Intimate Trial Chapter 33

Chapter 33

When Su Yu returned to the room, he skillfully and quietly transferred from the wheelchair to the bed with the help of auxiliary tools.The soft mattress supported her thin body, but she did not lie down, nor did she reach for the half-read Introduction to Quantum Physics on her pillow.

She just sat quietly, her back straightened out of habit, like a seedling growing in the dark but striving toward the dim light.There was only a soft night light turned on in the room, casting a shallow shadow on her pale but unusually calm little face.The city lights outside the window were like distant stars, flickering through the gaps in the blinds and flickering in her light-colored pupils.

She always knew.

She knew it from the time she had a clear memory and ability to think.Not through a thrilling announcement, but in the long, silent years, like a puzzle piece, piece by piece, I pieced together the whole truth from Aunt Ye Chang’s casual gazes, the never-extinguished light in the study room late at night, the soft and then instantly frozen eyes when I mentioned “sister”, and the heart-stoppingly complicated eyes that occasionally fell on my face… piece by piece.

She knows her origins.

Not a fairy tale, not a cold description of a medical miracle.It was late at night when her condition was somewhat stable after a heart attack, when her aunt held her hand and told her with an almost cruel calmness and clarity.

“Xiaoyu, your mother’s name is Su Mian. She is my aunt’s sister, and she is also… my aunt’s most important person.” Ye Chang’s voice in the silent ward was as low as a sigh, but as heavy as a rock.”She was a very nice, warm person, like the sun. But something very bad happened to her and she went to a far away place and could never come back.”

Su Yu remembered that her aunt paused for a long time, her fingertips were cold and trembling slightly.

“Before she left, my aunt used a… not-so-common and not-so-permitted method to leave a part of her and a part of my aunt. And then, there was you.” Ye Chang’s eyes fell on her face, which was filled with huge love and deeper pain that Su Yu couldn’t fully understand at the time, but could clearly feel, “So, you are the product of my aunt and my mother. It was my mother who left this world and my aunt… the most precious gift and… the heaviest responsibility.”

“Irregular ways”, “less allowed methods” – these words are like hard stones, embedded in Su Yu’s understanding of the origin of his life.She doesn’t have any real memories or impressions about “Mom”. All the images about Su Mian – gentle smile, bright eyes, knowing how to play the piano, and covering her sister’s ears when she’s scared – all come from her aunt’s occasional and fragmented descriptions.Those descriptions always carry an almost sacred halo, but at the end they are always swallowed up by the loneliness that suddenly fills my aunt’s eyes, as if it can give people frostbite.

She knows that her aunt loves her mother.

Not sisterly love, but another emotion that is deeper, more desperate, and more… taboo.That emotion was hidden in the subtle changes in her voice every time she mentioned “sister”, in the old things that were never shown in the depths of the drawer in the study, and in the extremely suppressed sobs she heard in the next room when she occasionally woke up late at night.

She also knew that her mother did not know the existence of this feeling until her death.My aunt’s love is a grand and silent one-man show. When it ends, there is only an unmanageable mess and a cold monument called “revenge”.

And he, Su Yu, is the strangest and most contradictory flower that is watered by this hopeless love and bone-deep hatred.She inherited part of her mother and part of her aunt.She is the proof of my aunt’s love for her mother and the physical bearer of my aunt’s pain and obsession.Her existence is like a mirror, reflecting not only the unquenchable love fire in my aunt’s heart, but also the unhealable wound deep in her soul.

So, she must be good.

Must be smart, must be strong, must grow up quickly.

Not only for my own slim future, but also for my aunt.She needs to become strong enough, so strong that maybe one day, she can understand all the pain of her aunt, be able to share the heavy love and hate, and even… be able to find a chance to hold her back before the cold spiral called “revenge” completely swallows her up.

She has complicated feelings towards the mother she has never met.There is curiosity and natural closeness based on blood, but more importantly, there is a heavy, almost mission-like sense of responsibility – she carries part of her mother’s life, and also carries all of her aunt’s feelings for her mother.She must live her life with weight and meaning to be worthy of this life that has been so difficult to survive.

As for Assistant Shen who appeared next to her aunt with complicated eyes and made her unpredictable… Su Yu instinctively felt repelled and wary.Not only because of the child’s intuition, but also because she can feel that that person seems to affect some deeper and more confusing emotions of her aunt, and those emotions may be related to her mother or her aunt’s plan, and may also bring unknown dangers.

Tomorrow, she will take the college entrance examination.

This is the first and most important step she has taken for herself, her aunt, and her mother who only exists in narration.She had to step on it steadily.

Su Yu finally lay down slowly and pulled the soft quilt to his chin.The ragdoll cat in her arms purred happily, its warm little body pressed against hers.

She closed her eyes, her long eyelashes casting faint shadows under her eyes.

In the silent room, the girl’s breathing was steady and shallow.

She knows the road ahead is long and the shadows are deep.

But she chose to be aware of everything soberly, and then, quietly and firmly, follow the path she should take.

For my aunt.

Also for the mother whom I have never met, who became the source of all love and hatred for my aunt.