Cactus in Distress Chapter 29

Chapter 29


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Sun Yutan’s decision to go to Giethoorn was completely impulsive.

Sun Nianxi and Lin Xuan were caught in a scandal, and the former called her in tears early in the morning. She was so scared that she woke up in an instant. When she found Sun Nianxi, she saw her sitting on a seat at a bus stop.

After sitting in silence for a while, she then took Sun Nianxi back home.

She sighed as she applied medicine to her swollen cheek. “Your mother is really vicious.”

“I think she still showed mercy.” Sun Nianxi’s emotions had calmed down at this point.

“And him?”

“My mom hit him.” She put her phone, which was on silent, aside and received another call. She flipped the screen over. “Do you think I should go out and hide for a while?”

Sun Yutan nodded, and her hand was grabbed by Sun Nianxi. “Stay with me.”

“Where should we go?”

Sun Nianxi opened a ticket booking app and scrolled through it. “Let’s go somewhere far.”

They boarded a plane bound for Amsterdam.

After a twelve-hour flight from day to night, they arrived in Giethoorn after a series of transfers.

On the second night of their stay in this tranquil village, it rained. When the sky cleared up, Sun Nianxi became excited, dragging Sun Yutan to rent a small red boat.

Both of them had poor skills, stumbling all the way and constantly colliding with other boats. The foreign friends were very excited, laughing hysterically every time they were bumped into and even bumping back on purpose.

As they reached the back of the boat, both of them had become numb from the collisions and laughter. They supported each other and got off the boat.

When she was happy, she was completely immersed in her happiness. However, after the calm, those suppressed and unresolved emotions didn’t weaken at all, but instead bounced back with even more force.

Sun Yutan accompanied her in silence.

The relationship between these two people had never been conventional. No matter how one looked at it, it was difficult to understand.

Sun Nianxi and Lin Xuan were cousins. Lin Xuan’s parents were often away from home. During summer and winter breaks, they would leave Lin Xuan with Sun Nianxi’s family.

Although Sun Nianxi was only two years older than Lin Xuan, she looked very much like an older sister. She would take care of him, eat with him, bathe him, play with him, and sleep with him. As they grew up, their innocent sleep became something more substantial.

In Sun Nianxi’s words, they didn’t understand anything when they started being physically affectionate with each other. But after she went to school for a few years, she vaguely understood that those things were not supposed to happen. She and her cousin brother were not supposed to share a bed.

However, Lin Xuan didn’t understand that. He would wake up in the middle of the night, find that she wasn’t there, and without crying or making a fuss, climb onto her bed and sleep beside her.

The adults found it amusing and joked that Lin Xuan was too attached to his older sister.

Only Sun Nianxi knew that in the early morning, when they were both half asleep, Lin Xuan would hug her and rub against her. Occasionally, she would be awakened by the movement and see Lin Xuan’s face close to hers. He would be sleeping soundly with his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted, and his long eyelashes fanning out like feathers.

She felt both distressed and curious, so she crawled under the covers and took off Lin Xuan’s pants. His little brother was small and stood up like a finger, completely different in structure from hers.

Lin Xuan also woke up and moved his leg. “Sister.”

Sun Nianxi crawled out and pinched his face, asking seriously, “Why do you always poke me?”

Lin Xuan looked innocent, “I don’t.”

“How come you don’t?” Sun Nianxi caught his little bird, trying to catch him red-handed. “It’s this thing that pokes me awake.”

“I’m sorry,” said Lin Xuan, his face turning red. He didn’t know why it was standing up.

By the time they both understood what it was all about, they had grown into awkward teenagers and never mentioned their childhood experiences again.

However, Lin Xuan still clung to her. At the age of fifteen or sixteen, although he no longer insisted on sleeping in the same bed with his cousin sister, he had no reservations about physical contact. When the two of them sat on the sofa together, he would lean his body on hers and rest his chin on her neck when she was playing with something.

Sun Nianxi didn’t know if she had weak willpower or a petty mindset. She really couldn’t be as natural as him, nor did she believe his seemingly nonchalant attitude. As he held her waist and they looked at comics together once again, she leaned in for a kiss.

It turned out that Lin Xuan had been pretending all along. He quickly took charge of the situation, causing things to spiral out of control.

Seventeen-year-old Sun Nianxi and her fifteen-year-old cousin rolled into a ball on the couch. Luckily, both of them lacked experience and didn’t go all the way.

But once this kind of thing started, everything would have to change.

The adults were unsuspecting of their intimacy. Lin Xuan was unscrupulous. Not long after the sofa incident, during the summer vacation, the two tasted the forbidden fruit by the handwashing sink.

Sun Nianxi was constantly filled with fear and made a resolution in her heart each time, but Lin Xuan’s tricks were top notch, so her determination couldn’t last.

There were times when they lost touch. She went to study far away in Tangwai, deliberately choosing times when he wasn’t aware to come back home. They didn’t speak for two solid years.

Later, when he graduated from high school, he informed his family that he was going out to have fun, but the very next day he sought her out at her dormitory.

At the age of twenty, Sun Nianxi could no longer be irresponsible and she knew she couldn’t bear the consequences. She had a calm conversation with Lin Xuan, telling him that what they had before was just child’s play and that he was now blinded by a momentary impulse. She also said that there were countless good girls waiting for him when he entered university and that they still had a long road ahead.

Lin Xuan smiled as if he had listened to her words. However, when it came time to choose his university, he only applied to universities in Tangcheng. Sun Nianxi didn’t know what to do and eventually decided to study abroad at Waseda University for a year. Perhaps she knew deep down what being with Lin Xuan would entail and didn’t have the confidence to maintain a long-distance relationship with him. After all, time would continue to pass, and things may not have worked out in the end.

Eventually, the two of them ended up in bed together.

During the last year of college and three years of graduate school, they forgot their own names and identities. Sun Nianxi had carried her emotional baggage for so long that she didn’t even feel suffocated anymore. 

She joked with Lin Xuan that they might get caught by their families in a compromising situation and end up getting beaten to death.

Lin Xuan said, “If you’re so worried, I might as well go to Uncle and Auntie and apologize to them. That way, we can solve the problem once and for all.”

“Do you think everything will be fine once we come clean? The moment we do, it’s over. Impossible. My mom will force me to break up with you even if it kills me.”

Lin Xuan asked, “Will you do it?” and then sneered, “Of course you will. You said you didn’t want me, and you could easily break up with me. But I don’t care if you break up with me or not, I won’t let you go.”

When Sun Yutan first heard Sun Nianxi’s love story, she was in shock.

Sun Nianxi said to Sun Yutan in her senior year of college, “What’s wrong with me? How could I want to sleep with my younger cousin?”

“Yes, what’s wrong with you?” She never expected that her rational and intelligent companion, Sun Nianxi, would take such an unusual path, nor did she expect that her handsome boyfriend, who was two years younger, would turn out to be her cousin. Her mind was filled with biological knowledge and ethical principles, and she said, “Are you crazy, my friend?”

“Oh, did I forget to mention that we don’t have a blood relationship? My aunt was adopted by my grandmother,” Sun Nianxi said, looking very distressed. “Actually, I’ve thought about this a lot. Does blood relationship really determine everything? Is it that important? My aunt and us don’t have a blood relationship, but it doesn’t prevent us from being close and supportive as a family. So what’s the difference between me and Lin Xuan as siblings?”

“There’s a difference,” said Sun Yutan, “The difference is that you two knew early on that you weren’t truly blood-related, so when you were teenagers experiencing first love, you didn’t really want to restrain yourselves. Instead, because of the different kind of stimulation, things got out of hand.”

Sun Nianxi said, “Why are you so straightforward?”

“Of course, the main reason is that you two are not ordinary people,” Sun Yutan said.

“Is it shocking?”

“Yes,” Sun Yutan exaggeratedly rubbed her head, “I’m still a bit overwhelmed. Sun Nianxi, you are so bold. How could you dare?”

“I don’t know either. But this is a situation where it’s better to be open than to keep it hidden. If I think back to the first three years, I thought I was mature and level-headed, and that time would eventually fade everything away. But in the end, there wasn’t a single moment where I truly moved on. I would suddenly remember and think about it. So, it’s better to follow our hearts, satisfy ourselves, and maybe if we do get what we want, we’ll find out it’s not that big of a deal. Eventually, we’ll get tired of it and it will naturally come to an end.”

Who would have thought that the two of them would become more and more inseparable as time went on. In the year of long-distance, they were apart more than they were together, but their passion burned even hotter, throwing all caution to the wind, which was why they ended up being caught in bed by Sun Nianxi’s mother.


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