Chapter 50: “Real Lover” Part 2

But right now, her mobility was limited; she couldn’t quickly move indoors. A rash attempt might draw the woman’s attention instead.

Kong Liyuan held her hand, positioning her entire body as a shield, and murmured softly, “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Fu Tingli peered past Kong Liyuan’s shoulder at the frenzied figure nearby. The woman slithered through the crowd like a slippery fish; three or four attendants trailed her but always missed by a hair.

Fu Tingli saw the woman’s white hospital gown billow in the wind like a sail catching the breeze, saw her pour every ounce of strength into escaping the world’s grasp…

So this was mania. But why wasn’t Kong Liyuan like this?

Fu Tingli’s gaze traced Kong Liyuan’s shoulder, gently tousled by the wind, down to her rigid back and the faint blue veins standing out on her neck.

For the moment, she still had the presence of mind to ponder.

But the next second, when she saw the woman aim the sharp pen straight at Qiao Lipan—who was clutching a cat—Fu Tingli’s heart lurched.

“Mom!”

The word burst from her lips. Panic overrode everything; on instinct, she hobbled forward on her crutch to pull Qiao Lipan away from a dozen meters off.

Of course, she couldn’t move as swiftly as she envisioned.

Kong Liyuan, blocking her path, seemed to process the situation in an instant, without a moment’s hesitation.

She lunged toward Qiao Lipan, yanking the woman—who was still hugging the cat—in close.

The frail little cat leaped from Qiao Lipan’s arms, as if it had taken a tumble.

In that instant, the cat let out a piercing, heart-wrenching yowl, flipping the switch on utter pandemonium.

A loudspeaker blared from nearby speakers: Everyone in the park should return indoors immediately. Do not linger.

An unprecedented sense of reality crashed into Fu Tingli’s mind in that second.

Gripping her crutch, sweat pouring down her face, she struggled toward Qiao Lipan and Kong Liyuan. Her legs felt leaden, but she pressed on, head down, one laborious step at a time.

She didn’t notice that the woman bellowing about being the century’s greatest composer, amid the scattering crowd, had locked onto her—the easiest target.

The maniac wheeled around and charged straight at Fu Tingli, steel pen in hand, still yelling,

“My Muse! Help me, help me!”

Fu Tingli staggered forward, heard the cry, and looked up instinctively.

For a split second, the world fell silent.

Then a ferocious gust battered her, hair whipping across her nose, a bead of sweat trickling from her jaw.

She didn’t know where it fell—onto the ground, or evaporating into thin air.

The figures before her blurred into a jumbled mass, chaotic like an apocalyptic film under the blood-red sunset.

She saw Qiao Lipan’s terrified face, saw the woman with the pen collapse in a heap, her white gown stained with red ink, her face mashed into the special foam padding—dusty yet flushed with exhilaration.

It was like the finale of a grand blockbuster: the boisterous protagonist pinned by burly attendants, still grinning wildly and triumphantly, enunciating every word:

“I’m the greatest composer of this century!”

Then, in manic glee toward Fu Tingli, she flashed a smile soaked in the crimson sunset.

“Drip… drip…”

Something continued to fall, drop by drop, splattering on the ground, echoing in Fu Tingli’s ears.

As if something inside her had been punctured.

Dazed, she looked up and saw Kong Liyuan standing in front of her, saw the hand dangling at Kong Liyuan’s waist—pale-skinned, slender and bony, red liquid streaming steadily down it.

She couldn’t tell if it was ink or blood. Or perhaps both, mingled together.

“Kong… Kong Liyuan.” She forced out the name, as if the turmoil had finally ebbed.

The manic patient was bound hand and foot by the attendants, strapped into a wheelchair, and wheeled unsteadily indoors. She was still humming her own tunes. The screams and roars of the shaken onlookers began to fade.

It was as if peace had finally returned to the world.

The farce ended, and only one person was hurt—the very one who had endured so many wounds before, the one who never took care of herself.

“Are you okay?” Fu Tingli’s voice trembled as she reached for Kong Liyuan’s bleeding hand, only to find it slick and hard to grasp.

“I’m fine. It doesn’t hurt at all.”

Kong Liyuan spoke, staring at the blood on her hand, at the gash, and let out a faint, nonchalant laugh.

“Don’t talk. I’ll get someone to bandage it first,” Fu Tingli urged.

Qiao Lipan, still shaken, glanced between them and sighed. “I’ll go call for help.”

Kong Liyuan watched Qiao Lipan go, her gaze lingering for a long, long moment before shifting back to Fu Tingli.

“So this is your mom?”

“Yeah.” Fu Tingli, still rattled, clutched Kong Liyuan’s hand tighter, afraid she might slip away.

After a pause to steady herself, she added, “She came with me to see you.”

“Were you scared?” Kong Liyuan asked.

“No.” Fu Tingli insisted stubbornly.

Kong Liyuan smiled faintly. “I’ve done things like that before too.”

Fu Tingli’s fingers trembled slightly in her grip. Kong Liyuan met her eyes, sighed, and continued without pause, word by word.

“I’m a hypomanic patient—the same condition as that person you just saw. I’m in a manic phase right now, so my agent told me not to return home, not to let anyone discover it. That was all to prevent a situation like this from happening.”

“Five years ago, when I met you, I was also in a manic phase. I didn’t have anyone I wanted to find, and I wasn’t really injured. I went barefoot on purpose, changed into those clothes by grabbing them from someone at random, and made the wounds on my own body myself.”

“I know!” Fu Tingli felt like she was using every last ounce of her strength to hold herself up, to grip Kong Liyuan’s wrist.

“You know?” Kong Liyuan’s first reaction was surprise, but after a few seconds, that surprise faded, replaced by a knowing smile.

“Then do you know this? From the very start, when I flagged down your car, it was just to trick you into giving me a ride on the same stretch of road. It was just so I wouldn’t have to be Kong Liyuan for those three days.”

Under the blood-red sky, she gazed at Fu Tingli. Kong Liyuan’s entire form and outline blurred into vagueness, leaving only that faint, weightless smile.

“You must be thinking, how could anyone do something like that? But that’s exactly the kind of thing I would do. Even I find it unbelievable myself.”

“I’d just finished filming Winter Storm back then, so sometimes I couldn’t even tell which was more real—the woman driving with you from San Francisco to Los Angeles, was she more me… or more Li Yi?”

Fu Tingli felt like she was losing her grip on this woman. She was clearly holding on with all her might, yet Kong Liyuan was still smiling, like a cloud on the verge of drifting away.

“That news story was fake, after all. I didn’t abuse Little Bird. The scars on her weren’t from me.”

“When I found her, she was already like that. I’m not a particularly good person, but I never thought to do something like that just for a thrill.”

“I know.”

As she listened to Kong Liyuan speak word by word, Fu Tingli felt something slowly igniting inside her, beyond her control. All she could do was repeat “I know” in that barren, helpless way.

Even though she could almost hear the tiny crackle of flames in her ears.

The decadent yellow twilight spilled across Kong Liyuan’s face as she faced Fu Tingli. The colors in those eyes were so beautiful, as if they were about to burn themselves out.

Gazing at her, she continued.

“No, you don’t know. Because while I didn’t use the knife in my hand to hurt her, I also didn’t bury her. That fourteen-second video is real. Nothing was added that I didn’t do. Just like everyone saw—I was standing right there watching her, doing absolutely nothing.”

“If it were you, you would have felt sorry for Little Bird, then sincerely buried her and prayed a blessing over her. You’re kind—so much kinder than anyone I’ve ever seen. But that kind of kindness isn’t in my bones.”

“I—”

“Don’t deny it yet. Let me finish. My place in Shanghai is completely empty. There’s nothing you could put there, except for one room. That’s where I keep my collection of specimens. No one steps inside without feeling creeped out. Some say it looks like a spider’s web, but I sit in that room watching the movies I love, and to me, it’s the most comforting place in the world.”

“My favorite movie scene is the one about the process of life’s passing in Life. I love appreciating any art about death. My default attitude toward everyone in this world is disgust and indifference. When we were filming Winter Storm, the director said there was something in me that matched Li Yi. At first, I didn’t understand what she meant.”

“Even now, long after the movie wrapped, when I think back on it sometimes, I suddenly realize she was right. Most of the time, I really am like Li Yi—cold-hearted and unfeeling, my heart an empty void, so barren that I could erase my own existence at any moment.”

“There’s just one thing that’s not quite right. Li Yi has a lover who’s willing to be her accomplice. But the person I fell for… isn’t like that.”

“If you’ve been looking at me this whole time, then I hope you know this: the only reason I bandaged that little cat’s injured leg is because I thought of how you would do it—and I missed you so much in that moment that I was willing to. But if it were just me, if I’d never met you, I wouldn’t feel a shred of pity or sympathy. I’d just look past it coldly. And earlier, if you hadn’t said that woman was your mother, I would have just watched from the sidelines without a care.”

“I’ve said it before—I’m not a good person. A lot of things are just an act. I pretend to care about the people around me, pretend to be good. But I’m not. I’ve always been this selfish, this fake—a person with no love for the world, neither kind nor pure.”

“You said you want beautiful things to stay beautiful forever, so of course you’re a sculptor. You preserve the most beautiful things in your eyes that way. You pour equal love into everything you cherish. But I don’t have that much good love to give. Even movies… I only make them to escape being ‘Kong Liyuan.'”

“You think birds are most beautiful when they’re soaring high. I think specimens like that—still, lifeless things—are the most beautiful.”

Twilight deepened into darkness, the chaos of heaven and earth blending. The red glow cloaking Kong Liyuan grew ever fainter.

She looked like a fading photographic negative, dimming more and more. Even as she smiled.

“Kong Liyuan… Kong Liyuan, don’t… don’t say that.”

Fu Tingli desperately tried to say something. She felt—and painfully felt—that this was wrong, a fallacy, an untested prejudice. She didn’t accept Kong Liyuan’s view of herself.

She wanted to argue righteously that this accounting was all wrong, but she discovered her face was already streaked with tears.

Her voice came out dry and hoarse, unable to form a complete sentence.

“Don’t cry. At least, don’t cry for me.”

In the dying light sinking toward the earth, Kong Liyuan looked at her. The cool pad of her finger gently brushed the tear-soaked corner of Fu Tingli’s eye—using that one clean hand.

Then, just like she’d done countless times before, she lightly pressed the back of Fu Tingli’s head.

When she let go, her slightly downcast eyes brimmed with a warm, fragile emotion—like utter ruin, or endless tenderness.

“You said you don’t trust anyone else, only what I say. I’ve just told you everything about me now. Not a single lie in there.”

The last traces of the blood-red dusk melted into the blood dripping from Kong Liyuan’s fingertips, as if absorbed away.

With that remnant red light clinging to her back, the only thing left in Kong Liyuan’s eyes was that emotion that had spilled over more than once before—an gaze Fu Tingli had never been able to read. Now Kong Liyuan had laid it all bare.

Fu Tingli seized Kong Liyuan’s slick hand, desperately trying to parse that gaze even more deeply.

She yearned to understand this woman completely, to grasp everything in her life.

“Do you get it now, Fu Tingli?”

Curling weakly by Kong Liyuan’s leg was the frail little cat, its shadow like a pool of molten blood. She spoke softly.

“I’ve always been this kind of Kong Liyuan.”