WMSR – QT Chapter 43

 

WMSR – QT Chapter 43

By

siofra

Chapter 43

Pushing open the van doors, they found the interior completely gutted of all seats and standard amenities. Heavy, light-blocking dark film covered every window, sealing out the daylight to cast the cabin in a gloomy, oppressive twilight. In the absolute center of this stillness rested a single, silent object: an ice-sealed coffin.

Peering through the transparent lid, they could clearly make out the young, refined face inside, now locked in a terrifying, unnatural pallor and stiffness. Bai Jinchuan and his wife felt the world go pitch black before their eyes, a suffocating wave stealing the air from their lungs. Moments later, a ragged, irrepressible howl of grief tore through the van: “Yichen…!”

Stiff as a statue, Su Yuanhang stood a short distance away from the vehicle. Hearing the raw, bleeding sorrow echoing from inside, he slowly dropped his head and sank to his knees on the hard ground.

The agonizing weeping inside the van bore such a haunting resemblance to his own cries from a few days ago. But through the nightmare of those intervening hours, he had learned a brutal truth: crying solved nothing. No matter how he wept, no matter how desperately he prayed, Chen-gege would never open his eyes to look at him again.

He would never forget the exact moment, days after the horror set in, when he finally mustered the courage of a condemned man to pull back the blanket covering Chen-gege. He knew nobody simply passed away without a cause; something must have triggered it—or perhaps… Chen-gege had done something.

His fingers had shaken uncontrollably. He had dreaded lifting that fabric, terrified of uncovering crimson stains of blood—a punishment written in his own guilt. But beneath the blanket, the reality was starkly different from his fears. Not a single trace of external trauma marred Chen-gege’s skin. He lay there, perfectly serene, as if he had merely drifted off into a deep, uninterrupted sleep.

He had searched every inch of Chen-gege’s body, yet found no wounds. Ultimately, he had pulled up the security footage, playing back the video of his departure over and over with a frantic, obsessive neurosis. But there was no anomaly. Nothing had happened. Chen-gege had simply lain there in absolute stillness, resting quietly.

Failing utterly to unearth a cause, he had resolved to bring Chen-gege back here—returning to the very municipality he had once fled in ecstatic anticipation, the place where he had meticulously severed his own tracks.

He knew what awaited him upon his return. Regardless of the underlying pathology, his actions in abducting and imprisoning Chen-gege meant the Bai family would never let him go—to say nothing of the fact that Chen-gege was now gone forever…

Yet he had chosen to return anyway. Because he needed to know: Why did Chen-gege leave us? Even if it meant facing a prison sentence, or trading his life in a literal debt of blood, he would swallow the verdict with open arms.

Chen-gege was gone. What meaning was left in his solitary survival in this world?

Besides, compared to him, Chen-gege surely preferred to be surrounded by his own flesh and blood after crossing into eternal sleep…

Su Yuanhang had returned, and just as he anticipated, he had secured his answer.

Upon learning that Chen-gege had long been fighting an incurable terminal illness, a paralyzing dizziness had overtaken him. But when the crushing realization struck home—that his forcible imprisonment and the intimacy he had wrenched from Chen-gege had coincided precisely with his final forty-eight hours of life—a tidal wave of incandescent remorse nearly drowned him.

He had once believed that possessing Chen-gege was the one choice he would never regret. But he had been wrong. The agony of regret had arrived with terrifying swiftness, carving deep, agonizing canyons into his soul.

Listening to the venomous hatred lacing the voices of Chen-gege’s parents, he stood paralyzed, hollowed out, entirely stripped of any destination or purpose.

In the end, Chen-gege’s parents chose not to pursue criminal charges against him. However, they barred him from attending the funeral entirely.

On the day of the memorial, the rain poured in relentless sheets. He stood in absolute isolation outside the perimeter, watching the endless stream of vehicles glide into the grounds. It was Chen-gege’s funeral; anyone who had ever known him was welcomed inside, yet security guards cast wary, hostile glares in his direction, ensuring he remained locked out beyond the gates.

In the distance, he caught glimpses of Chen-gege’s family. But whether it was his parents or his younger brother, every face was sculpted from unyielding ice, their eyes passing right over him as if he were transparent.

He remained rooted to the spot in a mechanical stupor, letting the frigid rain lash against his face without feeling a single drop. In truth, ever since the day the full truth came to light, continued existence had transformed into a living sentence.

His Chen-gege—the dearest soul in his universe—had not been left a single warm memory in the twilight of his life. Coercion, humiliation, and a freezing heart were the only relics he had bequeathed to Chen-gege. He hadn’t even granted Chen-gege the comfort of a final farewell with his parents. At the time, blinded by Chen-gege’s exhausted, averted gaze, he had remained utterly oblivious to the quiet devastation churning inside that chest. But now, his heart was bloated with tons of unmitigated guilt. If time could rewind, I would never force Chen-gege by so much as a fraction of an inch.

Yet “ifs” were merely illusions. The sin had been cast in stone, and he had ultimately lost Chen-gege for all eternity…

Beneath the bruised, heavy sky, the downpour intensified. Mourners arrived and departed in a steady current, none of them sparing a shred of curiosity for the black-clad figure standing motionless in the torrential rain. Even if someone glanced his way, the violent sheets of water offered a convenient excuse never to step out of their vehicles to investigate what kind of fool refused an umbrella and chose to drown in the storm.

As hours bled away, the cluster of parked cars thinned to a trickle. Long after the vehicular traffic had completely died down, a solitary black sedan peeled away from the site. Unlike the previous cars that drove off immediately with their headlights cutting steadily into the distance, this vehicle rolled forward a short distance before coming to a halt directly on the road fronting the slope where Su Yuanhang stood.

Watching the car brake to a stop, a microscopic flicker of motion—a fragile, desperate spark of hollow expectation—struggled to life in the depths of Su Yuanhang’s eyes.

The driver’s side door clicked open. A chauffeur hoisted an umbrella and jogged around to pop the rear door. The moment a tall figure stepped out from the back seat, the tiny ember of hope in Su Yuanhang’s eyes instantly snuffed itself out. A bitter, self-deprecating smirk twisted his lips. What on earth was I still hoping for? Hoping that Chen-gege’s parents might grant me entry…?

Stepping out onto the asphalt, Song Junchi accepted the umbrella from his driver, instructed him to stay put in the vehicle, and began walking alone up the slope toward the lone figure standing in the rain.

The rain hammered a relentless, deafening tattoo against the turf, flattening the once-proud blades of grass. Separated by a curtain of cascading water—one man soaked to the bone and surrendered to the elements, the other sheltered beneath an umbrella walking with measured steps—both shared an identical, hollow mask of profound numbness.