Chapter Fourteen
Love Without a Trace of Another Color (2)
“You just said you wanted to, too. You're contradicting yourself.” She tried to catch him out.
Her tone made him laugh.
What he had meant to say was that his former self had never laid so much as a finger on her.
Not because he hadn't wanted to, but because he couldn't.
As long as something would harm you, I would never do it. That was not something a man driven by love alone could accomplish. To speak of nothing but love between them was far too inadequate. There had been more than love. They had also been each other's closest family.
For a person's deepest longing to endure a hundred deaths without ever forgetting the past, it could never have been sustained by love alone. It was also because she was his only family. For a person to reach a point where everything was empty, where every hope had turned to ashes, it could never have been brought about by the loss of something as small as romantic love.
Thinking about it this way, his former self really had been useless. He had been unable to keep the woman he loved, or protect his family.
In the end... he must have been consumed by regret and hatred.
That was his guess.
“Yes, I want to,” Shen Ce affirmed once more. He was a man. There was no reason he wouldn't.
Then he added with a smile, “What I said earlier was just to make you happy.”
Zhaozhao wasn't annoyed. Instead, she laughed.
She wasn't stupid. They had only met a few days ago. Of course, words like those were only meant to please her, to make her happy.
Shen Ce was facing the one-way glass. Beyond it were the crystal chandeliers in the venue downstairs.
For the past two days, he had been thinking about the same thing. Back then, she had been extraordinarily intelligent. How could she not have seen that her older brother was deeply in love with her? So deeply that he hadn't dared return to the Shen residence lightly. So deeply that he hadn't even dared listen for long when she was bathing.
Every single thing he had “not dared” to do in that lifetime had been because of her.
“Feeling hot?” He touched the skin beneath her ear. There was warmth at the roots of her hair.
“Mm,” Zhaozhao murmured. His hand was feeling for the pulse beneath her neck. Each beat pushed against her skin, striking the pad of his finger.
He swept her hair up and looked at the spot.
Zhaozhao sat perfectly still, but she felt the danger of having a wild beast fix its gaze on her neck. The sensation was so intense that when he kissed her there, her whole body shuddered. Shen Ce's breath brushed past the skin behind her ear, down her neck, and along the curve beneath her chin. Shivers swept through her body, one wave after another.
Like golden waves of wheat beneath ten thousand miles of untamed clouds, rolling toward her in succession, brushing over her body.
“Did you lock the door?” She clung desperately to the last of her reason.
“No.” He found her lips.
Zhaozhao's eyes darted toward the two wooden doors, her ears straining to catch any sound outside. Yet under the pressure of his kiss, she parted her lips and let him in. His tongue pressed heavily against hers, pushing deep toward her throat. Zhaozhao struggled to keep kissing him. The force of the kiss was too strong, too heavy, accompanied by deep, labored breathing.
“What if someone comes in...”
He laughed. “No what-ifs.”
The kiss went on and on. From the two of them wrapped in a blanket to the blanket falling completely away. From her sitting sideways to finally straddling his lap. From heavy to gentle, then to the two of them sucking and kissing, unable to part from each other.
At last, reluctant to let go, she ran her index finger back and forth beneath his lower lip.
She only wished that every second she spent with him could stand still and never move forward again.
She noticed that his gaze had never left her. Then she looked at his half-lowered eyes. She had wanted to try this for a long time, with those eyes of his, so gentle when they looked at her.
She wanted to kiss them.
A light flashed through Shen Ce's eyes, like a wild goose skimming across the surface of water. But she was the only one who had ever witnessed that fleeting glimpse. His lashes lowered, concealing his gaze.
Zhaozhao leaned forward and pressed her lips to his eyes. The two of them went still. Suddenly, her face burned. She buried her head against his shoulder. Kissing on the lips was clearly far more intimate than this, yet it felt entirely different. Her lips had actually gone numb. She had to bite them to restrain herself before the sensation eased even a little.
She felt as though she had done something outrageously flirtatious to him...
When she looked at him again, he had already opened his eyes. He, too, seemed to have been left momentarily dazed by that kiss.
She whispered, “Your eyes are so beautiful.”
Shen Ce broke into a quiet laugh.
Zhaozhao rubbed her cheek against his shoulder for a while longer. Gradually, she noticed that the room was growing darker. It seemed strange. She thought she might be imagining it. She tipped her head back to look at the lights. They really did seem dimmer.
She was just about to ask when Shen Ce leaned toward her first and murmured in her ear, “If we don't talk, the lights dim.”
Zhaozhao watched as though she were watching a sunset. Before her very eyes, the lights changed from bright yellow to dark yellow, then to dark red...
“The dark red is the prettiest,” she whispered in his ear.
She regretted it as soon as she said it.
He couldn't see it. But Shen Ce deliberately glanced up at the ceiling light.
When he was young, unable to see red, he had once been curious about what the color looked like. He had tried looking at it through corrective glasses, but hadn't found it particularly stunning. Later, the elders in his family had developed a fondness for collecting red jade. To his eyes, however, the stones were nothing but an indescribable, dreary gray.
He had never considered it a regret in his life. Yet at that moment, he felt powerless.
“It's not even that pretty. You don't have to go out of your way to look.” Seeing how seriously he was taking it made Zhaozhao's heart ache.
Shen Ce suddenly turned his gaze back to her, her reflection caught in his pupils.
He wanted to look at her lips, recall their color, and use that memory to work out the dark red of the light before him. But he couldn't recall it. There was no such color in his memory, either. Everything else was there, vivid and fresh as ever. Only that color was missing.
His eyelids lowered, hiding his gaze, and he said with a smile, “I still can't imagine it.”
As though he had finally admitted defeat.
In fact, the light in the room had long since returned to dark yellow because they had been speaking.
But he hadn't noticed at all.
That night, Zhaozhao tossed and turned, unable to sleep, regretting that one thing over and over.
It seemed wrong for an emotion like “admitting defeat” to appear in someone like Shen Ce. But then she thought she was making too much of it. There were plenty of people who were color blind, and it wasn't some serious illness. Yet somehow, when it came to him, it made her sad.
The following day, Shen Ce's whereabouts were once again unknown.
Even Uncle Shen found it strange. During a meal, he asked Shen Yan what Shen Ce had been doing lately, leaving Zhaozhao surprised. Logically speaking, if Shen Ce had been out attending social engagements, Uncle Shen should have been the first to know.
That evening, she stayed in her older sister's room, hoping to distract herself by thinking about something else.
Her future university life, for instance?
Around bedtime, a knock on the door interrupted the sisters' idle chatter.
“Who is it?” her sister asked.
“It's me, Shen Yan. I'm looking for Little Aunt.”
Zhaozhao rolled over and got out of bed.
Outside the door, beneath the corridor lights, Shen Yan gave her a strained smile and lowered his voice.
“Little Aunt, if it's convenient, could you make up an excuse and come downstairs with me?”
By all rights, Shen Yan knew nothing about their relationship.
But seeing the pleading look in his eyes, Zhaozhao guessed that it was urgent, and that it had to do with Shen Ce.
“All right, I'll be right there,” Zhaozhao immediately called out.
She was wearing cotton pajamas, a short-sleeved button-front top and shorts. There was no time to change, so she found a large silk scarf she used for sun protection and wrapped it around herself. Only after she followed Shen Yan into the elevator did he speak.
“Little Aunt was the one who talked him down last time, so this time you're the only person I could think of. You know the wedding banquet is in three days, and he's supposed to be a groomsman...”
“He's boxing again?” Zhaozhao was alarmed.
Shen Yan frowned. “From the looks of it, there's no way he can be a groomsman now. Little Aunt, just try to talk him down first. Everyone down there is someone I brought in. I didn't dare let anyone in the building find out.”
“What's wrong with him? Did something happen to put him in a bad mood?”
“I don't know.”
Shen Yan genuinely didn't know.
The moment the elevator doors opened, Zhaozhao ran out.
Sure enough, several unfamiliar men were standing guard outside the elevator on the first basement level. They all seemed to recognize Zhaozhao and didn't stop her. She ran into the gym and immediately heard the dull thuds of fists and feet striking flesh.
On the ring, Shen Ce and the boxer were already moving so quickly that she could hardly tell them apart. Their punches and kicks were all lightning-fast.
She ran toward the ring, and before she could even make out which one was him, she shouted, “Shen Ce!”
It was as though no one had heard her. She finally reached the ring, grabbed the ropes, and found him.
The hemp ropes beneath her hands were covered in blood. Both men were drenched in sweat and blood from head to toe. Shen Ce suddenly landed a punch that sent his opponent staggering back two steps, then followed it with a spinning back kick.
“Did you hear me?! Shen Ce!”
The boxer fell against the ropes, his eyes bloodshot, then lunged at Shen Ce again.
All Zhaozhao could see were their fists and legs. She could almost picture blood flying everywhere. This was no longer simply fighting viciously. They were practically tearing at each other's flesh with their teeth. If they were allowed to keep fighting, someone was bound to be seriously injured.
Zhaozhao kicked off her slippers. In her haste to climb into the ring, she nearly fell.
She shouted to Shen Yan, who had just caught up behind her, “Give me a hand!”
Shen Yan grabbed her. “That Muay Thai boxer doesn't understand Chinese! Fists and feet don't have eyes! You can't go up there. It's too dangerous!”
“I told you to help me, not hold me back!”
Zhaozhao's tone left no room for argument. She turned and fixed Shen Yan with a look.
She shook off his hand, grabbed the ropes again, and climbed onto the ring. The floor beneath her feet kept trembling from the force of the fierce fight.
Without the slightest hesitation, she ducked beneath the ropes.
“If you don't stop, I'm coming over.”
The wind stirred by their punches and kicks was already sweeping across her face and skin.
She closed her eyes and walked forward, without hesitating for even half a second.
“Little Uncle!”
Shen Yan sucked in a sharp breath as he watched Zhaozhao approach them barefoot.
In the darkness behind her closed eyes, Zhaozhao suddenly felt an arm tighten around her, and she collided with a man's chest.
Before she could open her eyes, a tremendous force struck the man holding her. It was a punch from the boxer. But it had its effect. The boxer saw that Shen Ce was holding Zhaozhao and struggled to retreat, bringing his attack to a halt.
The force of that blow reached her through Shen Ce's body, making her heart jolt violently.
Her eyes reddened in an instant.
She opened them. “Is this what it takes to make you stop?”
The man holding her remained motionless. All she could smell was the metallic scent of blood mingled with his sweat. His throat seemed constricted, and he was breathing hard from the violent surge of emotion.
His face slowly brushed past hers.
Zhaozhao held her breath until his entire face came into view before her eyes.
There were bloody marks on his forehead, at the corners of his eyes, and at the corners of his mouth, along with dark, purplish bruises.
There was no one in those eyes. No reflections. Not even hers. His eyes were so dark that they seemed capable of swallowing anything living.
Zhaozhao felt as though she were facing a stranger.
This person didn't seem to be Shen Ce. He wasn't the Shen Ce she knew.
“Shen Ce?” she called softly.
He tilted his head slightly, listening to the movement behind him, as though he still wanted to throw himself back into the fight.
Zhaozhao hurriedly caught his hand. No longer caring that he was covered in sweat and blood, she wrapped her arms around him.
“Calm down. Please, calm down.”
The muscles of Shen Ce's abdomen and chest were still contracting in waves. His body was still in the state of hand-to-hand combat from moments before.
“Did something happen? Are you upset?” she asked softly. “Why don't we get down from here first?”
In the strange silence that followed, Zhaozhao realized he wasn't paying any attention to her at all.
She looked up.
Shen Ce had lowered his eyes slightly, as though he were trying to recognize who she was.
The way he looked at her made Zhaozhao's heart constrict.
She said gently, “It's all right if you don't want to get down. Whatever you want is fine.”
Shen Ce still didn't respond. Not even the slightest response.
Zhaozhao embraced him again.
She closed her eyes and listened to his heartbeat, trying hard to calm herself.
She was holding him now. Nothing would happen to him anymore...
There was nothing beautiful about this scene. Shen Ce was covered in injuries, his eyes filled with ferocity, the ropes wrapped around his hands soaked in blood. Yet there was something strangely striking about the sight.
To Shen Yan, it was like watching a vicious tiger that had already sunk its teeth into its prey's throat and was tearing away chunks of flesh, only to be embraced by a girl. The tiger, still in the midst of devouring its prey, was trying to determine whether the figure before it was another creature it could tear apart.
But the girl had already pressed her cheek against its neck, softly coaxing it to recognize her.
An eighteen-year-old girl, trained in ballet, and so extraordinarily beautiful.
When Shen Yan first met her, he had assumed she was the gentle, graceful type. Later, as he got to know her better, he gradually came to agree with Liang Jinhua's description of her. She was a vast expanse of alluring red flowers amid thick fog. Tonight, however, his understanding of her was overturned once again. Anyone who wished to approach that soul-bewitching, vivid beauty would have to beware of the tangled thorns beneath their feet.
She was a red flower concealing thorns, white jade stained with blood.
The boxer gradually calmed down as well. He lay back against the ropes, breathing heavily.
Tonight, Shen Ce had been fighting in earnest.
There had been no way to stop, because Shen Ce was fighting for his life. The slightest lapse in concentration could have meant taking a killing blow.
When Shen Ce had paid a considerable sum to bring this veteran boxer out of retirement, this was precisely the kind of fighting he had wanted. A fight in which the chances of survival were slim, the most primitive form of combat, where life and death held no distinction inside the ring.
Zhaozhao felt his fingers touch the skin below her neck, as though it were an unconscious movement.
Suddenly, she wanted to cry.
She could sense that he was struggling against something.
Although the intuition was absurd and entirely without basis, she still wanted to cry.
She wanted to tell him, Ge, hurry up and recognize me. Hold me. Please don't keep being like this.
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