Chapter 58 The Only Touch of Warmth

Grandpa Huo, lying on his sickbed, coughed twice at the opportune moment, weakly echoing the sentiment.

"Ahem...that's the idea...a marriage to ward off bad luck, yes, that's it..."

Huo Yanzhi lifted his eyelids and calmly looked at the family of "Oscar-winning actors and actresses" in front of him, without even a ripple in his voice.

"Who should I marry to bring me good luck?"

Seeing that things were looking promising, Ye Mei quickly moved closer and revealed her ultimate goal.

"Moreover, the master even calculated your birth chart, saying that she could bring good luck to your grandfather and also bring prosperity to all the noble ladies in our Huo family, namely... namely, that little girl from the Ruan family, Ruan Yao!"

"The master said that Ruan Yao's birth chart is full of good fortune, and she and you are a match made in heaven. She is simply a tailor-made antidote for your grandfather's calamity!"

Huo Yanzhi listened quietly, his face revealing no emotion.

He simply looked at his "critically ill" grandfather, then glanced at the three over-the-top family members in front of him.

After a while, he stood up.

Without saying yes or no, he turned and walked out of the ward.

"Hey, Yanzhi, what do you mean by this? Do you agree or disagree?" Ye Mei asked anxiously, and followed Huo Jing out.

In the corridor, Huo Yanzhi stopped, turned around, and looked at his mother and aunt.

"You've gone to all this trouble today, putting on this whole show, just to pressure me into getting married, haven't you?"

Ye Mei was taken aback, so she simply stopped pretending.

"Yes, we're pressuring you to get married, so give us an answer! Yaoyao is such a wonderful girl, beautiful, with a great personality, and she's filial to us elders. If you two get together, wouldn't that be perfect, a double blessing?"

Huo Jing chimed in, her tone even more direct than Ye Mei's.

"Yanzhi, you know in your heart whether you like Ruan Yao or not. This young lady is already so proactive, why are you, a grown man, so timid and hesitant? If you keep dragging this out, you'll drag this good girl away!"

"You like her, and she likes you, isn't that a wonderful thing? Get married, everyone will be happy, what's wrong with that?"

They chatted back and forth.

Huo Yanzhi felt a headache coming on.

His work at the company had already taken up most of his energy, and now he also had to deal with this absurd drama at home.

He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, the turmoil in his eyes had been forcibly suppressed.

"I have things to do at the company." He used work as a shield. "Many projects are at a critical stage, and I don't have time to mess around with you guys."

After saying that, he was about to walk around the two of them and leave.

"You can leave."

Ye Mei grabbed his arm and issued an ultimatum.

"I'm giving you a week. Within that week, you must give us a clear answer. If you also like Yaoyao and want to be with her, then we'll go to the Ruan family to propose marriage in style!"

"If you don't agree, then I'll go to Yaoyao myself and make things clear. I'll tell her that our Huo family isn't worthy of letting her into our family, and that she shouldn't waste any more time on you. We will never delay another girl's happiness!"

Huo Yanzhi paused.

The corridor lights cast intermittent shadows on his deep-set face.

After a long while, his fingers, which were hanging by his side, twitched, and he squeezed out a hoarse word from his throat.

"good."

*

Huo Yanzhi drove away from the hospital and merged into the traffic jam in northern Beijing in the evening.

Outside the car window, the city's neon lights were stretched into blurry bands of light, and the sky had completely darkened.

A raindrop hit the windshield, then a second, then a third.

Soon, dense raindrops wove a vast, all-encompassing net, shrouding the entire world in a damp, cold, and hazy mist.

The windshield wipers swung back and forth monotonously, like a tireless pendulum, striking the tense nerves of the people inside the car.

Inside the train carriage, the mask of calm that she had just maintained in front of her family crumbled inch by inch.

Huo Yanzhi rested one hand on the steering wheel and pressed his temple hard with the other.

A sense of lingering fear, absurdity, and a feeling of powerlessness, as if fate had seized him by the throat, churned wildly in his chest.

To bring good luck.

They actually came up with such an absurd idea.

He closed his eyes, and scenes from his past life flashed before his eyes.

He remembered the fear in her eyes, the aging of his father whose hair turned white overnight when the Huo family fell, the haggard state of his mother lying in bed, and his grandfather who had lost his spirit.

Those images were his nightmares when he woke up in the middle of the night.

In their past life, he was the one who kept her by his side, which ultimately led to disaster.

So in this life, he told himself to be restrained, to distance himself, and to personally sever all possibilities.

As long as he stays far away from her, the tragedy will not repeat itself.

He could even secretly prevent the Ruan family from going bankrupt, allowing her to live the happy and peaceful life she deserved, without him.

His family would not have ended up in such a tragic state.

But fate seemed to be playing a cruel joke on him.

The more he pushed her away, the more Ruan Yao took the initiative to get closer.

The more he tried to escape, the tighter the ropes of fate bound them.

Rebirth.

He once thought this was a chance given by God to correct his mistakes.

Now, everything has deviated from his expected trajectory, sliding towards a future he cannot control.

He dared not gamble.

He was afraid that if he nodded, if he succumbed to the beast within him, his destiny would revert to the path of his past life.

That critical illness notice will become a reality.

The Huo family has fallen, and their closest relatives have been imprisoned. Everything will happen irreversibly, following the trajectory of their past lives.

That kind of excruciating pain, once is enough.

The rain outside the car window was getting heavier and heavier, and the city's neon lights turned into thick clumps of color in the mist.

He couldn't think, letting the wheels roll through one unfamiliar street after another.

That dark, damp, and unspeakable longing, forcibly suppressed deep within her heart, is now growing wildly with the combined efforts of her family and herself, and is about to break free of its cage.

After an unknown amount of time, the car gradually slowed down.

Until a warm, bright halo of light pierced through the rain and fell into his eyes.

Huo Yanzhi suddenly realized.

Before we knew it, the car had arrived at the entrance of the newly opened branch of Lexing Island.

Rainwater slid down the car window, and he looked up to see a familiar yet brand-new sign.

The shop was brightly lit, and the huge floor-to-ceiling windows looked like a warm and bright crystal box in the rainy night.

The image in his mind was now standing in the most conspicuous position in the store.

Ruan Yao wore a soft white sweater and jeans, her hair loosely tied into a bun, and a bright smile on her face.

She picked up a doll from the display shelf, tilted her head, and carefully adjusted its angle, all the while enthusiastically explaining something to the shop assistant next to her.

Like a sunflower growing freely in the sunlight, she was radiant.

Huo Yanzhi sat in the dark car, his gaze falling on the light through the cold, sticky rain.

soft.

Fresh and alive.

Bright.

It was like the only warm color in his dark, damp world, full of repression and pain.