093

When Xia Yuwei switched on the living room light, her gaze drifted involuntarily toward Xin Xin's bedroom.

The bedroom door was open. The light from the living room spilled across the threshold. On a not-quite-large bed, beneath a thin quilt, lay two human shapes, utterly motionless.

Her heart began to hammer violently. Without thinking, she switched off the light at once and pushed Ye Lifeng, who was behind her, toward the door.

With a soft click, the door shut behind them.

“What is it?” Ye Lifeng asked once they were outside.

“Senior, please don’t ask me yet...” Xia Yuwei tugged him toward the elevator, hurrying as if fleeing from something.

Her heart was still pounding madly, as though it might burst from her chest, making even her breathing uneven. She strode forward, her vision already blurring.

Ye Lifeng pressed the elevator call button. Xia Yuwei stood there, looking up as the elevator ascended floor by floor from below. As if she could not endure the slow, silent wait another second, she said, “Senior, the elevator is really too slow. Can we take the stairs?”

Noting that something was wrong with her, yet remembering that Xia Yuwei had asked him not to question her for now, Ye Lifeng simply answered yes and followed her into the stairwell.

Xia Yuwei rushed over, pushed open the stairwell door, and charged down into the darkness.

Inside the stairs there was only deathly silence and blackness. She normally never dared go in here; there were no lights in the stairwell, and few people ever passed through. Once, during a brief power outage, she had been forced to take the stairs in broad daylight, and even then the faint creaking sounds had set her heart racing. Every strange story she had ever read came flooding back to her; every tiny noise echoed and fed her imagination, leaving her unable to rest. After that, whenever the elevator could not be used, she would rather not go upstairs than take the stairs. Let alone now, at night, with the elevator itself so pitch-dark that one could not see a hand before one's face, as though it led to another world entirely.

And yet today, she desperately wanted to plunge into this darkness. Preferably, to be alone.

“Yuwei, slow down.” Ye Lifeng did not even manage to catch hold of her in time. Xia Yuwei stumbled and ran downward. It was as if she had forgotten that Ye Lifeng was still behind her.

What should she do? What should she do? She wanted to cry so badly... It was like a beautiful bubble bursting; she knew she should never have indulged such wishful thinking, knew all along that this would be the outcome, but when the truth lay before her eyes, she still wanted to cry. The feeling of having one's heart broken was truly agonizing...

She had never felt so helpless. She was the one who did not want him. She was the one who had rejected him. By what right should he not be with someone else? And by what right did she feel heartbroken?

Xia Yuwei, Xia Yuwei, Xia Yuwei, you must be a madwoman. You must have gone mad...

She rushed downward from the ninth floor to the fourth in one breath, her heartbeat growing ever faster. She could only trust her instincts and keep moving forward. When she was nearly at the last few steps before the third floor, her foot suddenly went weak; it felt as though she had tripped over herself, and her body pitched forward, crashing straight down onto the stairs!

“Ah...” She could not help groaning. It hurt so much.

Ye Lifeng caught up from behind, hearing only that pained sound.

“Yuwei, what’s wrong?” he asked urgently. He took out his phone and shone the light ahead, vaguely seeing Xia Yuwei sprawled headfirst on the stairway, a miserable sight. He hurried forward, reached down in front of her, took her arm, and helped her up.

“Waaah...” As Ye Lifeng pulled her up, Xia Yuwei was already crying out loud.

So humiliating! So awkward! So painful!

Leaning against Ye Lifeng's chest, Xia Yuwei's tears poured down in streams.

“Did you hurt yourself when you fell? Are you injured? Yuwei, don’t cry, I’ll take you to the hospital right away!” Ye Lifeng's heart ached terribly. He began blaming himself for failing to look after her properly. He lifted her into his arms and walked down the stairs step by step.

Xia Yuwei only felt a burning pain along the outside of her arm and on her knee, while her ankle throbbed with a piercing agony.

“Waaah... waaah... it hurts...” Using the pain as her excuse, she covered her face with both hands and cried like a child.

Ye Lifeng felt as though something had clenched around his heart. “Yuwei...”

“...waaah...”

“Yuwei. Bear with it a little longer; I’ll take you to the hospital to get it dressed right away.”

“Mm... there’s a clinic in the complex,” Xia Yuwei said through sobs.

Ye Lifeng carried her to the clinic she pointed out and knocked on the duty doctor’s door.

A short while later, Xia Yuwei was sitting on a chair in the infirmary, her eyes swollen and red, her hair slightly disheveled. After her knees and arms had been disinfected, they were wrapped in white medical gauze. Her left ankle had been sprained, and a tincture for reducing swelling and easing pain had also been applied. Ye Lifeng sat in the chair beside her, frowning slightly as he looked at her.

If he had not been mistaken, what he had seen at her place had been just such a scene.

Her roommate was Xin Xin, and Xin Xin's boyfriend was Lu Yichen. It would be perfectly normal for them to be together, wouldn't it? It was only that this might have been the first time it had happened in her own home.

Was that what had shocked Yuwei? She had actually lost control like this, completely losing her usual soft-spoken composure, losing her customary gentleness and restraint, running so frantically through the darkness that he could not catch her, making her fall to the ground and cry like a child.

So this was how deeply she was hurting, hurt merely because one man had another woman. Was a woman like this still worth his wholehearted love and pursuit? Her heart was clearly with someone else...

Looking at her dazed expression, Ye Lifeng felt a sharp pain in his heart. It was anger, and it was tenderness. Yet he still stood up and came to her side, stroking her hair. “Yuwei. Don’t cry.”

“Senior...” Xia Yuwei leaned her head against him. She had no strength left.

“I’ll take you to the Imperial Hotel so you can sleep well. Don’t think about anything.”

Her mind was blank. Weakly, she gave a muffled sound of assent. In any case, she was already miserable enough, already embarrassed enough. She had not slept for a day and a night. What she needed now was only rest.

“Then wait for me here. I’ll go drive over and pick you up.”

Xia Yuwei nodded without a word.