Shoutout to Alinaza for the commission!
When Jiang Se took away that piece of building block, she did not know to what extent Cen Li would eventually go for her.
But regarding Lu Huaiyan, she never worried he would give up on her.
Her only fear was that he would become a second Zhao Zhicheng. So when she left, she recorded him one last video.
Please don’t use love as the reason for committing a crime.
Please don’t become a criminal because of her.
Please leave her in the past.
“When you appeared in the basement, I suddenly felt very grateful that the one who won was me.” Jiang Se blinked, her long and dense lashes slowly dampening into thin strands. “I know you’re angry that I left you behind, but Lu Huaiyan, if I didn’t bring Cen Se back, I couldn’t properly respond to you. Only by loving myself well can I love others well.”
She also wanted, like other girls, to pursue love passionately and respond to love.
Family, romance, and all beautiful emotions in this world.
Feeling the dampness on his neck, Lu Huaiyan closed his eyes hard, then opened them, giving a deep “mm.” He cupped her face, touched her eye corner with his lips, and said, “You have already coaxed Lu Huaiyan. The twelve times you called ‘Older Brother Huaiyan’ coaxed him long ago.”
This night, she shed tears before him twice.
Once as eighteen-year-old Cen Se.
Once as twenty-three-year-old Jiang Se.
This girl cried especially quietly, without even a sob.
Her tears fell very slowly, sliding down her face like a slow-motion scene in a movie.
Lu Huaiyan felt heartache, and he also felt grateful.
At least this time she was crying in his arms. At least this time she wasn’t alone when she cried.
“I want to tell sixteen-year-old Cen Se, I’m very sorry I didn’t bring you back.” The man pressed his forehead to hers, his voice hoarser than ever, “And I also want to tell twenty-three-year-old Jiang Se, thank you for bringing her back, back into my arms.”
Jiang Se lifted her damp lashes and looked at Lu Huaiyan.
She hadn’t cried for a long time. The last time she cried was at eighteen.
In the more than five years after, her tear ducts seemed to have lost the ability to produce tears. No matter how painful or bitter or exhausted, she never cried again.
Even now, she still was not used to crying.
Jiang Se slowly stopped her tears.
The man’s lips had already reached the corner of her mouth. She parted her lips, wrapped her arms around his neck, and actively responded to his kiss.
They held each other very tightly, and kissed very deeply.
Like two fish pulled out of water, passing each other what little oxygen they had.
Their breathing gradually quickened and deepened. The desire suppressed for several days finally broke through all restraints and completely erupted in that moment.
Lu Huaiyan turned her around and pressed her against the headboard, lifting a hand to hook down her slender shoulder strap.
“Miss, tonight you can record a new debt,” he felt her heartbeat with his palm, his lips tracing along her long fair neck, leaving a mark on her shoulder, “I’m going to break my word.”
She still had injuries, mostly bruises from collisions. After several days, the dark purple had faded, leaving only a faint blue.
The knife wounds on her hand and wrist had also scabbed over.
He had said that as long as her injuries weren’t healed, he wouldn’t touch her.
But in the end, he couldn’t hold back.
The man’s hair was still wet. Jiang Se slipped her fingers into it, her fingertips gathering its cold dampness.
On such a humid spring night, she felt every part of herself was damp.
Her fingers, her cheeks, her lips, her neck.
In the dimness she looked at Lu Huaiyan’s eyes, darker and deeper than the night, and said, “Lu Huaiyan, I won’t coax you anymore. You’re the one who provoked me first.”
He had once laid his heart bare for her.
Now she also laid her heart bare for him. Just once. Never again after this.
Her eyes and lips were stained with a rosy hue.
Her almond eyes were clear and cool.
Her white body looked like a ball of cotton dropped into ink.
Lu Huaiyan lowered his head and kissed her eyes. “Alright. From now on I’ll be the one coaxing you.”
The sound of the river waves layered one after another under the moonlight.
As the third or fourth slap of river waves came in through the window, Jiang Se’s fingers buried in his hair trembled uncontrollably. The wound on the back of her hand tore with a faint sting, but she couldn’t feel pain at all, nor could she make a sound.
Under the sound of the river tides, a vision of white spray crashing against rocks seemed to appear before her eyes.
The moon was like flowing silver, the waves like piled snow.
The tide whispered and hissed. In her gaze only a field of white flame remained.
This feeling could not be recreated.
Both her heart and soul were filled with the sense of peace after returning to shore.
What she gave herself, and what another gave her.
The man’s hair was even wetter than before. Her palms were full of his sweat.
Breaths thin and dense, drowned in wave after wave of tide.
Jiang Se’s whole body swayed in a daze.
She couldn’t hold back and hugged Lu Huaiyan, her chin resting against his shoulder, saying in broken fragments, “Too much.”
At first, Lu Huaiyan thought he had hurt her, but later he understood that wasn’t what she meant.
What she meant was that the love was too much. The love she gave herself, and the love others gave her.
He lifted her face, damp with sweat, and kissed her almost fiercely.
“Too much what,” he lightly bit the tip of her tongue, “be more greedy with me, Jiang Se.”
There was still so much he wanted to give her.
Things related to love, and things unrelated to love. Whatever she wanted, he wanted to give.
Later, Lu Huaiyan carried her into the bathroom.
When they came out of the bathroom again, the sky had already broken into dawn.
A thin line of light had risen at the horizon where the river met the sky.
“Do you want to watch the sunrise?” Lu Huaiyan asked the girl in his arms who was closing her eyes to steady her breath. “Or do you want to sleep? If you want to sleep, we have to switch rooms.” The bed in this room couldn’t hold anyone anymore. The sheets and quilt were both wet and messy.
Jiang Se opened her eyes and looked toward the riverside, quietly watched for a moment, and said, “Watch the sunrise.”
She was actually exhausted.
She had been so tired in the bathroom she couldn’t stand, and he had held her the whole time. She had no idea where this man got so much energy. He’d been exhausted yesterday too, yet he seemed to have endless strength. Nothing was enough. Nothing ever ended.
In matters like this, Jiang Se never begged for mercy. She didn’t cry, and she didn’t call for him to stop. Even if she was exhausted down to her bones, she would tangle with him to the very end.
To others, they had always been rational and clear-headed.
But once they touched each other, they became mad.
Lu Huaiyan carried her and sat by the windowsill, and on the way he picked up his phone from the bed.
The whole night, both of their phones had been ringing from time to time.
But neither of them had the mind to look. All their attention was on each other, mutually taking and mutually holding.
Not long after, the sun leapt out from the river’s surface, like a ball of flame burning quietly.
Then someone’s phone rang again.
Jiang Se didn’t bother to shift her gaze. Her head was leaning softly against Lu Huaiyan’s shoulder. She said, “Help me look.”
Lu Huaiyan reached for the phone. “Yours. Your brother @ed you, asking why you aren’t replying him?”
As he spoke, he opened her hand and placed the phone there.
Jiang Ye had @ed her in the family group.
Only then did Jiang Se vaguely remember that last night, when Lu Huaiyan had come out of the bathroom, she had just said in the family group that she would go watch Jiang Ye’s final match the day after tomorrow.
Then Lu Huaiyan came over, and she put the phone down. After that, she never had a chance to look again.
Now the group already had many messages @ing her.
Yu Shiying: 【Do you want to go home for a day with Dad and Mom? Tell your dad to make your favorite plum ribs.】 @JiangSe
Jiang Chuan: 【Sese, your mom misses you.】 @JiangSe
Jiang Ye: 【You two only miss Second Sister? You don’t miss me at all?】 @YuShiying and @JiangChuan
Jiang Chuan: 【Didn’t you just come back two days ago? Stop pretending, Little Ye. The happiest person about your sister coming to watch the match is you.】 @JiangYe
Jiang Ye sent a whole string of emojis, then quietly asked: 【Are you coming back alone? Do you want Dad and Mom to pick you up at the airport?】 @JiangSe
The last message was the one from a minute ago, the one Lu Huaiyan mentioned, Jiang Ye asking why she wasn’t replying.
Jiang Se slowly finished reading every message. The corner of her lips curved unconsciously with a bit of a smile. She lowered her head to reply.
She was curled up completely inside Lu Huaiyan’s arms. As long as he lowered his eyes, he could see what she was typing.
But Lu Huaiyan didn’t look. Instead, he leaned sideways and kissed the corner of her smiling lips.
In private, he always liked touching her. Whether it carried desire or not, he liked touching her, especially her fingers, the corner of her lips, and her earlobes.
There was a kind of tender, intimate lingering between their temples.
When Jiang Se finished replying, his lips had already moved to her earlobe. Seeing she was done, his breath brushed against her ear as he asked, “You’re going to your brother’s match the day after tomorrow?”
Jiang Se made a soft “mm.” “Come with me. I told them you would.”
Lu Huaiyan said, “Alright.”
Jiang Se added, “After the match, I’ll go back to Tongcheng for a day. Are you going?”
Lu Huaiyan: “Do you want me to go with you?”
Jiang Se thought for a moment. “Mm.”
Lu Huaiyan smiled. “Then I’ll go. I’ll stop by and check on the project in Tongcheng.”
The morning light warmed them softly. Sleepiness washed over Jiang Se. She tugged his shirt and said, “I’m going to sleep. Take me to the next room.”
Lu Huaiyan lowered his eyes and looked at her.
This girl was always extra delicate after everything, though her voice still carried that cool, clear tone. Yet she could speak in a way that softened his whole heart.
A gentle smile rose in his eyes. He was about to lift her when his phone vibrated.
This time it was his phone.
Han Yin had sent him a photo.
Mother: 【Mom is sorting old pictures and suddenly found this. I guess it counts as your first photo with Sese.】
Mother: 【image.JPG】
Lu Huaiyan opened the photo, and it really was their first picture together.
In the photo, a baby lying in a cradle was tightly grabbing a young boy’s finger, turning her head toward him and opening her mouth in a smile. Her chubby little fist had four dimples.
The young boy seemed a bit surprised, head tilted, frowning as he looked at the toothless baby girl grinning up at him, hesitating whether to pull his finger back.
Lu Huaiyan had a vague memory of that banquet. It was the day of Jiang Se’s hundred-day celebration.
He had followed Han Yin inside to see her, and somehow, when he passed by, she suddenly grabbed his finger.
The warm, soft flesh of her tiny fist had surprising strength.
The man looked at the girl sleeping soundly in his arms, her eyelashes already lowered.
He gave a faint smile.
“Clearly, you were the one who provoked me first.”
“When you wake up, I’ll settle the score.”
【End of main text】
