TCOR CH47

Chapter 47: I don’t want to like him anymore

It’s strange. The dreams I’ve been having lately about Shen Wunian are all so strange.

Although it can be explained by the fact that what you think about during the day is what you dream about at night, what are the chances that dreams from different times are connected? And there were people in the dreams that I didn’t know. This person looked like Shen Wunian and Philia’s adoptive father Ashmakine, no matter how you looked at it.

I covered my forehead and staggered to the door to go into the living room.

“You really saw it? You’re not lying to me, are you?”

“Really. If you don’t believe me, do you think I’ll believe my own mother?”

The young couple, Xie Yunze and Peng Dai, probably stayed home to keep an eye on me, and instead of going out on a beautiful Sunday, they sat on the floor around the coffee table, chatting away, not sure what they were up to.

Peng Dai saw me first and sat up. “Little Ai, why are you up? Has the fever gone down?”

“It’s gone down. I want to get up and walk around. I’ve been lying down for a long time and my back hurts a little.”

I didn’t feel anything except a little weakness, not even the tearing behind my back, which just gave me a little twinge. Should I say that the human body is really strong? Or maybe it’s just that I’m young and have a strong recovery rate.

“Do you want to eat? There’s chicken and mushroom congee, and pumpkin and millet congee. I’ll heat up whatever you want,” Xie Yunze said briskly as he got up from the floor.

“Pumpkin and millet congee, thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” Xie Yunze said, patting my shoulder as he walked past me and quickly headed for the kitchen.

I went to the bathroom and washed up quickly. The tooth marks on my Adam’s apple had faded quite a bit, leaving only a bruise.

I slept and woke up feeling groggy. For three days, Xie Yunze and Peng Dai took turns taking care of me. I wasn’t sure if they had seen the marks on my body. They probably had, because there was a big tooth mark on my Adam’s apple. But they acted as if nothing had happened, so I just let it go.

After I washed up, I sat on the sofa and saw a pair of flying chess pieces on the coffee table. I guessed that they were playing chess, except that Peng Dai was still holding a pair of red-rimmed glasses. I wondered what they were for.

“Xie Yunze’s mother gave them to him and said you can find people with Redvein Syndrome in a crowd,” Peng Dai saw my puzzled expression and volunteered to explain, “What about stimulating the manifestation of Redvein Worms by emitting far infrared light of a certain wavelength…”

Xie Yunze in the kitchen heard this and, fearing that Peng Dai was misleading me, hastily corrected him out loud, “Is that what I just told you? What I said clearly was that the red line worms have a very narrow band of visible light, probably between 8.3 and 8.5 microns. If there is any other light, they are like chameleons and cannot be seen by humans, but this device can simulate a monochromatic light environment with an extremely narrow band and filter out other light.”

I was still confused by Peng Dai’s explanation, but Xie Yunze’s words made the principle of the glasses much more understandable.

I exclaimed, “I’ve always heard that red thread worms can be detected by far-infrared light, and I thought that this kind of infrared physiotherapy device would do the trick…”

There are thousands of rare diseases in the world. Just as people without children don’t pay attention to products for mothers and children, ordinary people don’t pay special attention to the specific circumstances under which the Red Thread in Redvein Syndrome will appear. When I planned Yu Xiaoshan’s Red Thread exhibition before, I did my homework, but I left this part out.

Xie Yunze laughed, “If it were that simple, my mother and the others wouldn’t have had to do so much research.

“Recently, there have been so many marches around the world about ‘standing up for Redvein’s human rights and freedom. Everyone is clamoring for Redvein’s privacy rights and to stop the government from releasing Redvein’s identity information to the public again. Can these glasses still be released?” Peng Dai asked, playing with the red glasses in her hands.

Yu Xiaoshan’s shocking leap not only caused heated discussions in the country, but also drew strong reactions abroad. It can be said that… it was not in vain for him to sacrifice his life to complete this last work.

“It definitely won’t be released, otherwise my mother wouldn’t have sent me the glasses to play with. Ouch, it’s too hot…” Xie Yunze took the bowl of congee out of the microwave and hissed all the way over, “Quick, catch it, I can’t do it anymore!

I quickly grabbed a paper towel to catch it, and as soon as I turned around, I saw Peng Dai wearing the glasses and staring at me blankly. It was as if the glasses had possessed her.

I put down the porridge bowl uneasily: “What’s wrong?”

Peng Dai shook her head and without saying a word, took off her glasses and gave them to Xie Yunze who was standing nearby.

Xie Yunze put them on confusedly, then opened his mouth and stared at me blankly, just like Peng Dai.

This feeling was not good. Not that they were looking at me with a bad feeling, but I had a hunch that what happened next… would not be good.

“Little Ai, are you… a Redvein Syndrome patient?” Peng Dai asked cautiously. “Don’t worry, we won’t discriminate against you, I just want to know if you are sick.

“Redvein Syndrome?” I was shocked. ‘I… I’m not, I have no symptoms and I don’t have marbling. I said, opening the collar of my T-shirt a little to show them.

Xie Yunze took off his glasses and handed them to me, suggesting another possibility: “If it’s not Redvein, it must be Cure.”

When I put the glasses on, my vision immediately turned a strange red. I looked down at my body and saw a thin, fluorescent line growing from my chest. The line was thin and long, wrapping around my body like a ball of twine that would never unravel.

My scalp went numb and I looked up at Peng Dai and Xie Yunze. Their chests were clean and there was no fluorescent reaction on their bodies.

“Am I… a Cure?” This possibility, which I had never considered, suddenly dawned on me, and I was a little dazed.

Peng Dai was the quickest to react and she pulled me up and started walking towards the door, “We’ll know when we go for a checkup.

“Huh? Wait for me!” Xie Yunze fumbled for his phone and keys, and came out after us.

The headquarters of the Red Line Control Bureau in China is in the capital, where Xie Yunze’s mother works. Of course, we couldn’t travel thousands of miles just for a check-up. Fortunately, the Jiang City Center for Disease Control and Prevention has a Redline Clinic affiliated with the Redline Control Bureau that can perform simple tests for Redvein Syndrome.

“I will write you a prescription, pay the fee, and go next door to the room to get tested. You’ll know right away if it’s Cure or not.”

The Red Line Clinic is a quiet place, with just one consultation room, one exam room, and a pharmacy and cashier’s office. As soon as he heard the reason for our visit, the doctor in the white coat gave me a prescription for the test.

The examination room is a small room of ten square meters with a huge instrument like an operating light pointing at the floor. In the middle of the room is a circle, and the medical technician told me through an intercom to stand in the circle and then turned off the lights in the room.

It was pitch black, and the only sound I could hear was the humming of the instrument above my head. It was probably less than half a minute before the room lit up again.

“Okay, you can go out now,” the voice on the loudspeaker said again, informing me that the examination was over, and I left the examination room the same way I had entered it.

Peng Dai and Xie Yunze waited outside. When they saw me come out, they stood up and escorted me back to the previous consultation room.

“The doctor looked at Peng Dai and the others and ordered them to leave.

The two of them looked at each other and had no choice but to leave in disgrace.

The doctor looked at the report on the computer and said slowly, “You really are a Cure. However, the male and female worms are already combined, and in a few days or a few months they will disappear after mating and spawning, and it will have no effect on your body.”

I stared at him in shock, and after a while I opened my lips and said, “Why…why is that?”

Maybe it was because I hadn’t had any water since I woke up, but my voice sounded like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing against each other.

“If you’re asking why you’re a Cure, I can’t answer you, because the mechanism by which Redvein worms infect humans is still unclear. If you’re asking why the male and female worms are in a bonded state, then I must ask you in return…” The middle-aged doctor looked at me calmly and asked, “Have you fallen in love recently?

Shen Wunian.

The name almost popped into my head as a reflex, and then all sounds slowly faded away, and the doctor’s words sounded like some kind of distant echo.

“Some healers and Redveins become too close, and a situation similar to dream induction will occur, usually when the Redvein is more emotional. But it’s okay, as the Redvein-worm bond dissolves, this situation will gradually disappear…”

Dreamwalking, I opened the door. Ignoring Peng Dai and the others who had approached me, I walked out alone, speeding up until I was running. It seemed like someone was yelling at me from behind, but I didn’t stop.

I had no recollection of how I got into the car, and I had no recollection of how I got out. When I came to my senses, I was standing in front of Shen Wunian’s apartment building, ringing the doorbell over and over again.

I rang for several minutes, but there was no answer. Then I knocked on the door with my hand so that the neighbors would come out to see what was going on.

“This family just moved out two days ago,” the curly-haired old lady said, looking at me curiously. “I remember they used to live here too. Did they not tell you when they moved?”

“Moved…moved?” I took a step back, went back to the elevator, and even though I knew that pressing once or several times made no difference, I kept nervously pressing the down button, trying to make the elevator come up faster.

After waiting maybe ten seconds, I couldn’t wait any longer and took the safe passage on the side.

On the way down, I called Xu Meiqing.

“Hello, Xu Meiqing, do you know where Shen Wunian went?” As soon as the call connected, I couldn’t wait to ask.

There was a moment of silence before Xu Meiqing’s voice came through, “Mr. Shen is supposed to be having dinner with the Liang family tonight.

Liang family?

“Is it Liang Zai?”

The other person sighed and said, “I can’t say anymore. Mr. Shen told me not to tell you. After that, she didn’t give me a chance to ask any more questions and hung up the phone neatly.

Maybe I was running too fast, or maybe I had not fully recovered, but I lost my footing and slipped down the stairs. In a moment of crisis, I was lucky to grab the railing on the side and didn’t slide all the way down.

A sharp pain rose in the palm of my hand. I held it up to my face with shaking hands and saw that a large piece of skin had been torn off the top of the palm, the base of the four fingers. Small spots of blood were oozing from the wound, competing with each other, and the sight was very eerie.

I hung the hand out to dry and sat on the stairs, dialing Pei Huanchen’s number.

“Hello?” Pei Huanchen answered quickly, his voice as sunny and cheerful as ever.

“Is Shen Wunian with you?” I asked directly.

“Yes, he is. I even asked him why he didn’t bring you, and he said you had something to do. Little Ai, have you finished your business?”

“I’m coming over now. Can you talk to the guard at the bottom of the hill?”

“Yes, yes,” Pei Huanchen agreed immediately.

I took a taxi right away and went to Liang Zai as fast as I could.

Pei Huanchen was waiting for me at the door as usual and greeted me as soon as I got out of the car, “Little Ai, you’re finally here. Let’s go in together, they’re having dinner inside. He took my arm and led me inside, “I didn’t tell anyone you were coming, I want to surprise them.”

I was really shocked. As soon as Pei Huanchen and I entered the dining room, the atmosphere suddenly froze.

I thought Pei Huanchen’s “they” referred to Liang Zai and Shen Wunian, but I didn’t expect to see not only Philia, but also the old man with blond hair I had seen in my dream – Ashmekin.

Everyone looked at us, or rather at me, with surprise, while Shen Wunian’s expression was not only surprised, but also a little incredulous. It was as if he didn’t understand why there was a toad at the swans’ dinner party.

“My memory is so bad that I even got the names of some of the guests wrong,” Liang Zairen said as if he were a seasoned professional. Without losing his composure, he didn’t ask me why I was there, and simply waved for the servants to set out the new dishes.

I sat across from Shen Wunian, and the moment I looked up, I saw his gloomy and unpleasant expression.

When he saw me looking at him, he quickly looked away without a second glance and instead started chatting with the others. It was as if… he had never met me before.

I held my glass tightly in my hands, and my already subdued emotions surged with anger at his carefree attitude.

“Is this your friend, Huanchen?”

I froze for a moment and looked at Ashmakhin at the table, who had suddenly brought the conversation back to me.

Pei Huanchen said, “Yes, little Ai is my classmate and also Shen Wunian’s…”

“My assistant,” he said before Shen Wunian interrupted him.

Ashmakhin raised his glass and made a distant toast to me, smiling kindly and friendly, like Santa Claus, the children’s favorite in picture books: “Nice to meet you, my new friend. I’m Robert Ashmakhin, Uriel and Philia’s adoptive father.”

Normally, when such a big shot offers me a drink, I’m sure I’d be overwhelmed and flattered, but today I didn’t seem to feel much tension.

I smiled and raised my glass in return: “Hello, Mr. Ashmakinen. My name is Zhong Ai, Mr. Shen’s former assistant and his… healer.”

“Snap!”

Shen Wunian accidentally broke the glass and the table fell into a momentary silence.

The legs of the chair dragged on the floor, making a harsh sound. Shen Wunian suddenly stood up, stared at me coldly, and said, “You come with me. He said this, then pushed open the dining room door and walked out without looking back.

I drank the glass of dry red wine, looked away from the faces of the other people, and without saying anything, I left the dining room right behind him.

It was getting dark early in the summer, and the sky was still slightly lit after six o’clock. Shen Wunian walked quickly in front of us all the way out of the mansion. We stepped over the lush green grass and stopped under a huge camphor tree with thick branches and leaves.

The grass must have just been watered because it smelled moist and clean. Under the lights, you could even see tiny drops of water on the delicate veins of the leaves.

“Who told you to come here?” Shen Wunian’s eyebrows knit in anger and he points in the direction of the front door, “Leave, now!”

I stare at him, not missing a single expression on his face. “No one. I came here alone. Today I went to the Redvein Clinic for a checkup and found out that I am a Cure, and the Redvein worms are already in a combined state, which means… my Redvein was cured a long time ago.” My throat felt a little tight, so I took a deep breath and continued, “I want to know, is it because I am your Cure that you are approaching me, helping me and being nice to me, and you need to cure your Redvein Syndrome by making me fall in love with you… is that it?”

Shen Wunian looked at me steadily, and after a long while he said with conviction, “Yes.

Even though I had already guessed the answer, the shock of hearing him admit it himself was beyond my imagination.

I thought back to the beginning when Bai Qixuan told me to watch out for him. I still felt that I was ordinary and unimpressive, and that I had nothing to gain. It turned out that his goal was very clear from the beginning to the end, and he was coming at me with all his heart.

The air I had been holding suddenly let out, and I trembled and closed my eyes. “How could you do this…”

“What could I have done? Walked right up to you and asked you if you wanted to fall in love with a Redvein and then wait like a beggar for your mercy?”

I opened my eyes wide and glared at him, “I would never do that to you!

Shen Wunian snorted, “Of course you say that now.

The breeze rustled the leaves above us, and the grass on the ground danced slightly. Neither of us spoke for a while.

After a moment, Shen Wunian broke the silence, “Since we’ve come this far, I might as well tell you everything. Yes, from the time we first met, or rather, from the time I befriended that idiot Bai Qixuan, everything has been carefully planned by me. That stupid Pygmalion experiment was just an excuse to lure you. Your breaking up with Bai Qixuan was also arranged by me.”

He chuckled. “And remember those goodnight milks? I added a strong sleeping pill to them so that I could get your bodily fluids after you fell asleep. He stepped forward, pinching my cheeks and running his thumb over my lower lip. I’ve tasted your lips and your body countless times and I’m bored already…”

His fist tightened little by little, making his whole body shake. I tightened my lips and could taste a faint taste of blood in my mouth, but the pain seemed very weak.

“I never wanted to fall in love with you. The trial period was all a lie. I was cured before I went to the United States, so the first thing I did when I got back was to get rid of you. But you just wouldn’t go away…”

“Do you know how annoying you are to me, Zhong Ai?”

My body defended itself before my mind did, my fist raised high and then dropped, the hand on my chin released, Shen Wunian’s face tilted to the side and a cut opened at the corner of his lips, dripping a bright trail of blood.

He gently wiped the blood away with his knuckles, looked at it in his hand, and then suddenly shook his shoulders and laughed.

“So you can raise your claws.”

After laughing for a while, he took off the watch on his wrist, grabbed my right hand, and forced me to hold the metal strap of the watch: “Come on, wear this and hit me, it will hurt more. After you hit me, we’ll be even.” With that, he turned his face to the side and aimed my fist at his cheek to make it easier for me to hit him.

My eyes fell on the corner of his mouth, which was already starting to turn red and swell. I pushed him away and threw the silver watch in my hand to the ground.

“Why didn’t you just tell me about Redvein Syndrome when you got better? Do you think I would have bothered you?”

Shen Wunian took a few steps back to steady himself. He didn’t rush to answer, but first picked up the watch from the floor and put it back on.

“Are you sure you don’t want to fight? If you miss this chance, you won’t get another.” Seeing that I didn’t answer, he fastened the watch strap and straightened his sleeves before answering my previous question, “Who knows if you won’t bother me? I didn’t mean to make things so awkward with you, but you ruined everything.”

“I didn’t ask for your heart for nothing. I introduced you to Xu Ao, encouraged you to take up photography again, helped you get rid of your jerky ways… I’ve done enough. If you think that’s not enough, then you can name your price now.”

He lifted his chin slightly, looking completely condescending and arrogant.

In this atmosphere, I felt a hint of absurdity: “Are you trying to buy my feelings for you?”

As if he didn’t want to waste any more time with me, he took out a checkbook and a pen from the inside pocket of his suit, quickly signed his name, tore off a page and handed it to me: “Name, date, amount, fill it out however you want.”

This is the real him, this is the real him… I fell in love with only an illusion, a mask he made for me.

His care, love, and tenderness were all fake. That’s why he could withdraw so coldly and treat me so cruelly.

At one point, I thought I could have a home again, warm and comfortable, with someone I loved dearly. In the end, it was just my own self-righteousness, and I was still the same unloved little brat.

Shen Wunian had given me a beautiful illusion. When I was excited to move in, I discovered that it was full of cobwebs, and the beams and tiles were rotten.

When the sun shone in, everything turned into bubbles. It wasn’t even his house, it was just a movie studio that he had carefully built.

Of course, when the shooting was over, the actor had to go home.

The moment I realized this, a great wave of exhaustion washed over me: “No, I never loved you. What kind of relationship could I have had with you?”

Shen Wunian’s imperious expression froze, and the check showed a deep crease.

“Zhong Ai.”

“What I feel for you now is not love, it’s an illusion, and this illusion… is worthless.” I didn’t want to stay a moment longer. After I finished speaking, I ignored him and turned to leave alone.

I didn’t look back until I got on the bus that was going downhill. All the time I kept telling myself not to look back, not to look back.

I got off the bus at the gate and opened my left hand, which I had held tightly the whole time. The palm of my hand was bloody, but strangely, the pain was still minimal. In fact, I began to doubt that there was anything wrong with my perception of pain.

It took me two and a half hours to get from Liang Zai’s house to Xie Yunze’s rented apartment, which was in the middle of Jiang City. I took the subway four or five times.

As soon as I entered the house, I saw Peng Dai and Xie Yunze sitting on the sofa, waiting for me for a long time.

“Little Ai, where have you been? You scared us.”

“Brother, your face looks terrible, are you okay?”

The two of them stood up together, full of concern, and walked towards me.

“I…” I clutched my shirt to my chest and after taking two steps, my knees gave way and I fell to my knees.

“Little Ai!” Peng Dai cried, kneeling down with me and supporting me anxiously.

“The pain exploded instantly and I almost curled up like a melon worm.

“Where does it hurt? Where does it hurt?” Xie Yunze continued to rub my back.

I could no longer hold back my tears, which fell in large droplets. All the suppressed emotions were like a handful of hot oil that was calm on the surface, but as soon as it was doused with tears, it suddenly exploded in my body.

Frustration, sadness, remorse, anger, resentment, hatred… The emotions were like little fish trying to escape through the tiny cracks in my skin. In an instant, they made my whole body covered with wounds and bleeding.

“Everything hurts! I thought the healing wouldn’t hurt me. Why am I in so much pain?” I cried, not knowing what to do with the pain.

Peng Dai hugged me and kept reassuring me, “It’s okay, it’s okay, just cry it out, just cry it out.

“Sister, I am in so much pain…” I cried uncontrollably, “How could he hurt me so much? How could he use my love for him to do this to me? How could he… be so bad…”

“I don’t want to like him anymore… I don’t want to like him anymore…”

I didn’t look back, I didn’t linger, but I was in so much pain that I even wanted to dig out my heart, which had already been marked by Shen Wunian, and throw it away completely.