The cruel truth

Near the blood test window, at the relatively empty corridor window, Gu Nanxiao stood there alone.

He leaned against the cold, white-tiled wall, his head slightly lowered, his fine black hair hanging down in front of his forehead, almost completely covering his eyebrows and eyes, making it impossible to see his expression. His whole body exuded an intense loneliness and alienation.

The sunlight shone through the window at the end of the corridor, casting bright spots on the ground, but it seemed unable to warm him at all. It only outlined a lonely and cold outline around him, like a silent island forgotten in a noisy corner.

I felt out of place among the classmates who gathered in groups of three or four to chat, share snacks, or comfort each other about their fear of having blood drawn.

He seemed to be in an invisible glass cover, isolated from all sound and temperature.

Jiang Yile's heart felt like it was being pierced by dense needles, causing sharp and lasting pain.

She was hesitating whether to ignore his cold rejection and muster up the courage to walk over, even if it was just to ask an innocuous question like "Have you had your blood drawn?", trying to break the suffocating barrier.

He saw a doctor in a white coat, about fifty years old, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, with an elegant temperament and unquestionable authority, walking towards him with a smile.

The doctor seemed to be the director of a department in the hospital or a senior expert. He had a familiar and kind attitude. He walked to Gu Nanxiao and patted his shoulder naturally, as if to say hello, and said something with his lips moving.

The distance was a bit far and the hospital corridor was a bit noisy.

The place was filled with the sounds of footsteps, conversations, and calls.

She couldn't hear the specific content of their conversation, but some intermittent words, perhaps because the doctor habitually raised his voice, or perhaps because he was inadvertently raised his voice due to his emotions, still stubbornly and clearly floated into Jiang Yile's ears without missing a word. Every word was like a heavy hammer hitting her eardrum.

First, the chief doctor smiled with concern and comfort: "... It's Nan Xiao, accompanying your family to the hospital for a follow-up check again? You are such a filial and sensible child. How is your father's health recently? Alas, after that incident, his heart has been feeling unwell. He can't get too excited. He needs to take care of himself..."

Gu Nanxiao seemed to respond in a low voice, but his voice was so low that it was completely drowned out by the surrounding noise.

The chief doctor seemed to sigh, and his voice unconsciously rose a little. It came clearly with the comfort and persuasion of an elder, and was amplified in Jiang Yile's ears like a broadcast.

"...Sigh, come to think of it, it's been so many years since the accident, and your family has really done their best to compensate you. Medical expenses, subsequent recuperation, various nutritional expenses... We've done everything we could, and we've done our utmost. Don't feel too burdened..."

Jiang Yile's heart skipped a beat for unknown reason, as if he had a premonition of something.

"Accident"?

"compensate"?

These words were like a fishing line with a barb, instantly hooking all her sensitive nerves. An ominous premonition, like a cold poisonous snake, quietly crawled up along her spine.

The doctor continued to speak, like a dull and cold knife, cruelly cutting into her increasingly tense sanity.

"...That mother and daughter, especially the little girl, were in a critical condition when they were brought in. They had lost too much blood, suffered multiple fractures, and had internal damage. They were immediately declared critically ill... We all thought they wouldn't make it. What a sin..."

"Mother and daughter", "little girl", "critical illness notice", "sin"...

These words were like powerful thunder, exploding in her ears one after another!

Her breathing suddenly stopped, and her blood seemed to flow backwards in an instant, rushing to her head and then quickly receding. Her hands and feet were cold, and her fingertips trembled slightly uncontrollably.

A vague and terrifying thought flashed through my mind like lightning.

No... Impossible... Just a coincidence...

There are so many accidents in the world every day...

She desperately denied it in her heart, trying to grasp the last straw, but her body began to tremble uncontrollably, like a fallen leaf in the wind.

However, fate seemed determined to tear off all the tender disguises at this moment and reveal the bloody truth.

The chief physician's next words, like a final verdict, carried an unquestionable, cruel force that completely shattered all her hopes and self-deceptions:

"...Luckily, he was rescued in the end, a life saved from the brink of death. I heard he recovered well, but his physical foundation was damaged, leaving him with some sequelae. He's much weaker than an ordinary person, can't overwork, can't get sick, and I heard he also has heart problems... Alas, it's fate, such a young child... Your family must have been under a lot of psychological pressure these years..."

"Little girl", "rescued", "sequelae", "weak body", "cannot work hard", "heart problems", "psychological burden"...

These words were no longer simple vocabulary; they were like red-hot, poisoned iron spikes that pierced her eardrums suddenly and fiercely.

With destructive and extremely precise power, it pierced into the softest and most vulnerable part of her heart!

The body she had been told to take care of since she was old enough to understand, the taboos against strenuous exercise and catching colds easily, the innate and ever-present fragility...

It turns out that all this did not come out of thin air!

"boom--!"

Jiang Yile felt as if something in his brain had completely exploded, leaving everything blank and buzzing.

The blood color on his face faded away in an instant, leaving him as pale as paper. Even his lips had lost all color. They were slightly open, but no sound came out.

She felt a severe dizziness, her vision went black, and her hands and feet were as cold as if they were instantly immersed in ice water. Even her fingertips were shaking uncontrollably and violently, and she could hardly hold the light physical examination form.

Many details that had been overlooked, or that she had once thought were a little strange but had never thought deeply about, at this moment, like Pandora's box being opened, madly and rushing into her chaotic mind, connecting into clear clues that made her feel cold and terrified, but she could not escape -

Gu Nanxiao transferred to the school right after she had passed her seventeenth birthday and was about to turn eighteen, a crucial juncture that the doctors had repeatedly mentioned as requiring extra attention.

When he first saw her, the fleeting look of confusion and absent-mindedness that she thought was strangeness and alienation, now thinking about it, it was more like... shock and confirmation?

When he occasionally looked at her, there were complex emotions hidden in his eyes that she could never understand - it was not just indifference, but also struggle, pain, and... guilt!

His father's eyes in the car that night, those scrutinizing, heavy eyes, filled with compassion and coldness as if he knew all fate;

Is his unusual silence and resistance to rainy days because... the accident that changed everything also happened on a rainy day?

When he was feeling unwell, his extraordinary, almost cautious concern and nervousness for her even carried a kind of atonement...

Also, he once said in his studio in a gloomy tone, "...something happened later, and I stopped painting." Could that thing be...

He might even have known her name, her address, and the real reason for her...poor health...

A terrible, absurd guess that made her almost unable to breathe and froze her blood was like a lightning that suddenly lit up in the darkness and tore through space.

With the power to destroy everything, it exploded in her chaotic mind, illuminating all the hidden, hideous truths that she had always been unwilling to face!

Could it be... Could it be that Gu Nanxiao is...

It was that devastating evening many years ago when it was also raining heavily.

The driver of his car crashed into her and her mother, completely changing the trajectory of her life and leaving her burdened with a frail body and a short lifespan...

Someone from the perpetrator's family? !

And when he transferred to her school, those seemingly accidental approaches, those silent cares, those moments that made her heart flutter...

Are they all mixed with deep guilt and compensation?

Maybe he even knew who she was from the beginning?

Did they know that she was the little girl who was lying in a pool of blood and almost died?!

How is this possible? !

How can this be? !

She actually...actually developed feelings for someone from the family that indirectly caused her tragic fate?

Even... fell in love with him and got together with him?!

This huge, absurd and cruel truth, like a huge rock, completely stunned her and shattered all her cognition and the beautiful world she had just built.

She took a sudden step back, her heels unstable, and she bumped into the classmate in line behind her unexpectedly and heavily.

"Ouch! Jiang Yile, what are you doing? Watch the road!"

The girl who was hit complained unhappily, rubbing her back.

But she was completely unaware, as if she had lost all senses, and just stared at him with an almost terrified, unbelievable look, as if she had seen the most terrifying and unacceptable ghost in the world.

He stared intently at Gu Nanxiao's figure at the other end of the corridor without blinking.

The eyes that were once filled with tender affection and twinkling smiles for him were now filled with great shock, anger of being deceived, fear and coldness that penetrated deep into the bone marrow, as well as a sense of confusion and emptiness after the world collapsed.

Gu Nanxiao seemed to have noticed the unusual movements here and the overly sharp, almost tangible gaze.

He subconsciously raised his head, his eyes passing through the bustling crowd, and accurately and unobstructedly captured her - Jiang Yile, whose face was as pale as paper, and whose eyes were full of horror, collapse and silent questioning.

Their eyes met.

There seemed to be invisible electric crackling in the air, carrying destructive energy, and time seemed to freeze at this moment.

A trace of confusion flashed across his eyes, as if he didn't understand why she looked at him as if he were an enemy or a monster.

However, when he saw her expression, as if she had seen the most horrific and unacceptable truth in the world, when he saw the pain, anger and silent cry in her eyes that were clear and like shattered glass - he understood instantly!

She heard it!

She guessed it!

The secret that he had tried so hard to hide, the dirty, unbearable secret that was enough to destroy all the fragile and beautiful illusions that he had carefully built up...

The sin that he had carried for more than ten years and made him unable to breathe...

In the end, it was exposed in front of her in such a sudden and cruel way!

Exposed in front of the girl he had fallen deeply in love with without realizing it!

”

His face turned paler than hers in an instant, his pupils constricted violently due to the immense panic, pain and despair of having nowhere to escape, as if even his breathing was being strangled by an invisible hand, his chest heaving violently, but he couldn't take in a single breath of oxygen.

He opened his mouth, his lips trembling violently, as if he wanted to say something, to explain, to beg, to deny...

I wanted to tell her that it wasn't what she thought, or rather, not entirely... But in the end, I couldn't even utter a broken, meaningless syllable.

All language seems pale and powerless in the face of such cruel truth.

The next second, under Jiang Yile's gaze, which was like looking at an enemy, or in other words, looking at a pathetic associate who brought endless pain, he felt like he was burned by a hot iron, or like a prisoner who was stripped of all disguises and exposed naked in the sun for execution.

He turned around almost in a panic, desperately, and escaping manner, staggering and almost falling into the dim stairwell next to him, which seemed to lead to an endless abyss.

Disappearing around a dark, downward-reaching corner.

It seemed that if he stayed for one more second, he would be burned to ashes by the flames of truth and be tortured to death by her gaze.

"Lele? Lele! What's wrong with you? You look... so ugly? As pale as paper! Why are your hands so cold?! You're shaking!"

Zhou Xiaowei worriedly supported Jiang Yile, who was shaky and looked like he would collapse at any moment, and asked repeatedly.

Her voice was filled with anxiety and helplessness. She had never seen her friend so distraught, as if her soul had been taken away.

Jiang Yile seemed to have lost all her senses. She shook her head mechanically and slowly, biting her bloodless lower lip so hard that it almost drew blood, and she tasted a hint of sweetness.

She just felt cold all over, so cold that it bit her bones. The chill spread from the deepest part of her heart, quickly freezing her blood, her limbs, her mind, and her entire world.

The doctor's cruel words kept echoing in his ears, and Gu Nanxiao's hurriedly fleeing back and his desperate eyes kept flashing before his eyes.

Her heart felt like it was being gripped by an invisible hand with all its might. The suffocating, sharp pain spread to every part of her body like a tsunami, causing her to almost curl up in pain, her stomach churning.

The boy who gave her a first kiss as beautiful as a feather, made her heart beat fast and made her think she had found a ray of light in her life.

The boy who quietly accompanied her in painting in the studio, with focused and gentle eyes, making her feel that the world was so beautiful.

The boy who held up a dry sky for her on a rainy night and didn't care even when his shoulders got wet.

The boy who made her feel the vague love for the first time, whose heart fluttered and gave her infinite longing for the future...

it turns out……

It was most likely that it was that rainstorm-ravaged, devastating evening many years ago that caused the driver's wheel to hit her and her mother, leaving her on the critical illness notice.

The one who made her bear the burden of a weak body and a possible short life from now on...is it someone from the perpetrator's family?

Maybe he even approached her deliberately out of compensation and guilt?

Were those seemingly beautiful moments, those caring moments that made her heart beat faster, all built on such a cruel and unforgivable foundation?

How is this possible?

How could she accept this?!

Was her life and her emotions a ridiculous misunderstanding based on huge lies and tragedy from the very beginning?

Tears burst out without warning, blurring her vision and sliding hotly down her cold cheeks.

But she stubbornly raised her head, not letting the tears fall, as if shedding tears was a kind of weakness, a compromise with this cruel reality.

It turns out that those seemingly beautiful encounters, those moments that made her heart palpitate, those secretly treasured sweetness...

Beneath it all lies such an unbearable, disgusting truth filled with blood and tears.

Fate played such a cruel and ridiculous joke on them.

And it was not until this moment that she sadly and completely saw the full extent of this joke and its hideous, destructive smile.