Chapter 2

Chapter 2

But our abnormality was quickly discovered.

After all, when one person possesses two diametrically opposed temperaments and personalities at the same time, no matter how careful they are, clues will eventually surface.

Zhan Yao’s stepmother told her father that she often saw Zhan Yao talking to herself in the mirror.

Zhan Yao’s stepbrother told her father that she had held a steel needle and tried to kill him.

The school teachers approached her father, saying that some students reported Zhan Yao sometimes seemed like a completely different person-at times gentle and quiet, at others indifferent and cold-blooded.

For Zhan Yao’s face-conscious father, this was a massive loss of prestige. He slapped Zhan Yao across the face, making the corner of her mouth bleed. “How did I end up raising a psycho like you?”

Before Zhan Yao and I were taken away to the Private Psychiatric Hospital, her stepmother leaned against the door, watching Zhan Yao with a triumphant smile. “Oh, Ah Yao, don’t be afraid. I chose this hospital very carefully. Once you’re better, you can come home.”

At that Private Psychiatric Hospital, the method for treating Zhan Yao was “electroconvulsive therapy” using convulsive electrical stimulation equipment.

I was trapped inside Zhan Yao’s body and couldn’t get out. I could only watch helplessly as they shocked her.

Zhan Yao and I tried to pretend I was gone, attempting to deceive them, but we were caught every time.

They would force her to look in the mirror while she was foaming at the mouth and incoherent from the shocks, asking her what her name was.

They would deprive her of food for two days and nights, then place a tempting strawberry cake and milk in front of her on the third day, promising she could eat as long as she eradicated me.

They didn’t let her sleep, and they subjected the room to extreme shifts between freezing cold and sweltering heat.

They weren’t “treating” her; they were torturing her.

I told Zhan Yao to forget it-to cooperate with the treatment and let them erase me.

But that timid girl somehow found a reservoir of endurance. Battered and bruised, she curled up in the corner of that vast, empty room, wrapping her arms tightly around herself.

It was as if I were the one embracing her.

As if, by doing so, she wouldn’t be cold or afraid anymore.

She bit her lip until it bled. The timid girl who had once cried every night in terror after being kidnapped now stubbornly refused to shed a single tear.

She said, “I won’t abandon you, Ah Zhu. I won’t let you disappear. We promised we would never be apart.”

“This time, it’s my turn to protect you.”

Finally, on the night she was nearly electrocuted to death, I hypnotized myself into disappearing.

Before I vanished, I said to Zhan Yao:

“I’m only leaving you temporarily, Ah Yao. Don’t be afraid. Walk on bravely and with confidence.”

“I’ll be watching you. If there comes a day when you can’t hold on anymore, believe me-I will come back to be with you.”

She thought I was lying to her. With bloodshot eyes, she threatened that if I left, I should never come back. But then she started sobbing.

“Ah Zhu, don’t go. Please, I can hold on. It doesn’t hurt at all, really.”

My heart ached as I looked at her. Amidst her painful, desperate cries, I closed my eyes, unwilling but resigned.

A promise made must be a promise kept.

Fourteen years later, on her saddest day.

I opened my eyes inside her body.

I didn’t know a human could feel such profound sadness.

It was as if, under a pitch-black night sky, the boundless sea and the heavens had merged into one. The horizon was gone, replaced only by massive waves crashing down one after another, overwhelming everything.

Her heart was suffocating in agony at the deepest part of the ocean floor.

And yet, I heard her laughter.

At twenty-five, she sat in a luxuriously decorated living room. The brilliant crystal chandelier overhead cast its light down, making her skin look as white as snow.

She had grown up, and her features had fully matured. Her eyes and brows were stunningly beautiful, and she was smiling.

However, the handsome, tall man standing before her had a gaze as cold as ice, completely indifferent to her beauty.

He looked down at Zhan Yao and said, “This face of yours truly disgusts me to no end.”

What a nasty thing to say.

Zhan Yao’s eyelashes fluttered, but the smile on her face didn’t diminish in the slightest. The curve of her lips was perfectly composed.

She smiled very gently. “Then I’m truly sorry, Fu Chengbi,” she said in a soft, lukewarm tone, as if merely stating a fact. “No matter how much it disgusts you, you’ll have to look at this face for the rest of your life.”

Long after Fu Chengbi had left, the smile remained on her face.

Until I sighed and spoke from within her body. “Ah Yao, stop smiling.”

She froze, and the smile at the corners of her mouth slowly solidified.

After an unknown amount of time, she began to smile again, bit by bit. I saw the shimmering glint of tears in her eyes.

She smiled, her voice as light as a sigh, as if the fourteen years of separation had never happened.

She called my name: “Ah Zhu.”

I smiled and replied, “I’m here.”