Chapter 46 Huang Shiyu didn't know why...
Huang Shiyu somehow made his way from the dining table to the television in the living room, his eyes fixed intently on the news report.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say I'm feeling extremely anxious right now.
Clang, clang, clang...
The moment the phone rang, I gripped it tightly and brought it close to my eyes. The instant I saw the caller, I decisively pressed the answer button.
Were you on that plane?
The only response she received was the buzzing of her phone.
An uneasy feeling welled up inside her. She glanced at her phone; there was no signal interruption, nor did it display any message indicating that the call was out of service.
She suppressed her unease, her fingertips gripping the phone trembling slightly, as if announcing her inner fear. Her voice was forced calm as she spoke: "Hello... is the signal bad?"
After a sharp, piercing crackling sound, Zhang Jingyan's voice finally came through the phone, though it was intermittent.
"Here I am..."
"Can you hear me... Shigure..."
The news on TV was still reporting, and the host's voice sounded slightly choked as he expressed his hope that all passengers on flight CA996 would return safely.
The embassy in Vancouver is actively contacting the airline, and according to the rescue center, search and rescue operations have been launched.
As Huang Shiyu listened to the news broadcast, she was filled with mixed emotions. After taking a deep breath, she continued, "Jingyan... are you on the plane?"
She forced back her trembling voice.
How are things on your end?
After a long period of static, Zhang Jingyan's intermittent clicking sounds could be heard.
"The plane is shaking... I'm a little scared..."
Her fingers, gripping the fuselage, gradually turned white: "It'll be alright. The captain and flight attendants will definitely find a way. We'll definitely be able to wait for rescue."
That suffocating feeling reappeared out of nowhere, almost overflowing from my chest. It was so familiar; I couldn't remember experiencing this helpless moment a few years ago, like standing in an abyss, struggling on my own.
"I saw in the news that a rescue team has been dispatched, so we should be able to wait for them..."
Before she could finish offering words of comfort, Zhang Jingyan suddenly chuckled softly on the other end of the line.
The plane was rapidly descending through the air, so fast that Zhang Jingyan saw multiple images overlapping before her eyes. The dark night outside the window was like a woven net, trying to drag the plane down into the abyss below.
The cabin was filled not only with wailing and screaming, but also with people pulling out their phones and writing their wills while crying.
Everyone was on edge, no one could calm down, not even the flight attendants and the captain; their attempts to soothe the passengers were trembling with suppressed emotion.
In this situation, Zhang Jingyan surprisingly felt a sense of calm.
Because she clearly realized that her life had come to an end.
Whether you say it or not, it's all fate. Despite her greatest fear of dying far from home, she was ultimately led step by step by fate to the very thing she feared most.
The roar of the plane and the image of the flight attendant being thrown to the ceiling kept flashing before her eyes, so fast that it almost made her faint. The trembling face outside the window seemed to be a reflection of what happened after death, following her mind like a shadow, playing continuously.
Zhang Jingyan's face was deathly pale. She stared unblinkingly out the window and said weakly, "If we fly just a little more, we'll be in China. I feel like I can see the mountains of my motherland..."
Outside the window, there was only a desolate long night; looking down, there was no light or mountains to be seen on the ground.
Perhaps it was the indescribable loneliness and desolation in Zhang Jingyan's words that caused Huang Shiyu a momentary pang of pain in his heart.
"Where are you right now?" Huang Shiyu struggled to control his trembling hands. "Don't look down, please don't."
"Can you do me a favor?"
Amidst the sharp, piercing sound of electricity, Huang Shiyu caught this sentence.
"I'm listening, you have to hang in there."
Zhang Jingyan's voice was even weaker than before: "Go back to Yucheng and apologize for me."
Huang Shiyu stood still, her heart pounding wildly because of Zhang Jingyan's words. She couldn't take it anymore, grabbed her hair, and lost control of her emotions, yelling something into her phone.
"If you want to go back and apologize, then go back yourself. Why should I apologize for you?"
"I know this request is presumptuous, but please."
"Who should I apologize to?" My eyes welled up with tears without me even realizing it.
"At my father's grave, the Spring Festival happens to be his birthday. I can't go back. Please pass on my message: I don't want to have any regrets in the end."
"I will go."
After saying that, she felt even more distressed, as if a hand was choking her.
Zhang Jingyan's next words shattered her fragile nerves.
"I miss my dad so much, I want to go home."
Huang Shiyu didn't know how to answer her, so she could only tear at her hair as if in self-torture. Time seemed to freeze and stand still for her. Then she went crazy and ran out of the presidential suite, out of the elevator, and out of the hotel.
No one knows why she did it.
The only answers she received were the wind rushing past her ears, her labored breathing, her wildly beating heart, and the loud cries of her clothes battling the icy wind.
These sounds gradually began to creep into her mind, without any restraint, silently evoking the images she least wanted to recall, gradually making the previously blurry and unclear images clearer.
Beneath the collapsed buildings were the slightly upturned faces of a thousand people, like works of art meticulously sculpted by someone, each with the same expression, desperately seeking a last glimmer of life.
She realized that she wasn't completely oblivious to the past; it was just like she was wound up, and as long as... as long as someone turned that spring, the terrifying... horrifying music would return.
"Please hang in there a little longer." She kept running without stopping, not knowing where she was going, only that she had to keep running. "Please, we'll be rescued."
"It has unfortunately affected the plum tree you gave me, causing it great harm. I'm afraid it won't live to see the flowers bloom."
"Hang in there." Huang Shiyu suppressed her sobs, "Flowers bloom again, what are you saying? Everything will be alright."
She forgot the second half of the saying: "Youth never returns."
"Could you please not hang up...?"
Hearing the increasingly loud roaring and shaking sounds coming from the phone, Huang Shiyu gripped the phone tightly with both hands, her voice unusually panicked: "Hold on, just a little longer, it'll be over soon."
Receiving no response, he roared again, "Did you hear me...?"
Zhang Jingyan laughed: "I was quite scared at first, after all, I'm quite afraid of heights."
As the plane hit the ground, Zhang Jingyan, in her final moments before losing consciousness, gasped for breath, letting out her last cry: "All I want now is to go home... and I won't be able to hear the good news about your project going public..."
With a loud bang, Huang Shiyu seemed to realize something and gradually slowed down his running speed. However, as if stimulated by something, he mechanically repeated the running posture.
Tears that had been building up for so long rolled down her cheeks one after another, and within seconds, her face was covered in tears.
Zhang Jingyan is dead.
The person who wanted to go home the most died on that flight home.
She will never be able to go home. At the moment the plane crashed, her flesh and blood had already vaporized and merged with the air.
As she passed a French restaurant, she suddenly stopped her unsteady steps and looked down at the news broadcast in her hand.
As of 11 p.m. tonight, the missing CA996 flight crashed in the Xiwu Mountains in China, killing all 215 passengers and 21 crew members on board. We are deeply saddened and hope for a miracle...
"No, how long are you going to leave this cat with me? I hardly have any personal time. Look, I have to take this little devil with me when I go on a trip."
Li Xingzhou walked down Burrard Street, listening absentmindedly to Xiang Zhinan's complaints in the video.
Despite Xiang Zhinan's continued barrage of questions and incessant chatter, he remained unmoved and nonchalant.
As if she couldn't stand his incessant chatter, she glanced down at him and said, "Are you feeling wronged? Didn't you insist on raising him for me in the first place?"
In the video, Xiang Zhinan issued a series of protest statements: "Oh, even interest has its time limit. Besides, I thought it was cute at first, okay? You have no idea how fierce it is to me. Not only does it take over my bed, but it also likes to hit me. Can my handsome face be ruined like this?!"
Xiang Zhinan was wearing a headband, which pulled back all the bangs that covered her eyebrows. At a glance, you could clearly see several light pink scratches on her forehead, which were obviously from a cat.
Li Xingzhou naturally noticed this as well. Just as he was about to offer some words of comfort, Yu Guang seemed to see someone and suddenly looked up, not forgetting to say to Zhi Nan, "Wait a minute."
He hung up the phone without offering any further explanation, because he clearly had more important things to do at that moment.
"Hello." Xiang Zhinan, who clearly knew he had been hung up on, just held the phone and said to the cat lying next to him, who was giving him a dirty look, in a cheeky tone, "Wow, your dad doesn't want you anymore, I'm telling you, if you keep being so mean to me."
He paused for a moment, quickly organized his thoughts, and threatened in a fierce and imposing manner: "If you keep acting so aggressive, listen to me, I won't give you any of your snacks!"
Seeing that the cat ignored him, Xiang Zhinan felt that his dignity as a human being had been challenged by a little glutton. He had to get back at the cat and decided to teach this ungrateful little glutton a lesson.
Sure enough, his eyes lit up, and he remembered how his older sister used to bully him when he was a child. He ran back faster than a rocket, carrying a big bag of things.
His expression was almost identical to that of someone revealing the winner of an award at a ceremony. He eagerly pulled out the things he had prepared earlier from his bag, his hands almost unable to hold them, and his face was beaming with joy. "Look what I bought today! Sausages, cheese..."
"You don't look well. What happened?" Li Xingzhou asked Huang Shiyu, who was squatting by the roadside with her head in her hands, her face hidden from view.
Huang Shiyu, who had been wishing she could hide in a corner, suddenly heard Li Xingzhou's gentle voice.
She clung to Li Xingzhou's arm as if it were a lifeline, shouting at the top of her lungs, "Get me a car! Or a plane will do! But it has to be full of gas!"
"What happened?" Li Xingzhou also bent down and squatted down.
“CA996,” she said vacantly, her voice erratic.
"Hurry! Otherwise it will be too late! It will really be too late!" she muttered to herself. "I'm serious... it will really be too late..."
Li Xingzhou looked down at Huang Shiyu, whose face was streaked with tears. He had never seen her so distraught. Besides disbelief, he also realized that something was happening quietly without his knowledge.
"Where exactly is she?" she murmured, her eyes red and brimming with hot tears as she looked at Li Xingzhou and said softly, "She's gone, Zhang Jingyan is gone, something happened to CA996."
These words shocked Li Xingzhou, and Huang Shiyu's series of accusations completely stunned him.
"Why do I have to go through this again!"
Who could have imagined that someone you met just a few hours ago would suddenly pass away?
"Now I'm finally... finally I won't hear their cries for help anymore when I go to sleep at night, and I won't see their terrified faces anymore. Do you know that feeling?"
As she spoke, the images that gave her the biggest headache and that she couldn't shake began to surface one by one: the corpses buried underground were all missing limbs, some with only their heads remaining on the ground, and without exception, they had all died of terror.
Perhaps because she had cried too much, her voice was hoarse when she spoke, "I could only stand there and listen to these sounds, watching helplessly as they were pressed underground."
Amidst the horrified faces, she saw two kind and gentle faces smiling at her, their expressions exactly the same as before—like fireworks from her youth, fading away a few beats later, as distant as a mirage.
She wanted to seize this rare moment of warmth, but Li Xingzhou stopped her without saying a word. Although there were few cars on the street at this time, it was still too dangerous. Li Xingzhou grabbed Huang Shiyu's hand and pulled it to his chest, completely covering her. With his other free hand, he gently patted her back, the movement as gentle as tapping a rhythm on piano keys.
“My grandparents were sleeping soundly at home when they were murdered in their sleep by a landslide.”
She tilted her wet face slightly upward, staring intently into Li Xingzhou's eyes, and said in a trembling voice, "Do you understand that feeling? You don't know who to blame, you don't know who to hate, and you feel like you shouldn't even be alive."
Huang Shiyu shifted her gaze to the road, where she saw two figures she had longed for. She looked at them with their still kind and gentle smiles, but this time the smiles were too short. They slowly turned their heads, leaving the backs of their heads to Huang Shiyu, and walked straight ahead in unison.
Seeing this, Huang Shiyu panicked. She decisively withdrew her hand from Li Xingzhou and tried to catch up with them. Li Xingzhou noticed her movement and quickly grabbed her. Huang Shiyu struggled desperately in Li Xingzhou's arms, crying and trying to reach out and grasp at the void.
"Why am I the only one still alive? Why?!"
This desperate, hoarse cry seemed to be an attempt to vent all the grievances of a lifetime in one day.
"I didn't even get to see him one last time."
As the two illusory figures were about to disappear, she still tried to break free from Li Xingzhou's embrace. She wanted to see the two of them one last time.
"If only I could run faster, even faster..."
Just as she was about to let go, Li Xingzhou raised his hand and grasped her drooping hand. Many pedestrians walked by on both sides of the street, and every now and then someone would stop and pause for a moment, probably thinking that they were a couple arguing. Some people even left their heartfelt thoughts: "A bag can cure all diseases."
"Shiyu, stop." He hesitated for a long time before saying, "Your emotions are too volatile. Take a deep breath with me, take a deep breath."
He lowered his head to look at him, their noses almost touching, as if they were sharing a long, lingering kiss.
"Don't torture yourself. I don't think they would want to see you like this either."
Her eyes were vacant, and her voice was faint: "For a while, I often dreamed of them, and then for a while, they weren't in my dreams anymore. I wondered if they didn't want to come see me anymore."
This was the first time he had ever truly heard her talk about her family, but he didn't want it to be in this way.
He took out a palm-sized object from his pocket and put it on Huang Shiyu, saying, "Nature can be unfair sometimes. It's not your fault."
Huang Shiyu was taken aback by his actions and words.
"Your grandparents left this world with a sense of relief seeing you shine brightly, and they also wanted to see you living a good life."
It's music.
It was the piano piece that she had heard Li Xingzhou play in the piano room.
The initial unease seemed to dissipate with the sound of the piano piece.
This piano piece was also the only one that her grandparents would play on repeat on the radio every time they finished their farm work.
She remembers it vividly.
Indeed, memories have a flavor.
Hearing the familiar piano music, she said, "If you could... take me away from here."
"good."
"I'm leaving this shitty place, Vancouver, right now."
Li Xingzhou said, "I'll take you away."
The winter night was bitterly cold. She wiped away her tears and turned to take one last look at Vancouver in winter, but her gaze was drawn to the enormous plaza of the shopping mall.
The woman's beauty in the picture is breathtaking, the kind that gives you goosebumps, and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say she's stunning.
Huang Shiyu gazed at that familiar face. The woman in the picture was wearing an overly long velvet black dress that covered her from calves to feet. Perhaps because the background was black and white, her skin appeared too pale, but it was still captivating. At first glance, she was elegant and beautiful, like a classical painting.
What's even more captivating are those smiling eyes, not the kind of hearty, wild laughter, but rather like a touch of rouge on a face, a half-revealed smile, which can be described as bewitchingly flamboyant and unrestrained.
When Huang Shiyu saw those eyes, he stared at them for several seconds before turning his face away.
"You know, the person in this poster really has eyes that look like yours, especially when they smile," she exclaimed.
Li Xingzhou also turned around and looked at the woman in the picture. Two pairs of highly similar eyes looked at each other through the crowd, but there were still differences. One pair was smiling, and the other pair was dark and cold.
Then he slowly said, "She is a pianist. If I remember correctly, she was a resident judge of the Chopin International Piano Competition."
Huang Shiyu had heard at least eight hundred, if not a thousand, about this pianist's life. Her grandparents always played this female pianist's famous piece on repeat on the radio, which was also the piece that Li Xingzhou played in that self-service piano room. Unfortunately, she was a talented person who passed away at a young age.
"The eyes are so similar." No wonder she felt she had seen Li Xingzhou's eyes somewhere before; they were very similar to the woman in the poster. Those eyes, which could drip ink, seemed to be the work of the same masterful artist.
After gazing at him silently for a while, he said meaningfully, "My son has used up three vats of water, yet only one thing resembles Wang Xizhi."
But no one knew what those words meant to Li Xingzhou.
Huang Shiyu, who was standing next to him, didn't understand what he was trying to say by quoting this famous allusion. She could only think that it might be referring to the similarity in their eyes.
The two stood on the street, while pedestrians stopped to take photos of the square. The black and white background was made more vibrant by the green plants on the side. Vancouver is an outlier city in Canada. Compared to other cities, it is incredibly warm. This was the first thought that came to Huang Shiyu's mind after he got off the plane in Toronto.
As soon as they got off the plane, she and Li Xingzhou went to visit the plant sound therapist without even putting down their luggage.
She needs to keep herself busy non-stop, otherwise she's afraid her health will collapse before the police investigation results are released.
She has so many regrets in her life. If she could turn back time, she would definitely want to go back and change everything.
The taxi took them to a small villa surrounded by greenery. Before they even got close, they could hear people talking inside.
"I wanted to ask if it's okay to put this flower in a sunny spot, or if it should be rained on occasionally?"
Lee Seo-hee moved the potted plant she had just received from the box to the ground and said with a smile, "The Food Language Flower will grow very quickly if it gets some sunlight and rain, and then we can stop using the plant growth solution."
"Ever since we used your potion, everything has started to bloom," the woman said with a beaming smile, holding a pot of green plants with tiny flower buds.
Lee Seo-hee lowered her head, staring at the potted Talking Flower. Then she reached out and waved her hand slightly in the air before touching the green leaves of the flower. "It looks like the flower will grow better and better in ten days or half a month."
The woman was about to reply when she noticed someone pushing the door open and entering. She wisely said, "We have a guest, so I'll be leaving now."
The journey had been quite bumpy, leaving Huang Shiyu feeling slightly unwell. After all, no one is made of steel, and she hadn't slept much all night. Having rushed here, she was also a bit dizzy. Before she could even greet the plant sound therapist, the person in front of her greeted them first, though in a rather familiar tone.
"You've arrived, and this time you've brought a new friend with you."
"Hello," Huang Shiyu replied, then went straight to the point, "Could you help me treat this plum blossom?"
"Of course, I left my stethoscope in my bedroom on the second floor. Could you go get it for me?"
"I'll go." Huang Shiyu replied, placed the plum blossoms on the table beside him, and turned to head towards the second floor.
But Lee Seo-hee stopped her and said, "Let Xingzhou go; he knows the place."
Li Xingzhou didn't say anything, patted Huang Shiyu on the shoulder, and went straight upstairs.
Watching Li Xingzhou's departing figure, Huang Shiyu thought to himself, "He seems to know the way quite well; he must come here often."
The quiet little house was suddenly filled with the sound of footsteps overhead.
"Just a moment," Lee Seo-hee said.
To avoid an awkward atmosphere, Huang Shiyu asked, "May I look around?"
Lee Seo-hee nodded, pointed to the potted plants around the room, and said, "You can take your time to choose and look at them. Aren't these flowers all quite pretty?"
Huang Shiyu looked around and saw that many plants with withered leaves had thin tubes of different sizes inserted into them, like specimens in a laboratory, a kind of broken beauty. "Hmm, very beautiful. You can tell that the person who takes care of them is very careful and attentive."
"You've lived here for quite a while, haven't you?" Huang Shiyu, with her keen eye, noticed that although the outside of these thin tubes was very new, the outermost ring of the connecting paddle had a yellowish tinge. She thought that this thin tube must be something used as a medium.
“Nine years.” Lee Seo-hee answered as she picked up the five remaining potted plants from the box. These last few were the larger plants, and she struggled to move them. Unfortunately, her hand slipped, and despite her quick reflexes, the top plant was damaged.
A loud bang was heard.
Huang Shiyu turned around reflexively. Her mind went blank for a moment. Even such a loud noise would give her a momentary stress response.
It was Lee Seo-hee's voice that gradually pulled her dazed mind back to normal.
"I almost ruined my flowers."
Huang Shiyu watched as she squatted on the ground, groping around with her hands. "Your eyes..." She met her eyes again, which were not dull at all. Suddenly, it flashed through her mind that Li Xingzhou had told her that she was a blind plant sound therapist. She also squatted down to help her tidy up. "Are you alright?"
"It smells like earth, the scent of nature, isn't it wonderful?" Lee Seo-hee said with a smile.
How pleasant can the smell of soil be? At most, it's a mixture of plant fragrances.
However, Huang Shiyu had already mastered the art of speaking in a way that resonated with people. "Hmm, I can imagine what nature looks like."
“I remembered who you were as soon as you walked in.” Li Ruixi looked up at her. “I’ve heard about you on the financial news. You’re Huang Shiyu, the famous young entrepreneur.”
Huang Shiyu was startled: "You can't see me, so how do you know it's me?"
“Even though you can’t see, you still have ears.” Lee Seo-hee winked at her. “You can’t let your heart be blind too, even if you’re blind in your eyes.”
-----------------------
A note from the author: Happy Dragon Boat Festival everyone!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
