Chapter 76 Happy New Year! At least there's still family.
The stairs leading to the attic were narrow and steep.
Cheng Mingdu walked ahead, deliberately slowing his pace to test the floor for her if it might be shaky.
Ye Yuying followed behind him, each step feeling like she was stepping on her own hazy, lingering memories of her girlhood.
She had never climbed those fifteen steps so slowly, nor had she ever felt them so long and impossibly high...
With each step she took, her more severely injured leg trembled slightly, but she tried her best to keep it from becoming too obvious.
She could only place most of her weight on the cold wooden handrail and the lightweight cane she carried with her, the handle now warmed by her body heat.
Her breathing began to become somewhat heavy.
Generally speaking, she has some idea of the terrain that her legs can withstand, but her badly injured legs always occasionally cause unexpected problems and trouble for her.
Just as they were halfway there, Ye Yuying's left leg suddenly experienced an uncontrollable spasm...
"Hmm..."
She let out a subconscious groan, her cane tilted in the darkness, and her body lost its key support. The hand gripping the armrest could not support her entire weight.
In a panic, she opened her eyes wide, and in the next instant, she was about to lose control and fall backward!
At this critical moment—
Cheng Mingdu, who was walking in front of her, suddenly turned around at an incredible speed, as if he had eyes in the back of his head!
He didn't ask her what was wrong, nor did he make any other moves.
He simply stretched out his long arm on the narrow staircase, so narrow that it was almost impossible to pass each other, and with an undeniable force, grabbed her drooping waist, then pulled her whole body towards him, causing her to crash heavily into his solid chest.
Ye Yuying buried her face fiercely in his thin, chilly shirt.
She was still breathing heavily, her breath coming in gasps, each one carrying his unique fragrance.
Her body was held firmly in his arms, almost like an embrace.
"careful."
His voice rang out right above her head.
At the same time, the lightweight cane fell to the ground with a thud, leaning against the wooden steps.
She could clearly feel how taut the muscles in his arms wrapped around her waist were; she could also feel his steady, powerful heartbeat pounding fiercely through the thin fabric of his clothes.
Time seemed to stretch out infinitely at that moment.
Her right hand instinctively reached down the stairs, her fingers far from the cane, but the cane slipped from her grasp, and she became uneasy.
Then, Cheng Mingdu steadied her, took a few steps down as fast as he could, picked up the cane, and handed it back to Ye Yuying.
"Help me up."
He looked at her and said in a low voice, in a tone that brooked no refusal.
In the end, she, like a child who had given up all resistance, obediently gripped his arm and let him distribute the pressure of her legs.
Clearly, the hands supporting her waist were not intimate in the slightest, and were quite strong; with his arms around her, her legs barely touched the ground.
However, the moment he released her waist and his hands left her, her side felt a little itchy.
Pushing open that familiar, tightly closed wooden door, a smell mixed with old wood and dust rushed out.
The lights were off in the attic. Only the dim yellow of a few red lanterns outside the window and the dazzling lights of the city in the distance shone through the gaps in the loosely drawn curtains, casting dappled shadows on the floor.
Cheng Mingdu stepped forward and pulled back the curtains, saying, "The power switch inside the house needs to be opened by the management personnel."
Her eyes had long since adapted to the darkness, and with the help of the light from the courtyard, she could still see everything clearly.
The room was furnished exactly the same as when she left.
The small desk by the window, the creaking rocking chair she couldn't bear to throw away, and even the wicker box in the corner that she used to store odds and ends were still there.
She couldn't tell at all where it had been repaired; everything was perfectly fine.
Everything seemed to have been sealed away by time inside a giant amber.
Or like a crystal ball where it snows all year round, everything has been frozen in time by human hands.
Ye Yuying, leaning on her cane, slowly walked to the somewhat mottled wall that she had faced day and night.
She reached out and gently ran her fingertips across the wall, tracing the adhesive residue from the faded but still recognizable sticky notes.
She hadn't expected to touch anything, but a piece of paper still brushed against her fingertip.
“Here,” she exclaimed, her eyes widening in surprise, as if saying to herself, “even the words we used to put up are still here.”
"Back then, I had to memorize it every night before bed. If I didn't finish memorizing it, I wasn't allowed to sleep, and the next day I would put on a new sticker."
It goes on and on.
Cheng Mingdu stood behind her without saying a word.
He simply watched her quietly, observing her thin and fragile profile outlined by the dim light from the window.
Those days of her striving were invisible to him, but he still knew that Ye Yuying's journey had not been easy.
Ye Yuying slowly walked to the small window and habitually stood on the far left.
She reached out and pushed open the window, which was already covered with a thin layer of dust.
A refreshing breeze, carrying the chill of a winter night, rushed in instantly, ruffling the hair on her forehead.
“Cheng Mingdu,” she said, looking out the window without turning around, her voice sounding as if she were asking a question she already knew the answer to, “Have you ever looked out the window?”
Cheng Mingdu fell silent, and just as Ye Yuying thought he hadn't heard what she said and was about to give up,
His Adam's apple bobbed, and he said, "I've seen it."
"Didn't you notice anything? You probably haven't observed the outside world from any unusual angle, even though it's just a window."
Ye Yuying slowly turned around and looked at him. For the first time, her usually cold eyes revealed a kind of mischievousness that was both playful and filled with endless sorrow.
She pressed her face almost against the window frame, finding the most tricky angle from the far left.
Looking out from this angle, the view is so subtle.
You can clearly see the only driveway leading to the underground parking garage in the distance, and the warm headlights of every car returning home late.
Alternatively, one could conveniently see the huge floor-to-ceiling window of his always brightly lit white villa on the second floor, the window that belonged to his study.
She glanced at it, immediately straightened up, and spoke each word that followed with exceptional clarity: "This is the only place where you can see the white house."
She still habitually referred to Cheng Mingdu's residence as the White House. She was so familiar with this abstract definition, which was inseparable from the fact that she had mentioned it countless times in her diary and in her heart, just like mentioning his name.
“I can only see light. The light in your bedroom is rarely on at night, but the light in your study is always on.”
"If you come home too late that night, the whole house will be pitch black, but before 2 a.m., there will definitely be a car headlight on your side of the driveway..."
She looked at his face, which had become incredibly complicated because of her words, and a faint, self-deprecating smile appeared on his lips.
"Now that you hear this, doesn't it seem... a little... chilling upon closer inspection?"
She took a breath in the courtyard with a hint of regret, thankful that this wasn't a suspense drama, otherwise she would definitely be that insecure, secret admirer living in the shadows.
But she didn't get the chilling look that Cheng Mingdu was giving her.
Cheng Mingdu simply watched her from behind, observing the feigned ease and self-destructive honesty in her eyes. His calm eyes held no anger, but rather a hint of cracks.
He wanted to tell her that he knew.
He actually always knew, though he didn't know the details.
But he never mentioned it to her.
After a long while, he came to her side, stood to her right, and together they gazed at the bright moon tonight. A silent regret had already melted into the air flowing between them.
In this suffocating silence, filled with unspoken words—
After a long pause, he spoke slowly in a hoarse voice, "Ye Yuying, we..."
"Thump—thump—thump—"
In the distance, from the direction of the city, came the deep and resonant tolling of New Year's bells.
Then, a huge, golden firework exploded in the night sky behind them! Immediately afterwards, countless fireworks soared into the sky, instantly turning the quiet midnight into a cacophony where no one could hear a sound.
The dazzling, fleeting light instantly illuminated the entire attic, as well as their faces, so close together and filled with complex emotions.
Ye Yuying seemed to wake up with a start and instinctively turned around.
Countless colorful fireworks burst forth one after another against the dark, velvety night sky, creating the most dazzling yet lonely spectacle.
She remembered.
I remembered eight years ago, on a New Year's Eve illuminated by fireworks.
He stood behind her just like that.
Then, in the instant she turned around, he leaned down and gave her a kiss that filled his forbidden heart, a kiss that reached the clouds.
That wasn't their first kiss, but rather, it was the first kiss he initiated on her behalf.
But now...
Ye Yuying felt a profound emptiness in her heart and deeply regretted that her words had been interrupted by the fireworks. However, a smile then appeared on her lips, conveying a sense of openness, as if the past had been turned over.
Ye Yuying looked out the window at the dazzling yet distant fireworks, then turned back to look at the man standing behind her, a step away, his eyes flickering.
She knew it was no longer possible.
Between them, there was already a vast, unbridgeable icy sea.
Any feelings that break taboos will only increase the pain at this moment. She longs to return to the day of Frost's Descent when she first met him.
If none of this had happened, she would at least still have a bond of kinship unrelated to blood ties left in the world.
He smiled with relief and looked back at the dazzling fireworks outside the window.
Happy New Year, Ye Yuying.
She slowly withdrew her gaze, turning it back to the fireworks outside the window that were about to burn out. Her voice was so soft it sounded like a sigh.
Happy New Year... Cheng Mingdu.
When the fireworks subsided, she suddenly looked at him again, her gaze intense.
"Could I become...the older brother again?"
Cheng Mingdu's jawline tightened, and he asked, "Why?"
"In this way, there will still be a bond of kinship between us, which will be the strongest bond in the world, no matter how strong the wind and rain, or how deep the separation of life and death..."
"None of them will...disappear."
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Author's note: 50~
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