Chapter 58: Cosmic Latte (10) Soulmates, She and He Chuan...
Early November was the last bit of downtime before the Christmas rush, so MT, as usual, organized a team-building trip for all employees. It was a two-day, one-night weekend trip to a newly opened, upscale hot spring resort near the city, which was said to be quite nice.
During the team-building process, the company arranged numerous activities, including mountain climbing, hiking, swimming, and ball games. Winning and losing offered generous prizes, and everyone participated voluntarily. However, Lin Xia had little interest in any of these; she simply came to relax and unwind.
She slept in her room until noon, had brunch at the restaurant, went to the hot springs in the afternoon, and then had an outdoor barbecue with her colleagues. At nightfall, Meijia dragged Lin Xia to the bar. The decor was stylish and the atmosphere was wonderful. A resident singer sang softly on the stage, guitar in hand. The slight intoxication of a mojito filled her heart. A day without work was truly wonderful.
In the middle of the show, Meijia went to the bathroom, and Lin Xia was left alone in the booth. She liked the song sung by the resident singer very much. When she was concentrating on searching the song title on her mobile phone, suddenly someone sat down in the empty seat in front of her.
She thought it was Mika who came back, but when she looked up, she saw a woman she didn't recognize at all, but looked somewhat familiar.
She has a fashionable short hair, a white shirt and jeans, which makes her look casual yet sexy.
"Do you remember me?"
Lin Xia was a little surprised: "You are...He Chuan's colleague?"
They met in the elevator on Halloween.
"Yes, my name is Ji Min, you are Lin Xia, right?" She smiled slightly.
"It's me."
As Lin Xia answered, her eyes subconsciously looked behind her.
"No need to look. He Chuan didn't come. This resort is owned by my relatives. They invited me to come and play. I didn't expect to run into your company's team building."
"Then why did you come to see me?"
"Nothing, I just have nothing to do and want to chat with you."
"We probably don't have much to talk about."
Lin Xia didn't want to have any contact with Ji Min.
After their encounter in the elevator that day, Lin Xia remembered that this wasn't her first time seeing Ji Min. The last time, she'd also been standing next to He Chuan. Her intuition told her that the two of them might be more than just colleagues. She'd be lying if she said she hadn't felt the slightest bit of emotion. But who was she to show any emotion? They'd been apart for seven years, and anything could have happened in those seven years.
Ji Min gave a meaningful smile: "You may not know me, but I have heard of you for a long time."
“I don’t know what I’m famous for.”
"He Chuan and I are not only colleagues, but also classmates at University College London. He Chuan always mentions your name."
Lin Xia was stunned when she heard this and didn't know what to say for a moment.
Ji Min continued to speak slowly:
"He Chuan and I met at a Chinese class reunion. Unlike those wealthy second-generations who were just idling around with fake degrees or those bookworms who were obsessed with studying, he was handsome, ambitious, intelligent, humble, gentle, and polite. Frankly, I fell in love with him at first sight. I knew he had a girlfriend in China, but I still didn't give up. Come on, what era is it still a long-distance relationship? I bet they'll break up within three months."
To pursue He Chuan, she chose the same elective courses as him, deliberately ran into him in the library study room, and even went to work with him part-time. Her tactics were very clever. She didn't express her feelings or show any affection, but simply created time to spend together, increasing their mutual affection and quietly bringing them closer. He Chuan noticed her intentions, but since she didn't make it clear, he couldn't directly refuse her, so he had to distance himself from her as much as possible.
Ji Min laughed at herself, "Do you know how jealous I was of you back then? I went through so much trouble to find a chance to talk to him, but he never stopped talking about you. He said his girlfriend had been studying art since elementary school, had always ranked first in the city in both the high school entrance exam and the college entrance exam, and was a top student at the Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts. She was beautiful and outstanding. His phone screen saver was a photo of you two, and he always wore that ridiculous couple ring on his finger. He really didn't give anyone else a chance."
"Although I was reluctant, I also had self-respect, so I stopped asking for trouble. However, what really made me decide to give up was what happened before Christmas one year."
When she first met He Chuan, Ji Min felt that He Chuan was diligent and self-disciplined, never indulging in pleasure, and had no bad habits, so she admired him very much. But later, as she followed him and got to know him better, she found that his self-discipline was almost pathological. Even the most diligent and motivated people cannot be on edge 24 hours a day; they always need time to relax and have fun, but he didn't. He almost squeezed his spare time to the minimum, either studying or working, leaving himself no room for breathing, just like a robot. No wonder, besides her, there were other girls who tried to pursue him, but in the end they all gave up. Who could stand such a boyfriend?
It was the end of 2012, and they had both graduated. They were juggling internships and studying for their bar exams, which was incredibly grueling. She'd only accepted an offer from a smaller law firm, but when she heard He Chuan had signed a contract with the prestigious L&Z, she was envious and convinced. His level of hard work was truly beyond her reach. During that time, they should have been focusing on their internships and exams; the law firm's stipend was more than enough for daily expenses. But for some reason, He Chuan suddenly became a madman, working part-time jobs everywhere, neglecting food and sleep, and making it known to everyone around them that he was desperate for money.
The international student community was small, and some, out of jealousy, had always looked down on He Chuan. They took advantage of this opportunity to instigate a wealthy young man they were close to to gang up on him. He Chuan barely mingled with the community, attending only a few gatherings, but he was known to be a delicious cook, and his dishes were always popular. They deliberately gave him money to help in the kitchen, harassing him and humiliating him, forcing him to drink so much that he ended up in the hospital with gastric bleeding. He never complained, and upon leaving the hospital, the first thing he did was run to the other party and demand payment of the bill.
Ji Min was furious when she found out about this. On the one hand, she was furious at the excessive behavior of those people, and on the other hand, she was furious at He Chuan for being such a person who would even risk his life for money. She ran to the Chinese restaurant in Chinatown where he worked to question him. It was snowing heavily in London that day, and the shops were extremely busy on Christmas Eve. He Chuan was still ill and had a high fever as he moved goods through the back door of the restaurant. He turned a deaf ear to her questions. Pushed too hard, he just opened his bloodshot eyes and said to her word by word:
"You don't understand. I can't lose her. With a family like yours and a life like yours, you'll never understand how important money is."
Ji Min does come from a wealthy family, but she believes that every step she has taken to where she is today is due to her own abilities, and she hates it most when others use this to attack her. In a fit of rage, she pushed He Chuan hard.
He was taller than she, he was a man and she was a woman, so what could a push like that do? But at that moment, his body had already reached its limit, and he fell directly into a pile of takeout boxes and fainted. British ambulances are a joke. Ji Min and another black waiter in the restaurant took great pains to get He Chuan to the hospital. After a series of emergency treatments and IV drips, and struggling until midnight, his condition finally stabilized. The doctor said that because he had a spleen removal, his immune system was already weak. If he continued to abuse his body like this, there was no telling when he would die suddenly.
After that, He Chuan was in a coma for a day and a night before waking up, and Ji Min breathed a sigh of relief. Unexpectedly, his fever hadn't even subsided, and the first thing he did after waking up was to search the world for his phone to call his girlfriend. He said he had promised her that they would spend the end of the world together.
Ji Min held his forehead and sighed, "When I heard this, my brain went numb. I didn't expect that he would actually believe in these things. This...this is too stupid!"
"Really?" Lin Xia lowered her eyes and smiled softly, saying bitterly, "But at that time, there were so many people who believed it from the bottom of their hearts."
There were certainly many reasons for Lin Xia and He Chuan's separation, but this incident is definitely a scar in Lin Xia's heart that has never healed.
During that period, just after Lin Haisheng's death, the two families were fighting the most. Zhao Qianyi called Lin Xia every day and hysterically interrogated her about her relationship with He Chuan like a criminal. Even Lin Xuedong had some doubts. People will really do a lot of crazy things under great pressure. The two of them forced Lin Xia to swear that she would never go to study in the UK and would never have any involvement with He Ping and her son, otherwise they would come to Beijing to find her in person.
Lin Xia's inner anxiety and fear reached their peak, and she desperately longed for He Chuan, who was far away in England, to comfort her and reassure her. She understood that he was busy and didn't dare to bother him any further, but she repeatedly urged him to call her on the day of the end of the world. It was hard to say how much she believed in the Mayan prophecy, but she just wanted to make a bet with herself: if he could keep the appointment that day, then no matter how great the hardship was, they would be able to get through it smoothly. From a psychological perspective, this is called the obsessive-compulsive disorder of using random possibilities to predict future events, leaving all the results to fate.
2012 truly felt like a watershed year. The year before that was the age of the internet, a time of widespread rumors and gossip. A generation believed, with all their hearts, that after December 21st, the sun would stop rising, and humanity would cease to exist. The news was filled with reports that, years later, seemed unbelievable: people committed suicide out of fear, others gave away their wealth, protested in the streets, celebrities took the opportunity to announce their relationships, and a man reunited with his wife and lover, a "family of three" awaiting destruction together.
The Academy of Fine Arts held a "Doomsday Dance Party" that day. Everyone was laughing and saying that they would party until the last second of the earth. Lin Xia was dragged over by her roommate, but she was in no mood to play at all. She just sat in the corner from beginning to end, holding her phone tightly, her palms sweating, for fear of missing the news.
But no matter how many times she called him or sent him MSN messages, it was like a stone falling on the sea, without any response.
That day, she kept wandering around the playground, waiting until midnight, until the early morning, until the dance ended and everyone left, until the sun rose as usual the next day. The so-called doomsday prophecy was ultimately just a joke, just like the millennium. Her heart was like the dew on the lawn in the early morning, wet and cold, not frozen into ice, but just a layer of frost.
It wasn't until that evening that He Chuan called. He apologized profusely and explained that he had simply broken his phone while working. Lin Xia didn't lose her temper or blame him. She just said disheartenedly, "Oh, that's it. It doesn't matter. The world hasn't really ended anyway. Whether I called yesterday or not is no longer important."
But at that time, how could she know that he had gone through so much hardship, so much suffering, and that he had almost risked his life to come to this doomsday appointment and fulfill her insignificant girlish wish. But he didn't say it, he never talked about any of his suffering or difficulties. She loved him for this, but also hated him for this.
Immersed in the past, Lin Xia had lost her mind. It was Ji Min's voice that brought her back to reality:
"After that day, I don't know why, my love for him just vanished. He wasn't what I imagined him to be. We were two different kinds of people, not suitable for each other. Maybe from the beginning to the end, I was just fond of the He Chuan I imagined. Afterwards, I endured for two years, but failed the LPC, so I simply returned to China. I haven't had any contact with him since then, and went to Shanghai to join Owen, where I've been ever since. I didn't expect that he would return to China this year and become a partner in Owen Shenzhen. I wasn't supposed to come on this business trip, but I came anyway. On the one hand, I wanted to catch up with him, an old classmate, and on the other hand, I wanted to meet the legendary you."
Ji Min chuckled. "I don't know when you broke up, but I know he definitely still can't let you go. Shenzhen Owen's office is just down the hall from your company. I don't think there's such a coincidence in the world."
Lin Xia was speechless for a moment, not knowing what to say to her.
Seeing that she didn't respond, Ji Min continued with all his might, "If you two continue to hesitate like this, I won't be polite! After so many years, He Chuan's stock has soared, and his value has doubled. I really regret letting go so early!"
Lin Xia couldn't stand it any longer: "Whatever you want to do has nothing to do with me!"
She looked directly into Ji Min's eyes and spoke seriously:
"There were misunderstandings and misses between us, but those were not the real reasons that led to our separation. I know you told me these things out of kindness, but I can't thank you enough. He is definitely not the kind of person you imagine. You underestimated him. You don't know how hard he has worked to get to this point. He is so honest and kind, has such self-respect, and sticks to his bottom line. If he could really do anything for money, then he could have lived a much easier life a long time ago. There are some things that he finds difficult to say. He must have his reasons. It has been like this since he was a child. He doesn't want anyone to know about the hardships and sufferings he has endured. Although I have complaints in my heart, I respect his decision. Maybe he will tell me one day, maybe not, but in any case, this is a matter between He Chuan and me, and it should not be said by anyone else."
Ji Min was stunned after hearing this. She was surprised, angry, and confused. But after a few seconds, her expression gradually softened, and she became relieved and happy.
"You really are the person who understands him the most in the world. It's no wonder he loves you so deeply. Soulmates are hard to come by, so you must not let this fate go to waste."
Ji Min smiled and waved her hand: "Don't mind me, I was just trying to provoke you, but unfortunately you didn't fall for it. Don't worry, I've been married for a long time. Who would wait so many years for a unrequited love in their youth? Look, this is my son, he's two years old, isn't he cute?"
Lin Xia was caught off guard when she was shoved in front of her face with her phone. Looking at the chubby little boy on the screen, she didn't react for a moment and answered like a parrot:
"cute......"
"Tsk, stop lying to me. I'm sick of seeing this brat!"
Seeing Lin Xia's face showing an almost dead expression, Ji Min chuckled:
"Okay, okay, I won't tease you anymore. I'm leaving. I'm going back to Shanghai tomorrow. If you have the chance, come and play with me with He Chuan!"
After Ji Min left, Lin Xia was left sitting there alone, mechanically stirring the half-melted mojito with a straw, feeling mixed emotions.
In reality, she had lied. She hadn't acted as confidently as she had. Deep down, she was grateful for Ji Min's words. They were like a piece of a puzzle falling into place, filling in the blanks in her mind about He Chuan over the years. But at the same time, this also brought on a heavy sense of guilt and remorse. She was the one who had caused their breakup, and she was actually adding to the blame.
Soul mates, how could she and He Chuan be soul mates?
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