Chapter 53
Tao Xi hadn't cried so loudly like this for a long time. He didn't know how long he had been crying. He could only feel that Lin Qinhe had been holding him tightly, patting his back gently, and patiently accompanying him in crying.
It was not until he had been crying for too long, choking and having difficulty breathing, and his tears were dry and could not flow out, that Lin Qinhe held his shoulders, gently kissed his completely red and swollen eyes, and said softly:
"Don't cry, let's eat cake and make a wish together."
Tao Xi forced open his sore and stinging eyes and looked straight at Lin Qinhe. He found that Lin Qinhe's eyes were also red. His chest heaved and he sobbed, then he nodded.
Lin Qinhe looked into Tao Xi's eyes. Those beautiful eyes were wet from crying. The eyelashes were stuck into small clusters by the tears. The dark pupils were flashing with a faint light after being soaked by tears.
He couldn't help but kiss Tao Xi's eyes again, then he held Tao Xi's wrist, half-hugged him and pulled him up from the carpet.
Tao Xi obediently took Lin Qinhe's hand and walked to the bathroom. After Lin Qinhe wet the towel with hot water and wrung it dry, he carefully wiped his face and eyes. At that moment, he was like a child, closing his eyes and slightly tilting his face up, feeling the touch of Lin Qinhe's fingers through the soft and wet towel, and occasionally sobbing intermittently.
Afterwards, Lin Qinhe took him to the restaurant and handed him a full cup of warm water. He took it, held the cup with both hands and drank it in big gulps. After drinking it, his intermittent sobbing finally stopped a little.
It was already past midnight, and the neon lights outside the floor-to-ceiling windows had dimmed a lot. Only the heavy snow was falling without stopping. The two teenagers held hands and returned to the carpet next to the floor-to-ceiling window and sat down side by side.
In fact, they both had a lot of questions to ask each other, but at this moment they just snuggled up to each other in tacit understanding and silence.
Tao Xi hugged her legs and rested her chin on her knees, watching Lin Qinhe take out the paper box of candles from under the coffee table and carefully insert the candles one by one into the cake.
He looked at Lin Qinhe's profile, and then at Lin Qinhe's fingers holding the candle. His head was empty because he had been crying for too long, but his eyes were full, as if filled with the cleansing light of the sky.
Seventeen colorful candles were placed on the cake. Lin Qinhe took out the lighter he had prepared earlier and asked Tao Xi softly, "Do you want to light the candles yourself?"
Tao Xi shook her head and said in a hoarse voice, "I want to see you."
He used to see that at his classmates’ birthday parties, it was the closest relatives who lit the candles on the cake.
Lin Qinhe said "OK" and used a lighter to light seventeen candles one by one. The warm yellow candlelight lit up in clusters, swaying in the pupils of the two.
He turned sideways and turned off the floor lamp. This corner and the two figures swayed in the orange candlelight.
"Close your eyes and make a wish." Lin Qinhe's voice was low and soft. He turned his head to look at Tao Xi, his long eyelashes drooping and being gently gazed at by the light and shadow.
Tao Xi stared at Lin Qinhe in a daze. After a long time, she slowly moved her gaze to the cake and candles. Then she looked at the candles with an unfocused look, as if she remembered something, and her eyes suddenly became moist again.
Lin Qinhe felt pain and tenderness in his heart, and asked softly, "What's wrong?"
Tao Xi shook her head, just held Lin Qinhe's hand tightly, and then closed her eyes in the flickering candlelight.
Dear mother, are you doing well in heaven?
Can you bless your child again?
May he and Lin Qinhe have a safe, peaceful and happy life.
May the hands they hold never separate.
Tao Xi opened his eyes and saw the flickering candlelight on seventeen candles. It was such a faint light, but it seemed to illuminate the past seventeen years.
He turned to look at Lin Qinhe and smiled.
Lin Qinhe looked at him intently, a smile on his face, and asked him, "Is the promise ready?"
Tao Xi nodded, holding Lin Qinhe's hand without letting go, and said, "Let's blow out the candles together."
"good."
The two of them put their heads close to the cake, and seventeen candles went out while swaying and dancing, like a sigh in the winter night.
"Happy birthday."
Lin Qinhe whispered to Tao Xi again.
After saying that, he leaned over.
It was still snowing outside the window, and every roof was covered with white dreams. Two young men sat leaning on each other in front of the window, kissing each other between their shallow and intertwined breaths, like snowflakes falling into the center of the lake, early cherry blossoms growing on the embankment, hot and lingering in silence.
In the end, Tao Xi only ate a small piece of the cake, because Lin Qinhe said that eating too many sweets in the middle of the night was bad for the body. He and Lin Qinhe pasted the group photo they had just taken that night on the next page of the album and solemnly wrote "17" under the photo with a pen.
It was already past one o'clock when they finished. Tao Xi took another slow shower in the bathroom of the master bedroom. When she came out, she saw Lin Qinhe sitting at the head of the bed in pajamas, looking down at his mobile phone. It was obvious that he had also taken a shower in another bathroom.
Tao Xi looked back and forth at Lin Qinhe's smoky gray pajamas with her two red and swollen eyes. She walked to the bed in her slippers, took off her shoes, crawled to Lin Qinhe's side, and asked in a natural way:
"Where do I sleep?"
When Lin Qinhe saw him coming out, she put down her phone, hugged his waist and put him on her legs, looked up at him slightly, and said, "There is only one bedroom prepared here."
Tao Xi sat on Lin Qinhe's lap with her legs apart, hugged Lin Qinhe's neck, glanced at the other pillow next to her, didn't notice the word "prepare", and asked with a blush on her face:
"What are the other two rooms?" He saw that there were two rooms with closed doors.
It was almost two o'clock. Lin Qinhe thought for a moment and said to Tao Xi, "I'll show you around now."
Tao Xi nodded quickly; he had been curious for a long time.
He followed Lin Qinhe out of the bedroom. The first room opened by Lin Qinhe was a piano room. Tao Xi followed him to the black grand piano in the center of the piano room. He walked around the piano and wanted to open the piano cover but held back. He just asked:
"Do you practice piano every day?"
Lin Qinhe said: "No, I practice it once in a while."
As he spoke, he opened the piano cover, played a few notes on the keys with his right hand, and asked Tao Xi, "What do you want to hear?"
Tao Xi thought for a while and said, "Let's sing "Happy Birthday"."
Lin Qinhe actually sat down and played a song of "Happy Birthday", but he added a lot of temporary adaptations, so that a simple and familiar song became complex and pleasant to the ear.
Tao Xi sat next to Lin Qinhe, watching his bony fingers play an almost brand new piece of music on the black and white piano keys.
"This is a completely new song, so it needs a new name." After Lin Qinhe finished playing, Tao Xi tilted his head to think, and his fingers randomly pressed a note on the keys.
Lin Qinhe took back his hands, looked at him, and said, "Say it "Happy Birthday, Mr. Tao Xi."
Tao Xi thought of the song "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" and was very satisfied with the name. She smiled and said, "Okay, thank you Mr. Lin Qinhe."
The two walked out of the piano room. Tao Xi followed Lin Qinhe to the next room, which was also the last room. He asked curiously, "Is this room a study or a bedroom?"
Lin Qinhe didn't answer him and opened the door directly. He looked up, but stood there at the door with nothing in his mind.
This is a spacious studio with a full wall of floor-to-ceiling windows to ensure ample lighting. There are three easels of different sizes, a large workbench, drawing boards, lighting, molds, lining cloths... The tall cabinets are filled with a lot of paints, brushes, drawing paper and other painting supplies. Almost everything needed for painting is available.
There is a gouache painting hanging on the wall on one side. In the painting, there are peach blossoms and flowing water in a clear stream in the valley. He once thoughtfully named it "Forest Flowers Filling the Stream".
Tao Xi's eyes trembled, as if all the fireworks and neon lights in the world were flashing in his eyes.
After staring blankly for a long while, he suddenly turned around and put his arms around Lin Qinhe's waist, buried his forehead in his shoulder, and rubbed it back and forth gently, causing his hair to blow up.
Lin Qinhe felt a little itchy from being rubbed, and laughed softly. Through the thin pajamas, he could feel the slight vibration of his chest. He asked him, "Do you know where to sleep now?"
Tao Xi said "hmm", and after a moment of silence, he looked up and stared at Lin Qinhe and said, "Don't forget what I said, when I make a lot of money in the future, I will buy a big house with a yard, and then you must live in the house I buy."
Lin Qinhe rubbed the back of his head and said, "Okay, I'll listen to you."
Tao Xi walked around the studio for a few times before reluctantly following Lin Qinhe back to the master bedroom. When she saw the big bed again, that feeling of embarrassment came back to her.
He never thought that he would be able to live with Lin Qinhe and even sleep with him so soon.
"Do you know your bed when you sleep?"
When Tao Xi heard Lin Qinhe asking him, he quickly said, "I don't recognize it."
He had slept on a bed with straw and a broken wooden bed in a room with ten people, but this was the first time he had slept on a bed this big and this soft, and he had an urge to roll around on the bed.
Tao Xi thought so and did so. She took off her slippers and climbed onto the bed. She rolled around on the bed, from one side to the other and then back again, and finally rolled into Lin Qinhe's arms.
Lin Qinhe put his arm around his waist, looked at him with amusement, kissed him lightly on the forehead, and said, "Go to bed early, it's very late."
Tao Xi was silent in Lin Qinhe's arms for a while, but still couldn't help asking the question he had always wanted to ask:
"How do you know that?"
Knowing what goes without saying.
Lin Qinhe turned sideways and turned off the light, plunging the bedroom into darkness. Then he covered himself with the quilt again and held Tao Xi in his arms again.
He only gave a general account of the matter of hiring people to investigate Taoxi Bay, omitting the details mentioned by the old man and the matter of Tao Jian.
Tao Xi listened to Lin Qinhe's story in a daze. Thinking of how Lin Qinhe had recognized him through his handwriting before, he felt that Lin Qinhe was terribly smart and sharp.
"Why haven't you said it out loud?" Lin Qinhe asked him calmly.
Tao Xi hesitated for a while, and finally said: "I promised my... my adoptive mother not to tell the truth before I come of age."
But in fact, he didn't take Guo Ping's plea to heart.
Only he himself knows the real reason.
Lin Qinhe's arms around Tao Xi suddenly clenched. Fortunately, the bedroom was dark and they could not see each other's expressions. He was silent for a while before he suppressed his fluctuating emotions and said in a deep voice:
"She has no right to ask this of you, and you don't have to keep your promise."
Tao Xi hummed and said, "So I was planning to tell you, but I didn't expect you to know it first."
He began to feel sleepy, his eyelids were fighting, but at the same time he was still excited and wanted to continue talking to Lin Qinhe. At this time, Lin Qinhe kissed him gently on the forehead again and whispered, "Go to sleep, good night."
Tao Xi hooked her neck and kissed Lin Qinhe gently on the forehead, and said drowsily: "Good night, but I can't seem to sleep."
Having said that, perhaps because she was tired of crying, or perhaps because she felt relieved that the secret had finally been entrusted to her, Tao Xi fell into a deep sleep within 10 minutes.
On the contrary, Lin Qinhe was not asleep. He kept his eyes open in the darkness, listening to Tao Xi's shallow breathing, his expression was almost solemn.
He said he wanted to take Taoxi home, but he knew that home was not just a few blood-related people living under one roof.
He will definitely let Tao Xi recognize his relatives, but can Tao Xi really return to the so-called new family? How is he going to get along with the relatives he hasn't lived with for seventeen years? What's more, there were already conflicts among those relatives, and there was also Yang Duole, whom they had raised for more than ten years.
With a sensitive personality like Tao Xi, will she be hurt and wronged in this new family during the adjustment period?
He had to consider everything carefully, but he was an outsider to the Fang and Yang families after all and had no right to say anything.
So he had to give Tao Xi a home first and give him an eternal retreat.
He even thought, what if those relatives could not accept Tao Xi well.
Then he would be happy to be Taoxi's only family.
The author has something to say:
I’m sorry that I’ve been really busy with the three-dimensional world recently, and I’ve been having some writer’s block, so the updates are very unstable. If I can’t update on the same day, I will explain it in the comments of the latest chapter around 7pm. Thank you all for your continued follow-up and encouragement!
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