In the afternoon, the thin mist in the forest gradually dispersed, pale golden beams of light slowly shining into the forest. The animals on the manor’s pasture behind lay lazily on the lawn, beginning to enjoy the warm sunlight.
At this time, Shen Lingge was accompanying Wen Xian, lying on a lounge chair in the garden. Perhaps because of the time difference, Wen Xian lay with her eyes closed for quite a while but didn’t fall asleep. So she secretly opened her eyes and glanced at the person beside her.
Shen Lingge had his eyes closed, breathing shallowly, as if already asleep.
Wen Xian endured lying on the chair for another ten minutes, but really couldn’t hold it anymore, so she quietly climbed up. When she strolled back to the living room, she happened to run into the butler preparing to go out.
Seeing she was bored, the butler took her to the indoor swimming pool inside the castle. Wen Xian hadn’t expected even swimsuits were prepared. She spent quite a while in the changing room before picking out a two-piece swimsuit.
Light pink flower buds blooming, light gauze thin as cicada wings.
Wen Xian discovered that after falling in love, her girlish heart seemed to have returned.
Wen Xian hadn’t gone swimming for a long time. She did a few simple warm-up exercises, then ran a few small steps and jumped into the water. The water temperature in the pool was moderate. Wen Xian moved freely in the water like a fish.
The water here was clean. Wen Xian played for quite a while before leaning against the poolside to rest.
And she had never noticed that someone had been watching her from outside the glass all along.
When the little girl secretly climbed up and sneaked away, Shen Lingge had already woken up. In fact, he hadn’t been sleeping deeply. He watched as she took off her shoes and held them in her hand, carefully walking into the house.
He patiently waited for a while before following. The butler told him Wen Xian had gone to the swimming pool, so Shen Lingge circled around to the gallery outside the pool to watch her.
Without him there, the little girl was much more at ease. After swimming for a while, she splashed over to the poolside to hug a swimming ring, lying on it and floating for a long time, then went to grab floating toys on the water.
Before leaving, the butler had instructed the servants to prepare tea and snacks for her. At this moment, she was leaning against the poolside eating little cakes. On her fair and smooth back, there were only two thin straps tied, apart from that there wasn’t a single extra decoration.
Between her movements, the hollow of her waist appeared faintly.
Her frame was small. Even though she had a little flesh on her body usually, she still looked slender.
Shen Lingge lowered his eyelids to look at the time on his watch. She had already been in the water for half an hour. He raised his hand and knocked on the glass window. The little girl froze for a moment before starting to look around for where the sound came from.
He helplessly curved his lips and walked in through the side door into the indoor pool.
When Wen Xian heard the sound, she turned her head to look, immediately threw down the small spoon and instinctively covered her chest. She blinked rapidly, her face reddening, stammering: “You… when did you come over?”
Shen Lingge didn’t continue approaching her. First, afraid of scaring her; second, he didn’t want to torture himself either.
He lowered his eyes to look at her for a while, calmly reminding: “Can’t play for too long, in the morning you already caught the cold wind. Get up and go shower and change clothes, after sleeping for a bit you can get up and eat dinner.”
Wen Xian fidgeted in the water for a while, then obediently climbed up. Shen Lingge took a bath towel and wrapped it around her. Her fair and delicate feet stepped on the cold ground.
He bent down slightly and picked her up. Her tender little face was still covered with water droplets. He asked in a low voice: “Where to shower? In the changing room or go back to the room?”
Wen Xian swung her little legs, wrapping her arms around his neck: “Back to the room to shower.”
The castle was very big. Shen Lingge held her and walked for nearly five minutes before returning to the room she slept in last night. As soon as she touched the floor, the little girl slipped away like a slippery fish.
Shen Lingge pulled the curtains in the room shut, took off his jacket, and lay down on her bed.
Because the wound under his collarbone was still red and swollen, he hadn’t slept well last night. On the pillow, there was still her faint fragrance. Shen Lingge unconsciously closed his eyes, his body and mind gradually relaxing.
Inside the bathroom, Wen Xian sneezed several times while showering. She rubbed her nose and turned the hot water up a little higher, the slightly scalding water gradually driving away the chill on her body.
This time after finishing her shower, Wen Xian obediently dried her hair completely.
When she changed into her pajamas and walked out of the bathroom, she saw Shen Lingge lying on her bed with his eyes closed, seemingly asleep. She lightened her steps and climbed onto the bed, then softly called: “Shen Lingge? Gege?”
Wen Xian obediently lay down beside him, staring at his long eyelashes for quite a while, even counting them with interest. But halfway through counting, she became sleepy, her head also feeling a little dizzy.
She pulled up the blanket and shrank beside Shen Lingge, no longer moving.
The heavy curtains blocked out the brilliant sunlight from outside. On the large bed inside the bedroom, the two of them were snuggled together, embracing each other as they slept. Time seemed to slow down at this moment.
The drifting clouds gradually dispersed, the setting sun sank in the west.
A peaceful day thus passed.
…
Shen Lingge was woken up by the heat coming from the person beside him. The moment he opened his eyes, he realized something was wrong with Wen Xian’s body temperature. He furrowed his brows and reached out to touch her forehead and earlobe.
Both were burning hot.
He instinctively called her: “Xian Xian?”
Of course, Wen Xian couldn’t hear. What answered him was a stretch of silence.
Shen Lingge didn’t even have time to put on his jacket before running out. Inside the manor, apart from the veterinarian, there was no family doctor. The fastest the family doctor could arrive was still half an hour.
Shen Lingge fed Wen Xian medicine and kept holding her the whole time. The servants kept changing towels to help her reduce the fever.
During that time, Wen Xian stayed drowsy and never woke up. Her small face was flushed red from the fever, her eyelashes drooping listlessly. Shen Lingge silently watched her the entire time, never once loosening the hand holding her.
When the doctor arrived, he was startled by Shen Lingge’s expression. He had to repeat himself three times before Shen Lingge slowly let go of Wen Xian.
While the doctor examined her, Shen Lingge kept his face cold as he watched Wen Xian. When she let out small pained noises, he wished he could pull the doctor away and not let anyone touch her.
Shen Lingge’s black eyes were dark and heavy, his jaw muscles faintly tensed. When the doctor gave the injection, he stiffly held Wen Xian down to keep her from moving around. Perhaps feeling pain, she furrowed her brows slightly.
The moment the doctor put away the syringe, he immediately pulled her back into his arms.
The doctor looked at this nervous man with some amusement, comforting: “Sir, madam is fine. It’s just that long-distance travel made her body a little tired, and this morning she caught cold wind. Her temperature will go down by tonight.”
Shen Lingge answered in a low voice and didn’t speak again. The butler led the doctor to have dinner and rest. Before Wen Xian got better, they had to stay inside the manor.
After the butler, servants, and doctor left, only the two of them were left in the room.
Shen Lingge picked up a towel and wiped the thin sweat off her forehead. Her body temperature compared to an hour ago had already gone down quite a bit, the tight furrow between her brows also slowly relaxed, but she still hadn’t woken up.
He had lived twenty-six years always smooth sailing. Aside from the past years when his father’s health wasn’t good and he had to worry, he had never known he would be this afraid of losing something, didn’t even dare let such a thought appear.
Wen Xian was different from him. She had lost her parents and still lived strongly and with effort. But Shen Lingge didn’t know if he could continue living as usual if he lost Wen Xian.
Even now, just a simple fever had already thrown his heart into chaos.
He even couldn’t imagine how she got through that year. She once told him it was Xu Chuwei who accompanied her, helping her through those hard days. But later, she found out all of that was just a lie.
And at this moment, Wen Xian had fallen into a nightmare.
A stormy night, lightning and thunder across the night sky.
The airplane was delayed due to bad weather.
Eighteen-year-old Wen Xian sat in the waiting lounge wearing her school uniform. Her small face was pale without a trace of blood color, her slender fingertips tightly hugging a box. Actually, there were only some scraps of clothing inside.
Her parents, like that airplane wreckage, had been split into four or five parts. The plane had already disintegrated before crashing onto the small island. Most of the fragments had fallen onto the island, while some had sunk into the seabed.
Wen Xian followed the search team looking for three days and three nights, only managing to find some torn fabric.
Chang Ligu sighed lightly beside her: “Xian Xian, you haven’t eaten anything for days already, this won’t do. If your mother were still here and saw you like this, she would definitely worry.”
Wen Xian lowered her eyes, looking at the box in her arms, stubbornly replying: “My mother is still here.”
After a moment of silence, Chang Ligu no longer spoke.
In the days that followed, almost no one paid attention to Wen Xian. Everyone was caught in Wen Group’s internal chaos. Wen Xian asked Uncle Butler to request a long leave of absence for her. She almost single-handedly managed Wen Tianlin and Chang Shuang’s funeral.
During that period, Wen Xian’s weight once dropped to eighty jin [about 40 kg]. Her maternal grandparents once wanted to take her back to the Chang family, but she refused. Her home had always been here. She didn’t want to go anywhere else.
At first, there were still people coming to offer condolences, but after the funeral ended, there were very few people stepping into Wen’s house anymore.
After the funeral, Wen Xian returned to school. Two months later she was going to take the college entrance exam. During that time, Xu Chuwei was like light to her. Her frozen heart gradually warmed because of Xu Chuwei.
But the scene shifted again. Wen Xian returned to this year’s Summer Solstice rainy night.
Xu Chuwei and Qin Song intimately leaning against each other, walking towards her.
It was also that night that she met Shen Lingge.
In the boundless darkness, she found her own star.
In her blurred consciousness, Wen Xian started calling Shen Lingge’s name. Shen Lingge lowered his head, wiping away the tears at the corner of her eyes, replying to her again and again: “Xian Xian, I’m here, I’m here.”
Perhaps because Shen Lingge’s voice was gentle and full of strength, Wen Xian gradually struggled out from the nightmare.
Her tearful eyes looked at the person above. He, with red eyes, looked at her, his hands also holding her tightly. Seeing her awake, he lowered his head and dropped a light kiss on her sweat-dampened forehead: “Xian Xian, does it still feel bad?”
Wen Xian opened her lips, but her throat was burning painfully; she wasn’t able to speak immediately.
She could only reach out to hug him. Shen Lingge followed her movement and held her up a little. He pressed close to her slightly hot earlobe, asking in a low voice: “Xian Xian, what’s wrong? Does anywhere feel uncomfortable?”
Wen Xian weakly wrapped her arms around his neck. She slightly turned her head, softly calling his name by his ear: “Shen Lingge.”
Shen Lingge gently stroked her black hair: “I’m here.”
She slowly and with difficulty said: “I love you.”
Shen Lingge’s hands holding her suddenly tightened. He didn’t know what he should say. He couldn’t say a single word. At this moment, the only thing he could do was just hold her like this.
Until a long, long time later, when Wen Xian was almost about to fall asleep again, she finally heard the man reply to her in a hoarse voice: “I love you too.”