Chapter 15. The Road Back
In the dim stairwell, the two of them kissed each other quietly and lingeringly, their lips intertwined.
It was almost a kiss between lovers.
Her lips were soft, with a hint of tea fragrance, sweet and tempting.
His heart seemed to be gently crumpled and unfolded by her fingertips, and the numbness repeatedly spread from his heart to his whole body.
He wanted to push her away, but found that he couldn't do it at all. His reason was completely lost at this moment.
The deep longing of the past six years seemed to have finally been erased at this moment, and her unique scent lingered on the tip of my nose, filling my heart with warmth and fragrance.
Yes, she was in his arms, so close, so ambiguous, so beautiful.
This realization made Yi Lingjia open his eyes again to confirm whether this was another dream that was about to be shattered as usual.
What caught my eye were Ke Fan's cold eyes and eyebrows melted by tenderness, and his tightly closed thick eyelashes were like a silent sea, tempting and addictive.
His hands left his pockets and cupped her face. Her slightly cold cheeks gradually warmed up, and her breath seemed to get hotter.
He still felt it was not enough.
His hands covered her back, stroking the familiar curve of her back, then moved down and tightly wrapped around her waist, like a child holding his treasure, unwilling to let go.
His fingertips pressed against the thin fabric of her waist, and he could feel her breathing rising and falling slightly due to her rapid heartbeat.
He needed all the evidence to prove the reality of this moment.
He continued to deepen the kiss, sucking her lips devoutly and absorbing the sweetness in them.
Ke Fan was almost unable to breathe from the kiss and moved back slightly.
The next second, Yi Lingjia pulled her back into his arms. He put his hands around her waist, prolonging the kiss endlessly.
Biting her lower lip, restrainedly and a little punishingly.
As their lips touched, their breaths intertwined, and their emotions piled up to the point where they were difficult to control.
How could he let her go again?
But there was suddenly nothing between his hands.
Yi Lingjia felt a pain in his heart and opened his eyes anxiously.
But I was no longer in the corridor.
The heavy rain fell heavily and the sky was so gloomy that it seemed like it was about to collapse.
The water droplets under the eaves of the library splashed along the tiles, hitting the ground with a clatter, creating circles of water splashes.
He waited for several days before he finally stopped Ke Fan as he walked out of the library on such a rainy evening.
"Ke Fan, give me an explanation. What did you mean last time when you said we were not suitable?"
The girl opposite raised her face, a look colder than the sky, and her rosy lips, which he had kissed deeply, opened slightly:
"Don't you understand what I'm saying...it means breaking up."
"I don't understand. What did I do wrong? Didn't we agree before that my dad would send us abroad together?"
Yi Lingjia stubbornly stopped Ke Fan who wanted to leave, just like how she stopped her in the corridor that year when she wanted to pretend not to know her.
But this time, when she looked up at him, there was no longer any girlish shyness in her eyes, only a darkness that he could not understand.
"Yi Lingjia, we are not on the same path. You will always have the support of your family, but my life can only be controlled by myself."
"You still have me!" he said anxiously.
"I have you now, but what about in the future? People's hearts change. You said you loved me when you were 21, but what about when you were 27 or 37?"
Lowering her eyes, she said, "I don't believe in forever."
She opened her umbrella and walked quietly into the rain.
Yi Lingjia caught up with her and reached out to grab the handle of her umbrella. In just a few seconds, he was soaked.
His black hair was stuck to his face, making him look extremely disheveled, but his eyes were bright and burning:
"What about you, Ke Fan? Where were you when you were 37?"
The rain was getting heavier, and the rumble of thunder was rolling across the sky, like countless suppressed heartbeats.
"Have you put me in your forever, your future?"
His voice was trembling, and each word was forced out from between his clenched teeth, almost tearing himself apart.
"Don't think I don't know that you applied for a doctorate in Hai City."
Ke Fan's expression suddenly changed.
He stared at her without blinking.
She didn't deny it.
Yi Lingjia's heart sank rapidly. When he was about to ask again, his vision suddenly changed again. Endless sea water came over him.
He was so startled that he took half a step back, but missed a step.
I reached forward anxiously, but what I grabbed was no longer the slender and cold umbrella handle, but a pair of rough and warm big hands.
Those hands held his, steadying him.
The cold sea water receded, the picture gradually brightened, and a face that was so familiar that it couldn't be more familiar gradually became clear, and the wrinkles on the face were as gentle and kind as in memory.
The gentle middle-aged man smiled indulgently and gently dropped a head on his head:
"Stinky boy, where have you been naughty again? Why are you so careless?"
Yi Lingjia seemed to become a child again, tears instantly falling from her eyes, and she stretched out her hands to the man in grievance:
"dad..."
The man looked at him lovingly and responded to his coquettishness with open arms:
"Brat, come here."
Suddenly, there was a loud brake sound.
Everything disappeared, there was no light, no sound, and he fell endlessly in the darkness.
I couldn't hold onto anything, couldn't feel anything, only the piercing pain in my chest.
Why can't he keep everyone?
It hurts so much, it hurts so much...it hurts so much that I almost suffocate.
What should I do? Is there anyone who can save me?
I don't want to experience it again, I don't want to feel it again, is there any way to stop the pain?
Just don’t have any more emotions, okay?
In the chaos, he seemed to hear the sound of his chest freezing bit by bit, gradually spreading to become an icy shell outside his entire body. The pain finally stopped slightly, allowing him to resume breathing.
"Boss, boss, are you okay?" A hurried cry sounded in his ears.
When Yi Lingjia opened his eyes, he met Li Jing's worried eyes in the rearview mirror.
"The guy in front of me just braked suddenly, so I braked too. Boss, are you okay? Did you get hit?"
It took him a few seconds to realize where he was.
In Li Jing's car, on the way home.
Barely woke up.
Even though I escaped from the nightmare, there was still a thin layer of sweat on my forehead and pain in my chest.
His hand subconsciously reached for the medicine bottle in his suit trouser pocket, but found nothing.
The medicine bottle is missing.
*
Li Jing didn't quite understand his boss's recent behavior.
There are very few restaurants serving Suzhou cuisine in Jinshi, but he insisted on ordering this style of cuisine that day and spent a long time choosing from the limited options.
Even though it was a Saturday and the whole day was busy, he still chose a route that was a long way off in order to get a higher score.
Sure enough, on the way home from dinner, the man in the back seat fell asleep from exhaustion.
Li Jing turned off the music quietly, looked at his brows which were furrowed even when he was asleep in the rearview mirror, and tried to drive the car more steadily, but his thoughts went back to three years ago.
"The boss's son who went to America to get rich is back."
Li Jing still remembers the time when he first met Yi Lingjia, amid the whispers of everyone gathered around him.
It's very different from what I imagined.
Where does his imagination come from?
From the photo on the desk of the former boss.
It was earlier, when he had just started working.
The general assistant was on sick leave that day, so he took over temporarily. It was his first time entering the boss's office, so he was inevitably nervous and his hands were shaking.
In addition, I had no experience in making coffee, and the foam was all over the floor and almost overflowed from the cup.
The more he reminded himself not to spill the coffee on the documents when placing the saucer, the more he failed to do so and a few drops splashed out.
When it falls on white paper, it quickly spreads out, and the dark water marks are very obvious.
Li Jing's head buzzed and he apologized profusely, not daring to look up at the middle-aged man sitting in the office chair, for fear of Thunder's wrath.
I have heard of cases before where an assistant like him was scolded and fired for failing to serve several other senior shareholders in the company well.
The person sitting in front of him is the chairman of Yi Group!
Li Jing's face flushed red as he bent down to wipe the stain, his heart almost jumping out of his throat.
Just then, he heard a gentle voice saying:
"It's not a problem, it's not an important document, just leave it there."
The imagined rage did not happen. Instead, he looked so friendly. Li Jing's nose felt sore and he mustered up the courage to look at the man opposite him.
He was also looking at her, the fine lines at the corners of his eyes slightly curved because of smiling, and there was a shallow dimple on the right side of his cheek.
The man said gently, "Why are your eyes still red? It's really not a big deal. Young people make mistakes all the time."
He pointed to a family photo on his desk and chuckled, "My son is about your age, but you're much more stable than that brat. If he brings me a cup of coffee, I might even lose this desk."
Li Jing looked in the direction of his finger.
The family photo shows a teenager wearing a basketball uniform, stretching his arms happily to hug his parents and making a playful "V" sign.
She is very tall, with messy black hair and round smiling eyes.
Carefree, with the same dimple on the right side as her father, which is filled with sunshine.
It seemed as if all the beauty in the world was written on his face.
But when Li Jing really saw him, he was a pale and emaciated young man.
At that time, the chairman had just died in a car accident.
The Yi family's business covers a lot of real estate and fisheries. The bigger the cake, the more likely it is to be coveted by others.
There has been a lot of internal fighting in recent years, and shareholders are alienated. Many people want to dismantle assets and start a new business.
A few have even started poaching clients.
The founder died in a car accident when he was in his prime, and everyone thought that no one could save this crumbling company.
Especially since he is just the son of a boss who "went abroad for a few years to gain experience".
But a miracle really happened.
This young man really pulled the company out of crisis, then redeemed the shares and gained absolute control.
"It's just good luck." The person who failed and left said so sarcastically.
Only Li Jing knew that his current boss was definitely not the pampered rich second generation in the eyes of others.
He brought back those poached clients one by one by having drinks with them.
I often drink until my stomach hurts and I vomit violently in a deserted corner.
Once, Li Jing sent him home and went to the kitchen to boil water. When he came out, he saw him sitting on the sofa, stroking a camera for a long time, and then gently put it down.
Things gradually got better, but he never turned back into the boy in the photo.
The sunlight seemed to have disappeared, and there was always a numb gloom in his brows.
His life was like a stagnant pool of water.
Ordinary, extremely ordinary.
It was as if the whole person was hidden under an icy shell, with almost no emotions.
There was almost no emotion until...
Li Jing recalled the evening when the sky was filled with colorful clouds at sea and he looked into his own heart-suffocating black eyes.
It seemed that from that day on, the stagnant calm was broken.
He would stare at the bruises on his hands in a daze, and then suddenly stand up and ask me to find a suit.
In fact, since that day at sea, Li Jing had vaguely guessed that the relationship between his boss and Dr. Ke must be complicated.
Yesterday afternoon, Li Jing secretly searched her personal homepage using a browser, hoping to find some clues.
Suddenly, Nie Fei appeared in the company without saying hello as usual, and came to his desk.
Nie Fei was originally talking on his phone while looking down at it:
"Li Xiaojing, help me check Boss Yi's schedule for next week. I have a client..."
Midway through his words, Nie Fei caught sight of Ke Fan's name and photo displayed on the screen. He was startled: "Why are you checking her out?"
Li Jing blinked and said innocently, "The boss helped them with their boat near the wind farm last time, and Oasis will treat us to dinner tomorrow. I was curious about her, so I looked her up. Mr. Nie, do you know her, too?"
Nie Fei's face flashed with an unnatural look: "Of course, haha, we are college classmates, but we have never been close friends."
Li Jing seemed completely oblivious. "Really? What a coincidence! Our ship and her met in the middle of the sea last time... Oh, yes, that time the boss got stood up."
Nie Fei laughed dryly a few times and said it was indeed a coincidence, then changed the subject a little stiffly:
"It's the middle of the day, I'm feeling sleepy. I'm going to get some coffee. Can I bring one for you too?"
He yawned as he spoke, as if he was really sleepy. He was completely different from the man who had just walked into the office with such pride and confidence.
Li Jing looked at him suspiciously as he hurried away with a cup in one hand.
His cell phone was accidentally left on the table.
The screen just happened to light up, and a new message came.
Li Jing took a quick look and saw a lighthouse portrait.
He felt strangely familiar.
After a moment, he remembered that it was exactly the same as the avatar of Yi Lingjia's other private email account.
The red and white lighthouse sits at the junction of the azure sea and the vast green fields, overlooking the vast ocean.
It stands there alone in the vast universe, lonely and determined.
Yi Lingjia once explained it to him when he asked out of curiosity.
"It's the lighthouse at White Cliffs in England. A long time ago, my friend and I planned to go there together."
"What happened next?" Li Jing asked.
Yi Lingjia's brows were gloomy and he did not answer.
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