Chapter 65

Chapter 65

They hadn’t horsed around like this in a long time.

This kind of roughhousing with physical contact—ever since kindergarten, it had basically disappeared.

Chi Tuo, dragging his numb and aching legs, scrambled back awkwardly while An Ye laughed and kept pinching him, making him grimace in pain. He didn’t dare throw her off, and in the end, when there was no escape, he could only shout, “An Jiujiu! You’re about to pull my pants off!”

The air went silent for a beat.

An Ye looked up, the smile still on her face, and replied speechlessly, “You’re wearing suit pants! The belt is cinched so tight!”

Chi Tuo: “……”

Neither of them was saying anything remotely normal, so they both fell silent for a moment again.

Chi Tuo finally recovered a bit. He stood up and hopped a couple of times to get through the last wave of numbness.

“Not uncomfortable anymore?” An Ye stood up with him. When Lan Yifang and the others left, they’d already cleared the food off the coffee table—probably afraid of waking the two of them—so the rest of the cleanup hadn’t been done. She went to the kitchen to get a rag.

“...Yeah.” Chi Tuo knew she wasn’t asking about the numbness in his legs. After a pause, he finally responded.

An Ye didn’t say anything else to him. She wiped down the coffee table and tidied up the empty bottles. When Chi Tuo followed her and tried to help sort the trash, she glanced at him.

“About your anxiety…” she asked, voice neither loud nor soft, tone neither cold nor warm, “Am I supposed to ask about that?”

Chi Tuo pressed his fingers hard into the garbage bag he was holding, but didn’t say a word.

So An Ye said nothing more either.

The cleaning lady she hired only came once a month. When her narcolepsy kicked in, Lan Yifang would help tidy up. The rest of the time, An Ye did it herself. She hadn’t been home for five or six days while filming, so she turned on the robot vacuum, rolled up her sleeves, tied up her hair, and started changing the bedsheets and duvet covers.

Chi Tuo still didn’t say anything. Moving around like he was familiar with the place, he took out the trash, scooped cat litter, and even stopped by An Ye’s room to help shake out her bedding.

Once everything was done, he stood in the doorway. “I’m heading out.”

It was still early—barely 4 PM when they started celebrating. After all the chaos, it was just after 9 PM now.

He couldn’t bring himself to ask if he could stay the night.

And with how avoidant he’d been, it was clear An Ye wasn’t too eager to deal with him either.

An Ye poked her head out from her room to look at him. Lips pursed, her expression was a little like how she used to look after their fights—when An Jiujiu wanted to make up but didn’t know how to start.

So Chi Tuo didn’t move.

He hadn’t coaxed her in a long time, and his ability to find an excuse to reconcile was rusty. After thinking for a while, he finally blurted out, “You didn’t put on my duvet cover.”

An Ye: “?”

Chi Tuo: “……”

That head in the room disappeared again, and Chi Tuo heard a flurry of rummaging. A moment later, An Ye emerged carrying a full bedding set and threw it at him. “You don’t have hands or feet or what!”

It was a goose-yellow velvet duvet cover, pretty heavy, and it carried the familiar scent of the perfume she always sprayed in her room.

Chi Tuo pinned it under his chin and started taking off the shoes he had just put on.

After struggling so hard to find an excuse, it might’ve been better to have said nothing at all—but thick-skinned as ever, he stayed anyway.An Ye got busy again, though it wasn’t clear what she was doing. Around ten o'clock, she brought out a few large boxes from the storage room and started packing things up.

He asked if she needed help, and she shot him a glare.

So he didn’t dare ask again. Feeling guilty, he sat down on the sofa and glanced at his phone.

His mom, Zhang Rou, had already called him two or three times while he was asleep. He figured it must be about Wang Shanshan. He had originally planned to call back after going home.

But now it was ringing again.

He hadn’t turned the sound on, but the vibration still caught An Ye’s attention; she looked up from the boxes she was organizing.

Chi Tuo got up, answered the call, and walked out to the terrace.

“Mom.” He answered. As he spoke, An Ye looked at him again.

Zhang Rou’s voice was still gentle: “Tuotuo, Auntie Wang called me today. She was talking fast, and I didn’t really understand much. What’s going on? From what I could gather, it sounded like you were going to help Jiujiu go to court with her?”

“What kind of lawsuit could she even have with Jiujiu…” It was pretty cold outside. Chi Tuo flipped up the collar of his shirt to block the wind. “It’s nothing. Jiujiu’s dealing with a contract dispute. The two of them just don’t agree on how to handle it.”

Zhang Rou was silent for a moment, then said gently, “You… shouldn’t get involved in other people’s family matters…”

Chi Tuo exhaled. The glass door to the terrace made a sound—An Ye had handed his jacket to him, then shrunk her neck and went back inside.

Chi Tuo exhaled again.

The heaviness he’d suppressed just now while messing around with An Ye began to bubble up again.

Zhang Rou waited a long time without a response from Chi Tuo, and sighed softly on the other end.

“You insisted on quitting such a good job and coming back to China, and I never said anything.” Zhang Rou said. “I know you came back for Jiujiu. She’s your one and only attachment in this life. I didn’t stop you.”

“But…” Zhang Rou seemed to be carefully choosing her words. “Tuotuo, you’re getting too involved in Jiujiu’s family matters. It’s not good for you… It’s more than you can handle.”

Chi Tuo leaned against the glass door, head lowered.

“The doctor… doesn’t recommend this.” Zhang Rou’s last sentence came out very cautiously.

Chi Tuo stayed silent.

There was a man’s voice on Zhang Rou’s end. She responded softly to him.

“Mom, I’m really fine,” Chi Tuo said. “You two rest early.”

He hung up before Zhang Rou could finish what she was saying.

He thought about how, when he had completely broken down in Singapore, he’d cried to Zhang Rou and said, “Mom, can you please stop trying to kill yourself? I miss An Jiujiu so much.”

That was the first time he lost control—hyperventilating, unable to see clearly, his heart rate spiking to 190.

After that came the second time, the third time…

He wiped his face. When he turned around, he saw An Ye leaning against the door, watching him.

Maybe she hadn’t expected him to suddenly turn back—her face still wore an expression of worry that hadn’t had time to shift. She looked startled for a second, then quickly switched to a smiling face.

Chi Tuo’s heart tightened. He pushed open the door.

“Your mom on the phone?” An Ye looked a little awkward—eavesdropping through the glass like that was pretty childish. Though, she never really acted like an adult in front of Chi Tuo anyway.“Mm.” Chi Tuo lowered his head and came back inside.

An Ye didn’t say anything, turned around, and continued messing with the large boxes. It looked like she was planning to throw all the books from the study into them.

Her acting was excellent. The worried expression from earlier had completely disappeared from her face. She looked like nothing had happened at all, and her mood didn’t seem affected in the slightest.

Chi Tuo, just like that, felt a wave of inexplicable heartache.

“Jiujiu,” he said. “Ask me again—about the anxiety disorder.”

An Jiujiu was momentarily stunned and looked at him.

Chi Tuo walked over and crouched next to her, helping her sort the stacked books and trophies in the box.

“You…” Chi Tuo was finally willing to speak, but now An Ye hesitated, “I…”

“It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it,” Chi Tuo said. “I just don’t know where to start.”

An Ye looked at him.

“The time Di Dingbang smashed my head with a hot water bottle—it wasn’t as minor as I made it sound. At least from the outside, it looked really bad. I was sent to the hospital, and before they even started dressing the wound, my mom saw it.”

“So my mom…” Chi Tuo lowered his head and gave a small laugh. “It hit her hard.”

An Ye: “Mm.”

She could more or less guess that part. They had left in a rush. Chi Tuo had already been preparing to go abroad at the time. Logically speaking, it didn’t make sense that he couldn’t even say goodbye face-to-face.

“When we first arrived in Singapore, she entered a catatonic state. She couldn’t move at all, had no reaction to the outside world. After some stimulation, she’d react a little—but she’d start self-harming.”

“But that was something we could get through. After changing environments, as long as no one mentioned Di Dingbang, she really did start to improve slowly.”

“But just after she started to get better… Di Dingbang died.” Chi Tuo gave another small laugh.

“My uncle and I tried to keep it from her. But at that time, his noodle shop got reported for health issues. Singapore has strict regulations, so he got taken in for a few days. My mom had been staying at home during that time because of her progress, and I was in school. After Di Dingbang’s funeral, I don’t know who got hold of our home phone number, but someone from the water plant called about the compensation, and it just happened that my mom answered.”

Di Dingbang had died in a car accident on his way to work. He’d worked at the water plant all his life. The old factory director probably meant well, thinking they were just a widow and her child, and went through a lot of trouble to secure some compensation, eventually managing to get Zhang Rou’s contact information.

And just like that, by a cruel twist of fate, Zhang Rou, who had just begun to recover, was dragged back into hell.

An Ye thought about what she was doing at the time. That was when she had just finished filming Lin Luo. She hadn’t come out of character yet, was at home playing with fish guts, and had scared her mom so badly that she panicked and signed her up with a shady company.

“During her second relapse, my mom started attempting suicide frequently,” Chi Tuo said. “She tried every method imaginable. It would happen four or five times a month.”

“…And I had just gotten into law school…” He paused for a long moment. Head lowered, fingers absentmindedly fidgeting with one of An Ye’s Best Actress trophies—a golden ball.

An Ye reached over and gently squeezed his palm.

It was damp.

“You… want to slow down a bit?” An Ye lowered her head, watching his complexion.

He’d clearly been doing better earlier. Now he was pale again.

“No need.” Chi Tuo shook his head. “If I stop and start again, I’ll probably lose the will to talk about it.”

“It’s all little things, really. Law school was more stressful than I expected, big exams, small exams nonstop. My English wasn’t as solid as the other students’, so my grades were bad at first. And my mom couldn’t be left alone for even a moment. After my uncle got reported, he shut down two shops…”

“When everything piled up together, I just broke down…” Chi Tuo thought for a second. “That’s pretty much it.”

It was their third year apart. That year, they never video called again. Chi Tuo had sent a few video requests in the middle of the night. At the time, she’d been on a promo tour and had missed them all.That was also the first year they began to drift apart.

An Ye asked softly, “You… you’ve had anxiety disorder for seven years? And insomnia too?”

“Mm.” Chi Tuo leaned back against the wall. “So I really am a lot better now.”

“What kind of anxiety disorder?” An Ye asked again. “Specific phobia?”

Chi Tuo froze. After a while, he suddenly laughed.

An Ye didn’t quite understand, glaring at him.

“I used to…” Chi Tuo said, “maybe ten years ago, or twelve… I always thought that between us, I was the one clinging to you.”

“You weren’t as reclusive as me. If you wanted, making one or two friends would be a piece of cake. So I always thought, if I didn’t hold on tight, maybe one day you’d just say you had new friends now and wanted to cut ties with this little old man.”

An Ye’s eyes widened a bit: “Huh?”

“Mm.” Chi Tuo finished laughing, looked at An Ye, and reached out to pinch her cheek. “Back then, I felt pretty wronged. I was always the one to coax you after a fight. You’d get mad and just storm off, full of confidence.”

An Ye: “…Huh?”

Old grudges from ten years ago—was it really appropriate to dig them up now?

“But now…” Chi Tuo smiled again. “I’ve started to doubt something else.”

An Ye still looked dazed, not quite following the shift in topic.

“There are so many kinds of anxiety disorders. Why did you immediately think I had specific phobia?” He didn’t continue his previous thought but instead asked a new question. “What do you think I’m afraid of?”

“Wangcheng.” An Ye was still confused, but she answered what she thought, her tone firm. “And family.”

Chi Tuo suddenly leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

So, it really wasn’t just him who had feelings for An Jiujiu all this time.

So all the good luck he’d had in this life—was all saved up just to meet An Jiujiu…