Chapter 82 How could love willingly stop?
At the school gate, Lin Chengyu held the steering wheel with one hand as his dark gray Bentley slowly drove in.
The car window was half open, and a gentle breeze was blowing through.
Just as he was about to turn, he suddenly caught a glimpse of a black Maybach parked on the side of the road.
The driver's side window suddenly rolled down, and the dim yellow streetlights shone obliquely into the car.
From his perspective, all he could see was a girl in a pale yellow lace-trimmed top sitting on the man's lap. Her hands were resting on the car window, slightly curled up, while the man's large, strong hands were covering the back of her hands, gripping them tightly with possessiveness.
Her long hair fell down, covering half of her face, leaving only her fair and rosy nose visible.
Lin Chengyu calmly withdrew his gaze, and the Bentley smoothly glided past the car.
The black windows had been rolled up again, completely shutting out the ambiguous scene.
Lin Chengyu walked into the laboratory carrying several cups of milk tea.
Mark and Emma were huddled together, staring at their phone screens, their smiles knowingly knowing each other.
"Lin! Come look at this!" Emma waved excitedly, "It's going viral on Twitter!"
Lin Chengyu's gaze swept over the empty seats: "Yan Shuang hasn't arrived yet?"
"Hey, forget about that for now." Mark grabbed his arm. "Look at this video, it's good stuff!"
Lin Chengyu frowned slightly.
Emma's eyes lit up as she exclaimed, "Look at the video of Yan Shuang and Shang Qiuzhu playing tennis! My god, they're such a perfect match!"
Lin Chengyu had already turned around to call Yan Shuang, but stopped the moment he heard her name.
"show me."
Lin Chengyu's voice was so cold that Emma's hand trembled in fright.
Before she could react, Lin Chengyu had already taken the phone.
On the screen, Shangqiu Zhu delivered a fierce smash, his slender figure stretching out in the sunlight, every movement exuding an innate sense of oppression.
However, the tone changed drastically in the second half.
Shangqiu Zhu slowed down the pace, repeatedly and precisely delivering the ball to the position where Yan Shuang could easily catch it.
As the camera zooms in, a rare tenderness appears in the man's deep-set eyes, his gaze following the figure at the other end of the tennis court.
Lin Chengyu's face gradually turned pale.
Yan Shuang's face was not very clear in the video; the shadow cast by the brim of her white tennis cap blurred her expression.
But when she jogged to catch the ball, her profile, revealed through her flying hair, exuded a natural adoration, her eyes and brows seemingly glowing.
The scattered doubts from the past now connect into a clear line, completely overlapping with the entire video before our eyes.
His hand holding the phone began to tremble uncontrollably, as if he were under some kind of spell, replaying the video over and over again.
It was as if the scene would change if he looked at it long enough and with enough effort.
By the twelfth cycle, his pupils were already dilated, yet he still stared intently at the flickering screen.
Mark and Emma exchanged a puzzled look.
"Cheng Yu?" Emma asked tentatively, "Are you alright?"
Mark mustered his courage and tried to take the phone from Lin Chengyu's hand, only to find that Lin Chengyu's fingers were as stiff as iron clamps.
He gripped the phone tightly, and it made a faint, strained sound in his palm, as if it would break in the next second.
The laboratory door was pushed open at that moment.
Lin Chengyu slowly turned around.
Backlit, Yan Shuang stood at the doorway, slightly out of breath, as if she had run all the way there.
She was wearing…
It's that pale yellow top!
The blurry profile in the video, the vague outline of the Maybach, became dazzlingly clear at this moment.
Yan Shuang immediately sensed that something was wrong. Her gaze swept over the stiff Lin Chengyu, then turned to Mark and Emma, who had strange expressions: "What's wrong?"
Emma also looked puzzled, her eyes shifting back and forth between Lin Chengyu and Yan Shuang: "Um... we were watching a video of President Shang playing tennis with you..."
"A video?" Yan Shuang's eyes widened slightly, and the tips of her ears turned a faint red at a visible speed.
Lin Chengyu stared intently at her reaction.
A dull, indescribable pain suddenly welled up in my heart, as if someone were slowly chiseling at me with a blunt instrument.
It wasn't a heart-wrenching pain, but a long, suffocating agony that spread from the chest to every part of the body.
In the instant the excruciating pain struck, countless images flashed through his mind like a revolving lantern.
On a rainy London street, twenty-year-old Yan Shuang, holding a transparent umbrella, hurried past him and entered the red-brick school building.
That was their second meeting after their initial encounter in Paris. He had to ask around for a long time before he finally managed to meet her at the entrance of the University of London.
On her graduation day, he sat in the last row of the auditorium, watching her give her speech as an outstanding graduate. She held the bouquet of white tulips that had been sent anonymously in her arms, which made her smile as bright as a flower.
The night her plane crossed the terminator, he silently made a promise to himself: "Give me three more years after I graduate, and I'll stand before you."
Over the years, he has collected every photo of her and secretly followed every social media account.
He thought time would give him the answer.
Finally, I graduated and returned to China to be by her side.
But to his utter surprise, what awaited him was the cruel truth that she had already found someone else.
Lin Chengyu had considered this possibility.
In his long, unspoken crushes, he had already rehearsed countless terrible scenarios in his mind.
Perhaps one day, she will appear arm in arm with another man.
It doesn't matter. As long as he knows who it is, he'll find a way to push that person out of her life. Or even earlier, he can nip those unwanted feelings in the bud when they're just beginning to develop.
He was like a hunter lurking in the shadows, patiently waiting.
But what is the reality?
The reality is that her life is almost transparently clean. There are no ambiguous relationships, no frequent dates, and no trace of romance left on social media.
He was secretly pleased with this, even feeling that it was a reward from fate for his patience, a place she had reserved for him.
And what was the result?
It turned out to be all fake!
She wasn't without romantic relationships, nor did she reject everyone.
She simply chose the least likely person and kept it a secret perfectly.
He's a complete idiot!
He thought he was waiting for the main character to appear with deep affection, but little did he know that the play had already been playing out countless scenes in another, hidden theater that he could not see.
He didn't even have the right to buy a ticket.
Yan Shuang walked towards him in confusion: "Cheng Yu?"
She stood before him, softly calling his name, as if she were in his dream.
Yan Shuang looked at him, and the emotions surging in those usually gentle and refined eyes were too intense at this moment: anger, pain, disappointment... and the almost obsessive possessiveness that he had finally shown her.
She was startled by his gaze and took a half step back, her heart trembling.
"Lin Chengyu..." Her voice trembled slightly, "What's wrong with you?"
The laboratory was deathly silent; everyone held their breath.
Lin Chengyu stared at her, took a step closer, forcing her against the wall. Under the shocked gazes of everyone, he slowly lowered his head and said, word by word:
"I must be crazy to waste my time playing this stupid pretend-to-be-couple game with you!"
Every word seemed to be squeezed out from between teeth, every word piercing the ears of everyone present.
His gaze was sharp as a knife, yet it was clearly piercing his own heart.
These words, on the surface, are accusations against her, but in reality, every word is filled with tears and unspeakable regret. She regrets that she should not have proposed this absurd agreement in the first place, and she wishes she could have expressed her feelings sooner.
If he lingered for even a second longer, if he looked at her even once more, his last shred of reason would crumble.
Yan Shuang: "You..."
But Lin Chengyu had already let go of her and turned to leave.
The door slammed shut, causing the milk tea on the table to tremble slightly.
The laboratory was completely silent; everyone stared blankly at Yan Shuang.
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