Chapter 25
Translator: XHu
Editor: Isabelle
Quality Check: Kittsune
First Published on Ainus.h.i.+.
A deep and nasty wound was left behind by the letter opener knife that I slashed across my wrist. Fresh blood gushed forth from the gash, quickly dying my flimsy clothes red. However, I didn't feel the slightest amount of pain. Perhaps this was because the wound in my heart hurt even more than anything else.
"Hehe…" I unexpectedly laughed as I watched the scarlet blood dribble out from my body.
"Dammit! What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" Zhao Yi Xuan, who was the closest to me, was the first to regain his senses. He seized my forearm with panic, and quickly pulled off the tie that was hanging from his neck. Then he forcefully wrapped the area above my wrist, trying to compress the artery and lessen the amount of bleeding.
"Don't get close to me…" Despite my open wound, I pushed with all my strength against him, and my blood dyed his s.h.i.+rt red as well. However, after losing so much blood, my resistance felt powerless and weak.
"Hold it! If you keep resisting, I won't go easy on you," he barked at me. "Bo, get the car." He picked me up and rushed towards the door.
Zhao Yi Bo also rapidly recovered and grabbed the keys on the table before rus.h.i.+ng out. The high-performance sports car quickly brought us to a large hospital under the banner of the Zhao clan corporation. Medical personnel who already received the notification were waiting for us at the entrance. As soon as we arrived, I was quickly pushed into the emergency room.
The excessive blood loss made me dizzy, and my consciousness became indistinct. The scenery before my eyes slowly became hazy. Yet despite the b.l.o.o.d.y fog, the complicated expression on the twins' eyes left a deep impression on my mind.
When I awoke from being unconscious, the first thing I saw was a good-natured middle-aged woman sitting beside my bed watching over me.
"Miss, are you awake?!" Seeing me open my eyes, she stood up with pleasant surprise.
"Who are you?" I asked weakly.
She smiled as she explained, "I'm a servant for the Zhao family. You can call me Mama Yu. It was the young masters who had me come to take care of you."
"I've never met you before." Wasn't there n.o.body else in the Zhao residence except for that old butler who pa.s.sed away?
"I used to be a servant in the Zhao family. I've already retired though." She laughed, and did so without the slightest amount of annoyance or displeasure towards me.
I felt that the Zhao brothers must have trusted her a lot, otherwise, with their paranoid personalities, they wouldn't have allowed her to take care of me during this kind of time. Perhaps they were having her monitor me.
"Miss, you've been unconscious for more than a day. You must be hungry. Do you want to eat anything?" She asked with concern.
"I want to rest for a while." I shook my head, and quietly shut my eyes.
When I opened my eyes again, the sky was already pitch black. Mama Yu was already gone, and Zhao Yi Xuan was sitting beside my bed.
"You're awake? Does your injury hurt?" He approached me.
I didn't want to respond to him. I kept my eyes fixated on the ceiling.
"Ah…" A jab of pain that suddenly came from the wound on my wrist caused me to cry out. He actually forcefully pressed down on my injury.
"It hurts a lot, doesn't it?" He moved his hand away from my wound, looking at me with a gloomy and dangerous expression. "When you sliced yourself with the letter opener, how did you not think it would hurt?"
I glared at him hatefully.
"Don't you dare try that again! If this kind of thing happens, you'll have a funerary urn filled with the ashes of your family members in Jiayi." He spat out a grim threat from his mouth.
"I don't care. I wouldn't mind being reunited with my family six feet under." I didn't fear his threats. I thought about this a lot during the days I had ran away, and I finally realized that there was no reason to be afraid of them harming my family. They would never do it because they knew I didn't care for their wealth, nor was I interested in their handsome looks or even my own life. The only thing that could control me was my love for my family, and if they actually harmed them, it would undeniably lead to a dead end. And they didn't want me to die.
"You…" He stared at me furiously, but he didn't dare do anything to me. Perhaps my extreme actions this time made him afraid.
"Bang—" He angrily turned around and left my room, while the door slammed shut behind him.
I was the only one left in the hospital room, and a feeling of hollow emptiness immediately welled up inside me. I pulled up the bed sheets and buried my face, not wanting to face the silence of this hospital room.
I heard the sound of the door opening and footsteps slowly approaching my bed.
I a.s.sumed that Zhao Yi Xuan had came back, so I readied myself. I pulled down the sheets as I considered how I would confront him.
It was Mama Yu who came in. This time, there was no smile on her amiable face. She silently sat down at my bedside and tightly locked her eyes with mine.
"Miss, please don't be like this to Young Master Xuan. Their hearts are very broken." She finally spoke after a moment of silence.
I should take pity on them? What about me?! Shouldn't I be pitied?! They abused me all the way to this point, yet they still want me to comfort them? Is this supposed to be some sort of joke?
"The young masters are deeply in love with you." Seeing the incredulous look in my eyes, she continued to try to speak positively about them.
"I don't want to be loved by them." I retorted without hesitation. Their way of loving people was too frightening, and receiving love from them would be too miserable of an experience for anyone — it was because of this that I now was such a wretched person.
"The young masters don't know how to properly love a person," she sighed. "It's probably because of what happened to them in the past that they now retain this kind of thinking — that in order to possess the things they want, they must break it."
"What happened to them in the past?" I was doubtful. What sort of events could possibly make a pair of sixteen-year-old youths reach the terrifying and twisted conclusion: to love is to destroy?
"When they were little…" Mama Yu opened her mouth and then closed it, as if she wasn't sure if she should say it. In the end, she didn't complete her sentence.
Mama Yu's hesitation and the past events she mentioned that she seemed unwilling to disclose attracted my curiosity. What could it be that caused them to become so ruthless, paranoid, treacherous, and so skilled at faking their outward appearances?
TL: Happy Thanksgiving! The next batch of releases will be during the week of Christmas – New Year’s. We will be releasing one chapter every day of that week! See you then!