Chapter 83
Huang Ruoyu smiled and said goodbye to Cheng Shi: "Okay, goodbye."
Then, looking at Narumi's face hidden in the car window, she began to savor the feeling of his hand gently stroking her arm.
Was there love in that caress? Huang Ruoyu couldn't understand.
So even after Narumi started the engine, drove the car onto the sunlit driveway, and headed towards the main entrance of Central Park, Huang Ruoyu was still standing in front of the gate of No. 5 Napa Valley, watching the car grow smaller and smaller, and waving. Then, two soft horns sounded from Narumi's car, before it finally disappeared into the distant greenery.
Even after returning to DK, Huang Ruoyu's smile hadn't faded. She smiled as she tidied the table, smiling as she soaked the breakfast plates in the sink, and she was still smiling when she caught a glimpse of the used coffee cups.
She was still smiling, as if the smile was welded to her face, until her facial muscles became distorted from the prolonged smile, until spasms attacked her sore throat... and before she could even stop smiling, tears streamed down Huang Ruoyu's face.
Huang Ruoyu wiped away her tears, then randomly opened a comedy short on her phone to try and calm herself down. After the dishes in the sink were washed, she calmed down again.
However, Huang Ruoyu felt a burning pain in her throat because she had smoked too many cigarettes and drunk too much coffee the night before. She also noticed that her hands were trembling uncontrollably, and her heart was pounding, as if her heart rate was much faster than usual. But apart from that, Huang Ruoyu felt that everything was fine.
After watching a mindless short drama, Huang Ruoyu glanced at her phone screen as she prepared to watch the next video. It was already 8:45! She was startled, feeling like she'd forgotten to pick her child up from school just before afternoon dismissal. Huang Ruoyu quickly washed her face with cold water at DK, took a few deep breaths to calm her heartbeat, then lit a cigarette, turned off the video on her phone, and opened Su Ningna's WeChat chat.
“Nana,” Huang Ruotong dialed Su Ningna’s voice call, and Su Ningna answered the phone shortly after. “Did the kids not make a fuss last night?... What’s wrong with my voice?... Oh, no, no, I just still feel a little unwell, so I called you... You don’t mind if they stay with you for another day, right?... Chengshi should be going to pick them up tonight... I’m not sure, um, that’s great. Nana, thank you so much... No, no, it’s not that serious, it’s just... you know, it’s just those things... Okay, thank you. Tell me and the two of them that Dad will pick them up after work, either tonight or tomorrow... Oh, no, no need, don’t call them if they’re playing outside…”
The ash from Huang Ruoyu's nearly burnt-out cigarette fell onto the countertop. She quickly dusted it off, then gripped her phone even tighter and said, "Please...please kiss them for me, both of them, tell them I love them, and tell them...never mind, that's enough for now, Nana, thank you, I want to go to sleep for a bit..."
Before her phone screen even went black, Huang Ruoyu couldn't help but cry. To control her emotions, she lit another cigarette. But this time, the smell made her nauseous. She went into the first-floor guest bathroom and stayed there for a long time, vomiting up the little breakfast she had eaten and still dry heaving. After that, she washed her face again, brushed her teeth with the disposable toothbrush in the guest bathroom, and told herself: It's time to do what needs to be done.
"Have you figured it out yet?" Huang Ruoyu remembered that her grandmother used to ask her this, while raising her hand, which was covered with age spots, and waving it at her. "You don't want a rope, do you?"
Therefore, Huang Ruoyu felt that the first thing to do was to tidy up the room, especially the messy coffee table.
Last night, Huang Ruoyu sat in front of that coffee table for hours, trying to clear her mind, making a complete mess of it. Now, the ashtray was overflowing with ashes, the coffee cup had a dark brown ring around it, and crumpled pieces of paper were scattered all over the floor. Now, whenever Huang Ruoyu sits down at the coffee table, she can immediately recall those bitter, lonely, and chaotic moments from last night.
Huang Ruoyu bent down and picked up a crumpled piece of paper from the floor; it was the letter she hadn't finished writing. She unfolded the paper and laid it flat on the coffee table, carefully examining the words. But at first glance, she could hardly recognize her own handwriting—because she had never written anything so crowded, so bold, so angry, like a swarm of swatted flies.
However, there was one passage amidst all the dense text that Huang Ruoyu managed to decipher:
"What you call 'love' is nothing but a self-deceiving illusion. You cowardly hide in this illusion. You know just as well as I do that besides mutual contempt and distrust, and the ugliest thing—finding satisfaction in each other's flaws—there's nothing between us. That's why I laughed when you said I wasn't capable of love. That's why I can no longer tolerate you touching me, that's why I no longer believe your so-called reasoning, let alone the things you say..."
Huang Ruoyu didn't want to read any further, because she knew these words had become powerless due to hatred. Like the other crumpled letters, they weren't worth reading. Huang Ruoyu felt she should find an iron bucket, stand at a crossroads, and burn all these paper balls, just like she had seen online about the Ghost Festival and Cold Food Festival for commemorating deceased relatives, even though she had never burned paper money for her deceased parents.
Although Huang Ruoyu desperately wanted to burn all these letters, they were letters she had written all night yesterday, until five o'clock this morning, and it had taken her a lot of effort to write them!
At this moment, Huang Ruoyu herself couldn't believe that it all happened just four hours before she was born. All she could remember was that around 5 a.m. this morning, she forced herself to stand up from the coffee table, then dragged her tired and aching back, from being curled up on the low, soft sofa for so long, into the bathroom in her and Chengshi's bedroom. She took a long, hot bath. She lay motionless in the still water, like she was doing water yoga meditation, until her mind was completely calm before she got out of the bathtub, went into the bedroom, and changed into clean clothes.
It was at this moment that Huang Ruoyu saw Cheng Shi—lying flat on the bed, looking carefree and without a care in the world.
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