Chapter 148: Seeking
“Get lost, get lost! The person you’re looking for isn’t here. You’re making a scene on New Year’s Eve. You’re crazy. If you don’t leave… I’ll beat you up, believe it or not.”
“Sorry, sorry… I was looking for the wrong person. I’m sorry to bother you.”
The man at the door pushed Su Yu with his thick arm. He stumbled back a few steps and grabbed the railing on the side of the corridor, barely steadying his exhausted body.
He shook his head and leaned against the mottled wall, his body slumping down his deeply bent spine to his feet. He fell to the dusty floor of the old building, breaking a few fragile spiderwebs that were hanging in the corner.
“Where… where is she?”
Su Yu murmured weakly. Even in such a cold night, he was still sweating. He had messed up his thick, smooth hair, and the dust, mixed with fine beads of sweat, stuck to his forehead. He looked as dejected as a beggar on the side of the road.
He sat for a while, then struggled to get up from the ground. His muscles were sore and weak, and he could barely support his body. He barely managed to stand up by grabbing the railing in the corridor. His bloodshot eyes stared at the silent darkness outside the balcony, bewildered and helpless… without a single clue.
Su Yu had only been here once, in his previous life. Xia Qian Ge had wanted to move to a strange city where no one knew her to start a new life. He had agreed without much hesitation and had gone with the girl to her childhood home that day to help her pack some luggage.
The first time he had come with the girl, he had only then realized that not far from the bus stop where she had gotten off, there was such a dilapidated old neighborhood.
The buildings were apartment buildings that had been built for the workers of a chemical factory that had been demolished. Rows of dense rooms were crowded together, and each room was not very big. The construction team that had built the houses had also cut corners. After a long time, the vermilion paint had long since cracked and peeled off, and dense patterns had spread on the old and decaying walls. The ground, which had not been cleaned for many years, was covered with dust, and it was choking even if you covered your nose.
But the girl had led him through the uneven and low trees as if nothing was wrong and had stopped in front of the first building on the left after entering the neighborhood. A lot of black garbage bags were piled up at the corner of the old building. The garbage had accidentally spilled out, and the smell of rotting food was nauseating.
So this was the place where the girl had grown up. At that time, he had held the girl’s hand tightly in his palm, enduring the sourness in his nose, his heart twitching with pain. He had only then realized that under the girl’s gentle and kind, frail appearance, there was a past that was far more tragic than he had imagined.
The mischievous big yellow dog downstairs suddenly barked fiercely, and the noisy barking echoed throughout the neighborhood. A few curses followed. The voice-activated light above his head suddenly turned on, and the dim light shone down, revealing Su Yu’s dirty and dejected face, which was hidden in the darkness. He cut off his memories and used his little remaining strength to continue to climb upstairs.
The old building was not too high. He had roughly found two more floors with his memory and had dragged his almost-exhausted body up the last two steps. The cold wind in the corridor on the fifth floor was particularly biting and fierce. He was caught off guard and fell back two steps, almost falling down the stairs.
Su Yu swallowed and sighed in relief. His originally thick clothes had become a little thin in the violent wind at a high altitude. He shrunk his neck and climbed up again, stomping his feet twice. The voice-activated light in the corridor did not turn on. He had to use the dim light of his phone to grope around and look around. The houses in the narrow corridor seemed to be all closed. The hope that had been ignited was mercilessly crushed by the strong wind like a fragile bubble.
He looked down at the call log on his phone, which had been dialed for several pages. His trembling fingers gently tapped on the screen again. The phone was dialed out. He couldn’t help but swallow the saliva that was madly secreted between his lips and teeth. The palm of his hand, which was holding the phone, was trembling slightly. The calls he had made before had all ended with no one answering. A sense of unease and suffocation was surging in his chest, and his heart was pounding violently.
Time slowed down in his numb and cold consciousness. He stared at the phone that had not been answered for a long time. In a daze, it seemed that a melodious ringtone was mixed with the howling wind and passed by his ear.
His gaze passed through the deep darkness and stopped at the end of the corridor. The old and worn-out door had been blown open by the wind at some point and was creaking in the wind. His heart beat irregularly. He walked step by step towards the end of the corridor, his steps becoming faster and faster, and finally he ran towards the door.
Su Yu rushed to the door. Before he could catch his breath, he kicked open the plastic bag that was hanging on the door hinge. He had almost missed something because of this, and that might have been a lifetime of regret.
His eyes were wide with anger. He roughly pulled open the old and worn-out door. The light from his flashlight shone into the dark house. He looked down at the large puddle of water on the floor. The cold water surface reflected the dazzling light of his flashlight, which extended to the kettle at the corner of the wall and stopped.
Su Yu’s gaze froze, as if it had been frozen by the extremely cold temperature of deep winter, forcing him to stop thinking. Then… he met the girl’s eyes.
The girl’s expression was a little dazed. She was wearing thin clothes and was sitting in a corner, hugging her knees. The sound of someone entering the room had attracted her attention. She looked up with a numb gaze and met the boy’s eyes. She was stunned for a moment and looked around in a panic. Her first reaction was actually to hide, and she even tried to cover her face so that the other party would not see her pathetic appearance.
But she futilely found that the other party’s gaze was unavoidable. So she had to meet the boy’s gaze again, biting her pale and chapped lips and forcing a smile that she thought was beautiful. She smiled palely like this, her hands still constantly pulling at her messy and tangled long hair, trying to maintain a beautiful appearance in front of the boy.
Finally, she still realized that she must look very ugly now, like a living madwoman. The perfect image she had deliberately played for so long had shattered into pieces on the ground and could not be picked up. Otherwise, why would the boy stare at her with a blank expression and not say a word?
“Su… Su Yu, you… you don’t look at me. Don’t. I… I…”
She stammered, unable to hide the sobbing in her throat.
“New Year…”
She still ridiculously tried to struggle, her trembling and stiff body trying to get up from the ground, but she lost her strength halfway and fell back into the cold water. The short four words were tragically broken in two, becoming a nondescript blessing.
“Happy…”
Su Yu looked at the girl’s helpless appearance. This was a rare time when the girl had lost her usual dignified and gentle demeanor in front of him. The overflowing sadness was like a nail, piercing Su Yu’s eyes and heart.
He clearly heard the sound of something suddenly breaking. The fragments flowed with his blood throughout his body and were finally sent to his heart, contracting powerfully with every beat of his heart.
Su Yu suddenly moved. He rushed up and picked up the girl from the cold water. His heavy down jacket wrapped around the girl’s cold and trembling body.
He buried the girl’s somewhat hot head in his chest. He felt the girl’s warm breath on his chest. The rich gardenia fragrance pulled at his olfactory nerves. His pounding heart seemed to be slowly wrapped by a thin thread. As the thread tightened, it bulged out in pieces. Every beat made him bleed from the cuts of the thread, and the other end of the thread was in the girl’s hand. He was sorry for her.
His emotions fell off a cliff and into a deep, dark valley. He suppressed a sob and whispered in the girl’s ear.
“I’m sorry, I’m late. But it’s okay now. Qian Ge… it’s okay.”
PEAK!