Chapter 71 He seems guilty, but he cares about you a lot.
Everything happened so suddenly that the starlight in Ye Yuying's eyes flashed by, and her mouth found the answer before her brain could process it.
"He was almost healed, but he sprained his ankle again, making the injury worse. It will probably take a long time."
As she said this, she stared at the small puddles on the ground without changing her expression, lying without batting an eye. Afterwards, she thought about it and realized that her excuse was absolutely flawless.
She looked up at the glass doors of the building, where her own complacent expression was reflected, and couldn't help but sigh inwardly.
When did the upright and honest Ye Yuying begin to be filled with these insincere lies?
She felt that her reflection had become very unfamiliar.
"How could you be so careless?" Cheng Mingdu's voice rose a few decibels.
Upon hearing this, Ye Yuying slowly relaxed, realizing that he hadn't noticed anything.
She pursed her lips, shrugged helplessly, and said optimistically, "Perfect, these canes are made of carbon fiber, which is very expensive, so this increases their utilization rate."
As soon as she finished speaking, she wished she could end the conversation immediately, because she knew in her heart that if she talked too much with Cheng Mingdu, he would eventually notice something.
"Shall I take you up?"
Just as she was about to make an excuse to slip away, Cheng Mingdu spoke up.
It was a suggestion, but Ye Yuying couldn't detect even a hint of a question or inquiry in his deep voice.
She quickly assessed in her mind whether any unexpected situations might arise during this trip, and whether she could prepare a response in advance.
This time, she didn't think things through, because her heart, which had already been thrown into chaos by his appearance, made the choice before her brain could.
She nodded.
In that instant, she felt as if the cold air around her had become exceptionally quiet, and even the sound of water falling from the eaves seemed to be amplified infinitely.
"Perfect timing. Take a look at our office and put in a good word for us with Mr. Feng, asking him to recommend some investors to us."
She reacted quickly, using a relaxed and business-like tone to defuse the awkwardness of the long silence.
Upon hearing this, Cheng Mingdu looked at her, seemingly trying to deconstruct the balance between truth and falsehood in her words.
The two silently boarded the elevator. The moment the elevator doors closed, the mirrored door reflected their side-by-side figures and the strange look on her face even more clearly.
In her tension, she could clearly feel the pain gradually awakening from the nerve endings in her legs.
Fine beads of cold sweat began to appear on her forehead again.
"Have you visited...your mother in all these years?"
As the elevator ascended, Cheng Mingdu looked at her reflection in the mirror, at the taut, fragile profile of her face, and asked this question in a very low voice within the enclosed space.
Her body suddenly stiffened.
This is a very delicate issue, the only one in the vast city of Jiangcheng that can be connected to her past.
The person who asked the question is also the only one who knows everything.
However, it's hard for her to say whether or not they are family.
In the past, she would have asked him, "Why did you bring her up?"
She wanted to say that the woman had nothing to do with her.
But in the end, all the surging emotions have long been diluted by the endless passage of time.
She discovered that Jiang Xinxue was still an unavoidable and inseparable part of her life, one that could not be completely severed.
“I visit her every time I go back to China.”
She stood silently in the distance, watching her go downstairs to move around freely with the help of her caregivers. Sometimes she would witness her having an attack and being forcibly restrained by several medical staff, who would then inject her with sedatives.
She was no longer as elegant and beautiful as before, but her eyes were still breathtakingly beautiful. However, as some folk tales suggest, she had lost some of her soul.
Upon hearing this, Cheng Mingdu's profile suddenly tightened.
He continued, "Have you tried to talk to her?"
Ye Yuying nodded: "I tried, but she doesn't recognize me anymore. When my name is mentioned, she reacts with instinctive disgust..."
She exhaled with some difficulty and said stiffly, "Besides, we didn't have much to talk about when she was mentally sound, let alone now."
Cheng Mingdu pursed his lips, not asking any further questions, and silently shifted his gaze away from her reflection.
"bite--"
The elevator arrived at the floor.
The moment the door opened, Ye Yuying was like a prisoner finally freed, and she couldn't wait to be the first to get off the elevator.
Cheng Mingdu followed behind her, watching her back, which, though walking quickly, still couldn't hide her disheveled and limping state.
A heart always dominated by reason and logic felt, with great difficulty, a dull ache that was almost powerless.
They walked to a simple glass door with the word "Ashera" in metal lettering.
Ye Yuying stopped, turned her back to him, and took a deep breath.
When she turned around again, all the vulnerability and pain caused by the memories on her face had been wiped away.
“Please come in, Mr. Cheng.” She raised her eyes and looked at him calmly, as if she wasn’t the one who had lost control of her emotions in the elevator just now. “This is Ashera.”
With this cold, business-like title, she once again erected a high, secure wall between them.
Cheng Mingdu frowned slightly at her address, but didn't say anything. He simply nodded and followed her into this brand new world that she had created.
The office was small, even a bit cramped.
In the open-plan work area, there are more than a dozen workstations. It's the middle of the night, and Ye Yuying is the only person in the entire company.
In the distance, a whiteboard was covered with dense code and speculations, and the air was filled with the unique scent of a startup, a mixture of coffee and orange-scented air freshener.
Cheng Mingdu glanced indifferently at the small but vibrant space, finally settling on the independent research and development laboratory separated by glass at the far end of the office.
Ye Yuying led him over.
"This is Ashera's R&D department."
When she stood in this laboratory filled with 3D printers, oscilloscopes, and various scattered mechanical parts, all the unconscious tension and defensiveness she felt in front of him vanished.
Instead, there is a radiance belonging to the creator, full of passion and absolute confidence.
She truly loves what she's working on, as always.
“This is our first-generation model, Ashera v1.0. You were here at the last beta test, so you should be familiar with it.” She pointed to the futuristic and powerful exoskeleton prototype fixed to a support frame in the center of the room.
She began to introduce her masterpiece to him, speaking clearly and concisely.
At that moment, Cheng Mingdu's sense of unfamiliarity with the person in front of him seemed to reach its peak.
She is no longer the "Aying" who needed his protection, with a stubborn and fragile heart, nor is she the self-conscious and pessimistic middle school girl who once wanted to give up on herself.
She is Ms. Ye, the founder of Ashera, a German engineering graduate with core technologies and a cutting-edge team.
One who is trying to use technology to enter the medical field – a fighter.
Cheng Mingdu listened quietly. He looked at her and inadvertently noticed the scar on her left eye that was almost fading away, but it couldn't hide the bright light in her eyes at all.
Her presentation was professional and detailed, and he didn't ask any questions about technology or business.
He simply looked at the intricate mechanical skeleton before him, made of cold carbon fiber and metal, and then, in an extremely light yet deep voice, asked a question that had nothing to do with any of this.
“So,” he looked at her, “this is what you’re going to do next.”
Ye Yuying had just finished her passionate and confident narration, and her heart was still pounding. She nodded vigorously, "Yes."
She looked at him, at his eyes that seemed to see through everything.
She knew he understood everything.
He understood her ambition and her aspirations.
Have you finished your doctoral degree?
"Huh?" Ye Yuying didn't expect him to bring this up suddenly.
"I'll go back and defend my thesis in a while, and then it will be completely finished."
By the way... I'll have a very high-risk surgery.
Ye Yuying replaced the second sentence with the action of swallowing.
Later, she invited Cheng Mingdu to sit in the tea room and have some tea.
She knew that no matter what time he drank tea, it wouldn't affect his sleep.
After the water boiled, she was about to get up when Cheng Mingdu stood up first, slightly raising his hand to stop her movement, "Your legs are weak, let me do it."
Ye Yuying didn't continue with the pretense of politeness. She quietly sat back down and pointed towards the refrigerator, saying, "There's a light cheesecake that I bought this afternoon."
Cheng Mingdu was using a wooden spoon to scoop tea leaves, his hands steady and precise. With his back to her, he said, "I don't eat sweets, do you want some? I'll get you some."
After thinking for a while, Ye Yuying faced her immediate need and said somewhat apologetically:
"Then, thank you for your trouble."
So Cheng Mingdu took the cake out of the refrigerator, cut off a corner, put it on a plate, found a dessert fork, and brought it to the bar along with hot tea.
Upon seeing this, a flash of memory struck Ye Yuying's heart.
In recent years, her life has been far less refined than when she lived in the Cheng family. She is busy with her studies, rarely eats proper meals, and doesn't cut cakes into such neat pieces when she buys them. Everything is kept simple.
But she forgot that Cheng Mingdu always maintained the most refined lifestyle. The time they spent together, secluded from the world, was still vivid in her mind, yet she always wanted to say…
She forgot.
Cheng Mingdu sat down and pushed the cake in front of her, watching her quietly enjoy the dessert in small bites, her happy eyes showing a hint of her former childlike innocence.
She loves to eat desserts, as always, but her figure remains as thin as before, or even thinner.
As she ate, she said, "Do you know about the Black Forest region?"
"I know." Cheng Mingdu took a sip of tea and silently put the teacup down.
"Black Forest cake comes from the Black Forest region, around Freiburg, Germany. There's a cheesecake shop called Stefan there, and every Saturday Stefan cakes appear at markets in major cities. I go and buy a big one, just enough to last me a few days..."
She stopped halfway through her sentence when she realized that what she was saying seemed meaningless.
However, Cheng Mingdu on the other end listened quietly without asking any questions about the significance of the matter.
She scratched her head sheepishly, "Sorry, these words don't seem to make any sense."
She instinctively wanted to avoid disturbing Cheng Mingdu's time, since he also worked overtime until midnight and was probably much busier than her.
Cheng Mingdu didn't mind at all. "I don't pursue the idea that everything carries meaning. Say what you want to say."
He spoke like an old friend, "Tell me about everything you've seen and heard over the years, the joys and the sorrows, you can tell me anything."
Ye Yuying lowered her head again to eat the last bite of cake, and said softly, "It's just ordinary life."
She knew full well that those things would be the floodgates of a torrent, and once opened, her parched heart would be uncontrollably flooded, and she didn't know when it would be over.
In the time that followed, they chatted idly in the cramped tea room, tacitly avoiding bringing up anything from the past.
It wasn't until Cheng Mingdu caught her gaze during a break in the conversation, and after a moment of thought, asked, "When you returned to China halfway through, did you think about looking for me?"
She was speechless.
"I've thought about it." Her answer came abruptly.
Why didn't you come?
Even just once would be fine.
"I don't have the confidence to see you anymore." Her voice wavered, tinged with shame.
After a long pause, Cheng Mingdu's lips curled slightly, and he said in a low voice, "So, you knew..."
Unable to bear the torment in her heart, Ye Yuying hurriedly stood up and said, "I want to go home."
In the end, Cheng Mingdu drove her home. They were silent the whole way. Ye Yuying sat in the passenger seat, looking down and chatting quietly with Echo about tomorrow's weather.
Cheng Mingdu stopped his car at a red light and glanced at the apartment area ahead.
"You moved?"
Ye Yuying nodded, "We can't stay in hotels forever."
The car pulled over, ready to take her downstairs, but she quickly waved her hand, saying, "I'll get off here."
Inside the dimly lit, enclosed carriage, her phone screen suddenly lit up.
In that instant, light illuminated her surprised face and also shone into Cheng Mingdu's unfathomable eyes.
On the screen, a new message appears clearly as a push notification.
It's Echo.
【Echo】: Ah Ying, you must be tired after a long day...
Echo detected that she was near her home and sent her a greeting. This was a new interactive feature she recently set up for Echo, allowing the AI to be integrated into her daily life.
Ye Yuying's heart almost stopped beating for a moment.
She quickly tossed her phone into her bag, but could still feel the air getting colder.
Her movements were too fast, too joyful, and instead... made things worse.
Ye Yuying could clearly hear her own heart pounding so loudly due to extreme panic, as if her chest could no longer contain the frightened deer.
Did he see it?
He must have seen it.
So close, so clear light...
"Echo?"
Cheng Mingdu's deep voice, which seemed to reach the bottom of an ocean current vortex, finally rang out.
He softly repeated the name he had just caught in that fleeting glimmer of light.
His tone was calm, yet it instinctively sent a chill down her spine: "He seems to care about you a lot."
“…Hmm,” she squeezed out a dry syllable from her throat, sounding a little weak. Although she couldn’t quite put her finger on what she was feeling guilty about, she was probably afraid that Cheng Mingdu would find out that she was using his predictions to train the AI lover.
Cheng Mingdu didn't say anything more, but just stared straight at her, his gaze seemingly able to pierce through her mask and reach her terrified and guilty face.
After a long while, he reached out his hand to her, and Ye Yuying became extremely nervous.
Fortunately, he simply unbuckled her seatbelt without any fuss, and politely said, "Be careful on the road," as if nothing had happened.
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Author's Note: 50
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