Chapter 43 – “Don’t you think the one left behind is more miserable?”
Thinking about it, Wen Yu felt goosebumps, Ying Chen’s face is extremely high, which is also the reason why he cares so much about his image. One day, he will become old, his hair will turn white, his body will go out of shape, and his face will have wrinkles
Wen Yu began to shiver, and even began to resist continuing to be together with Ying Chen.
Xia Mu put out his cigarette in the ashtray, and laughed: “Rong Di said you are his friend’s boyfriend, and repeatedly asked me to take you seriously. Presumably, that friend shouldn’t be an ordinary human being, right?”
“So, what are your plans? Are you still going to stay with him?”
“I…” Wen Yu said: “I haven’t thought about this kind of thing.”
“It’s nice not to think about anything.”
Xia Mu sighed, the soft light played on the corners of his melancholy eyes, where fine lines can be clearly seen: “Sorry. I’m sorry. I said something that shouldn’t be said, it added to your worries.”
He smiled and looked at Wen Yu, “Boy, enjoy this time to the fullest, and when passes, you can choose another life again. Right?”
Wen Yu nodded.
After leaving the bar, the teenager stood in the street with traffic, suddenly wanting to go back to the old dilapidated house where he used to live. He called for a car and went there directly without telling Ying Chen.
In the house, all the furniture is still in its original state. It’s just that it hasn’t been cleaned for a few months, and the room is covered with dust.
Even so, looking at the familiar atmosphere and furnishings in the house, Wen Yu can still feel full of intimacy.
Because this is the home he grew up in, and the place where he belongs.
The young man opened the window and skillfully cleaned the house up and down. And then sat in front of the easel in the small living room on the second floor.
It was an unfinished painting of his, a painting of memories that he had previously puzzled over. The night he left here, he put a cloth over the painting, and now he suddenly opened it, the forest landscape in the painting was as clear as it was imprinted in his brain.
That place was the place where he lived with Ying Chen in his last life. The main hall was in the middle of the forest here, the little rabbit he raised often ran to the stream to eat grass, some orioles would land in front of the window eaves and chirp crisply, and some fierce beasts appeared around the hall from time to time, only to flee in panic when they saw Ying Chen.
He remembered a bear escaping at that time, because of too much fear, it fell to the ground, and rolled over several times before finally getting up. He laughed for a long time at his clumsy and silly appearance.
It turned out that unknowingly he had remembered so many things from his previous life.
Wen Yu quickly took out the original oil paints left in this home, after mixing colors, he began to brush on the canvas. The prototype of an ancient and magnificent hall gradually appeared on the canvas. The young man pursed his lips, trying to find more details of the hall in his memory, trying to restore its entirety under the brush.
The fan creaked and blew, and sweat rolled from the boy’s forehead to the chin of his face, dripping onto the old floor. After a long time, the sultry room suddenly breathed in a refreshing and cool breath, and rushed around the boy.
The brush in Wen Yu’s hand paused, and he turned his head and called, “Ying Chen.”
Ying Chen appeared beside him and asked in a low voice, “How did you think of coming here?”
The teenager looked at the time and found that it was already past three in the morning, he apologized a little: “You’ve been waiting for me?”
“What do you think?” Ying Chen bent over and kissed the hair on top of his head: “I thought that something had happened to you.”
“How come?” Wen Yu raised his hand to show him the bracelet: “With this, what can happen to me, can’t you also find me easily?”
It’s not that easy.
Ying Chen sighed: “Let’s go home?”
Wen Yu raised the brush again and said, “I want to finish painting it.”
Ying Chen did not say anything, he quietly stood behind the teenager and watched him paint.
The morning sunlight slowly illuminated the dim room, and the tired-looking teenager finally put down his brush. Because of sitting for a long time, his brain was dizzy when he stood up, and his body swayed. From the corner of his eye, Ying Chen stretched out his hand, and then his body leaned directly towards him.
Then he closed his eyes comfortably and went to sleep.
He knew Ying Chen would take him home.
——
After waking up, he found himself lying on the large and comfortable bed in the bedroom at home. Ying Chen guarded him by the side, and brought back with him the painting he completed last night.
“Have I slept for a long time?”
“Not long.” Ying Chen came over to kiss him and bit his lips: “Have you already remembered a lot of things?”
Should be referring to the painting that he highly recreated out.
Wen Yu: “It’s okay, anyway, what I know, I know.”
“Can you tell me some of it?”
“My memory is your memory, what is there to say.”
Ying Chen held his hand tightly: “Different, your memory has a lot of things I do not know, for example, who told the snow spirit grass?”
Wen Yu was startled.
It was Rong Di who told him that this grass could save Ying Chen. And he, most likely, died on the way to pick the Snow Spirit Grass.
Did Rong Di want to save Ying Chen? Or did he want to let himself die?
Wen Yu cautiously replied, “This, I haven’t thought of yet?”
“Is it Rong Di?”
Ying Chen asked plainly.
But in this plainness, Wen Yu could perceive that Ying Chen was pretending to be plain. He also instinctively felt that if he told it was Rong Di, things might go in an extremely terrible direction.
Wen Yu innocently asked back, “Does Rong Di also know about the Snow Spirit Grass?”
Ying Chen looked at the bright eyes of the teenager, trying to find out something from it, and finally softly smiled and said: “There is no existence like us that does not know it. By the way. Don’t you want to thank Rong Di? I called him here today. He’s downstairs playing with Lin An right now.”
Downstairs, Lin An was studying middle school math in preparation for enrolling in school in September. Rong Di sat on the table biting a piece of watermelon and pointing: “Kid, you’re wrong here, you’re wrong here too. Kid, how come your grades aren’t as good as mine?”
Lin An frowned: “Uncle Rong, don’t bother me. My brother will have to check my homework later.”
Rong Di knocked him on the head with the back of his hand: “Uncle? You call Ying Chen big brother, but you call me uncle? I’m hundreds of years younger than Ying Chen, you know?”
Lin An: “Don’t joke. People can only live up to a hundred years.”
Rong Di: “You don’t know I’m not human?”
For fear that others do not know that he is like a thousand-year-old demon, his face is all showing off.
“Mr. Rong, don’t make such jokes with Lin An. He doesn’t understand yet,” Wen Yu hurriedly walked over and explained a little.
“You guys are really raising him like a human.”
Incredulous, Rong Di looked at the cold-faced Ying Chen behind Wen Yu and said, “Old friend, didn’t you come to thank me? How come you have a stinky face again? Can’t you smile to an old friend?”
Ying Chen narrowed his eyes and swept him a glance, and said to Wen Yu, “You guys talk first, I have to go out for a while.”
Ying Chen is not all idle, in order to maintain his identity and the wealth of the industry owned under this identity, he has to attend human social activities.
After hearing this, Rong Di jumped down from the table where Lin An was studying, his eyes chased after Ying Chen who went out: “You’re really something, aren’t you afraid of me doing something to your little devil?”
Ying Chen glanced at him, his body disappeared after leaving the entrance hall.
Rong Di sensed it, and indeed, Ying Chen’s breath cannot be found for many kilometers around. He tsked and shook his head at his old friend’s cold attitude: “Still ruthless, he really left. Say, how do you want to thank me?”
Wen Yu went to the cupboard to bring the tea set and made tea for Rong Di: “If Mr. Rong does not mind, I can draw a painting for you as a thank you gift, can I?”
Rong Di: “You can. Xia Mu said you are very talented, and it is only a matter of time before you become famous. I’m starting to collect your paintings now, then I’ll make money later when the value rises.”
“Mr. Rong is joking.”
Wen Yu smiled lightly and made a pot of tea for Rong Di. After asking Rong Di what kind of painting he wanted, he brought out the easel and oil painting tools from the room and sat in the hall to talk with Rong Di while painting.
Inadvertently, he asked, “In the past, did Mr. Rong tell me about the Snow Spirit Grass on purpose?”
Rong Di inclined his head and smiled: “You wanted to save that dragon, I just showed you the way. You ask this question, do you remember something?”
Wen Yu shook his head: “So did I end up saving him?”
Rong Di’s smile stagnated on his face, and after a long pause, he put down the cup in his hand and said, “You died. Should be from a fall from that cliff, because I and Ying Chen cannot reach that place, so Ying Chen cannot find your body, I also did not tell him where you went.”
Wen Yu: “After my death, was Ying Chen saved?”
Rong Di just confessed that he had indirectly killed Wen Yu, and was prepared for Wen Yu to question him, but he didn’t expect the child to be worried about Ying Chen after his death.
He snorted, “You are the one who made Ying Chen carry the sin, so when you died, the backlash he suffered also disappeared.”
It turns out that when he picked the Snow Spirit Grass, he can really save Ying Chen. If he can’t pick it in a place as dangerous as that, an ordinary human can easily die in distress. As long as he dies, Ying Chen’s illness can be cured.
Wen Yu understood Rong Di’s so intention and asked indifferently, “Is that why you are helping me now for no reason? Is it to compensate me?”
Rong Di: “I never thought about what would happen to you, as long as I could save my old friend, your life as a mere human is nothing. It’s just that I didn’t expect Ying Chen to be so crazy after you left, the kind of madness that is more painful than the backlash he suffered.”
“Indeed, it was presumptuous of me to do more than is required.” He gave a bitter laugh, looked at Wen Yu, and asked, “Do you hate me? Do you want to kill me?”
Wen Yu continued to draw, his face ripple-free as he shook his head, “Ying Chen should hate you more.”
Because in his last life, if he knew that his death could free Ying Chen, he would also be willing to die.
But after his death, Ying Chen…
Rong Di: “Yes, if he knew that I killed you, he will certainly kill me. It’s a relief for beings like us to die, someone who has been around for so long. But I don’t want to die now. I also have someone I want to protect, if I die, that person will also be sad, he may also become as crazy as Ying Chen back then.”
“Will you tell Ying Chen about this?” He looked at Wen Yu seriously, desperately wanting an answer.
Rong Di was trying to save Ying Chen, and he was also trying to save Ying Chen. The starting point was the same, and Wen Yu could not feel hatred for him, but only heartache for Ying Chen who had been struggling to find him for more than a thousand years.
Wen Yu looked at him sideways: “I have no memory, I don’t know if what you just said is true or not. So, I won’t talk about it blindly.”
Rong Di looked at the young man for a long time before moving his eyes away. He looked out the window, and said in a low voice: “If you need anything, just come to me, and I will do what I can for you.”
Wen Yu nodded gently and continued to draw.
Rong Di stopped talking because of the topic just now, and the hall fell into an eerie silence for a moment. It made the atmosphere quite awkward.
Wen Yu took the initiative to find a topic and asked, “You just said that you have someone you want to protect, is that person Teacher Xia Mu?”
“It’s him.”
Rong Di was very honest with Wen Yu because of his guilty conscience, and there was some confusion in his tone: “But he ignored me and offered to be only a friend. I really don’t understand what humans are thinking. Anyway, I have plenty of time for him, so let him be.”
Wen Yu knew the reason why Xia Mu ignored Rong Di, and it was also a problem he was facing himself.
At night, Ying Chen arrived home and found Wen Yu in the drawing room, he went over to hug the teenager as he always does, kissing his forehead. The hands stroking the waist gently moved down, and he took out something like a black button in the back pocket of Wen Yu’s trousers.
Wen Yu, unaware of this, pushed Ying Chen’s hands away that were wrapped around him, and said, “Ying Chen, I want you to promise me a request.”
Ying Chen quietly nestled the object in his hand and asked, “What?”
Wen Yu: “I can stay with you now, but if one day I become old, please allow me to leave you.”
Ying Chen gripped the teenager’s arms with force suddenly: “Why? Did Rong Di say something to you?”
Wen Yu’s throat was bitter, he averted his eyes: “I don’t want you to see me grow old.”
Ying Chen exhaled a shaky breath and said in a low voice: “Don’t you think the one left behind is more miserable?”
Wen Yu snapped his head up to look at him.
Yes, when he leaves, Ying Chen is still there, left with the memories of the two of them, once again tormented by the withering silence, day after day, and year after year.
Ying Chen rubbed his head: “Then I also have a request, please allow me to grow old with you.”
