Chapter 129 The Purest Love

After dinner, while Jiang Chuan was clearing away the dishes, Lin Yu took a proper hot shower, as if to add a touch of ritual to her newly changed bed for the first time.

She dried her hair, pushed open the bedroom door, and saw Jiang Chuan leaning against the headboard, holding a book he had casually pulled from her bookshelf. As she got closer, she realized he was reading a collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe.

She kicked off her slippers and climbed into bed, her warm body pressed against his, her chin resting gently on his shoulder. "I didn't expect you to read this. I thought you'd be more interested in that 'Trump Autobiography'."

Lin Yu bought that book when Trump was elected president, and it had been gathering dust in a corner of the bookshelf ever since. Jiang Chuan's copy, on the other hand, was almost worn out from being read so many times.

She always felt that reading Edgar Allan Poe's books was a niche activity, and those who were obsessed with this literary style were mostly people who were outside the mainstream values.

But on second thought, from a certain perspective, aren't she and Jiang Chuan also two outsiders who are out of step with the conventional framework?

"I just randomly picked the oldest one..." Jiang Chuan honestly admitted that he was only curious about Lin Yu's likes and dislikes, so he just randomly picked a book from the bookshelf that looked like it had been read the most.

But after reading a few pages, I found the content to be surprisingly good. The story is not long, and the plot has a kind of gothic madness.

"If you like it, take it back and look at it slowly later."

Lin Yu snatched the book from Jiang Chuan's hands and casually placed it behind her. She pulled a pillow over her chest, sat cross-legged next to him, and stared straight at him with an astonishingly bright gaze in the dim light of the bedroom.

Jiang Chuan suddenly remembered something, propped himself up a little, and faced Lin Yu. "Did you suffer any injustice at the sanatorium before?"

He recalled that when he visited her a few days ago, his grandmother had held his hand and asked about Bai Qianhe. He then realized that she had mistaken Lin Yu, who had come to visit before, for someone else.

Those unusual actions and moments of hesitation suddenly strung together like scattered beads.

"Hmm..." Now that things have come to this, Lin Yu has nothing to hide. "Grandma probably confused me with your ex-girlfriend."

"So that's why you returned the bracelet to me in a fit of pique that day?" Jiang Chuan raised an eyebrow, his thumb tracing her slender wrist.

"I did have some reservations at the time..." Lin Yu said with a smile, looking down. "I felt like you were using me, treating me as a substitute for someone else, saying you loved me while you were still entangled with your ex-girlfriend."

"Plus, I was under a lot of work pressure during that period, and all the bad things just happened at once."

"Just a little?" Jiang Chuan looked at her with a half-smile.

Because of this, Lin Yu kept her distance from him for half a month, and finally broke up with him in a heart-wrenching argument. Now, she says it so casually.

"Okay, I admit it's more than a little... about this much." Lin Yu smiled and pinched his thumb and forefinger together to measure. Seeing him raise an eyebrow, he spread his arms wide, making an even more exaggerated arc.

"And now?" Jiang Chuan was amused by her sudden childishness, his long, narrow eyes slightly upturned, exuding infinite tenderness and weariness.

"Now?" Lin Yu tilted his head and thought for a moment. "You know, a while ago, someone told me some things about your school days."

She looked directly into Jiang Chuan's eyes, not wanting to hide the fact that Bai Qianhe had called her. She needed Jiang Chuan to understand that even knowing all about his past, she would still stand by his side without hesitation.

Jiang Chuan's eyes darkened; he knew without guessing who Lin Yu was referring to. His Adam's apple bobbed slightly, and he let out a soft chuckle. "Oh, so you came prepared."

"Remember?" Lin Yu leaned closer to Jiang Chuan, cupping his face in her hands and forcing him to look directly into her eyes. "You told me to learn to trust you, and now I'm returning that promise to you verbatim."

Her voice was gentle yet firm. “You don’t need to be strong all the time in front of me. I allow you to be tired, vulnerable, and even make mistakes, because what I want is a living, breathing, passionate lover.”

"So, try to trust me, okay? Trust that I can help you."

In the past, Jiang Chuan was used to using control to mask the turmoil in his heart. He admitted that even when he first met Lin Yu, his help to her was mixed with an unspeakable desire for control.

He believed that abundant material support was enough to maintain any intimate relationship, and that as long as Lin Yu needed his protection, he could forever be the soil upon which she depended for survival.

But clearly, this is not the case. During the time Lin Yu spent with me, his personality blossomed like a tender bud in spring, unfolding at a visible speed.

He then realized that she was never a plant that depended on him for survival, but rather, like her name, she possessed her own light and warmth. When he peeled away the fog for her, she would probably no longer need him.

He was both gratified by her brilliance and terrified of the impending eternal night. It turned out that, all along, the one who needed to be illuminated was himself.

"No, no." His voice was low and hoarse. "Maybe one day, you'll become strong enough that you won't need anyone anymore, including me."

Jiang Chuan's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed the bitterness that lingered in his mouth. "At that time, my weakness and pain will only become obstacles on your path forward."

"So before that, I hope to walk ahead of you and shield you from the wind and snow."

“Jiang Chuan…” Lin Yu’s palm covered his tense forearm.

"I chose to be with you not because you can solve all my problems, but because every moment with you, even the chaotic and painful ones, makes me feel it's all worthwhile."

You don't need to be useful to be worthy of love.

She gazed steadily into his eyes. "You taught me how to face pain and how to accept my imperfections. So, you will never be a burden to me, nor do you have to always be ahead of me."

“We can walk side by side, so that when you can’t walk anymore, I can lend you a hand.”

At that moment, Jiang Chuan suddenly realized that Lin Yu had already seen through his feigned vulnerability and understood his deep-seated desire to be loved and recognized.

She became his guide, leading him out of the shadow of self-blame with gentle love and complete acceptance, and helping him find the possibility of redemption.

Jiang Chuan believed that this selfless devotion stemmed solely from the purest form of love. A crack suddenly appeared in what was once an impenetrable defense.

In a daze, he thought of his mother, and of a summer night in his childhood when he lay in bed listening to her softly humming a nursery rhyme to him.

Those tender moments from my memory that have died are now seeping in little by little through this crack.

His childhood, which ended abruptly after his parents' death, revealed that the warmth he thought he had lost forever had been quietly dormant in his memory all along.

He seemed to see a younger version of himself breaking free from his body and gently waving at him.

"Banban, I didn't grow up in a perfect family environment."

“My father betrayed his family and got together with my former piano teacher. Even on the day he died, the two of them were still in contact.”

“My mother knew everything, but she chose to keep quiet. And I only learned about it from the other woman’s family two months after they left.”

He lowered his eyes, looking at Lin Yu's fingers resting on his arm. "My father started from scratch, and in order to get rid of the nouveau riche image, he was very demanding of me."

"You can't make mistakes, you can't do anything he doesn't like, or go against his expectations."

"So my grades are always first in the grade, and my emotions are always appropriate." Like a specimen in a shop window, beautiful and perfect, but lifeless.

Perhaps growth is always accompanied by conflict and dull pain, but Jiang Chuan's adolescence was like a frozen lake, never truly experiencing those intense emotions.

Even after he retaliated against the person who broke up his family and indirectly caused his parents' deaths in an extreme way, his heart remained desolate, and he could not feel relief or peace.

Jiang Yunxing trapped Jiang Chuan with perfect shackles, yet he never practiced that perfection. He was deeply entangled in emotional turmoil, unable to control his own life, yet he demanded absolute rationality from his son.

This contradiction left Jiang Chuan completely bewildered, and all his past acts of copying instantly lost their meaning.

He couldn't even tell whether the principles he had adhered to over the years were fulfilling his father's expectations or worshipping a false illusion.

Ultimately, even this confusion became unfamiliar due to years of repression. Only one unanswerable question remained: who was the person he had spent his entire life trying to become?

As for his mother, he always suppressed a deep sense of guilt that he couldn't face. In the moments when she needed him most, in the days and nights when she maintained the facade of family life with silence, he chose to turn a blind eye to her pain.

He kept replaying those countless moments in his mind. He thought that perhaps if he had just asked one more question back then, just one question, he could have changed the ending of everyone's story.

But they were both using avoidance to maintain the perfect illusion of the family, except that the mother passively endured it, while he actively disciplined her.

When all the emotions came crashing down like a tsunami, Jiang Chuan found that he had lost the ability to feel and had completely lost the right to mourn.

His father fell from godhood to mortal, his mother went from shadow to fellow traveler, and he was caught in the middle, unable to feel the sorrow, only left with a sense of emptiness and bewilderment.

It was as if love and hate, resentment and pity, had become luxuries he could never reach.

After listening to Jiang Chuan's explanation, Lin Yu rested his head on his shoulder, placed his hand on his shoulder, and gently comforted him. "If it were me, I might not have handled these things better than you."

"Everyone has some secrets they don't want to see in the light of day, like the diary locked in a drawer when you were in middle school. Your father may have his own reasons."

"Of course, this is by no means an excuse for his betrayal of his family. But at least it shows that he didn't intend to hurt you from the beginning." With Lin Yu's comforting words, Jiang Chuan's emotions underwent a subtle change.

"Do you remember when we were in Feicheng, I talked to you about the conflicts with your mother?"

Lin Yu continued, "In fact, in the process of raising children, parents are also being educated by their children. Just like us, they are facing this role for the first time, and they will make mistakes and feel confused."

“Your father made a mistake, but that’s just a lesson in his life. You don’t have to let it hold you back.”

Lin Yu tried to make Jiang Chuan realize that his parents were just ordinary people with human limitations, so there was no need to be fixated on black-and-white judgments of right and wrong.

"So you can hate, you can resent, or you can feel nothing at all. You can even hate today and then soften your heart tomorrow. Emotional issues are inherently subjective, and there is no single, standard answer."

Lin Yu spoke slowly and earnestly, carefully choosing each word. "You don't necessarily have to find a 'correct' feeling; the important thing is to learn to be honest with yourself."

She paused for a moment and looked at Jiang Chuan, but he remained silent, like a deep pool of water with no ripples on the surface.

"Your father's infidelity is a fact, and his hypocrisy is also a fact, but these facts should not be the basis for defining your life."

"He is him, you are you, and you will eventually have your own path to walk."