Chapter 72: Su Ye Doesn’t Want Her Back Part 1

Outside the VIP private ward, Su Ye gripped the woman’s hand tightly, offering steady, rhythmic comfort. “Sister Feng, it’s alright,” she said softly. “Don’t be afraid.”

The woman’s emotions were on the verge of total collapse. She murmured, “So much blood… there was so much blood.” She no longer had the strength to say anything else.

Su Ye pursed her lips, swallowing a sigh. She could only continue to comfort this pitiful mother. As for herself, she was fine for now—or at least, she told herself she was.

The doctor emerged after finishing the examination. He turned and met Su Ye as she hurried toward him. He bowed slightly. “Hello, CEO Su.”

“Skip the formalities. What’s the situation?”

“Our conclusion is that, aside from some abrasions and a minor hairline fracture in her right leg, the patient has almost no issues.”

Yue Wenfeng broke down. “You spent hours checking her just to come to that conclusion?!”

“So much blood! There was so much blood! How could there be nothing wrong? Tell me, how is that possible!”

The doctor replied, “Ma’am, please calm down. There was indeed a large amount of blood at the scene, and we had a mobilization plan ready for her specific blood type. But the reality is that there are no major injuries. We have the test results to back this up. Please, stay calm!”

“That is my daughter! How am I supposed to be calm? You tell me, I—”

Su Ye embraced her gently from behind, pinning her arms down to soothe her frantic anxiety. She held her, turning her away from the doctor.

“Please have the full report organized and sent to me within thirty minutes,” Su Ye said. “Furthermore, ensure that all staff involved maintain absolute silence regarding the details of this patient.”

The doctor nodded and took his leave.

The woman continued to struggle. Shortly after the doctor left, she wrenched herself out of Su Ye’s arms, giving the thin woman—whose shirt seemed to flutter like a sail over her gaunt frame—a harsh shove. They both stumbled back several steps. Yue Wenfeng slumped onto the hospital bench, defeated.

She had no strength left.

Su Ye waited for the nausea and dizziness in her head to subside. Steadying her arm, she walked over slowly and held her phone out in front of Yue Wenfeng.

“Sister, look at the surveillance footage.”

It was no longer 1998. Surveillance technology had evolved. The cameras at key intersections were high-definition enough to capture the faces of people inside cars—and naturally, they had recorded the shimmering points of light surrounding Yue Chengqi.

Though it only lasted a few minutes, it truly looked like a metamorphosis. A rebirth.

Yue Wenfeng’s hands trembled as she watched the clip repeatedly. She looked up, her eyes bloodshot as she glared at Su Ye. “So? What are you trying to say? What is the point of this?”

Su Ye remained silent, merely taking her phone back.

“Are you trying to tell me she isn’t my Chengqi anymore? That she’s that Yue Huan from ’98? Is that it?”

Su Ye said nothing.

“Su Ye! Have you lost your mind? Have twenty-some years of being single finally driven you insane? Can you just… get out!“

The woman could not restrain herself. She delivered a slap that sent Su Ye’s head snapping to the side.

It was expected. But the woman was exhausted, so the blow didn’t hurt much. It was simply… the final break. Two people who had already grown distant and fractured had reached the absolute end of their tether.

Yue Wenfeng looked at her hand in disbelief. Though she had a temper, she had never truly raised a hand against anyone in all these years, let alone harbored a thought of hurting Su Ye. But just now, that single action was the only thing left in her mind.

Su Ye paused for a moment, then turned and pressed the door handle, preparing to enter the room.

Yue Wenfeng practically lunged forward, clinging to Su Ye’s leg. She ground her dignity into the dirt, willing to do anything. This was her compensation for everything she owed her daughter. She knelt and begged Su Ye.

“Can you please let her go? She’s only twenty-two. She has so much left to do, so much of the world she hasn’t seen… Su Ye…”

Su Ye didn’t look down. she simply reached down and pried the arms away. She heartlessly cast Yue Wenfeng’s hands aside and said coldly, “I told you, I will make the decision that is best for her. Like you, I hope she can have a better life.”

“I only have two nieces, Chengqi and Yolo. I will treat them both well.”

“I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”

With that, Su Ye entered the room, leaving a completely broken woman sitting outside the door, weeping hoarsely.

On the hospital bed, the person with the minor fracture had already sat up. She was currently looking down, holding her own arms, seemingly scrutinizing them.

Su Ye called out softly, “Chengqi, does it hurt?”

The girl didn’t move. Or rather, several seconds passed before she seemed to react to the name. She looked up at the newcomer.

Eyes truly are the windows to the soul, Su Ye thought. That withdrawn girl whose gaze was always distant was Chengqi. But the person before her, whose eyes unconsciously radiated tenderness and tolerance…

Su Ye’s voice trembled as she asked, “You… who are you?”

The tenderness in those eyes was quickly retracted. However, a person tempered by so many events and years could never truly reclaim the mindset or the gaze of a twenty-two-year-old. She could only play dumb, staring blankly at Su Ye.

“Who am I?”

It wasn’t that Yue Chengqi had amnesia. It was that she didn’t know who she was supposed to be.

The last twenty-two years had not been a mere blink of an eye for her. It wasn’t as if she vanished one second and appeared at the crash site the next. Those twenty-two years were more like a bizarre, vivid dream. In that dream, she occasionally saw Su Ye, watching her grow from a steady girl into the “Boss Su” who could command a room, and finally into the “CEO Su” who could procure sensitive data on the edge of legality with a single phone call.

One could say she was in the dream while Su Ye was in reality, but they had spent those twenty-two years together.

Yet a dream was just a dream. Though it had made her more mature by the day, her psychological age was hard to define—was she twenty-two, twenty-five, or twenty-five plus those twenty-two years? But every grand dream must end. When she woke and the dream collapsed, the memories she had actually lived through surged to the forefront of her mind, leaving her dazed by the sudden impact.

The scene of their parting was still vivid. The girl’s suppressed sobs, the silent tears falling one by one like knives stabbing her heart, making it hard to breathe. Even now, back in the present, she felt suffocated.

She had lain there for a long time before she could calm down, but the hair at her temples was already soaked with tears.

Right now, she didn’t want to care about anything. She just wanted to find Su Ye. To find her regardless of the cost.

But whether it was the accident or the fact that her bodily functions needed time to recover, though she had been conscious at the crash site, she had only just regained the strength to control her body and sit up.

As soon as she sat up, she heard the two people arguing outside. Naturally, she didn’t miss the sound of the slap. It struck Su Ye’s face, but it felt like it struck hers as well, instantly clearing her head.

In her clarity, only one question remained: What year is it, and does Su Ye still want me back?

Dragging her aching leg, she fumbled around the bedside and found her phone. The screen was completely shattered, but through the wreckage, she could barely make out the year: 2023.

Yue Chengqi finally understood. Her grand dream had ended precisely on the day of the accident.

So, what about Su Ye?

Did Su Ye want her back?

It was 2023. Here, she wasn’t Yue Huan. She was Su Ye’s niece, related only by social ties. Everyone in Su Ye’s social circle knew her as a niece. Would Su Ye still want her to return?

She looked at the person who was both familiar and strange. The image merged with the girl in her memory, but the soft baby fat was long gone. The gaunt face reminded Yue Chengqi that this was no longer that free, happy time. Time had carved its mark on everyone—except, it seemed, her.

At least her body was still that of a twenty-five-year-old.

And her A-Ye… after being obsessed with work for so many years, her excessively thin body was swallowed by her shirt. A gust of wind could practically sweep her away.

Too thin. Why is she so thin? How much food will I have to cook to nurse her back to health?

But for all those years, it seemed Su Ye had nothing else to do. She could only work.

Yue Chengqi took a breath. Meeting Su Ye’s questioning gaze, she said slowly, “I am…”

If Su Ye wants me back, I will throw myself to her side no matter what.

She looked at Su Ye expectantly, her mouth opening to emit a blurred sound.

Su Ye’s expression tightened. Before the girl could finish, she interrupted with another question: “You… who are you?”

Their shared understanding was laid bare by that single sentence.

Yue Chengqi realized: Su Ye recognized me. But Su Ye doesn’t want me to come back.

But I want to. I want to take care of her. I…

Yue Chengqi’s gaze swept across the room. In her peripheral vision, she saw the broken woman leaning against the doorway. The streaks of white hair on the woman’s head stung Yue Chengqi’s eyes.

The woman no longer cared for her grace or appearance. She looked like a withered husk, barely standing by leaning against the frame.

This was 2023. Yue Chengqi was not the motherless, fatherless Yue Huan. She wasn’t a girl with no social ties who only knew Su Ye in all of An City.

Su Ye wasn’t that ordinary girl selling goods on the street anymore, either. She wasn’t a little thing who could arrange her own life however she pleased.

Twenty-two years had brought too much. Su Ye had lived through those years consciously, becoming the focus of the spotlight. And Yue Chengqi, though she had been in a dream with moments of clarity, had essentially grown up alongside her younger self. She had now inherited all of that girl’s relationships and responsibilities.

They were no longer that young couple who could abandon everything to be together.

Until things were thoroughly thought through, they couldn’t just be together recklessly. At the very least, she couldn’t affect Su Ye’s life like that.

Is it really impossible? Yue Chengqi hesitated.

In the next second, Su Ye gave a tiny shake of her head. It was a rejection.

A sense of tragedy washed over Yue Chengqi. She had to bite the tip of her tongue to force a look of confusion and a shallow smile. Using the same spoiled tone she had used with Su Ye when she was twenty-two, she said, “Auntie, what are you talking about?”

“I…” Yue Chengqi choked for a moment, taking a breath before she could slowly force the words out. “I’m Chengqi.”

She was the Yue Chengqi who needed to think for a moment whenever she was called by that name.

Su Ye froze. In the next heartbeat, she grabbed her bag, turned, and bolted out the door.

Only then did the atmosphere in the ward ease slightly.

Yue Chengqi leaned back against the headboard. The pillows in the VIP ward were fuller and softer. Her fractured leg was carefully supported by plush padding.

Once, when Su Ye had injured her leg, they could only use two stacked shoeboxes to prop it up, desperate to keep the wound from rubbing against the coarse sheets and worsening the injury.

Yue Chengqi looked down and pinched the bedsheet. She felt like crying.

It’s so soft. It was soft enough to make someone who had just spent three years in the nineties want to weep.

Things were so hard back then. A layer of old cotton was the mattress, another layer was the blanket. The hard wooden boards made her back ache. Nothing was as warm or comfortable as this.

“Xiao Qi.” The withered woman dragged herself to the bedside, her voice sounding ragged and broken.

She called out the name once and then went silent, staring at Yue Chengqi as tears flowed uncontrollably.

Yue Chengqi hesitated for a moment. In the end, she couldn’t bear to see her cry. She pulled several tissues from the box nearby and turned to gently wipe away the tears.

Her somewhat calloused fingers brushed against a face lined with many wrinkles. Abruptly, Yue Chengqi was reminded of that wedding—the one that hadn’t been very grand.