Chapter 65 The Nutcracker is no joke.
When Gu Yinyan came downstairs, he saw two people downstairs.
He took off the towel from his head and ran a hand through his hair. The ends were still wet, with water droplets clinging to them.
He asked Liang Yizhi, "Didn't I tell you to come back in half an hour?"
"Not much different, I just arrived too."
When Gu Yinyan came downstairs, Jiang Huai had already put down the music box and returned it to its original place, so Gu Yinyan didn't notice anything amiss.
When he stood in front of Liang Yizhi, she smelled a faint fragrance emanating from him. It was probably because it contained bath oil, unlike his usual scent. The damp, cool aroma reminded her of a kitten's nose.
Her exposed neck looked exceptionally fair because she had just showered, and her pores were open, emitting a pleasant fragrance.
He raised his eyes and asked, "What is it that you said you were going to give me?"
Liang Yizhi said, "Ah, my mom... brought over two or three boxes of homemade snacks, like cookies and biscuits."
She didn't mention the jade pendant.
After returning home, Liang Yizhi pondered for a long time. The melody from the music box kept playing in her ears. Those few scattered notes were like a carousel surrounding her, the lingering sound lingering and not dissipating for a long time.
She couldn't help but care about this.
She had to find out the truth about Gu Yinyan's ex-girlfriend.
To find out more about his ex-girlfriend, he had to go to her house and see if there were any more clues. After all, all the previous fragmented clues about her were found at Gu Yinyan's house.
Liang Yizhi wanted to try her luck.
She took out the small bag containing the jade pendant and talisman given to her by her mother, intending to use it as another chance.
-
It was Tuesday, and there was no rehearsal today. Liang Yizhi glanced at the time; it was 3 PM. Gu Yinyan should be at the company by now.
She took her small cloth bag and met Aunt Jiang when she opened the door.
Aunt Jiang greeted her warmly as always: "Miss Liang, are you here to see Young Master Gu? He's not home right now."
Liang Yizhi gave a perfunctory "Oh".
"It's okay, I'll stay here for a while and wait for him to come back."
Aunt Jiang didn't suspect anything. Liang Yizhi often stayed at his house to rest like this before. She simply asked, "Miss Liang, would you like to stay for dinner? What would you like to eat tonight? I'll prepare accordingly."
"Aunt Jiang, anything you're good at is fine."
After watching Aunt Jiang go into the kitchen, Liang Yizhi went to the study on the first floor.
She carefully closed the door, pressed her back against the cold door panel, and exhaled.
Liang Yizhi wasn't good at doing anything sneaky. Especially since her relationship with Gu Yinyan became inappropriate, she found herself feeling guilty more and more often.
Liang Yizhi told herself: This is the last time. I'll just take a look. If I can't find it, I'll just ask Gu Yinyan in person.
She looked around.
In the spacious study, the afternoon sunlight poured in like an overturned glass bottle through the floor-to-ceiling windows, shimmering and sparkling on the floor.
The first thing my eyes caught was the shelf of records against the wall.
Liang Yizhi went over first and casually flipped through the pages.
Most of the records displayed here were ones Gu Yinyan had collected, or records from musicians he admired. Liang Yizhi flipped through the pages, and in the innermost, almost dusty layer, she found the record she had given Gu Yinyan as a birthday gift.
Occasionally, when she came across this album, Liang Yizhi thought about what kind of mood she was in when she wrote this song, and she scratched her face with a little embarrassment.
Why is such a new record placed on the very back shelf? Even the records next to it look like they've been there for a long time, and I've hardly ever heard them.
Gu Yinyan probably really didn't want to see it.
On one side of the wall is a record storage area, and on the other side are tall bookshelves. Liang Yizhi looked at the bookshelves and saw all kinds of Chinese and English books, but didn't find anything new.
But she saw the black candlestick she had given to Gu Yinyan, which he had taken out and placed on a shelf of the bookshelf as a decoration.
These things were all put away by Gu Yinyan before, and he was going to hide them in a dark place. Why are they being displayed again now?
Even that music box is the same.
She looked around the entire study but didn't find anything particularly interesting; instead, the more she looked, the more thoughts she had.
Liang Yizhi felt dizzy. She sat down on the sofa.
Gu Yinyan's computer was placed on the coffee table in front of him.
A thought suddenly struck her, and she tentatively tapped the keyboard lightly.
The screen lit up, but there was no password.
There's an open window on the computer screen, playing a video.
That was the complete video of her last performance with Hoss. It seems Gu Yinyan was here before, watching her and Hoss's performance to make up for his absence last time.
She bent down slightly, touched the touch panel, and focused her gaze on the progress bar.
You've watched them all.
In fact, Liang Yizhi herself hasn't watched the replay of this performance many times, because she always feels negative and resistant when faced with a performance that she had high expectations for but was not perfect. Reviewing the performance is a difficult task for her.
There was a video right in front of her, and Liang Yizhi thought for a moment, then decided to drag the progress bar back to the beginning and watch it again herself.
She became engrossed in watching it.
During the process, she listened carefully to distinguish her own playing, noting which vibrato was not clean and delicate enough, and which bow strokes were not smooth enough. She made a mental note of all of this.
As I listened, I became more and more engrossed.
As the film neared its end, she leaned back on the sofa, lost in thought, not even noticing when the video on the screen switched.
However, a few seconds later, a woman's voice suddenly rang out in the empty room.
"Gu Yinyan, what are you doing?"
Liang Yizhi was startled.
Then a shiver ran down my spine.
Where did the voice come from?
She glanced at the screen; the window had turned black, but the sound continued.
"It's Christmas today, so I called especially to wish you a Merry Christmas."
"What? Didn't you make plans to hang out with your friends? Looks like you're not doing too well in New York."
"Me? I'm out having fun with my friends, of course. We're still in Madrid, next stop... Seville."
The audio on the computer plays continuously; it's all one-way dialogue.
One sentence after another, clearly recorded during a call with Gu Yinyan, all from the same girl's voice.
Why record this?
Liang Yizhi's brain is no longer capable of thinking; she cannot analyze the purpose of this behavior.
The continuous conversation, echoing in the room, made her heart tremble, and even the pores on her body seemed to open up in surprise.
—Because the voice coming from the computer was none other than hers.
She couldn't remember when she had called Gu Yinyan, nor could she recall the specific content of the conversation. She could only rely on the recording to guide her fragmented memories step by step.
Madrid... that's the phone call she made to him when she was traveling around Europe and came to Spain.
The immature bet with Jiang Huai flashed through his mind, along with his testimony that Gu Yinyan and his ex-girlfriend still had lingering resentment and frequently contacted each other by phone.
Liang Yizhi's heartbeat almost drowned out the metallic sound. Her hand trembled as she reached out and clicked on the keyboard again.
The screen changes, and the audio switches to the second segment.
"When are you coming home? Isn't it almost Chinese New Year?"
"I just went to check outside your villa, and it's still dark. Aren't your parents coming back this year either?"
"It doesn't matter, we'll take you in. Come to our house for a meal. If you don't come, my parents will be unhappy."
"Why bring your boyfriend home? We've only been dating for a short time, my parents would kill me. Let me tell you, last time I went to the movies with him..."
...
Typing the keyboard again, another new paragraph begins.
"Gu Yinyan, I broke up with him."
"You guessed so accurately that you'd get paid? I didn't cry for long, I just cried for a little while."
"—Of course I was the one who broke up with him, but he didn't even say sorry to me once. He should apologize, apologize to me properly..."
...
She pressed pause.
No need to listen anymore. These snippets are enough.
She opened the folder, which contained rows and rows of edited audio files, each column titled with a date. Judging from the dates, they were probably phone calls she and Gu Yinyan had made while studying abroad.
I can't believe he actually recorded all those trivial phone calls we made over the years when we weren't together.
This is enough to prove that what Jiang Huai said she heard at his house was probably not a phone call, but a recording of her conversation with Gu Yinyan from a few years ago.
The world seemed to stand still; she sat on the soft sofa, her thoughts completely halted.
The sunlight, like outstretched tentacles, crept slowly across her skirt.
After an unknown amount of time, the door behind me creaked open.
The footsteps sounded like they were tattooed with names; you could tell who it was just by listening. But she didn't dare turn around.
The door closed, but the muffled sound continued to approach, one beat at a time.
Gu Yinyan's tall figure blocked the soft, slanting light from the window as he stood before her.
He slightly bent his knees, knelt down on one leg, and half-squatted in front of her.
Not long ago, he received a call from Aunt Jiang at the company, saying that Liang Yizhi was coming to his house to have dinner with him.
The untimely visit gave him a premonition.
Gu Yinyan said, "Ask me anything you want now."
Liang Yizhi spoke slowly, as if squeezing it out from her throat, in a muffled voice: "Is your so-called ex-girlfriend me?"
Gu Yinyan looked directly at her face and did not deny it: "Yes."
His voice was steady and incredibly gentle.
He lowered his eyelashes: "There's no one else, it's always been you."
The moment he spoke, the knot that had been binding his heart finally loosened. He was grateful that the girl he liked was so clever, stating the conclusion directly, allowing him to avoid lengthy explanations and honestly confront his own darkness.
That was about five years ago.
At the time, Gu Yinyan was studying at university in New York. The group of friends were scattered in several different places, but they often kept in touch by phone and shared their lives.
Because he missed her so much, yet dared not contact her frequently, he learned to record phone calls like this, and play them back very rarely, alone in the dead of night.
One day, Jiang Huaifei came to New York to visit him. When he arrived at his house, he saw some objects that seemed to have a feminine touch and mistook the gifts Liang Yizhi had given him for the fact that he had a new love interest.
While Jiang Huai was rambling on about him, he also had some unusual and strange thoughts.
Anyway, no one will know why he doesn't admit that in a world where no one knows him, he considers her his person.
So he went along with it, "admitting" that it was a gift from his "girlfriend," and then told a lie, saying that his girlfriend was studying in Europe and didn't have time to see them.
In Gu Yinyan's world, Liang Yizhi became the imaginary object of his affections.
When his "girlfriend" is mentioned, his cold expression softens slightly, and a rare smile appears on his lips. When showing off gifts he receives, he'll tell strangers that his "girlfriend" gave them to him. This fantasy is unrealistic, yet it fulfills his small, fleeting desires.
There was a glistening glint in Liang Yizhi's eyes.
She then asked, "Then why did you collect my things? Why did you record our phone calls?"
“No. It’s not about collecting them,” Gu Yinyan said calmly, “it’s about hiding them all.”
"I'll put them where I can't see them to make sure I don't think of you or fantasize about things that are impossible."
"Force yourself not to open it, not to touch it, and not to lose control."
“I won’t listen, I won’t think, I won’t look. And I’ll try…” He paused, “to not love you.”
Gu Yinyan looked quietly into her eyes.
She saw through everything. His selfish, despicable, and dark heart, his shameful actions, and his unspeakable secrets were all revealed to her.
She will inevitably become even more fearful and resistant to him. His angry remark, "I'd rather not be friends," is probably going to come true now.
Gu Yinyan lowered his head resignedly.
But at that moment, I heard her voice.
"Can't."
He looked up, his expression one of astonishment.
"What?"
A mist seemed to rise in Liang Yizhi's eyes as she spoke, each word deliberate: "You just said you wanted to try, that you didn't like me. I said—"
"Can't."
Their crimson lips touched lightly. Gu Yinyan, unusually, showed a moment of hesitation.
Liang Yizhi raised her hand and touched his face.
Upon hearing those recordings, she was surprised to find that her feelings were different from before. Although excited, she didn't want to back down, nor did she feel any resistance.
She only regretted why she was so slow to react. He always rushed to her side, but she habitually hid behind him, greedily regarding him as her eternal safe haven, and demanding that he not be tainted by any personal feelings.
Why didn't she discover it sooner?
Why did you have to make him sad for so long?
Liang Yizhi leaned forward slightly, supporting herself on the sofa with one hand, and cupped his face in her hands.
She lowered her head and kissed him.
The warm touch on her lips reminded her that this was not a dream, but all of it was real.
The kiss was real, Gu Yinyan in front of her was real, his emotions were real, and the heart pounding fiercely in her chest... was also real.
She lightly touched his lips, then released them.
However, Gu Yinyan suddenly stood up.
The original situation immediately reversed, and he became the one on top, while she was the one on the bottom.
Liang Yizhi didn't realize what he was going to do. She just watched as the man in front of her bent down, the back of her head was grabbed, and she passively raised her face.
As their lips met, Liang Yizhi felt her body become lighter. Her feet felt like they were floating on clouds, or perhaps treading on ice; she couldn't find her balance.
She cautiously opened her eyelids a crack and saw that familiar, handsome face. Behind her, in the distance, the setting sun outside the window had already dipped below the horizon, painting the sky a vast expanse of pink.
Liang Yizhi recalled a ballet she had once seen, the classic "The Nutcracker".
In the second act, the ballet dancers, on tiptoe and with light, delicate steps, danced together to the "Waltz of the Flowers," a piece brimming with happiness and dreams, against a backdrop of a pink-painted ice and snow kingdom.
She once thought that beautiful love was just a fairy tale, that once the curtain fell, everything would return to reality. But she never expected that someone would so devotedly stay by her side, constantly trying to tell her in the smallest of voices:
It's absolutely true.
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Author's note: Sending confetti to this young couple! [Sprinkling confetti][Sprinkling confetti][Sprinkling confetti]
The series is almost over! It's been a lot of hard work following it, thank you everyone! [Please!]
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