In the afternoon, Xie Minghao came to pick up Xieqing to go back to City B. It was very cold, and Aunt Ren put a hat on Xieqing, but the collar was not fixed properly. Xieyi reached out to fix the collar for her sister, which made Xieqing look back at her. Xieqing had a pure face, and her eyes were black and bright, just like a baby. Xie Minghao took good care of her, and her face was round, just like a red apple. Xieyi couldn't help pinching her with his hands, and she didn't resist, but smiled at Xieyi. If she said that she liked Xieqing like this, would Aunt Ren be angry? After she sent them away, she suddenly received a text message from Li Zeliang on the way.
"have a meal together."
"Okay," she replied, adding a smiley face at the end.
After a while, she remembered this and asked him again: "Where to eat?"
“I heard there’s an Italian restaurant on Ningjing Road that’s delicious.”
This "heard" is what Li Zeliang just asked Xiao Lin about. He is a person who pays close attention to these things. Before, when he had a female companion, others would try their best to please him, but he never paid any attention to it. Now he can only use his thin skin to ask others.
Xieyi smiled and replied: "Then you might as well cook it for me."
After a few minutes, he replied:
"Okay, I'll pick you up after get off work."
Xieyi looked at the words on the screen and raised her lips. He picked her up after get off work, and then they went shopping together and went home to cook. This kind of ordinary happiness was what she dreamed of. Even if it was late, she didn't miss it after all. At the end of the day, his car was parked low-key on the roadside across from the company. Xieyi hurried downstairs and jumped into the car. It was very cold outside. She rubbed her cold hands, and then suddenly put them on his cheek, which gave him a chill.
Seeing Li Zeliang's expression, Xieyi laughed mischievously. He twitched his eyebrows and glanced at the driver in the front seat helplessly. Fortunately, the driver sat upright and looked straight ahead. Even if he saw it, he pretended not to see it at all. Xieyi then realized that it was not Ji Yingsong who was driving. He was really on a business trip. She looked at Li Zeliang uneasily. It seemed that Ji Yingsong had not told him that she had asked about the car accident. Xieyi was not familiar with the driver, so she could not be presumptuous and had to sit properly. Unexpectedly, after a while, he stretched out his right hand and gently grasped her left hand. Xieyi glanced at him with a throbbing heart and found that he was pretending to look out the window as if nothing had happened. His hands were not much warmer than hers, but when their skin touched each other, they were particularly warm. Back at the apartment, Li Zeliang first called Lao Tan and told him that he would not return to the old house. He had been brought up in a strict family since he was a child, and he also developed the habit of saying hello to people wherever he went, so that they would not have to cook and wait for him.
Xie Yi asked, "You went back to the old house in the past few days?"
Li Zeliang nodded.
"Then why do you wait for me here every time?"
He said nothing and started washing the rice with water.
At this time, the phone rang, Xieyi wiped his hands and went to answer it.
"Miss... Shen." It was Old Tan again, and he was still a little surprised.
"Yes, Uncle Tan, it's me."
Old Tan sighed: "No wonder he is so happy today."
"Is it that obvious?" Xie Yi laughed.
"I was trying to persuade Mr. Li to go home, or to ask him to be nursed, but it seems that we can forget about it today."
"What's wrong?"
"His legs have been badly swollen lately, and he has to massage them every night, otherwise he'll feel even worse the next day."
"I advised him to go back."
"Forget it, Miss Shen, you know his temper. If he doesn't want to do something, even ten oxen can't pull him to do it." Old Tan shook his head, and he was afraid that the two of them would accidentally have a quarrel again.
"let me try."
After hanging up the phone, she returned to the kitchen. Li Zeliang asked, "Who's calling?"
"Uncle Tan said that you should go back to the old house after dinner."
"What are you going back for?" He stopped.
"Your leg needs treatment."
"I told him I'm fine and will go back another day." He stopped what he was doing and his back was a little stiff.
Xie Yi knew that he didn't like to talk about this matter, and was especially afraid that he would suddenly explode. The air in the kitchen really froze instantly.
Xieyi walked over and hugged his waist from behind, "Ayan, what if it hurts you?"
"I'm not hurt." His expression softened and he said softly.
"But my heart will ache," she paused, then said, "Go back, I will go back with you."
"Really?" he asked awkwardly.
Seeing that he was relieved, Xie Yi quickly replied, "Really."
"Okay," he said.
At that moment, she realized that he didn't go back to the old house because of her. He was afraid that she would not go to the Li family. Thinking of this, she tightened her arms around him.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"Actually, as long as we have A-Yan, nothing else matters. It would be great if we could be together every minute."
After they had dinner they returned to the old house, where a group of people were already waiting there.
In the bedroom, Li Zeliang frowned as he removed his prosthesis, his face turning pale. The broken right leg once again appeared naked in front of her eyes, but it was completely different from the feeling before. If it wasn't for her, why would he do this? A warm current gathered from her limbs and rushed to her eyes, almost making her cry.
"Xieyi, go out first." He noticed that something was wrong with her, and he really didn't want her to know that his leg was getting worse.
"No, I want to see it." She refused firmly.
While the beautiful nurse was going out to get something, he said softly, "You go out first."
"Ayan, this is absolutely impossible," she said, blinking her eyes, "leaving a beautiful woman here alone to touch your legs, I don't feel comfortable."
He burst out laughing.
After taking the medicine, he began to feel sleepy early. Xieyi was originally sitting by the bed watching TV with him. Seeing his eyelids begin to droop, she was about to turn down the volume of the TV. She looked around and found the remote control on the other side of the pillow. However, he had been holding her hand since just now, and he was still a light sleeper. If she moved, she would probably wake him up.
The TV entered the commercial period and the volume became louder. She couldn't help but move her position, trying to keep her hand still, and use her other hand to go around him to get the remote control. After finally getting it and fixing the TV, she let out a long breath and sat down, only to see the evil cat that Li Zeliang raised enter the bedroom happily, and then jumped lightly onto his quilt. Xieyi frowned and made a gesture for it to get off quickly, but the evil cat didn't know the situation at all. Instead, it calmly stepped on the quilt a few more times, and finally meowed at Xieyi twice in a proud manner. Xieyi was so angry that she raised her foot and kicked it off. She was so excited that she accidentally pulled her hand out of his palm and the cotton slippers on her feet fell off, which really woke him up.
He opened his eyes, "Where are you going?"
"I'm not going anywhere." She stood up and hopped a few steps on one leg before putting on her slippers, while the evil cat still barked at her unconvinced.
"What happened to you?" he asked.
"I... I advised it to hibernate, but it didn't listen, so I taught it a lesson for you."
"Have you ever seen a cat hibernate?"
"I haven't seen it, but I heard about it from someone." Xieyi seemed to be catching someone by the tail and was very proud.
During the winter vacation of the year they first met, there was a litter of newborn kittens in the library. Xieyi always caught the kittens to play with. The two kittens were not yet full-term and slept with their heads drooped every day, but whenever they fell asleep, Xieyi liked to wake them up.
After a while, her problem of wondering a hundred thousand whys started to occur again, so she asked him: "Why do they always sleep?"
He was very impatient with her at that time, and simply explained: "They hibernate."
From then on, this statement became an allusion to Li Zeliang's high school days.
He smiled, "Do you still remember?"
"Of course, I remember all those things about you clearly." Xie Yi continued, "And that time, before the CET-4 exam, you helped me review English words, but Hou Xiaodong and his friends squeezed into our place to watch football. The game didn't start until midnight, and they kept telling ghost stories to kill time. As a result, after listening to them, I didn't dare to sleep alone in the room for several days, so I slept on the floor in your room..."
Because of the effect of the medicine, he fell asleep before she finished talking. Xieyi had never taken care of him before, and for the first time, she felt that Li Zeliang could be weak. Xieyi smiled as she looked at his sleeping face and tucked him in.
At that moment, he said vaguely: "Xieyi, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." He said these three words several times, but his voice became softer and softer, until it was gradually inaudible. She didn't know whether it was his dream talk or he really said it to her. When she looked carefully again, he was indeed asleep again. Xieyi stood there and looked at him silently for a long time, and suddenly remembered the lyrics she heard in the taxi during the day: "I want to kiss your stubborn heart." She leaned over and kissed him very lightly, then turned off the lights and turned back to the guest room next door.
Li Zeliang slept until three or four in the morning. When he woke up, he found that he was the only one in the empty bed. He sat up suddenly, threw off the quilt and got out of bed, but accidentally fell to the ground. He climbed up by the edge of the bed, groped for the walking stick beside the bed, and went out with great effort to find the guest room. It was not until he saw Xie Yi lying on the bed in the guest room that his heart was slightly relieved. He was afraid that everything yesterday was a dream. He had had this kind of illusory dream many times, and every time he woke up, he found that it was just his own false joy. He put down his walking stick, slept on her bed, and hugged her from behind, with an unprecedented sense of reality.
She touched a familiar pair of hands while she was dazed. She came to her senses and turned around. "Ayan?"
"Yeah." He buried his head in her hair and then kissed her cheek.
"Your legs..." She was afraid that he was here to do something bad.
"I just want to hug you." He clung to her with some attachment.
"What's wrong?"
He whispered slowly, "I was afraid you'd disappeared."
Hearing this short sentence, Xieyi seemed to feel a kind of fragrant warmth slowly spreading from her stomach to her heart. She suddenly remembered a famous saying about love: To the world, you are just one person; but to one person, you are the whole world.
The next morning, when I went out, I found that it was white outside. It had snowed all night. The first snow of this year fell without any warning. It was an unexpected surprise. When I got in the car, I found that the driver was the same one from yesterday. Ji Yingsong had not come back, nor had he reported anything to Li Zeliang. They knew each other tacitly.
"I can't have dinner with you tonight," he said.
"Why?"
"Meet a friend."
"Male? Female?" she asked pettily.
"No comment." Li Zeliang smiled.
"Since you are so uncooperative, I won't allow you to go."
“But I have an appointment.”
"Then take me with you."
"good."
She had just said it casually, but she didn't expect him to agree so readily. Xieyi immediately suspected that she had fallen into some trap and looked at him suspiciously: "Are you setting a trap?"
"No." He laughed again.
She stared at him for a long time, but couldn't see anything. Finally, she decided to act cautiously and said, "Forget it. I believe you. I won't go."
After talking about this topic, Xie Yi's attention was attracted by a motorhome at the same traffic light. Li Zeliang turned his head and looked out the window on the other side, and then the smile on his face faded. He never wanted her to know that he was going to meet someone that night. The place where he and his date were going was a very distinctive Chinese restaurant by the river. The corridor was full of palace lanterns, and then he walked around a double-sided embroidered screen and entered the private room. He ordered the dishes first, and when he came back from the bathroom, the Schneiders had already arrived.
The old lady kissed his face kindly, then looked at him carefully and exclaimed, "Li, you have become handsome again."
When the dishes were served, he and the couple chatted about family matters and recent events. When the old lady was talking about something happy, she asked the old man to get a photo of her grandson for Li Zeliang to see. Li Zeliang was a little condescending to others, but he was always grateful to the Schneiders, just like the elderly in his own family. After finishing the meal, when leaving, the old lady suddenly remembered what happened the day before yesterday and asked, "Li, do you know a lady named Shen Xieyi?"
Li Zeliang was slightly surprised and said, "I know him."
"I knew you must know each other, so we did something wrong."
"What's up?"
"Miss Shen served as our interpreter twice and mentioned your car accident by accident." The old lady said, "Miss Shen was very surprised and left in a hurry. I wonder if we did anything wrong?"
"When?" he asked.
"It was the afternoon before yesterday."
The day before yesterday…
After Li Zeliang sent the two old people back to the hotel, he thought about this time in the car. He saw Xieyi downstairs of Li's building the day before yesterday, and her expression seemed a little strange. He saw her from a distance, so he wanted to walk over, but he didn't expect her to suddenly cross the road and run in front of him. At that time, she knew the truth, so she ran to see him, found an opportunity to pester him again at night, and even wrote a code in the book...
He smiled sadly. He had imagined that she really loved him, so she forgave him and was willing to be with him. Now, it was just a kind of guilt and sympathy after knowing that he became a cripple because of her. He squeezed the cigarette box in his hand tighter and tighter, and finally hit his right leg hard, letting the pain eat away at him.
At this time, a freehand text message came on the mobile phone.
"Ayan, it's been a long time since we had dinner, why haven't you come back yet? Are you still chatting? Come back soon, I'll pick you up at the door."
Li Zeliang read the message for a long time, then turned off the power and said to the driver, "Go for a walk and come back later." Then he opened the car window a little. A biting cold wind with small snowflakes blew in, disrupting the warmth and tranquility in the car.
I finally became convinced that this happiness was real, but now I realize it is still nothing.
He suddenly wanted to smoke, and then he realized that he had already crumpled up the remaining half pack of cigarettes, so he asked, "Lao Li, do you have any cigarettes?"
The driver hurriedly said, "Yes, but the cigarettes are not good. I'm afraid you won't be used to them, Mr. Li."
He said nothing, just took it and started smoking, one cigarette after another, without stopping.
The car didn't return to the old house until almost eleven o'clock. When he saw his car parked at the door, he put on his coat and rushed out of the house.
"Ayan." She ran to him with a smile.
"Yeah." He responded lightly and walked around her.
She felt that something was wrong with him, but she still smiled and asked again: "Where did you go? It's so late."
"Go back." He stopped and turned to her.
"What’s wrong with you?"
"What's wrong with me?" He smiled. "Shen Xieyi, why did you suddenly come to me? Do you feel guilty about your enemy or decide to let bygones be bygones? Or do you feel sorry for a cripple like me?"
"I..." Xie Yi was a little speechless. She didn't know if he had heard anything.
He sneered, "You can't say it? Then I'll say it for you. You are so deliberate in taking revenge on me, how come your sympathy takes over? You think I amended my limb for you, and I became a monster with a missing leg for you, so you are a saint, you feel guilty! You feel guilty! You think you have a responsibility to me! Let me tell you, Shen Xieyi, I don't need it! In this world, I, Li Zeliang, lack everything except people's pity. I am happy with what I do. Let alone amputating my leg, even if I jumped down and died, it was my own fault, and it has nothing to do with you!"
He became more and more angry as he spoke, and finally slammed the door and went into the house, leaving her alone in the yard.
"It's not like that." Xieyi looked at his disappearing back, tears welling up in her eyes, but she couldn't find any words to refute him.
What he said was not without reason. If the truth of his disability had not been revealed to her, how could she have the courage to face his love? But... it seemed that it was not entirely true.
"It's not like that, it's not like that..." She could only repeat these pale words weakly and slowly squatted down.
Snowflakes fell from the sky. She just stood there in the freezing night, but she could not feel the cold. She let the snowflakes fall on her hair and face, and then melt into snow water when they touched her skin. She just kept thinking about his words in her mind.