DF Chapter 114

Chapter 114: Sheng Jia’s Response Was an Embrace, Sheng Jia Held Her Tightly.

Chapter 114 Sheng Jia responded with an embrace, holding her tightly.

When they returned to Jingjiang from Norway, it was already August, the hottest time of the year.

The coolness of Norway completely disappeared, and they changed back into light clothing.

During the last five hours on Anils Island, Sheng Jia had a long talk with Hilda, a conversation just between the two of them. After the talk, she and Song Ji’an embarked on their journey back home.

Song Ji’an’s ability to regulate her emotions was stronger than Sheng Jia had imagined.

By the time they boarded the plane, the ambiguity and possessiveness on the island had vanished without a trace. Their gazes no longer served as emotional stimulants, and they could even sit calmly next to each other.

The plane gradually ascended, soaring over snow-capped mountains and the fragmented islands of Europe. After a full fourteen hours of flight, they saw familiar scenery and arrived in a familiar city.

The scorching air rushed towards them, and a thin layer of sweat immediately appeared on the tips of Song Ji’an and Sheng Jia’s noses.

Wei Pan had already received news of their return and had a car waiting outside the airport. Only after they were seated in the car did they finally have their first conversation of the long trip.

“Where to?” Sheng Jia asked.

Song Ji’an put away her phone, which she had been using to catch up on messages since getting off the plane, looked out the window, and gave an address, “Go to my place.”

She was referring to her house near the funeral home.

Sheng Jia lowered her eyes and nodded to the driver.

The car smoothly drove onto the Binhai Highway. Recently, the route connecting the airport expressway to the city was under repair, so the Binhai Highway, which they hadn’t traveled in many years, had become the only way to get back to Song Ji’an’s house.

The car returned to silence.

In fact, the silence between them had begun since Sheng Jia said that Song Ji’an had changed.

That sentence seemed to strike a nerve in Song Ji’an, making her feel somewhat frightened.

Having closed off her heart for too long, she was afraid of changing. It was her means of self-defense.

When she unconsciously changed, her first reaction was not joy, but fear. She was afraid that the hard shell she had painstakingly rebuilt would disappear.

So she began to retreat, shrinking back into her shell.

But the unusual silence between the two of them already symbolized the unease in their hearts.

Because they had left the isolated island and returned to their familiar environment, those indulgences became a sin. Every mark they had left on each other’s bodies was evidence of their transgression, and the countless kisses and desires were even more unforgivable.

Memories cannot be erased, so they can only pretend to forget.

Back in Jingjiang, they were still Song Ji’an, the funeral director, and Sheng Jia, the young CEO of Sheng Group. The eighteen years of debt, the year of deceit, and the five years of separation still lay between them.

Their real problems seemed to have not been completely resolved, but the relationship between the two had become even more complicated because of Sheng Jia and Song Ji’an’s overstepping the boundaries.

Sheng Jia sat in the car, quietly watching Song Ji’an walk upstairs with her suitcase.

She didn’t know if her decision was correct, but she knew very well that if she didn’t do this, Song Ji’an would only drift further and further away from her.

If their distance before they reunited was negative ten thousand meters, then her painstaking effort to find her and reunite with her was like walking five thousand meters. However, the remaining five thousand meters was still a long road with no end in sight, and even more rugged.

She could only press closer, step by step.

Until now, their relationship had become a tangled mess, impossible to untangle. Song Ji’an no longer had any chance of escape.

The car lingered downstairs for a long time. The shadow of the camphor tree fell on the car window. Through the glass, Song Ji’an could only see the silent body of the car. She sat on the edge of the bed, lost in thought.

In her palm, she held the wasp jade that Dong Zhen had given her. The golden-yellow ore was made into a pendant. It could be seen that the person who carved it was very careful, polishing it particularly smooth, like a drop of water. On the way back, she had countless times felt that it had become a hot potato.

But she still couldn’t bear to throw it away.

Sunlight fell on her face from the window, a spot of light dancing and finally settling under her eyelids.

Song Ji’an lowered her head to look at her palm, and finally couldn’t help but throw the jade onto the bed. She fell backward and sank into the not-so-soft bed, raising her arm to cover her eyes, trying to hide the turbulent emotions in her eyes.

Because of Sheng Jia’s words, she had already fled in Norway. Even the calmest surface could not conceal the panic in her heart, which made her want to go home quickly, so as not to collapse in front of Sheng Jia.

Admit it, Song Ji’an.

You hate your current self, you loathe yourself and don’t want to cherish life, spending your days just getting by.

But this you is also missing the past you that was full of spirit and charm.

The appearance of the wasp jade was like finally overlapping her past and present, forcing her to face how fragmented the two selves were.

The memories she had forcibly ignored so easily broke through the prison she had set up and surged out.

Recalling the experience in Norway only made this sense of fragmentation more intense.

Because most of the time there, she wasn’t the current Song Ji’an, but the Song Ji’an who had broken free from her constraints and finally dared to take a step forward.

But now she was back, and she had lost the environment that allowed her to bravely move forward. She only had a blank sense of falling, powerless and unwilling.

Tears fell from the corners of her eyes.

Song Ji’an suddenly hated Sheng Jia a little, hated her for insisting on approaching her again, hated her for insisting on digging out the Song Ji’an of the past again, hated that after so many years, she was still the same, liking to silently strike people a blow, hated her for why she had to force herself to recognize reality. If she hadn’t mentioned her changes, perhaps she wouldn’t have realized all this so quickly.

But perhaps what she hated the most was herself.

She hated herself for turning herself into this, she hated herself for being occupied by weakness, she hated her lost courage.

Was there really such a big difference between being in Norway and being in Jingjiang? Did the contradictions between them not exist in Norway?

Why was Norway okay, but Jingjiang wasn’t?

It was an excuse, everything was an excuse.

The only answer was that she was also moved at the moment she saw Sheng Jia again.

The dream that was not completed in her youth expanded into greed the moment Sheng Jia reappeared in front of her, forcing her to try her best to restrain her desire to obtain Sheng Jia, until Sheng Jia found an excuse for her.

Look, we are on the distant other side of the ocean, we can ignore everything, we can disregard everything, we can do everything we want.

So Song Ji’an really didn’t restrain herself, she really threw everything to the back of her mind.

They were two hypocritical bad people, intentionally deceiving each other and coaxing each other.

Now the dream was over.

Song Ji’an saw the true face of the Norway trip.

But she began to miss her past self.

Never had there been a moment when she wanted to go back to the past more, to become the Song Ji’an who bravely moved forward.

She didn’t know how long she had been lying on the bed, until the doorbell rang repeatedly in the house.

She belatedly reacted and got up from the bed, but the person she saw when she opened the door was Sheng Jia, who was supposed to have left.

She should have left without looking back like Song Ji’an, keeping the promise between the two of them.

“Why haven’t you left yet…” Song Ji’an looked at Sheng Jia at the door in a slight daze, a vague sense of unease rising in her heart for some reason. Sheng Jia’s unusual visit seemed to foreshadow something.

Sheng Jia looked at her red eyes, her eyes changed slightly, but she obediently answered her question, “Do you want to hear the truth or a lie?”

“What’s the lie?”

Sheng Jia smiled, “The sun downstairs is too strong, the car broke down, I can’t leave, I can only come up to find you.”

“What’s the truth?”

Sheng Jia’s eyes became serious, she raised her hand to touch Song Ji’an’s face.

The four-day trip to Norway was not without any changes. At least at this moment, because of her familiarity with Sheng Jia’s body and breath, Song Ji’an even forgot to avoid it.

Sheng Jia’s fingertip touched the corner of her eye, taking away that tear. She looked at her and said softly, “Because I was worried, I always felt like you were trapped in pain.”

She sat downstairs for a full half an hour, and finally made another decision that she shouldn’t have made according to her current plan.

People’s emotions cannot be followed step by step.

This was the truth that Song Ji’an taught her.

She didn’t know what impact it would have if she went upstairs again, whether it would deviate from her expected development, whether she would be coldly asked to leave by Song Ji’an, she just felt that at that moment she should go upstairs to take a look.

But at the moment Song Ji’an opened the door, perhaps this decision was not wrong.

Song Ji’an clenched her fist, and the tears that had just dried up couldn’t help but fall from her eyes again under Sheng Jia’s words.

“You shouldn’t have come up,” she said in a hoarse voice, “If you didn’t come up, maybe I could have returned to normal.”

“Are you referring to the normal of changing back to the Song Ji’an when we met again, or changing back to the eighteen-year-old Song Ji’an?” Sheng Jia asked rhetorically.

Song Ji’an smiled through gritted teeth, but the tears fell even more fiercely. The fist she clenched finally hit Sheng Jia’s shoulder, but not with too much force, not to vent her anger, but to mock Sheng Jia’s knowing question.

“I can’t go back to being the eighteen-year-old Song Ji’an,” she said.

“Then what should the twenty-four-year-old Song Ji’an be like?” Sheng Jia asked, “At least it shouldn’t be like this now. I think she herself might not want to become like this.”

“Do you know what you’re saying?” Song Ji’an said coldly, “And how do you know that the twenty-four-year-old me doesn’t want to become like this?”

“Because you’re crying,” Sheng Jia replied directly, “Because you’re in pain, you’re crying, whether it’s the Song Ji’an when we first met or the eighteen-year-old Song Ji’an, you can’t go back, can you?”

“Because I have already brought you change, because you also want to live freely and unrestrainedly, because from beginning to end, the impulse in your heart has only been suppressed and has never been worn away.”

“Sheng Jia, you’re such a bastard,” Song Ji’an’s emotions had reached the edge of tolerance, and she said somewhat brokenly, “Why do you have to do this, why do you have to change me once at eighteen, and then change me again at twenty-four?”

“I’m not your toy, I admit that I have wronged you, but can’t you let me go?”

Sheng Jia’s response was an embrace, holding her tightly.

Song Ji’an seemed to suddenly lose strength, and she slumped to the ground along the door frame. She knew that she was just venting her anger on Sheng Jia when she was being irrational, but at the moment she saw Sheng Jia, the grievance had become too difficult to control.

She also knew that only Sheng Jia, even if she used such sharp words to vent her anger, would not be angry, because this was a tacit understanding between them. She knew Song Ji’an too well, and Song Ji’an knew her too well.

Song Ji’an’s tears fell in large drops onto Sheng Jia’s wrist, wetting her shoulder. She struggled in pain, not knowing where to go.

“No,” Sheng Jia gathered the back of her head, so that she could lean more tightly on her shoulder. For some reason, there was also moisture in her eyes, and she repeated, “Song Ji’an, you have not wronged me. I am the one who is sorry to you.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t let you go.”

Because Song Ji’an had lost her protective shell under her intervention, and she was already teetering on the verge of collapse, she could only choose to move forward.

“Song Ji’an, let me try, okay?” Her tears fell on Song Ji’an’s ear, and she pleaded by Song Ji’an’s ear, “Please, believe me.”

Sheng Jia’s tone had never been so firm. She and Song Ji’an were close together, and she could feel Song Ji’an’s slight trembling. Her words were not answered, but Song Ji’an’s embrace was even tighter.

But sometimes, no response may be a response in itself.

The impulse in Song Ji’an’s heart that had never been worn away urged her to trust Sheng Jia one more time.

No one would want to pursue pain. Perhaps it was fate that Sheng Jia would dispel Song Ji’an’s confusion.