Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Yu Min’s body stiffened. He tentatively patted her back. “Xiaoxiao, I feel like you’re being a bit strange today. Are you okay?”
Yu Min had never called her that before.
Xiaoxiao was her codename.
Even in her dreams, she had never been able to hear Yu Min call her that for real one more time.
Shen Xiao held him tight. She watched the fragments of the world slip through her fingers as a hot tear splashed onto the back of her hand, yet her voice betrayed no hint of crying. “I’m fine. Being able to see you again… is really nice.”
As heaven and earth dissolved around them, she heard only a soft chuckle from Yu Min.
“You…”
Yu Min vanished.
***
The next mission: Sui Chunsheng.
If nothing else, it was a beautiful name.
Watching his dancing figure through the mirror, Ning Shuo thought that he truly was beautiful.
He had intended to take his time appreciating the dance, but a phone rang suddenly in the studio.
Sui Chunsheng stood up and pulled his phone from his bag. A name was flashing on the screen.
Frowning, Sui Chunsheng irritably pressed the end-call button.
A companion nearby asked curiously, “Tao Anqing again?”
“Yeah.”
Sui Chunsheng sighed. “I know I’m charming, but there’s really no need for her to keep pestering me like this. I’ve already rejected her clearly.”
“Maybe she really likes you.”
Sui Chunsheng held up a finger. “I’ve seen more people than I’ve eaten bowls of rice. Her, sincere? Absolutely impossible.”
“Besides, rather than being hung up on one person, it’s much more fun to dance with my brothers and sisters. Why can’t this woman understand that?”
Just as he was about to put his phone down, a message popped up.
Tao Anqing: I’ve been kidnapped, come save me!
Sui Chunsheng paused. Seeing him freeze, the person next to him leaned over curiously to look. “Tsk, tsk. Why is she pulling this stunt again? Didn’t she claim she was committing suicide last time? It turned out she just scratched a tiny bead of blood on her hand; if you’d arrived any later, it would have healed. Besides, even if she is kidnapped, can’t she call the police? Calling the police would be faster than finding you…”
Sui Chunsheng set his phone down and ran out in a panic.
His companion was stunned. “What are you doing? Didn’t you say you weren’t going to care about her anymore? Are you possessed?”
It wasn’t possession; it was a premonition of the future.
Albeit only a partial one.
When Sui Chunsheng saw the text, a flood of memories rushed into his mind.
Naturally, Ning Shuo saw these memories as well.
He saw a version of events where Sui Chunsheng didn’t go to find Tao Anqing. As a result, while Tao Anqing didn’t die, she was disfigured.
Sui Chunsheng spent a lot of money, but he couldn’t restore Tao Anqing’s face to its former state.
Tao Anqing’s mental state deteriorated until it reached the level of a mental illness. Then, one day, Sui Chunsheng went to visit her and saw her sitting on the balcony.
Sui Chunsheng went to save her but accidentally fell from the building.
He didn’t die, but his legs were ruined.
The famous dancer Sui Chunsheng had been crippled in an accident-the news was a hot topic among netizens.
Tao Anqing seemed to have been shocked into stability; her mental state remained steady in the following days, and she even began to take care of Sui Chunsheng.
This continued even though Sui Chunsheng developed a foul temper after becoming disabled and threw things several times.
Sui Chunsheng fell from his pedestal as a god of dance, while Tao Anqing was praised as the most beautiful girlfriend.
***
Sui Chunsheng drove at breakneck speeds the whole way, even running several red lights.
He wanted to reply to the message on his phone, only to realize he hadn’t brought it with him.
Sui Chunsheng felt a bit dazed.
Had he been in such a hurry to leave that he forgot his phone?
***
Ning Shuo: Of course not. I intentionally threw it away while you weren’t looking.
This memory wasn’t complete either.
Based on the previous two Hypnosis Experiments, incomplete memories always signaled trouble.
Changes were what caused things to go wrong.
Although Ning Shuo couldn’t pinpoint where the problem was yet, the entire situation felt inexplicably strange.
Take kidnapping, for example. It’s usually for money, for a life, or at the very least, for lust.
What was the point of disfigurement? A personal vendetta?
Furthermore, if someone has mental health issues, they have them. How could she suddenly just get better?
Ning Shuo considered himself a conspiracy theorist. Given Sui Chunsheng’s fame, the fact that Tao Anqing suddenly regained her sanity after his accident-and then managed to garner public attention by meticulously caring for him-meant the red flags were massive.
*Don’t you want to save Tao Anqing?* Ning Shuo thought.
He secretly increased his speed. While it seemed strange to Sui Chunsheng, the man simply chalked it up to his own unconscious urgency; it wasn’t enough to jar him out of the dream.
Humans are creatures that survive on memory. Sometimes, memories can dictate a person’s behavior to a significant degree.
For instance, this part of the memory that had suddenly surfaced for Sui Chunsheng was quite faded in certain areas. One point in particular: how exactly did Sui Chunsheng fall off the building?
Moreover, these memories almost exclusively depicted how cold Sui Chunsheng was when he failed to save Tao Anqing, and how patient and gentle Tao Anqing was while caring for him.
The various details in between-including Sui Chunsheng’s career and his social circle-hadn’t appeared at all.
That made it even more abnormal.
The car arrived at the kidnapping site at a speed Sui Chunsheng would never normally drive.
It hadn’t been written in the text message, but in Sui Chunsheng’s “past life” memories, this was where Tao Anqing’s incident occurred.
Because Sui Chunsheng had never replied to her messages and had arrived too quickly this time, Tao Anqing hadn’t had time to stage the scene.
The fact that Tao Anqing was entangled with another man was laid bare, the fig leaf of a so-called “kidnapping” ripped away.
…
Tao Anqing had a boyfriend, but she hadn’t told Sui Chunsheng.
She wanted to pursue Sui Chunsheng because, if nothing else, a boyfriend would surely give his girlfriend money.
Not to mention, the man was a famous dancer.
Sui Chunsheng was notoriously difficult to pin down. His habit of changing girlfriends as frequently as he changed clothes was enough to give anyone pause.
Other girls would have stopped pursuing him for that reason alone, but not Tao Anqing. She was determined.
Sui Chunsheng’s friends all advised him to consider her, but that advice stopped the first time Tao Anqing threw a fit and made a scene without any regard for his feelings. After that, they just teased him about his bad luck for having such a persistent pursuer.
It wasn’t the first time Sui Chunsheng had explicitly rejected her, yet Tao Anqing remained dogged.
She even started playing games within Sui Chunsheng’s social circle-faking suicides, kidnappings, and delivering medicine late at night.
Sui Chunsheng had stated more than once that he didn’t have stomach problems and that he kept emergency medicine at home, but Tao Anqing acted as if she were deaf, playing her role as a deeply devoted lover.
It wasn’t until something actually happened to Tao Anqing that Sui Chunsheng’s friends comforted him, saying life was unpredictable and that this kidnapping was actually real.
Sui Chunsheng had said with a bitter smile that he should have called the police for her when he saw the text.
His best friend comforted him: “Didn’t you call the police the first time she was ‘kidnapped’? Look what happened-the police took you away thinking you’d filed a false report. It almost turned into a massive scandal online.”
Still, Sui Chunsheng felt that failing to even call the police was indeed cold-blooded. When Tao Anqing had screamed and held a knife to her wrist, demanding he break up with the woman he was seeing at the time, he had eventually ended that relationship despite his headache and exhaustion.
*At least it started because of me,* Sui Chunsheng had thought.
But that was the extent of his concessions.
After that, no matter how much Tao Anqing acted out, Sui Chunsheng never indulged her again. He simply asked an acquaintance to help treat her face-until he received a call from her saying that if he saw her one last time, she would never bother him again.
Sui Chunsheng went. He saw Tao Anqing sitting on the balcony.
Just as he was about to pull her back, he suddenly smelled something strange in the room.
Sui Chunsheng had dated many women, and more than a few had ended up in bed. He knew exactly what that smell was.