In truth, she found herself a little bored. If she were a novel protagonist, she would’ve given him absolute hell. Instead, she forgave him without any revenge or violence.
She really couldn’t bear to part with him, though. She wanted the living Lu Yi, not the lifeless tombstone. She was tired of the line:
The furthest distance in the world is not the distance between opposite sides of the world. It is that you don’t know that I love you when I stand in front of you.
It was a beautiful, heart-rending phrase; but Yan Huan didn’t want to be heartbroken anymore.
Weren’t things fine as they were? Plus, there had never been any betrayal between them.
“What’s on your mind?” asked Lu Yi, taking the ladle from her hand and stirring the pot’s contents with it. Dumplings swam to the surface of the frothing pot. Shrimp dumplings have a short cook time; they are ready almost as soon as you dump them into the boiling water.
“Nothing?” Yan Huan scrambled for a plate and held it so that Lu Yi can transfer the ingot-like dumplings. They looked great, none of them broken.
So Lu Yi hadn’t been doing nothing in Xun River in those years. At the very least, he had learned to cook, an essential criterion for a good man. (Other criteria include: being presentable on formal occasions, and the ability to fight off hoodlums.)
Lu Yi had achieved all of them. His only imperfection was his hardened face, and his unapproachability.
Together, they managed to annihilate a whole plate of dumplings. Lu Yi ate a lot; he had always been a huge fan of Yan Huan’s dumplings, and it had been two years since he last tasted them. Yan Huan ate a lot too; she had no plans of acting in the near future, so she didn’t have to count calories and fuss over her figure anymore. Plus, she was still fairly skinny, so it was necessary for her to eat more.
Yan Huan woke up in the middle of the night, not knowing what time it was. It had been awhile since she slept well.
She threw herself around Lu Yi’s waist, burrowing her face into his chest. This was becoming a habit to her; she had grown accustomed to his body temperature.
Lu Yi stroked her hair gently. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“I can’t sleep,” said Yan Huan, pressing her face against his heart, listening to the beating of his heart. His heartbeat was measured, powerful, and unceasing.
“Be on your guard for the next few days,” said Lu Yi, holding her tighter. He was afraid. Afraid that something would happen to her again, especially with her approaching her 28th birthday. He remembered her mentioning she died at 28 during her previous life.
This life was different from that, he knew. Everyone’s fate had been changed; Yi Ling, him, his father, and Yan Huan herself. Even so, he couldn’t help but worry. His dangerous eyes narrowed. It seemed peaceful now, but before every storm was a deceiving calm.
“What’s wrong?” Yan Huan looked up. “Did something happen?”
Lu Yi sat up, beckoned her to sit on his lap, then cupped her face and pressed their foreheads together.
“Don’t go anywhere for a few days. Lu Qin has gotten his hands on my blood. I’m afraid that they would try to target you.”
“Your blood is useless to him,” frowned Yan Huan. “Su Muran has the same blood type as you, but your bone marrows are incompatible.”
She knew that. Lu Qin had gone to Lu Yi for help in her past life, but there was nothing Lu Yi could do to save her.
“That’s what makes me most scared. They might set their eyes on you,” crooned Lu Yi, gently raising her face to face him. There hadn’t been much color on her face lately; mostly because she had given too much blood to Lu Yi. It would take years before she recovered fully.
She had no more blood to give, and donating bone marrow was completely out of the question.
Lu Yi remembered the nefarious things Lu Qin had done to her in her previous life and had the impulse to skin his brother alive. She was pregnant when Lu Qin bled her dry.
In the end, he even tore her tummy open and removed her child by force, a child who was merely six months old. If I have a child, a daughter, thought Lu Yi, I will love her with all I have.
“What do they have to do with me?” asked Yan Huan, leaning her head against Lu Yi’s shoulder. She had transferred all her burdens to Lu Yi. Yes, she wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t related to Su Muran in any way, so why should she care whether she died or not?
Not like Su Muran cared about her in her previous life. She may have reincarnated, but make no mistake—she wasn’t Mother Mary. Don’t take her for a saint.
She wasn’t any of that. She didn’t even think of herself as a good person.
She closed her eyes. Trepidation flooded her. She hoped that her feelings were wrong.
The large warm hand patted her back gently, dissipating the worries that had spawned out of nowhere.
Her long lashes quivered. Soon, her breath turned measured.
Lu Yi carefully rearranged the cover, then reached for his laptop. He began researching about Thalassemias.
Since the start, something had struck him as odd.
Near-perfect bone marrow compatibility was rare even among kin… Weren’t there too many coincidences? Su Muran and Yan Huan weren’t related in any way, yet they had matching blood-types and nearly perfect bone marrow compatibility. Yan Huan’s child, the child’s umbilical cord blood … those were even more compatible with Su Muran. No wonder Lu Qin would go to such lengths to acquire the child’s umbilical cord blood.
None of these was logical. Yes, there are many people in this world who have compatible bone marrows despite not being related in any way, but for them to both have the exceedingly rare Rh-negative AB blood…
That was almost hard to believe. Yet, his research yielded nothing.
Even after enlisting Lei Qingyi’s help, he found out nothing.
Yan Huan was just a child from a common family, with zero ties to the Su Family.
Those were the facts he dug up, yet he felt as though there was something more to it.
