Chapter 55: But It Can’t Be Me—It Simply Cannot Be Me! Part 2

“Besides, you like girls, don’t you? I like girls too. We are both the same, so why can’t it be us?”

“No!” Yue Chengqi’s eyes were red as she glared at her. A single tear rolled down her cheek. “It can’t be us.”

She was from the future. She had only come here because of a car accident. Her presence was a fluke. She had shattered Su Ye’s peaceful life, disrupting everything. But everything she had disrupted would eventually return to its proper track. So it couldn’t be her… how could it possibly be her…

“Why can’t it be us, Ah Huan? I like you, and you like me, don’t you? We… we belong to each other. That should be enough.”

“It’s not! It’s wrong! You… you are supposed to meet a very, very, very good woman. You’ll be together for a few years, and she’ll become your eternal White Moonlight, someone you’ll remember forever. Even if you’re alone for all those years afterward, you’ll still remember her. You won’t accept anyone else…” Yue Chengqi was speaking in a jumble. Her mind was collapsing. She couldn’t organize her thoughts; her words were a chaotic mess of past, present, and future.

Su Ye felt her heart grow colder. She asked through her tears, “Can’t that person be you?”

“It can’t be me!!” Yue Chengqi shrieked, her voice full of exhaustion and despair.

She said, “My being here is a complete accident. This is a stolen life. I might have already died under the wheels of that truck. How could it be me? How can you be with a ghost who doesn’t even know how much longer she can last?”

“Ah Ye, listen to me. We should go find that person. She must be somewhere in An City, or maybe she’s among the people we’ll negotiate with. She must be there. She’ll be gentle, strong, and beautiful. She’ll have every quality you love. She’ll be the person you love most. Let’s go find her, okay? If she’s sick, we’ll heal her. If there’s conflict between you, I’ll find a way to fix it. There must be a way to make sure you stay together forever.”

Yue Chengqi looked away. She didn’t dare look at Su Ye. She didn’t dare look into those bloodshot eyes filled with longing. Just hearing Su Ye ask over and over why it couldn’t be her was enough to shatter Yue Chengqi’s heart.

It couldn’t be her. But truly… it couldn’t be her.

The girl stumbled back, leaning against the shelves, and closed her eyes in despair.

Actually, perhaps… it really was her.

History, which refused to change no matter what she did, might have always developed this way.

Those things in the future—the items in Su Ye’s life that came from a “mysterious person”—were things she had bought, things she had crafted with her own hands, letters she had written. They were all hers.

Every coincidence converged into one point. The moment Su Ye finally bared her heart today, Yue Chengqi realized: she was a participant in history. Everything was destiny.

She couldn’t change it because she was the one who caused those things to happen. Her life was filled with the “effects” of causality; she only knew the outcomes. Since she had arrived with the answers to the test, she could only ever derive the predetermined results.

But how could the world be this absurd? How could she…

Su Ye wanted to move forward and hold her, but she heard the woman’s trembling voice say—

“But I don’t want to be the source of your pain for the next few decades.”

It wasn’t a lack of love. It wasn’t that she couldn’t. It was because she knew what the future held, and she feared it—feared it deeply and completely.

“…Ah Huan…” Su Ye’s lips trembled. She suddenly lost the strength to keep speaking.

Yue Chengqi suddenly thought of something. She walked over and gripped the girl’s shoulders. “We’ll find that person. We’ll find her and we’ll bind her to your side. There must be a way. We won’t let it turn out like the future. It’ll work…”

“Am I… always alone in the future?” Su Ye’s heart felt like ice.

Yue Chengqi shook her head violently. “I can definitely change it. Ah Ye, Su Ye, don’t give up so early. There are still two whole years before ‘I’ am born. Even if I have to disappear then, it’s enough time to find that person. It’s enough. It has to be. I’ll definitely help you find her.”

She gritted her teeth so hard they nearly bled, enduring the searing pain in her heart. “I will… definitely find her.”

Su Ye was speechless.

Yes. There were only two years left until the birth of the little “Yue Huan.” If the two could not coexist, then there really were only two years left.

There were only two years left between them.

Su Ye, do you dare to start a relationship with a countdown? Do you dare to start a relationship destined to end in a lonely walk?

Yue Huan didn’t dare. And it seemed… she couldn’t afford to dare.

She finally nodded. “Fine. I promise you.”

“We’ll find that person. You have to help me find her, okay?”

“…Okay. I’ll be with you. We’ll find her together.”

Yue Chengqi forced a smile—a bitter, agonized smile. She smiled so hard she barely recognized herself.

With that difficult smile, she said coldly, “I can definitely change it, Ah Ye. Believe me.”

Su Ye’s smile was even more bitter. “Okay. I believe you.”

But how could feelings be changed? A confession made with gathered courage had ended in a mess of panic. Even the closest relationship would develop cracks, and both of them knew the cracks were there. There was no way around it.

Yue Chengqi hadn’t said “I don’t love you.” She had said she couldn’t love her, that she didn’t dare to love her—a profound fear born of knowing the future.

Su Ye hadn’t said “I give up.” She had said “we’ll do it together” and “you have to be with me”—a desperate struggle born of exhaustion.

Love was laid bare on the table, yet no one dared to look at it, let alone touch it. So, they could only turn their backs to each other. The quest to “find someone” was just a makeshift excuse that neither truly intended to act upon. Yet even so, they no longer had the strength to look into each other’s eyes.

Avoiding one another seemed better than meeting.

This situation was worse than their argument in June. It was so bad that even the two adults sensed something was wrong but had no way to intervene, as both “children” claimed they were fine—that nothing was wrong, and everything was great.

Yue Chengqi thought they would continue like this. After all, when Su Ye went to Sichuan to negotiate a partnership, she had called the pregnant Lin Wanjia to report her return time, but she hadn’t taken Yue Chengqi’s calls.

Still, Yue Chengqi placed a coin into the phone box. She had overheard Su Ye’s call with Lin Wanjia. She had heard how Su Ye’s breath hitched the moment Lin Wanjia mentioned “Ah Huan is right here,” followed by a hurried “I have things to do” before hanging up.

That counted as a phone call, in a way.

Yue Chengqi couldn’t help but smile as she inserted the money. A rare, genuine smile.

That counts as a call.

She thought she wouldn’t dream during this time, but she did. However, it had nothing to do with Su Ye.

How strange. She could actually have a dream that didn’t involve Su Ye.

In the dream, it was a night back when she was in university in Ye City. Lin Youle had just started her job and had no friends her age, so she asked Yue Chengqi out for a drink.

She had seen Lin Youle up close before, but she hadn’t paid attention. Now, meeting her in the dream was quite nice; she could see the girl’s face clearly.

A child raised in a rainy city had skin much fairer than her mother’s. One could faintly see another person’s shadow in her features, especially in her eyes—naturally gentle and soulful. She looked at everyone with a slight smile, making anyone who met her think she had a mild temperament.

In truth, she didn’t.

“Damn it all, they’re all picking on me!” the girl said, her southern accent mixing with awkward northern slang as she downed a drink. “Good thing I have you, Qiqi, someone to listen to me vent.”

“Yue Chengqi” held her glass and said helplessly, “Me listening doesn’t really help, though. I’m just a student; I can’t help with your work.”

“It’s fine! It’s enough just to have someone willing to listen. I don’t need you to make decisions for me.”

“Then go ahead. I’m listening.”

Lin Youle vented about all the frustrations of the past few days and took another sip. “Before I started working, I didn’t think it would be this hard. But now I see it’s brutal. Those old fogeys are just like the ones in my family—totally set in their ways.”

“Luckily, Everguest has Auntie Su Ye holding total power. Not like my guardian…” Lin Youle gave a cold laugh. “Giving up power way too early. Now there’s no one to manage things. If it weren’t for Auntie Su Ye helping out, the company would have been swallowed by the market waves long ago.”

“Her health isn’t great, you shouldn’t push her. Doesn’t she have a heart condition?”

Lin Youle only smiled, downing one drink after another.

The dream ended there.

The next morning, Yue Chengqi thought about it all morning before deciding to go ask Lin Wanjia.

Lin Wanjia didn’t seem like the type of manager who would just give up power as described in the dream. But it was hard to say; a lot could happen in over twenty years. Lin Wanjia might have grown weary of the power struggle and chosen to step back.

She sat silently by Lin Wanjia’s bed. The woman looked at her and smiled. “What’s wrong? Come to eavesdrop on my call with Little Leaf again?”

“What on earth is going on between you two? It seems serious.”

Two weeks ago, Zhang Mingfang had told her that Su Ye might actually be in love with Yue Huan and had even asked her for advice. Lin Wanjia thought any advice from Zhang Mingfang would be useless—after all, look how many years Zhang Mingfang had been waiting—but she hadn’t expected it to be this useless.

It was as if the confession had failed and they had broken up immediately.

Yue Chengqi shook her head and gently took the woman’s hand. “Sister, I think… I found you in my memories.”

Lin Wanjia pulled her hand back. “I told you, I’m not interested in the future.”

“…Sister, please let me finish?”

“Go on.”

“You’re going to name the child Youle—meaning ‘to have joy,’ right?”

Only then did Lin Wanjia turn to look at her, her expression one of surprise.

Yue Chengqi: “Is… is your heart not doing well?”

Lin Wanjia froze for a moment, then smiled. She patted Yue Chengqi’s head. “Alright, that’s enough. I know now. Don’t say any more; I really don’t want to hear it.”

Yue Chengqi slowly rested her head on the back of the woman’s hand, a soft gesture Su Ye often did. She said slowly, “Can I ask Dr. Zhang to bring in a cardiologist? Just to be there for you on that day?”

“Sure. Of course you can,” Lin Wanjia smiled gently, stroking the girl’s chin. “I’ll look for one myself.”

She smiled with such calmness and grace, but Yue Chengqi still remembered what she had said at the very beginning—that any news of the future would be bad news to her. Yue Chengqi felt something was wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on what.

She went back to the shop and called Su Ye, who was on her way back. The moment the call connected, she said: “Ah Ye, let’s stop avoiding each other, okay? I think… something is wrong.”