“Yes, it’s them,” Iris replied. “This was taken at Cross Academy’s main building. You’ve been there before.”
“En, I remember that ugly castle.” Jin Liwei paused before giving his wife a deep look. “I also remember why I followed you to Cross Academy and everything that happened after that.”
His words reminded her of what happened back then. It was around the time when the original Iris Long’s remnant was getting stronger due to its uncontrollable desire for revenge. When Jin Liwei confessed his involvement in concealing Fan Luo’s crime that caused the original Iris Long’s fatal car crash, the remnant went berserk and beat him up. In the end, she decided to leave him to resolve the remnant’s revenge.
Then after allowing the remnant to punish Fan Luo and the Alarm Girls with the help of her big brother and Shadow Winds, she went into depression due to guilt. She ended up running away to Switzerland with Grandpa Lu. From there, the old man dragged her to Cross Academy where the unique top-notch academic environment which was very familiar to her from her past as an alumni managed to snap her out of her dark slump. Her other emotions resurfaced, most especially her yearning for Jin Liwei.
After an emotional phone call, he flew all the way to Switzerland and reunited with her at Cross Academy. Their relationship, at that point, had taken a drastic change from being mere lovers to being the love of each other’s lives.
The next events after that deepened their bond and strengthened their commitment to each other. It was at Cross Academy that she told him “I love you” for the first time. Then after leaving the academy with her two music instructors, they travelled to Germany before staying in Italy where Jin Liwei finally and formally asked her hand in marriage with a beautiful and memorable proposal.
Remembering all of those events caused her eyes to water. Who would’ve thought that they would marry a year later? She was now even pregnant with twins.
The two of them had come such a long way from back when they first met each other in person at that hotel lobby. It wasn’t exactly the most pleasant first encounter for the two of them, yet here they were now, deeply in love and happily married and expecting their first human children together. It was indeed quite the emotional journey with many ups and downs for the two of them.
“Don’t cry, love.” Jin Liwei wiped a stray tear before it could fall from the corner of her eye.
She smiled and shook her head. “Hormones.”
He kissed her forehead and comforted her.
Wanting to return to the topic about the photo they were looking at, she pointed at one of the men beside her. “Look at Teacher Enrique. He still looks the same even now. It’s like he never ages.”
“En. His long shaggy hair in this photo looks terrible, though.”
“That was the style during those days. He was also still actively performing with his band back then before their vocalist died from drug overdose. I didn’t personally meet their band’s vocalist but I loved—no, I still love his voice. He was able to express and even amplify the powerful emotions of the songs that Teacher Enrique wrote for their band. Even after his death, the power of his voice is immortalized through their band’s music. I want to be like their band one day—immortalized through my music.”
“You’re already on your way there, love. I believe that you can achieve anything. I’m also right here to support you.”
She gifted him with a sweet smile. “Thank you.”
They continued looking at the two other men in the photo.
Professor Erwan Dupont, headmaster of Cross Academy, still had some dark blonde hair in the photo, not like his current pure white mane. His eyes, however, remained the same—stern and sharp.
As for Maestro Ludovico De Luca, he hadn’t gone bald on top of the head yet in the photo. He also looked slimmer than he was now.
Finally, his eyes returned to the photo of his wife’s past self—Evelina. Despite being surrounded by three older men who were considered legends in their chosen fields, she held her own and didn’t look intimidated by them at all. In fact, her calm confidence and dignified demeanour made her look like she belonged among the three legends standing beside her.
Something flickered in Jin Liwei’s mind—a memory of something but it was soon gone before he could dwell on it.
“This is one of the rare photos that I was able to take with people from Cross Academy,” Iris said, interrupting Jin Liwei’s meandering thought. “I wasn’t allowed to leave traces of my identity anywhere outside of the Vetrov’s territories. It was for my protection, the weakest Vetrov in combat, from countless enemies.”
Jin Liwei’s expression turned serious, knowing that this was a sensitive subject for his wife. There would always be a bitter shadow in her eyes whenever she remembered her lack of freedom in her past life.
She shook her head to rid herself of the shadow from her past life. Then she gestured for him to move on to the final photo.
He did and his eyes widened. He stared at the photo before turning to his wife. “Is this…?”
She nodded. “Me and Big Brother Nikolai.”
The Vetrov siblings.
Jin Liwei studied the brother and sister in the photo. The siblings didn’t resemble each other that much except for their striking eyes. Both were green but his wife’s eye colour was closer to emerald while Nikolai’s was like dark green olives. He was also dark-haired while Evelina was a vibrant blonde. Despite these differences, there was no doubt that the siblings were equally stunning in the looks department.
The brother was devilishly handsome while the sister was like a beautiful angel.
They looked great together. It was also clear just by their expressions that they cared about each other. Although Nikolai wasn’t smiling in the photo, the gentleness in his eyes for his sister was obvious.
