyuan didn’t speak, tears fell down her face again.
I walked up to her, took out the handkerchief she tightly held in her hands, and wiped away the tears from her face. “When we were shopping yesterday, I ran into my landlady. She wanted to rent out the flat opposite to my house.” I kept smiling softly at her and pretended to continue the conversation in a casual tone, “The rent is very low, so I thought about you. Aren’t you looking for a place to stay too? It will be very convenient for us to live close to each other, so I called you. But your phone was turned off all the time, so we went to the hotel to look for you. The concierge at the hotel told us that you just rented a room there, but never stayed…”
Ziyuan was choked with sobs, and she didn’t seem to want to deny it, “Then?”
“Then?” I chuckled, “Then I know you don’t live there anymore, so I asked you where we are going now…”
Ziyuan s.n.a.t.c.hed the handkerchief and looked down at her toes. After a long while, she said: “Why don’t you ask me why I lied?”
“Since you are hiding it from me, it means that you don’t want to tell me. So what’s the point for me to ask?” I murmured: “When you want to tell me, you will naturally tell me.”
“Yuan Yuan is right. Xiao Nan, for the people around you, you always choose to tolerate. Even if these people are not worthy of you doing it… You know this is not gentle, it’s just cruel.”
“That’s why I never said I am a good person.”
“You…” Ziyuan was speechless. She turned and left in a huff. I followed her silently, without asking her where she wanted to go.
“I have been living at Min Rou’s house…” Ziyuan didn’t look back, as if she was talking to herself, “I rented a room in a hotel and took you there specially just to make you think that I live there. I wanted to cover up the fact that I have been in close contact with Min Rou… Yuan Yuan did not wrong me, I have indeed hidden many things from you, and what I do now may not hurt you, but it will definitely not make you comfortable.”
Ziyuan paused. Suddenly, she seemed to hesitate. But eventually, she still continued: “Xiao Nan, I know very well in my heart what you want to know, but now I can only tell you that, I am only responsible for providing all the information the Third Lady wants to know about you to her and completing all the things she asks me to do.”
“The things she asks you to do?” My brows twitched, “including going to bed with me that night?”
Ziyuan didn’t answer immediately, and she was still facing the other way, so I could not observe her expression, “If I say that it is my own choice, do you believe it?”
I smiled bitterly: “That’s not your character…”
“My character?” Ziyuan slowed down. When I walked to her side, she gently put her arms around my arm and leaned her head on my shoulders. Her bangs blocked my eyes, I could only see two lines of tears streaming down her cheeks. “What kind of character is my character? Cowardly?” As if laughing at herself, she asked in a sarcastic tone and then continued on, “Yes, I was a little girl who didn’t have a father. I was a mixed-race kid back in school, and I was a different person from the people around me. I have always felt inferior to other girls because people around me called me an illegitimate child, saying that my father abandoned me and my mom because I was a freak. Everyone rejected me, and no one wanted to be friends with me. Apart from crying, I didn’t know what to do. All I knew was to rely on You, watching you stand up for me and beat others up for bullying me… Since I was a child, no matter what choice I made, I would either ask you or my mom. There was nothing I could make up with my own mind. Including when my mother asked me to go to the United States with her. Even if I didn’t want to go in my heart, I still didn’t have the courage to say anything… But, Xiao Nan, that was five years ago. I am a different person now from back then. Do you know how I spent the past five years? And How many things have happened around me?”
“People can change, and change means growth, but there is also a side that will never change. Ziyuan, in my opinion, you’re still you…”
“No, Xiao Nan, you don’t understand me. The first time I decided by myself was to leave quietly without saying goodbye to you five years ago. Since then, I’m not the Xue Ziyuan you know.” Ziyuan’s arms holding my arm tightened, but her voice was even quieter, “I want to change, but I also don’t want to change. Do you know how tormenting that kind of ambivalence is? I don’t want to change my dependence on you. I want to live like that and be protected by you all my life, so I know that our relationship must change because we have grown up. If we continue to be childhood sweethearts, you will eventually be s.n.a.t.c.hed away by other girls… But I don’t have the courage to ask you face to face. If it was not that I had to go to America with my mom, I think, I probably wouldn’t even have the courage to write that letter to you…”
Sure enough, this was the reason why Ziyuan left without saying goodbye… However, the time has changed, and now it is too late to say this. By my side, there are now not only Liusu, but also Mo Fei who has an ambiguous relationship with me, and Dong Xiaoye whose feelings towards me also start to become ambiguous…
“What happened that night, it should be half and half…” Ziyuan said softly: “it was the Third Lady who made this request, but I didn’t object.”
“Why?” I couldn’t understand, “Why did the Third Lady make such a request?”
“I can’t tell you now…”
“Why didn’t you object?” I was a little angry, because Ziyuan didn’t treasure herself.
Ziyuan cuddled up to me like a little bird. I couldn’t tell whether I was following in her footsteps, or she was following in my footsteps. We just walked forward slowly and walked into each other’s hearts…
“The Third Lady and I are just using each other. She found me because she had her purpose, but I promised to help her because I also had my own purpose as well. This is one of the reasons. You did not write back to me, and did not give me an answer, and you already have a girlfriend, this is the second reason. And the third reason… Perhaps, it’s just something I wanted to do…”
My heart beat faster and my face warmed up instantly. Ziyuan’s words were very explicit. Was this a confession? Ziyuan was also very embarra.s.sed that she stopped talking. The atmosphere instantly fell into an awkward silence.
Ziyuan eventually couldn’t help it anymore, and finally pulled me to the side of the road and stopped a taxi. I was fl.u.s.tered and my head was blank, so I didn’t even pay attention to the address she told the driver.
“Do you hate me?” Ziyuan said. Even the driver was visibly confused in the rearview mirror. She and I were sitting on both ends of the backseats, looking out the window like two complete strangers.
“No, but you should…”
“I did, but I was wrong…”
Uh… so she had been hating me until tonight… I had a hard time accepting Ziyuan’s honest answer…
“You weren’t wrong, the letter was torn off by Yuan Yuan, but it was my fault,” I also honestly said: “I felt lost because of the question you asked me in the letter, I didn’t know how to reply to you. I struggled to make up my mind, so Chu Yuan mistakenly thought that the letter made me unhappy, so… After all, it was all because of my hesitation.”
“It was because I was too naive…” Ziyuan tilted her body leaning against my shoulder again. “Only an irresponsible person would answer that kind of question quickly. You were struggling means that you took it seriously. I was too naive, thinking that one promise is enough to bind two people together. I haven’t considered how heavy that promise is in reality… If I ask you the same question now, I definitely won’t rush you to give me an answer quickly.”
“Then you… Why didn’t you write to me again?” I clearly felt that Ziyuan’s body trembled.
“You can hate me.” She responded.
I was dazed. “I just want to know the reason.”
“Because I hate you.”
“Do you think this kind of lie can fool me?” I said: “Ziyuan, why did you stop me from talking to the Third Lady? If you really hate me so much, why do you still want to protect me?”
“I….”