Confession and Repentance
However, at this moment, an extremely subtle movement, almost completely covered by the loud sound of rain, was like a speck of dust dropped into the surface of absolutely still water, causing ripples in the most sensitive part of her consciousness.
It was as if someone, with extremely gentle and careful movements, as if afraid of disturbing something, pushed open the door of her ward very slowly.
The door hinge made an inaudible, sigh-like creaking sound, so light that it seemed an illusion, but yet so clear that it struck her heartstrings like thunder.
Then, there were extremely light footsteps, almost making no sound on the floor, like the footsteps of a cat.
The footsteps stopped hesitantly and heavily beside her bed, bringing with them a hint of cool moisture and the unique fishy smell of rain that seeped in from the window, as well as a familiar, clean and refreshing scent that was now mixed with heavy moisture and sadness.
A figure, shrouded in the darkness beside the bed, carried the smell of lingering rain and endless sadness that seemed to crush him.
Jiang Yile struggled to wake up, to open his eyes, to shout for help, to ask questions.
But the extreme weakness after the high fever and the heavy effects of the medicine were like invisible, solid shackles that firmly imprisoned her body and consciousness.
My eyelids seemed to be glued shut, too heavy to lift at all.
My body was limp and I couldn't move. I couldn't even lift a finger.
She could only feel passively, like a helpless soul trapped in her own body, clearly sensing everything in the outside world, but unable to make any response, not even the slightest avoidance.
Fear and an inexplicable, huge tension gripped her throat, almost suffocating her.
Then, she heard a voice.
An extremely suppressed, hoarse voice with a thick nasal tone and broken crying sounded very close to her ear.
The voice was broken, full of despair and pain, almost unlike his usual clear tone, as if it was squeezed out from a torn chest.
It was Gu Nanxiao's voice.
"For music..."
He called her name, his voice as soft as the sigh of a dying man, but with a heavy weight, as if he had used up all his life's strength and courage.
"sorry……"
"……sorry……"
Over and over again, like the most devout believer's desperate confession before the statue, or like the last incoherent murmurs of a dying person.
Every word seemed to be dug out from a bloody wound, stained with blood and tears, hitting her eardrums hotly.
"I know... I shouldn't have come... I don't deserve to be here... I don't deserve to be near you..."
"But I can't help it... I really can't help it... I'm going crazy..."
The voice was choked, cut off by heavy gasps and suppressed whimpers like a wounded cub.
She could feel his warm, moist breath brushing against her earlobe, with a hot, salty wetness that was his tears.
"It's me...it's all my family's fault..."
"It's all because of me..."
His breathing became rapid and difficult, as if the next words would consume all the oxygen and remaining will in his life to uncover the bloody and dirty scar that he had tried to bury forever.
"That day...that day the rain was so heavy...so heavy...heavier than any rain I can remember...it was like the sky was leaking..."
His voice was lost in some distant, utterly terrifying memory, carrying with it clear, lingering fear and indelible trauma.
"Uncle Li... is our family's driver... He drives to pick me up from school..."
"The water on the road is so deep...it's already overflowing the roadbed...I can't see the road ahead clearly even with the wipers on full blast...The windshield is all wet, and the world is a blur..."
"The visibility is too bad... it's really too bad..."
"Then... then at that intersection... two people suddenly rushed out... a woman... holding a little girl... and holding the candied haws they had just bought..."
The moment Jiang Yile heard the words "a woman holding a little girl" and "candied haws", his heart suddenly stopped beating as if it was tightly grasped by an icy hand!
The blood in my body seemed to freeze instantly, and my limbs were as cold as if I had fallen into an ice cellar.
Those vague fragments of horrific memories, covered in dust by time and deliberately forgotten, were like a herd of startled, sleeping beasts, madly ramming into the cage of her consciousness.
Some broken images rushed out one after another——
The blinding car lights, the deafening roar, the feeling of being thrown out of control, my mother's shrill screams, and the bright red candied haws that fell to the ground, quickly soaked and melted by the rain...
"Uncle Li... he desperately stepped on the brakes and steered... trying to dodge... but the road was too slippery... he lost control of the car... it was really too late... everything happened too fast..."
His voice was filled with helplessness.
The immense pain and despair of the child sitting in the back seat, gripped by fear, seemed to be there again, swallowed by that unforgettable nightmare.
"I was sitting in the back seat... I saw the front of the car... it crashed straight into it..."
"I watched you... watched you and Auntie... being blown away like kites with their strings cut... falling in the rain..."
"I looked at you... so small... like a broken doll... lying in the cold rain... all over... all over you, covered in blood... so much blood... flowing out of you... mixed with the rain... flowing everywhere... staining everything red..."
His words were interrupted by violent, uncontrollable sobs, and he almost burst into tears.
His shoulders were shaking violently, and his suppressed, painful cries seemed particularly clear and desperate in the silent night, accompanied only by the sound of rain, like the howling of a lone wolf.
"So much blood... that blinding red... I'll never forget that color..."
Jiang Yile closed her eyes tightly, but tears had already flowed uncontrollably from the corners of her eyes, quickly soaking the pillow and sticking coldly to her cheeks.
Those terrifying images that she had deliberately forgotten, or whose memories were vague due to her young age and buried deep in her subconscious, began to become clear, hideous, and concrete as he described them in fragments and clarity.
The sting of icy raindrops hitting my face, the feeling of loss of control and the excruciating pain of being thrown back by a tremendous force, the teeth-grinding sound of bones breaking, my mother's heart-wrenching cries filled with endless fear, and the sickening, thick, rusty smell of blood that filled my nostrils...
It turns out that the fears buried deep in our hearts, which occasionally wake us up in nightmares, have never really left, but have been covered by a veil of time.
At this moment, the veil was cruelly lifted.
"The ambulance arrived... The sound was so piercing... I watched you being carried into the ambulance, covered in blood and motionless... Auntie was also injured, with blood all over her forehead. She desperately crawled to your side, constantly calling your name... Her voice was so desperate..."
"My father and I went to the hospital... I hid in the corner of the corridor... I was soaked and shivering... I heard... I heard the doctor come out and say... He said you were seriously injured... You lost a lot of blood... You had multiple fractures... Your internal organs... Your internal organs were ruptured and bleeding..."
He couldn't continue speaking and let out a desperate whimper as if his heart was being torn apart. The cry was filled with a deep fear of the fragility of life and the most primitive fear of impending loss.
"I heard... the doctor said you're critically ill... issued a critical illness notice... said you might... might not survive... asked us... to be mentally prepared..."
At that moment, the huge, cold fear not only enveloped him back then, but also penetrated the thick barrier of time and hit Jiang Yile, who was lying on the bed motionless.
She seemed to be able to feel her mother's despair and helplessness back then, and the cold touch of life slipping away from her young body bit by bit.
It turned out that she was once so close to death, only a thin line away.
It turns out that her seemingly calm and carefully maintained life of more than ten years was built on repeated brushes with death and countless surgeries and drug treatments.
A huge, belated fear and sadness overwhelmed her.
"My father...he tried everything...used all his connections...found the best doctors in the hospital...used the best medicine...regardless of the cost...just to save you..."
"Our family... paid your family a large sum of money in compensation... We covered all the medical expenses, the subsequent treatment costs, and the rehabilitation costs... I know... I know that no amount of money can bring back your health... can't bring back the normal life you should have... can't bring back your right to run and jump..."
His voice was filled with the paleness and deep sense of powerlessness that came from knowing that money was useless.
"I know you've been in poor health... I know you might not live to be eighteen..."
He was unable to continue speaking because of the surging tears that almost drowned and suffocated him.
That cruel, curse-like prophecy about her life span was like a most poisonous thorn, deeply piercing his heart. At this moment, through his crying, it also pierced Jiang Yile's heart.
All that was left of him were suppressed, desperate sobs that seemed to come from the darkest depths of his soul. In the silent night, where only the sound of rain was the eternal accompaniment, these sobs seemed particularly clear and heartbreaking.
"I dare not tell you... I'm afraid... I'm afraid that you will hate me... I'm afraid that when you see me... you will remember that day... the pain... the image of you lying in a pool of blood..."
"I'm afraid I don't even have the qualifications to watch you silently like I am doing now..."
"But I can't help myself... I like you... From the first time I saw you in the classroom, I liked you... You are so pure, so beautiful, like a ray of light..."
His confession, mixed with endless pain and deep guilt, did not sound like love words, but more like the most desperate self-judgment and accusation, a whipping of his own emotions.
"When you smile... you look so beautiful... like sunshine... lighting up my... dark and hopeless world that is always raining..."
"But what right do I have to like you? It's me... it's my family that made you like this... it's me who stole your health... your future... everything you should have..."
"I'm sorry... Yile... I'm sorry..."
"Please... forgive me... or... or just never forgive me... let me live in repentance forever... this is what I deserve..."
He almost gritted his teeth as he squeezed out the last sentence with great difficulty, with a kind of self-deprecating determination and eternal exile for himself.
One drop, two drops of cold liquid, with scorching, boiling temperature, fell on the back of her cold hand outside the quilt.
It's his tears.
It was so hot that it almost burned the skin on the back of her hand, leaving an eternal, indelible mark of sin and punishment.
Jiang Yile lay quietly, his body as stiff as a cold stone, even his blood seemed to have solidified.
She closed her eyes tightly, but tears had already burst out, like the torrential rain pouring down outside the window, silently and violently venting the turbulent waves and great sadness in her heart.
She bit her lower lip hard to prevent herself from making any sound, and her mouth was filled with a strong, disgusting smell of blood.
She was completely overwhelmed by immense sorrow and an indescribable, absurd feeling of powerlessness as if she were being manipulated by fate.
It turns out to be true.
All her guesses were true.
Every word was more cruel, bloody and despairing than she had imagined.
On that rainy night, the person who changed her fate was his family's driver.
And he was in that car at the time and witnessed the whole process with his own eyes, seeing her lying in a pool of blood, dying.
Over the past decade, she has been burdened with physical pain and the countdown of her life, struggling with repeated surgeries and drug treatments, and living in cautious fear.
He, on the other hand, was burdened with a heavy sense of guilt and inescapable psychological shackles, living under the shadow of the rain and filled with guilt for her life.
He had never really gotten over it, and his indifference, his loneliness, and all his abnormalities seemed to have answers.
They were like prisoners bound together by the same disaster, unable to break free. Under the trick of fate, they had such an absurd and sad encounter and... a heartbeat that should not have happened.
Fate played such a cruel, absurd and cold joke on them.
He let them get close to each other without her knowing, making her fall in love with him, and then when she just touched a glimmer of possibility of happiness, he used the most cruel way to expose the unbearable and bloody truth under this beautiful appearance.
She felt his trembling, cold fingers, extremely gently, with an almost humble and cautious gesture, brushing her cheek, wiping away the hot tears that kept flowing from her.
That action was filled with endless attachment, deep regret and a heartbreaking, desperate tenderness.
His fingertips were cold, yet trembling with burning, uncontrollable force.
Then he leaned over.
A kiss with the taste of salty tears, the breath of cold rain and despair, like a solemn seal made with all his strength, fell on her forehead, the place where he had left a gentle kiss before.
That kiss was cold and hot, short and long, like an eternal, sad, sinful farewell.
He stayed by her bed for a long time, so long that Jiang Yile almost thought it was dawn, and so long that the sound of rain outside the window seemed to become faint.
Finally, he stood up and walked out of her room with very light steps, one step at a time, just as he came in, carrying an inwashable sadness, sin and cold rain.
He closed the door gently, as if afraid of disturbing her "peaceful sleep", and as if completely closing any possible door between them.
There was a soft "click" sound.
In the silent rainy night, it was as clear as the final judgment.
As if it had never appeared.
Only the faint smell of rain and his desperate tears remained in the air, proving that that night and that desperate confession had truly and cruelly happened.
Outside the window, the rain is getting heavier.
It washes over the world madly and violently, as if to wash away all the sadness, sin, lies and helplessness, but it only leaves behind an even colder, endless dampness and an eternal chill that penetrates deep into the bone marrow.
Jiang Yile slowly, extremely slowly opened his eyes and looked at the blurry ceiling in the darkness that seemed covered with mist. The tear marks on his face had not yet dried, and new tears continued to flow, sliding silently into his temples.
The truth is out.
In such a way that her heart was broken and her liver was torn, as if she was being tortured by slicing.
All doubts were cleared up.
All the ambiguity, all the throbbing, all the tenderness, all the newly sprouted hopes were washed away beyond recognition at this moment by the heavy rain more than ten years ago and the tears of despair and repentance tonight.
All that was left was the naked, unhealable pain and the hopeless chasm between the two of them, built of blood, pain, sin and long years, which could never be crossed.
Across the chasm, there is no going back to that short and illusory spring with the light and shadow of the studio, the sunshine of the cafe and the kiss on the forehead.
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