Chapter 68 – The Last Life

Song Yu fell into confusion due to this question.

“Afraid that I’ll like him?” Was this something that a normal person would ask? Shouldn’t normal people be asking “Afraid that I’ll be cheated by him?”, or “Afraid that I’ll be bullied by him?”

But Xie Sui had somehow stumbled upon what he was most worried about. He was really worthy of being the main character.

As for being jealous, don’t be, okay? If Xie Sui really liked Qin Mo, then the consequences wouldn’t be that he’d get jealous, but that Qin Mo would get stabbed.

Song Yu’s brain slowly chugged along, his tone surprised, “This question of yours is a little interesting.”

Xie Sui smiled slightly, “Really?”

Song Yu opened up his lecture mode, “What are you thinking all day long? Didn’t you listen to the last psychology lecture? Come on, it’s almost time for class. Let’s not talk about this kind of nonsense.” He deliberately avoided the topic and took out a test paper as he went down the steps.

Xie Sui kept up easily, his lips curved.

The sudden realization that struck after getting an answer to the question that had hovered in his heart for a long time was like a flower blooming in his heart, filled with a hot sweetness.

Their last lesson on Wednesday afternoon was Music class. It was rare that it wasn’t taken over by other teachers, and the whole class cheered and clapped when the teacher came in. The sports event was tomorrow and everyone was impatiently looking forward to it, filling the classroom with expectation and joy. The Music teacher casually played a few songs, then let them study on their own.

The sports committee member came up to the podium with his roster and named the athletes along with the time of each event.

Song Yu was scheduled for the afternoon of the first day.

“Nervous?” Xie Sui asked suddenly.

Song Yu raised his eyebrows, “What’s there to be nervous about? I’m winning honor for my class.”

Xie Sui smiled, “In that case, I’ll be waiting to see it.”

Song Yu replied, “Wait for me at the finish line. I want to drink iced black tea.”

Xie Sui’s eyes curved, “Okay.”

The bell rang to signal the end of class. School was over.

On the way back from the teaching building, two boys from the building over were walking in front of them and discussing the sports event.

“I’m really out of luck with that. I got the long-distance race from drawing lots—dammit, am I going up to act as the bottom of the pack for the special class?”

“It’s okay. I heard that Song Yu’s participating in that, too. You’ll be losing face along with the school bully. It’s not a loss.”

“That’s true. Being good at fighting doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s good at sports. Song Yu doesn’t look like he’d be good at sports to me—hopefully the focus will all be on him when the time comes, and no one will be looking at me.”

“Hahahahaha, coward.”

The person they were talking about was right behind them. Song Yu rolled his eyes, tossed his mineral water bottle into the garbage can, and then turned his head to share his commentary on this group of people. His tone was flat, “At Shushan Building, they said that I didn’t look like I was good at fighting; before the monthly exams, they said that I didn’t look like a good student. When will they realize what their problem is and get their eyes treated? I’m really tired of slapping faces. Those who don’t know better might even think that I’m looking for trouble all day long.”

Xie Sui laughed lightly.

Song Yu found it interesting when he thought about it more and tilted his head to say to him, “Should I be blamed for being a decathlon athlete?”

Xie Sui blinked. His voice held traces of a smile as he dragged out his words, “You can be blamed for being too excellent.”

Song Yu was stunned for a moment. After realizing that this was a compliment from Xie Sui, his lips rose and he was completely unable to press the corners back down again.

He coughed, then nodded, “You have good eyes, fellow classmate.”

The lawn under the teaching building was covered with trees and dotted with white flowers. The petals landed on the teenager’s shoulders and skimmed his eyebrows as the autumn wind blew by. His expression was very vivid when he smiled, making that moment of dusk very gentle; even the scattered dead leaves on the ground seemed to gain a touch of vitality.

Xie Sui thought, how could he have missed out on such a star in his last life?

No.1 High forums.

[ I discovered a fun thing. Is Brother Yu afraid of dogs? ]

Original post: A fellow sister classmate took a photo from the sports stands. It might not have been taken very well, but please forgive her. After all, she was so excited that her hands were shaking at the time.

1L: [photo]

2L: [photo]

3L: ! What the hell! Why does my husband look so cute even when he’s afraid of dogs?

4L: Hiding behind the school grass and clutching tightly at his sleeve, what kind of absolute, well-behaved little cutie is this?

5L: I was at the scene. He really did seem to have been scared into a panic for a second when the dog ran over.

6L: Tsk. Are there any students from Class One present? It’s said that Song Yu will be participating in the long-distance event. Let me teach you guys a trick. Take a loudspeaker and record the sound of a dog barking. When others yell to cheer people on, you can play the sound of a dog barking. Getting number one in the long-distance race won’t just be empty words.

7l: Hahahahahahahahahahaha damn me, previous poster, you’re a genius.

……..

12L: Do you have to go so far? Just have God Xie stand at the finishing line. How does that sentence go again? It can stimulate all my potential to run hard, with dogs chasing from behind, or having you wait at the front

13L: ?? I smashed into a little sweetness

14L: Let me give the big sister upstairs a cappuccino [applause] [applause]

—

Xie Sui stayed up all night.

He was carefully sorting out his memories from his last life, trying to find clues about where Song Yu had appeared in his life.

Having this bit of expectation made him less resistant to recalling these dark memories from the past. It was like walking in a dark forest filled with mud while looking for scattered sparks of light.

It was a totally different feeling.

The first node in his previous life was returning back to the Xie Family.

But he’d also experienced a lot of unpleasant memories before that.

In fact, for Xie Sui, birthdays weren’t happy days. They were mixed with a rainy night and tangled into a humid, meaningless, and irritable one.

The candle on the birthday cake hadn’t been blown out yet.

But that beautiful and delicate woman was already unable to suppress her emotions. She crouched down, holding him as tears fell like rain.

“Ah-Sui, Mama’s sorry. Sorry, but I really, really can’t stand it anymore. I’m sorry.”

Her body was trembling and her breath was burning.

The happy birthday song was still playing nearby.

For a moment, confusion showed on his cold, pale face. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but he’d grown sensible too early, so he didn’t say anything.

That was the gentlest night he’d had with his mother ever since they’d come to Jing City. She told him about her childhood bit by bit and gently hummed songs to him until he went to sleep.

He had eaten the sweet cake, his nerves tense, then immediately fallen asleep.

But in the end, his inner unease struggled and grew, waking him up in the middle of the night.

It was raining hard outside, and the lights in the room were off. His mother was standing on the balcony.

She seemed to sense him.

His mother turned her head back, her expression panicked. All beauty turned grey and ugly in the moment before death.

He felt like he’d fallen bodily into an ice cellar.

He opened his mouth, wanting to shout.

It was just that he’d lost his voice in that instant of great pain.

He stumbled and groped his way forward in the darkness.

But his mother had already closed her eyes, turned around, and jumped.

He stood barefoot in the living room, his eyes blank.

There was no sound of alarm, no loud shouting, no painful crying. It was as if he was in a dream, and everything was confusing and unreal.

Even the shrill screaming and noise that came later, when the police car sirens rang out and all kinds of people pointed and whispered, all seemed very far away when it entered his ears. It wasn’t until Grandmother Chen had held him in her arms and sighed, speaking to comfort him in her Jing City dialect, that he suddenly seemed to startle awake. His heart was panicked and he raised his head anxiously, opening his mouth to ask “What happened just now?” But when faced with the old woman’s pitying gaze, his words seemed to be locked in his throat.

He remembered that when they’d first arrived in Jing City, his mother would always lock herself in her room, refusing to eat or drink. He’d curl up alone inside the dilapidated residential building, and when Grandmother Chen had found out, she’d pitied him and given them a bit of food every day. Grandmother Chen had said, “Give your mother some advice: In this world, everything except life and death is a small matter. What is there in this world that won’t pass?”

Later, when he was seven years old, he watched as his mother jumped from the building and found that even life and death were small matters.

What kind of person was his mother?

He was able to look at things calmly after a long time.

She was beautiful and proud, naïve and romantic. She was a precious flower who’d been cultivated by the Xu Family for many years. She was delicate and fragile, but she’d never understood her position in life. She’d been unwilling to accept the arrangements of her family, so she’d willfully gone to pursue her own love. It could be called fearless, but it could also be called stupid.

She fell in love at first sight with a man she knew nothing about. She’d gotten to know him, fallen in love, and decided on a lifetime, even giving birth for him without telling the Xu Family.

Finally, someone had torn open the bloody truth in front of her, and she’d found that her pure love had always been a joke. She no longer had any desire to live after the collapse of her faith.

She’d spent her life living in her own fantasy and had also died in her own fantasy.

Seven, and seventeen.

It was the same rain—the same humid, cold, and noisy rain. Maybe it was that he’d been worn out by the gossip, or maybe his mother’s death had hit him too hard.

He’d been silent and lonely ever since his arrival in Jing City. He was surrounded by malice from all directions, and he’d lost many of his instincts to the nightmares he’d walked in for a long time.

Otherwise, how could he be cheated by a little gentleness from Qin Mo?

He’d regarded him as his only friend.

After graduating from Senior Three, he’d been drugged and trapped in that most disgusting apartment.

He’d picked up a wine bottle and smashed it directly over Wang Ci’s head, splashing fresh blood into his eyes. Amidst Wang Ci’s screams, he’d felt that everything was both dull and ridiculous.

The timeline began to lengthen.

He’d fallen for another such trick in college. When he had been working in a hotel, he’d thought that he had a gentle boss. Who could’ve known that that person only wanted to support him because he had a face similar to the person he liked? Later, he investigated clearly and found that the one he liked turned out to be his dead mother.

How disgusting and boring.

He’d refused, and what followed was all kinds of revenge. It involved his work, his studies, and his life. It seemed that it wouldn’t stop until he was forced to drop out of school.

The Xie Family had found him at this time.

When he’d returned to the Xie Family, he was faced with a group of brothers and sisters who all had ulterior motives, Qin Qiuyun, who stared at him eerily like he was a savage monster, and his picky and disgusted grandparents.

The initial rumors about him in A City branded him as an illegitimate son and engraved this shame on his body.

Of course, later on, these words no longer dared to appear where he could hear them ever again.

On one afternoon, Xie Sinian explained to him what had happened in the past. The man’s voice had been calm and distant, but unable to hide the sadness and regret couched in between the lines.

“I didn’t want to cheat your mother. Qin Qiuyun and I are only in a perfunctory family marriage, and it’s nothing but an act. I wanted to first deal with everything, then confess to her and marry her back into the Xie Family. I didn’t think… that she wouldn’t make it to that day. Ah-Sui, I’ll make up for what I owe you. Don’t hate your mother.”

At the time, he’d looked down and smiled slightly as he thought to himself, ‘how touching’.

Later, he’d met Qin Mo again.

At a banquet.

Qin Mo had been like a madman, his eyes red as he persisted in explaining things to him and apologizing.

Xie Sui had a smile that wasn’t a smile on his face. There was really no need to apologize as karma would always come around.

The Qin Family suffered fiercely at his hands and it nearly hurt them down to their foundations. The old man from the Qin Family looked at him with a complicated gaze and sighed.

Qin Mo sent over a message asking if he was getting revenge on him.

Xie Sui felt that he himself had been a fool for falling into his hands as a child.

Not even that man who’d adored his mother had the right to see him after that.

Things reached another turning point. His grandfather became more confused the older he got. He worked with his elder sister, wanting to mess with him.

He’d never had any feelings for the Xie Family, and he also wanted to thoroughly deal with this group of people within the Xie Family. He acted out a play and left the Xie Family.

Unexpectedly, he’d encountered those three people again during that period of time.

To outsiders, he’d been driven out by the Xie Family and had fallen into the hands of his enemies.

The proud son of heaven had fallen from the altar. However high up above he’d been in the past was how much he was left at others’ mercy now.

A City was very shady and ambiguous.

He’d heard all kinds of disgusting remarks.

It seemed that this kind of malice had accompanied him as though it were his shadow ever since he was born.

He sped up through the memories that came after.

Xie Sinian died, leaving the entire Xie Family to him before he did so. After being trapped on a deserted island, he’d shot a gun and jumped into the sea to leave, bringing down the three families. Then after killing his enemies, he’d… also died on the road on a rainy day because of a traffic accident.

…… Song Yu.

Never showed up.

Last time, he’d already felt that there was something wrong with his memories. Now, he was even more certain.

The memory of their childhood friendship that had been drawn out by a dog had taken place before the nightmare started. He’d met him during the cleanest time of his life. It had been both romantic and naïve.

He could determine that Song Yu should’ve been an important person to him in his last life.

In his memory, they’d met again abroad.

It was just that he couldn’t remember anything about it.

…… How could he not remember?

—How could he not remember.