She could not carry the burden of his trust. She wanted to tell him all her secrets—everything buried deep down in her heart.
“Do you believe in reincarnation?” Jiang Yao prodded.
“No,” Lu Xingzhi answered bluntly. “Life ends with death.”
Lu Xingzhi did not believe in anything of the sorts. There was nothing else other than life and death. A buried body would become dirt and leave nothing, not even a trail, behind.
Jiang Yao thought maybe Lu Xingzhi would pretend to agree with her statement, just because she asked. His straightforward reply caught her off guard, leaving her speechless.
“I told you I will never lie to you.” Lu Xingzhi knew Jiang Yao was looking at him, and he knew that his answer was not to her expectation. Yet, this was his view, why did he have to lie?
After her initial shock, Jiang Yao laughed in relief.
That was right. This was Lu Xingzhi, who would never lie and tell stories just to make her happy. He said it himself that he was never good with words.
“It feels like a dream, and yet, it isn’t. In this dream-like story, I lived to thirty years old, which ended abruptly. When I woke up, I was back to my younger self, the day you came to visit me during summer break. With the blink of an eye, I felt like I lived a life more than everyone else.”
Jiang Yao raised her eyes and looked at Lu Xingzhi. She only noticed the slight twitching of his eye; his expression was as stoic as ever.
She continued, “I clearly remembered everything that happened and everyone that I met. I remembered the knowledge I learned in university and every single surgery I did after graduating. So, if I say that I was reborn, would you believe it?”
She grasped onto his shirt tightly, slightly nervous and a little afraid, would he think that she had turned delusional?
A while later, Lu Xingzhi moved his lips, “Of course I would, why wouldn’t I?”
Of course, he believed her.
To say her change during the summer break was drastic was an understatement. She had always avoided him, but he returned home to her embrace, as she kept saying how much she missed him. It was a moment he would never forget. When he held her in his arms, it felt like he was at the top of the world.
“Even without your rebirth, did our relationship become better toward the end?” Lu Xingzhi asked. If it were not for this, why would she embrace him with such quickness and vigor the moment she woke up?
It was unbelievable, her secret, yet it did not matter. She belonged to him and him only.
“Why do you think so?” Jiang Yao asked. Unfortunately, things were different, she thought to herself. His love for her was one-sided, even till the day he died. It was his death that awakened the feelings she had been repressing for a long time.
“Isn’t it so?” He was doubtful. With the way he treated Jiang Yao, it was only a matter of time before she fell in love with and accepted him.
“No.” Jiang Yao moved her body away from Lu Xingzhi’s embrace. She looked at his expression, filled with doubt, and asked, “Did you not think that we would divorce some years later?”