To Love You Again

Gasp!

Xiong Wuyue choked.

With shocked eyes, she grabbed onto his hands, her face turning red then purple.

W-what??? Why???

She was shocked how the always gentle Linfeng, the refined and calm gentleman, suddenly turned into something alien to her.

He…he actually laid hands on her?!

Linfeng?!

Aggrieved, tears welled up in her eyes.

Linfeng's romantic peach blossom eyes, which she had always loved, were currently staring down at her murderously. The rim of his eyes were red and wet. There was a drop of blood on his lips, born from biting his lips too hard.

"Where...where is that bastard Guan Gao Huan?!! Where did you hide my Young Miss?!!!" He angrily roared with gritted teeth.

Linfeng was ready to kill.

Xiong Wuyue could see it in his eyes.

In that moment, Xiong Wuyue thought that she would be killed.

However, what she could not believe was that she was about to be killed by the man she loved so dearly.

She cried.

Why was he being so cruel to her?

She loved him so much!

Seeing that she could not speak, Linfeng loosened his hands a little to give her leeway to do so.

Xiong Wuyue coughed hard and gasped for air.

She kept crying.

"I-I don't know, I don't know."

Linfeng erupted and waved his hands on the dinner table. He smashed the delicate plates which Xiong Wuyue had handpicked for the date. The food she had cooked for their dinner was flung away and smashed into a mess on the ground.

Xiong Wuyue was frozen with fear.

The image in front of her was eerily familiar.

She thought she saw herself in one of her outbursts.

But he was Linfeng, the always gentlemanly Linfeng…

She then realized that she seemed to not really know him at all.

Linfeng was raging mad and seemed to be intent on destroying everything around him. That was when she finally noticed what seemed to be a photo that was being held tightly in one of Linfeng's fists.

It was crumpled to the point that Xiong Wuyue could not see what was in the image. It took a while for the furious man to calm down.

Xiong Wuyue saw the tears in his red-rimmed eyes finally fall. However, his eyes were devoid of any emotion, except for cold hatred.

Why…? Why was he crying?

All throughout the time she was with Linfeng, Xiong Wuyue knew somewhat that Linfeng was not really honest with her. It was a woman's instinct. However, her pride and selfish heart threw all her doubts away, and just wanted to believe the lie she had conjured in her own.

Xiong Wuyue hugged herself amidst the things around her that had scratched her. She hesitated whether to comfort the irate man, but her fear of his sudden outburst scared her.

She was afraid to get near Linfeng at the moment.

After a while, Linfeng wiped his tears expressionlessly.

He directed a gloomy glare at the woman who was curled up in the corner.

"Because of you..." he whispered.

He went closer to her as if he finally decided to kill her.

"Because of your greed…"

That was when a group of highly skilled forces entered the room and attacked Linfeng.

They also had guns.

"No!"

Xiong Wuyue's thoughts froze.

She stood up to stop her father's men from shooting.

Linfeng immediately threw up the table, took out a gun fluidly, and shot back at them.

More men in black outfits came running. Linfeng seemed to have no choice but to escape. Before leaving, he threw her a cold look, as if saying that he would definitely kill her next time.

That day was the last day that Xiong Wuyue had seen Linfeng eye to eye.

Because the next time that she saw him, it was two years later, and he was lying down on that woman's lap in the middle of the blood-soaked road.

****

The police and the special investigations team had put yellow tapes around the crime scene, preventing people from coming closer.

Many dead bodies were scattered around.

Xiong Wuyue had ran immediately to the crime scene the moment she heard the news from her father.

She did not care about the rest of what he had said.

The only words that filled her mind as she ran to the crime scene, ringing in hateful echoes that she did not want to believe, was that Linfeng had died.

…

Xiong Wuyue's eyes were blank while she stared at the scene in front of her.

Her beloved man laid on the ground palely with closed eyes.

He looked like he was only sleeping, although his face was pale and he was covered in blood. He had a peaceful look on his face as if finally, he was with the person he was looking for.

There were countless knives that stabbed at her heart.

She choked in pain she clutched at her chest, but her wide eyes still remained fixated with a sense of unrealness.

Linfeng chose to die with that person rather than live in glory with her.

Why?

It was a foolish decision.

No sane man would choose it.

Xiong Wuyue was beautiful, prestigious, wealthy, and loved him with all her heart.

Compared to a woman who was always blank-faced, anti-social, and was already pushed down many times by another man, Xiong Wuyue was way better.

All men would want her without hesitation.

She stood still, not realizing that tears had come out of her eyes continuously, until her butler fearfully held out a pack of tissue.

She then realized that she was crying.

What was she crying for?

That in the end, even though she had the status and she was even the Young Miss Xiong, she was still not chosen?

Why? Why choose that person?!

Overwhelming heartache, pain, and grievances erupted in her heart.

She stared at the woman who remained seated on the ground, her back leaning on the car, and hugging the man in his arms, even in death. 

So you chose her?

Did you not say that it was unbefitting of a woman to cry while sitting on the ground?

Xiong Wuyue wiped her tears one by one.

Even in death, that woman still stole what was supposed to be hers.

Even in death...

She still had to envy her.

Xiong Wuyue was filled with grievances and hatred towards the dead woman.

Her eyes looked at the latter with the overwhelming desire to shred the dead woman's corpse to pieces, to scatter it for animals to eat, and to never give her a burial ground.

These two people wanted to stay together until death, but Xiong Wuyue would make sure they would never be able to get together in the afterlife!

She spoke to her butler. "Make sure to get both of their bodies. Send Linfeng's body to the best funeral parlor and had them preserve his body well. As for that woman…" Xiong Wuyue's eyes gleamed with madness. "Leave her in the mountains filled with wild dogs."

Linfeng had died, but he had left his body behind.

Even if she could not get his heart, she would at least get his body. With Xiong Wuyue's determined instructions, the entangled corpses which could not be separated were finally separated.

One was sent to a large mansion, while the other was left behind in the mountains to be fed to the wild dogs.

… But later on that day, a car drove by the mountainside and retrieved the woman's corpse.

The person solemnly cremated the dead woman and gave her ashes a proper burial ground in his family's ancestral graveyard.

It was the only thing he could do for the innocent woman who was implicated in this whole web woven by his father. He gave her a bow in silence. But he knew that it was never enough. Nothing could ever compensate.

*

A woven destiny was slowly untangling its threads one by one.

The same people, the same places, but the world had begun to drift off to a different course.

Xiong Wuyue breathed her last.

She did not even realize what she had 'seen' as her soul drifted off and scattered.

She died inside the dark room with no one knowing that her life had ended.

Even the person who loved her the most was continually waiting for her return inside his own dim prison.

Ever since Xiong De saw his daughter, he was always waiting for her every day.

Every time the sound of the door opening came, he would ask if his daughter had come.

Xiong De blindly believed that his daughter would get him out someday.

He pinned his hopes on her. Because it was the only thing he could do.

The days continued peacefully like that.

******

[E/N: Honestly, when I read this while editing, I felt that this father and daughter pair is truly miserable and quite pitiful. However, all evils they suffered originated from them as well. Their fate shows the karmic cycle of the world, coming from the sins from the previous lives and onwards. I appreciate that the villains are given depth in their sufferings, not immediately just killed off and done. They are humans too, they have reasons why they became like that, they suffer pain too, and they grieve. It doesn't mean they deserve forgiveness though, and although reading it made me cry for some reason, I know that it was all products of their own actions. A death will always be saddening, but it's a harsh fact that no matter how a person suffer and die, the world will still ruthlessly go on.]