The Sickly Beauty Gives Up Struggling [Rebirth] Chapter 91

The “apple incident” Cen Xiao mentioned was one of the rare moments in Li Rong’s memory where he had been truly unreasonable.

At the time, the GT201 project had just launched, and Li Rong was under immense pressure. However, he was used to processing his emotions internally and didn’t want to confide in anyone.

As the stress built up, he grew anxious and started having restless nights, frequently waking in the middle of the night. 

To cope, he would sit cross-legged on the living room sofa and peel apples. Engaging in a precise but relatively simple task helped him relax a bit.

Initially, he wasn’t very good at it, cutting the peels too thick and often breaking them after just a few tries. But the more frequently he woke up, the more he practiced, and soon enough, he mastered the art of peeling an apple in one continuous strip.

The peeled apples weren’t for him to eat. He’d place them on a plate on the dining table, and by the next morning, Cen Xiao would find and eat them. 

Li Rong wasn’t sure if Cen Xiao thought the apples were peeled intentionally for him, but at the time, he didn’t care.

One night, overwhelmed by stress, Li Rong was once again sitting in the living room peeling apples. However, as his technique improved, his mind began to wander—completely consumed by thoughts of the project.

Cen Xiao, thirsty in the middle of the night, noticed Li Rong wasn’t in bed and came downstairs to find him.

Li Rong, deep in thought, didn’t realize Cen Xiao was there.

Not wanting to disturb him, Cen Xiao quietly walked to the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water. But his hands were dry and slippery, and he accidentally dropped the glass onto the marble countertop, producing a sharp, piercing sound.

The noise startled Li Rong, jolting him back to reality. His hand slipped, and the knife sliced through the apple peel, nicking his finger.

A sharp sting registered as blood trickled down his thumb. Already on edge, the incident heightened Li Rong’s irritation.

He abruptly stood up, threw the knife and apple onto the coffee table, and shouted toward the kitchen, “Can’t you be quieter?”

The apple rolled off the smooth surface of the table, fell to the floor, and landed awkwardly, its juice splattering across the room.

The large villa fell into an oppressive silence, broken only by the faint ticking of the second hand on the clock.

Cen Xiao, startled, hadn’t realized how deeply Li Rong’s psychological wounds had festered.

Li Rong pressed a palm to his forehead, inhaled deeply, and said through gritted teeth, “Why can’t you just let me have some peace? Why do you have to show up everywhere? Why can’t you give me any space?”

In truth, cutting his finger or failing to peel the apple perfectly were trivial matters. He knew he was blowing things out of proportion, but he couldn’t stop himself.

He couldn’t control his need to vent, his pain, or the tears streaming down his face.

Shivering, Li Rong felt the cold dampness of tears on his cheeks. Embarrassed to cry in front of Cen Xiao, he grabbed a tissue, roughly wiped the blood off his hand, and tossed the tissue into the trash. Without another word, he stormed upstairs.

He didn’t realize then that Cen Xiao was the only person he could unleash his emotions on—because he was certain Cen Xiao wouldn’t truly disappear from his life. That certainty, rooted in a tangled web of love and resentment, made Cen Xiao both his anchor and his burden.

Cen Xiao didn’t say a word the entire time and didn’t follow him upstairs.

The kitchen was very dim, shrouded in darkness where the moonlight couldn’t reach. Li Rong couldn’t even make out his expression.

But perhaps because his pent-up emotions finally found an outlet, Li Rong cried into his pillow for a while before falling asleep.

Sometime later—he didn’t know how long—Li Rong vaguely felt someone enter the bedroom.

He sensed someone lifting his fingers and spraying a cooling, herbal-scented disinfectant on his wound.

The spray felt refreshing and soothing as it absorbed quickly.

Half-awake, Li Rong heard Cen Xiao holding his hand and sighing softly, “Do you hate me that much?”

That voice wasn’t as forceful and composed as Cen Xiao usually sounded; it was tinged with a rare trace of confusion.

Only when Li Rong was asleep would Cen Xiao reveal such emotions.

Li Rong kept his eyes tightly shut, his breathing steady, as if still lost in dreams.

But he distinctly felt a sting at the corner of his eye, and something slid down his cheek.

The next morning, after freshening up and going downstairs, Li Rong found that the apples on the floor were gone, the bloodied tissue was gone, and all traces of the incident had been cleaned up as if nothing had happened.

Only the faint scent of medicine and the now-healed wound on his finger reminded him that it was all real.

His emotions had stabilized, but thinking back on the previous night, a peculiar feeling stirred in his heart.

That evening, Li Rong deliberately left the Hongsuo Research Institute two hours early and bought two boxes of red bean double-skin milk custard from a tea restaurant on his way home.

The chauffeur, eager to maintain a good relationship with the boss, sometimes chatted with Li Rong to get on his good side.

Seeing Li Rong holding the two boxes of custard, the chauffeur smiled and asked, “Are those for President Cen?”

Li Rong’s eyelid twitched as he quickly hid the custard behind him, replying calmly, “The restaurant had a promotion—buy one, get one free.”

The chauffeur chuckled, “Ah… I thought someone like you and President Cen wouldn’t care about discounts and deals.”

Li Rong thought to himself, you’re not wrong.

At home, Li Rong calculated when Cen Xiao would return. He placed one box of custard beside himself and started eating the other.

When Cen Xiao opened the door, he saw Li Rong calmly eating the custard. His movements were unhurried, elegant, but strangely… absent-minded.

Cen Xiao glanced at the untouched box and then at the half-eaten box in Li Rong’s hands.

“Why’d you buy two of the same flavor?”

Li Rong’s eyelids fluttered slightly, and his hand paused mid-air: “…”

Cen Xiao assumed Li Rong was still dwelling on the previous night’s emotions and didn’t expect an answer. “Take your time eating. I’ll be in the study.”

Li Rong: “…”

He swallowed the carefully rehearsed explanation he had been crafting all day, along with a mouthful of custard.

In truth, his stress stemmed not only from the challenging GT201 project but also from external pressures brought by Suhe Biotech.

Suhe Biotech’s updated Jiaketing offered better efficacy and fewer side effects, but its price also increased. Patients could choose between the new and old versions; while the new drug was expensive, the old one was made more affordable.

At the time, the internet was filled with praise, elevating Suhe Biotech to almost god-like status. Riding the wave, Suhe Biotech captured an even larger market share.

Both “New Jua” and “Old Jia” required long-term use, and Suhe Biotech’s official statement claimed that switching medications midway wouldn’t affect health, as the efficacy of the two drugs didn’t conflict.

This meant that those with deep pockets would choose the new medication with fewer side effects, while those who couldn’t afford it could continue using the old one.

Suhe Biotech had managed to appeal to a broad spectrum of customers, and in the year Li Rong joined the Hongsuo Research Institute, the pharmaceutical company’s profits reached their peak.

However, Li Rong didn’t believe that creating a cure for bacterial progeria was impossible.

Li Qingli never made baseless claims. If he said it could be cured, it meant he was fully confident.

If the research reports for Luyinxu could be unsealed, allowing modifications and optimizations based on its failures, Li Rong believed he could create a better version of Luyinxu.

So, after thoroughly studying bacterial progeria, he proposed the idea of optimizing Luyinxu to Jiang Weide.

Jiang Weide pondered for a week before agreeing to try to apply for the unsealing of the Luyinxu research reports. However, he also advised Li Rong not to rely solely on those old reports and to develop his own ideas.

Jiang Weide also insisted that this new project would not continue under the name Luyinxu. Instead, he personally named it GT201.

Li Rong never understood the meaning behind the letters and numbers. In fact, none of the Hongsuo Research Institute’s projects in the past five years had used a “GT” prefix for their project codes.

But Jiang Weide simply told him to focus on the work and worry about the significance of the name only after achieving success.

This was something Li Rong had never calmly discussed with Cen Xiao.

Their lack of communication had indeed cost them many opportunities to truly understand each other.

Li Rong glanced at the locked bedroom door, then let himself fall backward, sinking lazily into the swivel chair. He ignored the course selection screen dimming due to inactivity.

Holding his phone, he indulged in his memories, replaying the bitter and clumsy moments of the past, and remarked with deep meaning:”Some people, huh, will happily eat the apples that weren’t meant for them but fail to understand the gesture behind the ones deliberately brought for them.”

On the other end of the line, Cen Xiao chuckled softly, his voice low and rich:

“Maybe it’s not that they didn’t understand—it’s that they wanted to save the best for you.”