Chapter Twenty-Four: Finally, They Recognize Each Other

Chen Kan straightened his tortoiseshell glasses, which had been knocked askew, and casually brushed the dust off the front of his suit jacket with his fingertips. He said calmly, "I'm here to find someone, of course."

Before he could finish speaking, the wooden door creaked open from the inside.

Lin Tang stood inside the threshold, the morning light casting a pale gold hue on the outline of her plain cheongsam.

Chen Kan took half a step forward, took out a brown paper envelope from his pocket, its edges worn and rough, and handed it to Lin Tang, his fingertips trembling slightly: "Old files from the Tongji Society of Architecture, luckily preserved. Jin Tang, do you still remember them?"

The wind swept past the envelope, lifting a corner of the yellowed paper to reveal familiar architectural sketches, like an old scar that suddenly appeared, tearing open the deathly silence in the morning mist.

“You…” Her throat tightened. She looked at Chen Kan with questioning and probing eyes, as if asking why she had this object, but she choked up.

"Back then... after that accident, I..." Chen Kan swallowed hard, but still answered, "I secretly kept it. Thinking... maybe one day..."

Chen Kan suddenly looked up, his gaze passing over A Chen's shoulder and piercing straight into Lin Tang's eyes, where pain, anxiety, and a hint of desperate pleading surged.

"Jintang!" He called out this long-forgotten name for the first time, his voice hoarse and broken, filled with a desperate tremor.

The call was like a needle quenched in fire, piercing Lin Tang's eardrums and breaking through six years of accumulated forgetfulness and deliberate numbness.

She froze on the spot as if struck by lightning, her pale fingers unconsciously gripping the door frame, her nails digging deep into the grain of the rotten wood.

Chen Kan's gaze slowly swept over the cramped yet clean shabby room, finally landing on the dusty old spinning wheel in the corner. His Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty, and his voice carried a hoarseness honed by the years: "This room... hasn't changed at all. Aunt Gu's spinning wheel is still here."

He took a step forward, not looking at Lin Tang's instantly pale face, his gaze seemingly piercing through the mottled wall and falling into a more distant time.

“That winter, the snow in Zhabei was particularly heavy. My mother had a bad cough, and we didn’t even have money to buy charcoal. You came to find me with a steaming hot roasted sweet potato in your pocket, wrapped in an old cotton-padded coat, wading through snow that was above your ankles…” His voice choked up, and he took a deep breath before continuing, “Right here at the door, your nose was red from the cold, and you stuffed the sweet potato into my hand, saying, ‘Bai Mu, eat it while it’s hot.’”

Lin Tang swayed, as if struck by this unexpected scene from the past.

My vision blurred, and cold tears rolled down my cheeks without warning, splashing onto the blue brick floor beneath my feet and leaving a small, dark, damp stain.

Those deliberately sealed-away fragments of memories, imbued with the bittersweet warmth of youth, were suddenly unleashed by his few words, surging forth.

She saw the boy's thin figure in the wind and snow, and the surprise and embarrassment in his eyes when he took the sweet potato... Her heart felt like it was being squeezed hard by an icy hand, and the pain made it hard for her to breathe.

As Chen Kan watched her tears fall silently, his eyes welled up with the same deep pain and long-suppressed guilt.

“Jintang,” he called out that name again, with an almost desperate honesty, “that shot… pierced through my lung, just half an inch from my heart. I fell into a pool of blood, thinking I was going to die… It was the Chen family who took advantage of the chaos to drag me out of the pile of corpses and sent me to Peking Union Medical College Hospital overnight.”

He gave a self-deprecating twitch at the corner of his mouth, a smile more painful than a grimace. "I had my life extended, but I lay in a hospital bed for more than half a year, mostly in a coma. By the time I could open my eyes and recognize people, it was already the following spring."

He raised his hand and subconsciously pressed his left chest through his suit, where a nearly fatal old wound lay buried.

“I barely escaped with my life, only to be sent straight to Germany. They said the situation back home was too chaotic, the winds were too thick, and they wanted me to lay low and recover.” His voice lowered, filled with profound weariness and resentment. “The first news I received about you while I was in my hospital bed, halfway around the world… was that you married Qiao Yuan. Jin Tang, what am I supposed to think?”

All the resentment and anger, the torment that gnawed at his heart and lungs in the cold nights of a foreign land, were now clearly etched in the lines of his eyes.

Lin Tang stared at him blankly, her lips moving but no sound coming out. It turned out that she wasn't the only one kept in the dark and mocked by fate all these years.

Chen Kan's gaze sharpened, piercing straight into the depths of her eyes, filled with scrutiny and a questioning that carried the pain of long-suppressed emotions. "After I returned to China, the Chen family was in dire straits. My father was investigated by the Nanjing authorities, and my third uncle was forced to return to take charge. That's why I took the initiative to come to Jiangcheng. At first... I refused to acknowledge you, refused to recognize you, and even deliberately avoided you... because I didn't know why you so quickly... threw yourself into Qiao Yuan's arms back then."

He paused, each word seemingly squeezed out from between his teeth, "I don't know if you were coerced, disheartened, or... truly changed your mind."

Lin Tang's fingernails dug deeply into her palm, leaving several crescent-shaped red marks.

He suddenly pointed at Achen, "If you don't believe me, ask him. He was with Qiao Yuan back then!"

Ah Chen was shocked, but he just covered his head and said, "I don't know! I don't know anything!" He didn't refute it, but only said that he "didn't know".

Lin Tang didn't press the matter further, but simply sighed.

In fact, she had harbored suspicions and investigated over the years; a nagging suspicion had long been present in her mind.

But the suspicion was like a spider web, delicate and fragile, and every time it was touched, it was firmly bound by the more turbulent reality and the web of "gratitude" woven by Qiao Yuan.

“So,” her voice was unexpectedly flat, like a frozen lake, without a ripple, “Qiao Yuan saved my father, got me out of prison, married me… all of this ‘gratitude’ was earned with your life. He gave me a title, a comfortable life, and made me his glamorous sister-in-law, all of this… was achieved by stepping on your blood.”

Her gaze turned to Ah Chen again.

“And you,” she paused, her voice still steady, “Achen, you’ve always known.”

Ah Chen's knees buckled, and he collapsed heavily to his knees on the cold blue brick floor with a thud, his forehead touching the ground, his shoulders convulsing violently.

Seeing her swaying precariously, Chen Kan instinctively reached out to support her, but his fingertips froze just before touching her sleeve. A bitter taste filled his throat, and his voice became hoarse and almost broken: "Jintang, all these years... I've hated you, and I hate myself even more. I hate myself for not dying completely, for letting you bear all this alone..."

The dim light of the kerosene lamp danced across his face, casting a long shadow over the old wound, as if time itself had frozen in the deathly silence of this humble room.

Chen Kan's fingertips were still suspended in mid-air, barely an inch from her sleeve, yet it felt as if an invisible abyss separated them. The embers of the coal stove popped open with a spark, piercing the stagnant air.

...

After a long silence.

Lin Tang looked at A Chen, who was still kneeling on the ground, squatted down, and reached out to support his arm.

“Achen,” her voice was as soft as the wind outside the window, “Go back. Tell Qiao Yuan that I will never go back. I have repaid his ‘kindness’ with these six years and with Bai Mu’s life.”

Ah Chen looked at her, then finally stood up, wiped away his tears, and walked out the door.

The door creaked shut, the sycamore leaves in the yard rustled for a while, and then silence returned.

Lin Tang sighed, wanting to say, "Qiao Yuan isn't that kind of person," but then she thought back to how he had harmed Bai Mu in order to get her back then... He was originally a member of the underworld, but he acted friendly in front of her just to please her, but deep down he was just as black.

He pointed to the headline in the newspaper, his eyes filled with determination: "I'll bring a lawyer tomorrow to draft the divorce agreement. I'll take care of everything after that, don't worry."

Lin Tang looked up at him, and tears welled up again, but not with the pain of before; instead, they brought a warmth of redemption.

“Bai Mu,” she whispered his old name, “you’ve really come back, haven’t you?”

A layer of tears welled up in Chen Kan's eyes. He reached out and finally gently took her hand: "Jintang, I'm back. I will never let you suffer again."

Lin Tang looked at him, a faint smile finally appearing on her lips, but tears rolled down her cheeks and into his palm: "Okay."

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