Chapter 132: The Fruit of Jealousy and Waiting
A ring with a full face is placed in a velvet antique ring box, which looks like a blooming flower.
Cui Jing was standing at the door changing her shoes, and Xue Yijie gave her the ring box at this time.
It was late spring, and the weather was still cold. Cui Jing had found a job with a lot of free time. Her work clothes were not as comfortable as at home. She wore a well-cut shirt inside, a wool coat outside, a pair of unobtrusive glasses, and a new briefcase.
The company she works for is a design company with a good reputation in the industry. It has a free-spirited atmosphere and although she has to work overtime, she has plenty of time to rest. Cui Jing plans to accumulate works and fame in the industry before planning to open a private studio.
This way you have flexible working hours.
After Xue Yijie gave her the ring box, she squatted down and tied her shoelaces as if nothing had happened, with her fingertips deftly:
"Okay." He looked up at her.
She was holding the small ring box, and Xue Yijie felt as if someone was looking down at her.
His palms were sweating. Was it too ordinary, without any sense of ceremony?
Cui Jing put the ring on her hand and said:
"I accept your ring, but let's put it aside for now. Also, I don't plan to have children." She reached out and touched Xue Yijie's face, looking at his carefully groomed hair, and said:
"very nice."
"I used some hairspray and casually scratched my hair." Xue Yijie really likes this kind of daily conversation. It feels like they have lived together for a long time.
Therefore, he followed the hidden rules of his family more closely. These were the lines he drew in his mind:
Cui Jing doesn't like people who are too clingy. He needs to be more independent, have his own life, and be an independent man;
Cui Jing doesn't like noise, she needs plenty of private space;
Cui Jing doesn't like anything mint-related, especially the smell;
Cui Jing likes the color purple, likes Tom and Jerry, and likes dogs more than cats, but she can't bring up keeping animals at home. He'd better not bring it up.
Especially having a cat.
She acted like she had never raised anything that wasn't black.
Today is his day off. After Cui Jing went to work, he opened the door of a room and placed all the items that were not black in it. He would regularly take a feather duster in to dust.
After Xue Yijie finished dusting, she went to get the sweeper and mop.
An hour later, the whole house was spotless, with the tile floor, glass windows and leather sofas sparkling.
Xue Yijie was proud, but her eyes suddenly dimmed. After the carpet was removed, the sofa looked cold even though it was decorated with a sofa blanket and pillows.
He kind of missed some of the softness that Buhei brought to the house when he was here. The soft cat bed, the stuffed toys, and even the softness of Buhei himself.
He returned from the studio in the early morning that day.
After Zhai Yang was sent to prison, he took back the painting "Floating Soul" and reframed it in his studio. He had seen the scenery outside this window more than once in his dreams.
He watched many sunsets.
Every time there is a sudden window frame like this, there is no message other than the window, and he feels sorry that he can't continue dreaming.
He turned on the light and was surprised to find that Cui Jing had started raising fish. On the cold coffee table in the living room was a medium-sized fish tank, in a square shape.
He walked over and pinched it. The material was highly transparent acrylic, and the fish inside was swaying. When the switch of the fish tank was turned on, crisp music and blue light would be emitted.
Xue Yijie was startled and quickly turned it off.
Later, a few more fish of different species were added to the fish tank.
All of them were fake fish. The mechanical fish could automatically swim in the sun, wagging their tails and circling the outside of the fish tank; the plastic clownfish floated idly; an original magnet fish was sucked away by the current. He took a plastic feeder outside and brought it close to the toy fish tank, and the original fish would approach the fish tank. Both the fish and the feeder were equipped with magnets.
Xue Yijie looked at the upturned glass fish and the diamond-shaped crystal pile at the bottom of the tank, and the vivid green plastic water plants.
A very strange feeling.
Some familiar things are combined into something strange, which has a kind of spiritual pollution. But it is also interesting to watch for a long time.
Cui Jing will regularly clean the acrylic fish tank soaked in raw water and clean the fish inside. It is indeed necessary to clean it as the microorganisms in the water will also multiply.
One holiday, when Cui Jing was cleaning the fish tank, she found a very small river shrimp. Xue Yijie said that it was given to her by his assistant while fishing.
After that, he fed them seriously every day.
During another holiday, Cui Jing discovered a hermit crab on the semi-shaded windowsill. The rectangular glass tank was tall and transparent, covered with coconut soil, and two small bottle caps were filled with water.
Xue Yijie feeds it fruit every day, and sometimes whole-wheat bread crumbs.
When Cui Jing was eating an apple, she peeled a slice and threw it in. The hermit crab quickly crawled over and ate it.
She was in a good mood. Wang Xiaoming left the Flower Country and headed for her Violet Manor, where she would get in touch with family-related businesses. At the same time, Qin Sheng said she would return to the Asia-Pacific region to develop business.
As summer approached, she missed Qin Sheng a little and wanted to go on vacation to the beach with her.
And Zhai Tianyu... was not complacent either. While the mantis stalks the cicada, the oriole is waiting behind. The situation changes rapidly. Cui Jing learns from Wang Xiaoming that the person in charge of the Zhai family has become the eldest sister who is related by blood.
Tang Annian became one of the shareholders of the Zhai family, although his shares were not large.
Zhang Ye was never found and was reported missing.
After eliminating the unstable factors in life, life becomes as peaceful as the original world.
Everything is so harmonious.
calm.
Xue Yijie drove Cui Jing to work as usual. He would usually take Cui Jing to work first before going to the studio. He drove very steadily and in a disciplined manner.
A car suddenly hit without warning.
Auston in the driver's seat had crazy eyes, the fire of jealousy could burn into the brain, jealousy turned into wine. Driving after drinking is extremely dangerous, hurting others and yourself.
Xue Yijie's mind went blank. He turned the steering wheel sharply, causing the car to make a half circle and the brakes to make a teeth-grinding sound.
Xue Yijie felt his entire body hit from the left side, and his body shifted to the right. The airbag popped out, and Xue Yijie only felt a warm liquid flowing in his head. His vision went dark, and he looked at the passenger seat with difficulty.
Cui Jing closed her eyes, her face was clean, and her neck was slightly twisted. Could a normal human neck really be at such an angle? A huge panic filled his heart.
"Cui Jing."
He called her softly, "Cui Jing, are you asleep? Please talk to me. Please."
"Please don't die."
The sparks burned something, crackling like a pile of firewood in winter. Xue Yijie hallucinated that he was lying on top of someone, like a child in his mother's arms. His knees were on the ground, and his hands were actually hugging a pair of slender legs. He looked up.
Cui Jing sat quietly on the chair, with restraints tied around her body.
This time he remembered everything.
Xue Yijie trembled uncontrollably, and he finally remembered that she was dead in her previous life.
Someone was knocking on the car window. There were men and women outside the window, looking anxious:
"Hey!"
"The car door couldn't be opened, so the window was smashed."
"Bang." Someone smashed the front car window.
Xue Yijie was pulled out by someone's clothes. He looked like he had grabbed a life-saving straw, with a sad and dull expression: "Save her, you must save her, you must save her."
"Brother, your wife has been rescued, hold on, why are your eyes closed? Don't sleep! Hang in there! Don't die!"
"This is caused by oil leaks and fire. Don't let it explode."
"Run!"
Everyone was talking at once. His body was being carried by an Alpha and a Beta. His whole body was numb with pain, and his head and ears were buzzing.
"Brother, it's uncertain whether the fracture will get worse, so save your life first." The Alpha who took the lead in saving people seemed to have experience, and kept muttering, "At least stay alive first, your wife is still waiting for you."
It's so noisy. Why is it so noisy again?
What about her?
.
Austin confessed to hitting someone with his car, driving in the wrong direction while drunk, and fleeing the scene with intentional injury. The circumstances were serious but no serious consequences had been caused, so he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Cui Jing lay on the bed with her eyes closed, her face looked very bad due to blood loss. Xue Yijie took out a non-woven wet wipe to clean her face, neck, hands and exposed skin.
Doctors said she would wake up in a few days and her injuries were not serious.
Xue Yijie could only wait and wait...
When he was bored, he would sit by the window and read an e-book with the ink display, or look out the window. There was nothing outside the high-rise window.
There are also.
There are birds, the sun, and half a fallen red salted duck egg.
The afterglow spread across the earth. The window frame became pitch black in his eyes, leaving traces of the poisonous fire. This place looked like a post-disaster scene. Xue Yijie found himself sitting on the windowsill, his feet suspended in the air. The ground was hard with steel and concrete, and no weeds grew.
He took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, held the cigarette between his legs and looked at the clouds above his head.
The clouds in the sky have strange shapes, like reptiles with bared fangs and claws.
After looking at the clouds, Xue Yijie looked at the sun. His eyes were fixed on the sun, which gradually turned into a ball of scattered paint.
On a fine day no one can look directly at the sun, or else they will be burned by its rays.
He closed his eyes, and tears flowed out. His closed eyelids were imprinted with the black shadow after looking directly at the sun, and his retina seemed to still have a vivid afterimage:
Thick fire snakes, billowing black smoke and heat waves. The door was kicked open and several orange firefighters rushed in. He was suddenly pulled away from a person. The firefighter said,
"The fire didn't burn anyone, but the smoke was too thick. The woman had no pulse... She suffocated. There was another person who was unconscious! She was still breathing! I think she fell to the ground with her head suffocated. The smoke went up and she survived."
"Bring the man out first."
No pulse?
Who has no pulse? His mind is still functioning. It's not him, so who is it? Who is it? He doesn't understand what they are saying.
When he opened his eyes, the flames that shot up into the sky disappeared. He sat on the post-disaster windowsill again. After the mental hospital was burned down, it was never rebuilt. The room was filled with black ash that looked like charcoal.
He pulled his legs back, squatted from sitting, and continued to smoke on the window frame with some shakiness. The cigarette box became shriveled, and the fire on his fingertips consumed the tobacco, which was blown by the wind onto the filter element, and Xue Yijie was burned.
He didn't know what he was waiting for.
The waiting and the fear of waiting made him feel that the days were getting long and unbearable. Especially in the evenings, every evening was hard to get through. The sun went down, but it would rise again from the east tomorrow. But what about his sun? Would it rise again?
He watched the sunset alone for a year and survived until today's New Year's Eve. He couldn't bear it anymore.
He stood up and jumped down:
"boom--"
A dull sound.
Farther away in the city center, a building loaded with bombs exploded in an instant, sending flames soaring into the sky. The surrounding high-rise buildings collapsed, and innocent and not-innocent people all died in a huge explosion, like deafening fireworks to celebrate the New Year in advance.
"Bang--" The store was playing festive music and the red lanterns were swaying in the heat wave.
"Happy New Year."
"May you be happy and prosperous."
"Family reunion."
The world collapsed in an instant, the sky fell and the earth cracked, a large amount of magma poured from the sky to the earth, and the earth cracked and rained down to the sky. The invisible world consciousness suddenly felt that the two protagonists supporting this world were dead.
The world collapses.
……
Xue Yijie struggled in her dream.
"Ding, bed 0609 is calling..." The call bell of the bed was pressed by a hand.
The mechanical call from the bedside woke him up from the nightmare that his memory had turned into. Xue Yijie woke up in a cold sweat and saw Cui Jing slowly opening her eyes with a lazy and tired look on her face.
Her voice was hoarse, but it echoed clearly in the space:
"Won't you give me a glass of water?"
Xue Yijie stood up from his chair with great movement, and the electronic book on his desk fell to the ground with the screen turned on. His wait was over, and time no longer seemed long.
He answered the question irrelevantly:
"I love you."
His eyes were filled with tears, which was a gesture she liked very much.
Cui Jing raised her hand and motioned for him to come over.
He would come over without her signaling. Xue Yijie brought water and leaned over to Cui Jing's bedside. His knees knelt on the dusty ground. Cui Jing's hand fell on his head and she said in a very calm tone, which was half detached from him.
"Don't cry."
The roar in his heart that echoed through the wilderness never stopped—
END
June 14, 2023 (First edit)
September 9, 2024 (Second edit)