TIL - 58

It took Wen Huo thirty seconds to react to Su He’s words, and when she did, she felt as if she had been struck by lightning. Many seemingly random and unrelated details all connected, and her mind was suddenly filled with “so that’s it.” She didn’t listen to Su He continue and quickly hung up the phone.

Chen Cheng noticed her strange behavior and asked her, “Whose phone call was that?”

Wen Huo shook her head and gave a fake smile that betrayed all her anxiety and tension. Chen Cheng didn’t ask again, but he remembered her expression. This was the first time she had shown such a desperate look since the last time they had a big fight after exposing their true identities to each other. Her despair was a kind of silent, heartbreaking agony. It was hard to describe; it was as if she had lost all hope in the world and just wanted to rot and die quietly in a corner. It was a suffocating pessimism that would infect anyone who got close. From that phone call on, Chen Cheng was trapped in a sea of suspicion.

He wasn’t afraid of her finding out about his unsavory past; he was afraid of her sadness. When she got sad, she would torment herself, and the notes Cheng Cuo had on her mental state were still etched in his mind, and he ached for her.

At dinner that night, Wen Huo only ate two bites. When Chen Cheng asked her if she wanted to eat a little more, she suddenly felt nauseous and went to the bathroom to throw up. Chen Cheng followed her to the bathroom, knelt down, and rubbed her back. “Is your stomach upset?”

Wen Huo shook her head. She just felt like throwing up, but she didn’t say anything. Chen Cheng didn’t get a response, so he stopped asking, but he continued to rub her back. He was very gentle, his movements light, yet each stroke seemed to go through Wen Huo’s thin frame and touch her heart. Wen Huo could feel Chen Cheng’s steady heartbeat and his warm, fresh breath on her ear. She really wanted to turn around and hug him. He was so good, and she liked him so much.

But what Su He said was too impactful and destructive. Even though so much time had passed since the call ended, she could still remember the tone and volume of his voice when he said that. Su Di was dead, and it was because of Chen Cheng. Did Chen Cheng know? Did he know about her and Su Di’s relationship? Did he know that Su Di was like a mentor and a friend to her? Did he know that when she was a teenager and couldn’t see her future, it was Su Di who helped her find her direction? She wanted to ask him, but she was too afraid of knowing the truth.

Chen Cheng saw that Wen Huo’s condition was getting worse and called a doctor. The doctor was Chen Cheng’s private doctor, a psychiatrist who could also treat minor illnesses. Back then, when Chen Cheng’s condition was very unstable, the doctor had lived at his house to monitor him. Later, Chen Cheng ended this arrangement, not because his condition had improved, but because he didn’t want to monopolize social resources. Of course, this was the doctor’s own guess. He guessed this because Chen Cheng had helped him get into the Peking University First Hospital. Whether Chen Cheng truly didn’t want to monopolize social resources was something only he knew.

Chen Cheng wasn’t a good communicator and was unwilling to share his feelings with others. Many things, others would find out about and then ask him, and only then would he consider whether or not to answer. The only thing he had ever expressed clearly was his feelings for Wen Huo. With a personality like his, it would be very difficult for him to talk about his past with Su Di, especially since it was the root cause of his illness.

After the doctor arrived, Wen Huo was nowhere to be found. She said she was sleepy and had gone to bed. Chen Cheng didn’t want to disturb her, so he was about to send the doctor away without seeing her. The doctor asked him how he had been lately. He said he was fine, but the doctor looked at him intently and didn’t believe him.

Chen Cheng had actually been doing very well lately. As long as Wen Huo was in his sight, he felt calm. He was never manic, nor was he particularly low, depressed, or unable to find relief. The doctor seemed to have figured something out. “You’re entrusting your chance at a cure to one person. When that person leaves one day, you’ll be finished.”

Chen Cheng had no reaction.

The doctor tightened his grip on his briefcase and said, “The abyss is bottomless. There’s no ‘worst,’ only ‘worse.’ Don’t think you’ll be free when you hit rock bottom. There is no bottom. You can’t be free. You have to climb out yourself, not rely on someone else to pull you out. When someone else’s rope snaps and you fall, it will hurt more and you’ll be shattered more completely than if you fall while climbing yourself.”

“Because you don’t know when that rope will break.” The doctor then mentioned Cheng Cuo. “I just found out that Dr. Cheng is your relative. He is very skilled and can be trusted. If you don’t want to talk to me about it, you can talk to him.” Chen Cheng didn’t want his family to know about his illness, which was why he didn’t go to Cheng Cuo. He trusted Cheng Cuo’s abilities, but he didn’t want to.

After sending the doctor away, Chen Cheng went upstairs. When he reached the top step, the bedroom door was right there, but his vision suddenly became blurry and dark. Depression and the feeling of death descended upon him. It had been a long time since they had visited, but they were still just as hideous, rushing into his mind with their fangs and claws. Had Wen Huo’s rope snapped? He didn’t even know what had happened, but why was the feeling of losing her so strong? What on earth had happened?

He leaned on the wall, a fine sweat breaking out on his forehead. He walked to the study and looked at Wen Huo’s phone, which was charging. He knew the password, and Wen Huo had also forced him to add his facial recognition. It seemed that if he just opened her phone, he would know what had happened, but he still didn’t. He sat down and called Tang Jun’en.

Tang Jun’en had just had sex and was a little tired, his lips were pale. “What’s wrong?”

Chen Cheng asked him, “What did you say to Huohuo?”

Tang Jun’en hadn’t realized the seriousness of the situation yet and was still joking around. “Did you two have a fight? I knew it. No woman can peacefully accept your complicated past, unless she doesn’t love you.”

Chen Cheng didn’t want to hear that. “How much did you say?”

Tang Jun’en finally heard the exhaustion in his voice and sat up, his expression becoming tense. “Is it that serious?”

Chen Cheng was very tired. He knew the depression was taking over. He didn’t know how much longer he could talk normally. “Tell me.”

This was the first time Chen Cheng had had an episode in front of Tang Jun’en. Tang Jun’en was flustered. He had never seen Chen Cheng like this. Just hearing his voice, he felt as if Chen Cheng was single-handedly holding back the end of the world. “I just told her about your time in Canada, and told her to go to foreign websites...”

Foreign websites. Anna. Su Di. Crime.

Chen Cheng understood and hung up the phone. Had Wen Huo found out about his illegal activities on foreign websites? Was the phone call she made to someone she had asked to investigate his past? Would she investigate him? Who would she ask? That mixed-race guy? Yes, that mixed-race guy.

Chen Cheng had never investigated the mixed-race guy Wen Huo knew. At first, he thought he was from her past love life, and that relationship made him so uncomfortable that he couldn’t bring himself to investigate. Later, he accidentally found out about his relationship with Ruan Lihong, and there was even less need to investigate. He didn’t feel he could pose a threat to him, and since he was someone Wen Huo was familiar with, he didn’t want to investigate him and make Wen Huo hate him. He was Canadian, so Wen Huo must have asked him.

He immediately ordered someone to look into it. His original intention was to find his contact information so he could ask him himself, but the information his secretary found was enough for him to understand the whole situation without needing to make a call. So he was Su He, Su Di’s twin brother. And Wen Huo was the strange little girl from China that Su Di used to talk about. The rope snapped. Chen Cheng was shattered.

Wen Huo lay in bed early but couldn’t fall asleep. She knew the doctor had come, but she didn’t want to see him. She touched her stomach. It felt a little cold, just like the weather today. Such heavy rain in September was quite rare.

She suddenly remembered what Su Di had said to her. “What do you think is the right orientation? The heart’s orientation is the right one.” He didn’t have a different orientation from most people. He had placed Chen Cheng in the position he reserved for the person he loved. And Chen Cheng just happened to be the same gender as him. He had accepted it gladly and lost his life for love...

Why did it have to be this way? Why did it have to be Chen Cheng? She could still remember Su Di’s manic state before he left. She was grateful to him for showing her the infinite world of physics, so she was instinctively biased toward him. So no matter if the person who hurt him was helpless, she would still imagine them to be her enemy. And now she was being told that Chen Cheng, the man she loved, was her imagined enemy? Is that how it was?

Su Di fell in love with physics because of Chen Cheng, and Wen Huo fell in love with physics because of Su Di. After returning to China, it was because of physics that she was chosen by Han Bailu to get close to Chen Cheng... What was this? What was this? What was it all? She bit her arm. Why was she so sad all of a sudden? Had it always been Chen Cheng? Was it always Chen Cheng who had made her foggy future suddenly clear? But what about Su Di? He was the one who gave her the courage to face all of this. How could she ignore a human life and deceive herself into being with Chen Cheng?

Her whole body started to ache. The feeling of nausea came back. She got out of bed, put on a coat, grabbed her car keys, and left. She wasn’t wearing her riding gear; she just grabbed a helmet from the shelf in the garage and took off.

Chen Cheng’s house was in the suburbs, right next to a mountain road. Wen Huo, in her white dress, was riding through the mountains on a rainy night. It was so out of the ordinary that it attracted a lot of attention. Halfway up the mountain was a hot spring village, one of the larger hot spring resorts around Beijing. Chen Cheng was a member and had brought Wen Huo here before, so everyone knew her, or at least they knew her license plate number. A plate number as good as that belonged to only one person in all of Beijing. They saw Wen Huo riding in the rain and told the owner, who immediately used it as an excuse to contact Chen Cheng.

Chen Cheng quickly walked to the bedroom while on the phone. She had really left, but he hadn’t heard a thing. His ears had been ringing, as if he were in a world with an audio frequency above 100HZ. He was oppressed by the high-decibel sound and was in great pain. It was like a marine animal encountering sonar, its organs damaged, and then getting stranded and dying.

Su Di had returned to his life, and in this way. He couldn’t accept it. The severity of his bipolar disorder reached a peak the moment he found out. Depression accompanied by mania continuously put pressure on his brain. His brain, in turn, drove and controlled his body, leading to both a psychological and physical breakdown. By the time the hot spring resort called, he didn’t even have the strength to stand up from his chair. This is how terrifying mental illness is; it easily destroyed an all-powerful man.

He struggled to change his clothes and drive to find Wen Huo. He was worried about her. Even if he was going to die, he had to make sure Wen Huo was safe first. He could repay a life with a life, but Wen Huo had to be okay. His wife had to be okay.