At first, Zixi felt numb as his mind tried to cope with reality. Then he was screaming so loudly he couldn't hear himself. The scope of what he had lost crashed all around him; his eyes were squeezed shut, thinking that this couldn't be happening to him, not here, not now, not after all that had already happened.
He had already lost his grandfather, father, mother and that unborn, unnamed little younger brother or sister of his all those years ago and now he had lost the only person who had ever carved a space in his heart. He had lost the girl of his dreams.
The girl he had tried so hard to protect had died protecting him. In the end, he had brought his bad luck upon her as well.
Zixi didn't think he could look at her again, but he forced his eyes open. He lets out another colossal wail as her body, once so vibrant, so happy, so alive, lays still on the floor, her beautiful head tilted to one side.
He removed her bangs that had fallen on her forehead, soft and fine as silk, and when she didn't react, he began to cry.
His breath comes in stutters, he made choking noises but no tears escaped his eyes. His voice became hoarse after calling her name repeatedly.
Her body still felt warm to the touch. He grasped it between his arms and kissed her face over and over again.
Why hadn't he told her his feelings earlier?
Why hadn't he spent more time with her?
Why had he tried to hide his identity from her?
She told him just a few minutes ago that he was the light in her dark world. If it hadn't been for the circumstances, would she never have disclosed her feelings to him?
How lamentable that both of them had been afraid to give voice to their thoughts and emotions before this and now, she was out of his reach.
They had been so near yet so far from each other all these years.
Zixi stared at her lifeless figure and cried with renewed anguish. Her eyes were staring at him with a dull, pale colour. They didn't have their usual vibrancy in them. His girl was gone. She had left him behind like everybody else. She said she couldn't bear to leave him behind and that was why she had returned to this godforsaken place, so why did she leave him behind in death?
How was he supposed to survive from now on?
Who would tell him to meet her at nine o' clock sharp in the morning?
Who would ask him to taste their bland food again?
Who would look at him with a twinkle in their eye and ask him if he was alright?
What would he say to uncle?
How would he explain to him that his daughter had been killed trying to do something she shouldn't have?
How would he face the person who had been his safe harbour all these years?
Would uncle even talk to him ever again once he realised that he had lost his precious daughter due to him?
Zixi started screaming again, the screams became a way to release all the pain he couldn't voice that he felt inside. The pain intensified with every passing second, tearing at his soul.
What had he done to deserve this?
He asked himself this question knowing that it was all in vain, that the answer would never come to him.
Her body seemed to grow colder with every minute passing as if it had never felt any warmth. To think he was the cause of her death. He, Xun Zixi or better yet Young Master of the Qin family had been the reason for the death of the love of his life, he who had always tried to protect her from any harm, he who would have given up his life in exchange for her's in a heartbeat was the cause of her death.
If only, he hadn't overestimated himself and tried to make even with that old geezer. He had waited for so long, he should have been patient, he shouldn't have tried to conclude things so hastily.
He pondered going the same way as his love, he could follow her in death. It would be so easy. This thought calmed him a little. He tried to look at his surroundings and found the gun just a few paces away from him.
He reached and picked it up with one of his hands. Looking at the gun made him realise that he could just end it all.
No more worries
.
No more duties.
No more promises to keep.
No more this gut-wrenching and soul-searing pain.
He was all alone in this world now. He had killed the person responsible for his family's massacre so he didn't need to think about anything else. He could welcome the oblivion of death with peace.
With this knowledge, he bent over her body, trying to keep it warm, trying to give it some warmth with human contact. But it seemed impossible and wasted on her. The heat from her body seemed to be almost all gone now.
Zixi turned the gun towards himself but before he could pull the trigger, it was snatched away from his hand. He could feel someone trying to shake him, a pair of hands seemed to rest on his shoulders but he shrugged them away and curled himself over her body.
A few seconds later he felt the same pair of hands under his arms, trying to lift him up but that would mean leaving her body so, he didn't move.
He couldn't leave her.
He didn't want to leave her.
He wanted to stay with her. More importantly, he wanted to die with her.
Who was this person who was disrupting him again and again?
Zixi tried to look behind him but he couldn't see anything. Had his eyesight gone blurry?
No, not blurry. He was crying. It was his veneer of tears. He couldn't see much past them.
He felt too tired from everything that had happened today, too weak from all the crying and screaming and collapsing, and he felt himself being pulled away from her. "No" he yelled, in a strangled cry that resembled nothing like what he normally sounded like. "No, no. Let me stay with her."
He didn't want to care about the other person, whoever they might be. What did it matter to him? He didn't care anymore. Zixi just wanted to be left alone with her. He had given up on himself.
What was the point of living, when the person he loved was gone? He didn't have any other blood-related family anyway.
Zixi again felt his shoulders being shaken by someone. He was starting to get pissed off at this person so he shouted, "Go away. Leave us alone." The other person replied to him but he couldn't hear their words. It was as if they were speaking from too far away.
Slowly the voice started to talk to him. It had an urgent tone to it?
He pondered what could be urgent now whenever everything had already collapsed?
Wait.
He knew that voice.
He could recognise it.
He had heard it so many times.
He had always felt the voice to be grating on his ears.
That voice would always call his girl princess here and princess there all the time?
It irritated him beyond measure and here it was again trying to disrupt him.
He looked up and stopped screaming the same denial again and again. Oh yes, he was right in his guess. Staring him in the face was Li Rong. He opened his mouth to tell him to leave them well alone, but no sound came out.
Zixi belatedly realised that the other person was crying as well. Oh, his love had been Li Rong's best friend so he must also feel pain and heartache. Li Rong knelt beside him.
"I want to die. Let me go," he told Li Rong.
At least, he had the sense not to say or give meaningless platitudes in a time like this. It was small mercy if any. He could see the tears trickle down Li Ring's face in rivulets.
"You can't die," Li Rong replied. The words that come out are thick and rough around the edges and Li Rong has to swallow to remove the tremble from his voice.
Li Rong remembers with clarity that one moment when princess wasn't speaking to Zixi, she had gazed at him with nothing but a warm and an apologetic look in her eyes.
That look had seemed to say many words - thank you for being my friend, take care of yourself and help Zixi all in once. He could also see the relief in her eyes, relief that nothing had happened to Zixi at the end of it all.
Li Rong had also realised a few other things in that instant :
He had always been able to coax out a peal of hearty laughter from Princess, but all along her sweet smile had always been shared with Zixi.
Princess would cry in front of him if she was sad, but all along her sadness and fear had always been only shared with Zixi.
Princess would be gentle and sweet towards him, but all along her tenderness and care had always been only for Zixi.
Princess had always seen him as her best - friend, but all along she had considered Zixi as her own, even if unknowingly.
Princess had always shared her laughter and tears with him, but all along all her joy and sorrows had always been shared with Zixi.
The one she cared about the most will always be another man and the blood seeping out of her body had also proved something else :
She could share her life with him but she was giving up her life for another man, her man - Zixi.
Zixi feels his vision blur once again with tears. He himself can't answer, so thick is the knot that has formed deep inside his throat. He lets out a shuddering breath.
Li Rong again shakes his head at him, "She told you to pass on her message to her father. You also have to keep your promise. Moreover, princess wouldn't want you to die like that. She died saving you. If you do this you will make a mockery out of her sacrifice."
Those words seem to bring Zixi out of his own thoughts.
Later on, they bring her back home. As soon as uncle sees it, an instinctive understanding dawns on the Yu patriarch and Zixi doesn't realise he's holding his breath until his chest starts to burn and the breath leaves his body in a long, gushing sigh. He's afraid of what uncle will say to him. If he'll cut him off his life? But uncle doesn't blame him.
Even if uncle doesn't blame him, he cannot forgive himself.
In the end, Zixi tells her last words to uncle before the funeral. He tells him everything, all the words that were spoken between the two of them, hiding nothing and uncle hold him as if he were a little child, too much like the time all those years ago and they cry together for what they had lost.
Later on, uncle tells him slowly and gently that he will always have a place within the Yu Household. He says, "That was the promise that I had made the first time you came to stay here and I intend to keep it for as long as am alive"
Under the heavy weight of the sandalwood incense that curls around each of them, he sits through all the funeral rites, close to his uncle.
People question in whispers as to why the seat next to the Yu patriarch is seated upon by a close - aide of the deceased but they don't dignify that with a response whatsoever.
He remains close by uncle's side and feels a stab of guilt whenever he sees his face haggard and aged, eyes dulled and head slumped as he kneels by his side.
Zixi's gaze turns towards that spurious child as well. Seeing the grieving expression on that woman's face, he scoffs, eyes filled with disdain. He was truly disgusted by her hypocrisy.
As he watches her talk to all the mourners present, he realises that now her path must seem clear to her, nobody to block her from snatching the heiress position. Zixi sneers.
Why even bother attending the funeral?
All these false pretences, she's already dead yet they're still trying to disgust his girl even in death. Clenching his fists, he looks at that woman, his eyes brimming with resentment.
This thought brings Zixi to a halt.
He doesn't want to be a spectator to that. He won't watch her take everything away from the person it should have rightfully belonged to. Nothing about her was worthy enough to fill the gap and position left be Yu..... he can't even take her name, it hurt so much, he hadn't even said her name in his thoughts since all those days ago.
At this point, he realises the ramifications of that one death. People inside and the outsiders seem to be eyeing the Yu Corporation now. He wouldn't let anyone take what was rightfully hers.
This turns Zixi's face expressionless, appearing so calm all of a sudden that it's feels as if he is indifferent to everything happening around him.
In later years, his identity is disclosed to everyone. Uncle asks him to chair the President's seat, but he refuses though he does keep the position of the acting president.
He doesn't allow that spurious child to eye things above her station.
He had promised his girl to never hurt her physically, but he makes sure to never let her live the life she had so envied.
He and uncle jointly decide not to clear out her room, but instead keep everything exactly as it was, maintaining the same appearance as when she had left. Year after year he tries to do things that she would have approved of so that when they meet again next time, she won't be disappointed in him.
He personally sends off uncle when he passes away and never lets the other woman seize or grab anything that should not be hers.
Zixi never takes on a wife. His heart is already dead with his girl so there went his feelings to separate such matters along with her.
A few years down the road, he adopts a boy. He teaches him everything and tells him about the wonderful woman who should have been his mother if she was still alive. He tries to instil in the child, all the qualities that she possessed.
Slowly Zixi's tall, straight physique withers and years later he would still wake up in the middle of the night, then remain in his room wide awake until dawn.
Sometimes be dreams about his parents or grandfather but most nights he dreams about her. Her smile, her eyes, her voice and his hopelessness at her end.
Then one day he collapsed, his health is not in the best condition. He is diagnosed with stomach ulcers due to long working hours but he doesn't mind.
He doesn't tell his son about it and doesn't go for treatment.
After all, since the moment she left him, he had been waiting for this day.
Now that the time was near, he feels an eerie calm. In the end, he passes away in his sleep with an anticipatory smile on his face.
He knows now he can follow her.
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