Subordinate Doting - Chap 75
“I didn’t mean it!” Ji Tingyu was so excited that he interrupted him.
”I didn’t mean to leave the bottle in the living room to take up space in the house, because it snowed today, and it hasn’t snowed in Neville for a long, long time. I wanted to take the stones with me to see the snow, but I was scared when you came back, so I forgot about them.”
”I know I was wrong, I really know I was wrong… I won’t do it again, please give them back to me, please, don’t do this…”
He had no idea what he did wrong, but he kept apologizing as if he had been trained to do so.
He Zhuo didn’t know what to do. Saying sorry seemed meaningless at this moment, so he could only tell him seriously: the stones could not be found, they were washed far away by the water.
Ji Tingyu opened his hollow eyes, strings of tears rolled down from his eye sockets like blood, and even his grievances seemed so humble.
”But…why did you give away my things…”
”I have nothing left…”
”I don’t even have the last piece of evidence… No one will remember me…”
-
Since then, Ji Tingyu never stepped out of the attic again.
His weight was dropping rapidly, until he was just a thin skin, like the corpse of a withered plant, rotting from the roots.
He Zhuo knew that something was wrong with Ji Tingyu, but he was afraid of this “knowing”.
He was unwilling to think deeply, and even more unwilling to believe it. How could an adult collapse just because a child took away a few stones?
Ultimately, it was his cowardice that was at work – he didn’t dare to take responsibility for the fact that he had “ruined” his lover.
So he put down his work and spent a lot of time accompanying Ji Tingyu. He moved Ji Tingyu out of the attic where he insisted on living in with a tough attitude, and bought him a lot of stones for him to choose from.
When Ji Tingyu ignored him, he replaced them with gems, pearls, and jadeite stones, but Ji Tingyu remained indifferent.
He Zhuo also got angry and grabbed his shoulders in a rage.
”I apologize for giving you the stone without your permission, but I have chased and searched for it for you, but the stone has been washed away a long time ago. I even asked someone to fish it out in the sea! We have been fishing for half a month and haven’t found a single stone. That’s enough! Enough of the fuss! It’s just a few broken stones. Why are you so fussy about it?”
Ji Tingyu just let him shake him blankly, no longer reacting to being touched.
Because he no longer had the ability to feel fear or grievance.
There was not a trace of humanity in him, yet his collapse and despair were so obvious.
He Zhuo then felt scared and completely panicked.
He knelt in front of Ji Tingyu and apologized to him: “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have lost my temper with you, but can you please stop being so half-dead? I’ll take you to see a doctor, okay? I’ll travel with you, and I’ll help you pick up lots of rocks.”
Unexpectedly, Ji Tingyu actually laughed.
Just like the young man who had caught people’s eye on the snow-capped mountains, he raised the corners of his lips with high spirits, looked at the snow-capped mountains in the distance outside the window, and said with a sighing tone like recalling the past: “Do you know, I used to be… a very good war correspondent…”
Less than a fortnight later, he went to Syst.
He Zhuo felt uneasy from the first day he left.
It’s funny, but after everyone left, he suddenly realized that he had cared too little for the person he claimed to love deeply in the past three years.
He opened the door of the long-sealed attic, trying to find some trace of Ji Tingyu’s past happiness.
But I didn’t find anything else, but I found the empty bottle – it was placed in a small corner on the top shelf of the bookshelf, tightly blocked by several books, as if I was afraid that someone would see it and snatch it away.
The stones in the bottle are gone, replaced by medicine.
Long capsules, flat tablets, sugar-coated and non-sugar-coated… lots and lots of medicines, taken out one by one, put in a glass bottle, and mixed with colorful sugars.
Only then did He Zhuo realize that he had to take so many medicines.
He knew he was sick, and he had been taking medicine properly. He never wanted to live.
How could a soldier who dragged his burned legs and used his last breath to scare away the criminals give up on survival because of depression?
His tattered body contained a tenacious yet decadent willpower. He had hoped countless times that one day he would get better and go outside to see the sun and the snow.
It was He Zhuo who, twice in a row, tore away his last ray of hope.
The first time, he was rewarded with an afternoon of fake sunshine, but the price was giving away his most precious thing and blaming him for being pretentious.
The second time was before Ji Tingyu went to Syst.
He Zhuo couldn’t stand his lifeless look, so he deliberately said that he would find a group of young masters and young ladies to come to his house to accompany him for entertainment, hoping to get some reaction from him.
Ji Tingyu looked at him numbly for a long time, then suddenly smiled.
”I have accepted an appointment to go to Syst and will be back in a month. Can we talk when I come back?”
He Zhuo thought he had finally returned to normal and nodded quickly.
Ji Tingyu smiled again.
Because he seldom smiled, the few times he did smile seemed particularly bright.
At that moment, He Zhuo remembered for the first time in a long time what kind of boy he truly loved and wanted to marry, and he suddenly felt a strong sense of uneasiness and reluctance in his heart.
He suddenly wanted to keep Ji Tingyu and stop him from going to the war zone.
But Ji Tingyu just lowered his head, showing his two withered and yellow furry ears, and asked, “Sir, do you want to touch my ears?”
-
”He Zhuo… He Zhuo? Wake up, He Zhuo!”
He Zhuo only came back to his senses from his memories when Ji Tingyu called out for the third time. The stone in his hand had already rubbed his palm red.
The cat let out a sigh of relief.
”Oh my god, you scared me to death, I thought you were possessed by a ghost!”
He Zhuo was a little dazed, and his movements of looking at him were slow and stiff.
Ji Tingyu found that the color of his eyes had become much lighter. In just a few seconds, several bright red bloodshot lines appeared crisscrossing each other. He looked like a broken ice-blue gem, lifeless and in so much pain that he wished he could die.
