"When I was in high school, I felt that you were very special. I couldn't help but care about you. When you sat in front of me, it wasn't that you blocked my view of the blackboard, but your profile always distracted me. In the photo album that Xie Wenxuan brought, there was a photo of you sketching from top to bottom. That was me secretly taking a photo of you. Because we were separated into different classes, I couldn't see you often anymore. Every once in a while I saw you, I wanted to take a photo of you..."
This time it was Shen Antu's turn to be shocked. He pushed Xie Duo away and sat up, leaning forward and staring at Xie Duo like a small animal that could not resist human emotions.
"But please forgive me. I was a fool back then. I didn't know why I behaved so abnormally. It wasn't until you left for your senior year of high school that I realized that I actually liked you." Xie Duo took Shen Antu's hand with heartache and kissed it gently on his lips.
"I have always had a crush on you, Shen Antu. This is not fake. This is the only truth among all the lies I have told you."
"The day you woke up in the hospital, I told you I was your boyfriend. I wasn't trying to embarrass you at all. I had dreamed of this identity for many years, but I never thought it would come true."
"Although I may have liked you two years less than you, Shen Antu, I did like you since high school, and this year is the tenth year."
“Pfft…” Shen Antu couldn’t hold it in any longer and started laughing with his hands covering his face. It started out as a soft chuckle and ended up laughing out loud.
Xie Duo was right, they were all fools. Even though they were now powerful figures in the business world, they were cowardly and incompetent cowards in that small classroom more than ten years ago.
If even any one of them had stepped forward and said "hello" when they met on the way to school in the morning, the outcome might have been very different.
They could have really been like Xie Duo imagined, going to school together, taking the college entrance examination together. Even if they were in different places, it didn't matter. They would eventually return to a city, to a home, holding hands tightly from sunrise to sunset, and finally be stuffed into urns together, with their graves next to each other.
But they didn't.
They wasted ten years and suffered a lot for nothing.
The words of love they expressed painfully every late night could never reach their lover's ears. Even if they met, even if their eyes met, they could only be hurt by their lover's indifference and could not see the boiling love buried under the disguise for each other.
"It's okay, Xie Duo, it's okay. Look, aren't we together now? There's a saying in English, 'All is well that ends well'. How do you say it in Chinese? Anyway... Anyway, it's okay now."
Shen Antu didn't know that his face was covered with tears from smiling. Xie Duo wiped them away for him with the back of his hand. He held that hand back and rested his cheek on his palm, his movements as devout as a believer.
"Xie Duo, I have never had good luck in my life, this is the only time. I am grateful for this plane accident, thank it for bringing you to me..."
It was as if his vocal cords had disappeared out of thin air, and Xie Duo was unable to utter a word. He could only hold Shen Antu tightly in his arms. The pain from the wound on his thigh reminded him that all this was real.
"Because this accident brought you here, I won't care no matter who tampered with my plane. But he actually dared to touch you."
Shen Antu's voice suddenly turned cold, and his personality seemed to switch from "Shen Antu" to "Shen Lin" mode in an instant.
Xie Duo then remembered that Shen Antu’s story was not over yet. Not only was it not over yet, it had not even reached the part that he cared about the most.
"What happened later? Why did you suddenly go abroad?" Xie Duo asked.
Shen Antu paused for a while before continuing, "At first I thought that although Shen Kaiping was a bad guy, he at least helped me when I was helpless. Since he needed a son, I could be his son. Later I found out that it was not that simple. I was just another Shen Yixing."
Shen Antu later went to find the wealthy businessman who was going to marry Shen Lijun. He pieced the pieces together and finally restored the original appearance of the events of that year.
At that time, Shen Kaiping found Shen Lijun and asked her to let Shen Antu come back to be his son. For this, he could compensate Shen Lijun with a sum of money. This money was enough to buy out an ordinary person's life, but for the first time, Shen Lijun put money second. She knew what kind of person Shen Kaiping was, and Shen Antu must not go back, so she refused.
Fearing Shen Kaiping's revenge, Shen Lijun went to ask her fiancé to protect Shen Antu. However, she didn't expect that the money that Shen Lijun refused had already been in her fiancé's hands. She overheard him talking on the phone with Shen Kaiping, saying that he could take the person away directly in the evening.
Shen Lijun had no choice but to escape with Shen Antu.
But she said to Shen Antu: "Baby, you did so well in the high school entrance exam. Mommy will take you on a trip."
Shen Antu knew nothing. He got into Shen Lijun's car, happily playing with his phone, planning the route to Tibet with Shen Lijun, and then -
"That was not an accident at all. It was deliberately arranged by Shen Kaiping."
"They told me that my mother was seriously injured and died because of ineffective rescue. That was not true. She was still alive at the time and there was still a chance for rescue. It was Shen Kaiping who refused to save her. They didn't even let her go on the operating table."
"Guess how I knew that?"
"With 102 days left before the college entrance examination, I was reading in my room, and two servants were chatting in the garden under my window sill. They described the entire process of our car accident in great detail, saying that my mother was lying on the bed, covered in blood, and died with her eyes open. They described it as if they had seen it with their own eyes..."