The President’s Man - Chapter 272
Xiao Lei thought about what she wanted to do, but she could not think of anything to do. After a while, she shrugged. “I don’t know.”
They had been to the movies twice this week and tried cakes at various cafes, and Xiao Lei was actually bored of all those things.
“Maybe we can just go home and rest…” Xiao Lei suggested.
Han Ye nodded. However, when he stopped the car on account of the red traffic light, he asked, “Let’s do something that you and Yunjie used to do.”
“Han Ye, you don’t have to.”
Han Ye smiled. When the traffic light turned green, Han Ye started driving again before saying with a soft smile, “When Yuexue first got into the accident, I was so lost… especially after the doctor told me that the possibility of her waking up was less than one percent. At that time, whenever I missed her, I would go back to the places that we went to before. It gave me hope; hope that she would wake up one day. After I got the revenge that I wanted, I stopped going, because it was getting a little too painful. But when she was finally gone, I did the same thing. I went back to all of those places, hoping to see traces of her. However, most of the places where we had our fondest memories were gone. And I regret not visiting those places earlier.”
He pulled the car aside. Once he was safely parked, he looked at Xiao Lei with a wry expression and said, “I don’t want you to have the same regret. Not doing things that you used to do with Yunjie won’t help you to move on. It would only build up within you, eating at you a little at a time, until one day, you could not hold it in anymore, and when you go back to try and get back those memories, you’d realize that those places are gone and that you’d never be able to try to make new memories at those places anymore.
“Zhihao needs help, but so do you. I know that you’re trying to put on a brave front so that you won’t make Zhihao or us worry, but how long could you last? If you don’t learn how to accept it, how could Zhihao do the same?”
Xiao Lei did not answer him. She merely looked out the window while clasping her hands tightly together. For the last couple of days, she had been slowly forcing herself to stop thinking about Xiao Yunjie. Worried that she might end up crying in front of her son, she kept her husband’s photo away, hoping that one day she would be able to look at his photo without crying.
And she kept putting on a fake smile whenever her son was in the room. Perhaps this was why she liked to hang out with Han Ye. At the very least, he would not expect her to smile, nor would she feel an obligation to smile at him.
“I don’t want… I’m not ready yet…”
“Not even when I’m there with you?” Han Ye asked in a soft voice as he looked at her with a pair of kind eyes.
“I… don’t want to end up crying again…” She looked at Han Ye and said with a tired voice, “I’m tired of crying… I’m very upset and all, but I don’t want to keep crying…”
“I won’t let you cry then.”
Xiao Lei raised a brow and asked, “How are you going to do that?”
“I have my ways,” he said with a wink. He leaned toward her slightly as he asked in a teasing tone, “So, should we go to someplace that you went with Yunjie before? I’ll show you how I will stop you from crying.”
Xiao Lei looked at him with a curious expression while trying to think of whether to accept his offer. There was actually a place that she wanted to go back; it was a place that she had not been back to in years.
“Alright…” She looked at the built-in digital clock in the car for a few seconds before saying, “It’s about a two-hour drive. I just want to stop by and take a look at the place. We should be able to come back before Zhihao is done with his school.”
Han Ye smirked. “Let’s go then.”
….
Two hours later, they arrived outside an old building in a small town. The paint on the building was so faded that it looked as if there was none. And there were water stains everywhere, and these looked as if they had been there for years.
“This place…” Han Ye looked at the address which Xiao Lei keyed in in his phone earlier. “Is this where you used to live?”
Xiao Lei nodded as she looked up the building from within the passenger’s seat. She pointed to a unit 8 floors up and said, “That’s our unit.”
Han Ye reached over and looked up from her window. He then sat back in his chair. “How long did you stay here?”
She thought for a while before replying uncertainly, “About 5-7 years? I can’t remember the exact details… And at a point of time, I was living somewhere else while he was in a mission.”
A reminiscent expression appeared on her face, as if she was thinking about some old memories. She leaned her head against the car window as she murmured, “When he first took me back, I was scared that he might be another wolf in sheep’s skin. You know, someone who seems nice but actually harbor ill-intention… I mean, I’ve met a lot prior to meeting him, so even though he saved me from that bad man who tried to r.a.p.e me—”
“What?!” Han Ye gasped as his eyes went wide open. Almost immediately, he reached over and grabbed her shoulders as he asked worried, “Did anything happen?”
He did not know what he would do if she were to go through the same thing as what Kai Xin had. And he kept praying in his heart that she would tell him that nothing had happened.
Looking into his eyes, Xiao Lei could tell that he was genuinely worried, and she immediately shook her head. She glanced at Han Ye’s hands that were at her shoulders and grabbing her tightly. When he finally released her, she quickly reassured him, “Nothing. Yunjie arrived in time and saved me before anything could happen.”
She then told him everything, and Han Ye listened intently. The only way for him to get to know her better was to listen to the stories of her past, and the stories of how close she was to death and danger scared him.
Even after she knew how dangerous the world was, it did nothing to stop her from doing stupid things.
It also made him appreciate Xiao Yunjie more. He was glad that at the very least, Xiao Lei had Xiao Yunjie by her side during her hardest time.
Xiao Lei then continued while looking at the old unit that she shared with her late husband. “Yunjie was overprotective of me, and we got into fights all the time because of it.”
She chuckled at that one memory where she dumped a bucket of cold water on Xiao Yunjie when the latter refused to let her go out with some of the younger people from the gang. She did not have many friends, and she wanted to go out with them because they were going for a midnight movie.
“I was probably 15 then…” she murmured quietly. Her voice was so faint that Han Ye had to strain his ears to catch what she was saying. Xiao Lei sighed at the memory of her younger self. “I thought he would get angry, and I immediately hid behind… a couch or a table. Anyway, I hid. I thought I would be dead. I mean, I’ve seen him getting really angry before, and those who made him angry always end up… incomplete. But he did not.”
She closed her eyes as she thought about her husband, but her mouth continued to move as she said, “Even when I dumped the bucket of cold water on him when he was dead tired and sleeping, the first thing he did when he woke up from it was to look for me and ask if I was alright…
“I don’t know why, but I started crying then…” She smiled. “He was so scared. When I couldn’t tell him why I was crying, he nearly dragged me to look for a doctor.”
Xiao Lei could still see her husband’s panicked expression as well as that worried gaze of his in her mind, as if it only happened yesterday. “Perhaps that was the day when I finally realized that my love for him was more than what a younger sister should feel for her older brother.”
“Argh!” Xiao Lei suddenly cried out and her body jerked forward.