WMSR – QT Chapter 44

 

WMSR – QT Chapter 44

By

siofra

Chapter 44

Treading across the rain-soaked turf, Song Junchi didn’t give a single thought to his shoes soaking through as he walked straight up to Su Yuanhang. He first swept his gaze up and down over Su Yuanhang’s drowned-rat appearance before his lips curled into a cold, mocking sneer. “Who are you trying to put on this tragic show for?”

After all, the person who once actually cared enough to worry over you is already gone.

Though that was what Song Junchi thought, he couldn’t suppress the hot, stinging surge of sour acidity and jealousy gnawing at his own chest. Attending the funeral of the person you loved—no one’s heart could possibly weather that unscathed, and that raw, agonizing grief naturally found a prime venting outlet in the man standing right in front of him.

After all, who was the one who committed such an unforgivable transgression? And who was the person whom Yichen had kept locked in his thoughts and worry, right up until his dying breath?

He couldn’t deny that when he first learned Su Yuanhang was barred from the Bai family’s forgiveness and locked out of the funeral entirely, a cold satisfaction had flickered in his chest. But that petty triumph paled beside the seething hatred he felt over Su Yuanhang having hijacked the final moments of Yichen’s life. Clearly, Yichen had already secured his heart, arranging everything so that up to the very end, he was meticulously protecting and planning for Su Yuanhang’s sake. Why couldn’t he just stay in his lane? Why had he been so sickeningly greedy? Did he really feel like the portion he already possessed wasn’t enough?

Faced with Song Junchi’s deliberate provocation, Su Yuanhang wore a wooden, unresponsive mask, offering zero reaction. Their past rivalries had, after all, been fought purely to capture a single person’s attention; but now, that person was gone forever…

Noticing Su Yuanhang’s total lack of engagement, Song Junchi quickly pivoted his strategy. He stared down at Su Yuanhang and dropped a casual bomb: “Mother Bai was crying terribly today.”

Su Yuanhang’s expression finally flickered with a faint wave of emotion.

“Yichen was always the most filial son to Mother Bai. If Yichen could see her in this state right now, it would surely break his heart.”

At Song Junchi’s words, Su Yuanhang’s fingers clenched tight at his sides.

“It’s just tragic that even after discovering his terminal diagnosis, Yichen still kept you at the front of his mind, making all those meticulous arrangements just for you. If he knew how things turned out in the end, I wonder if he’d regret it.”

“What did you say?” What arrangements? A jolt of suspicion and dread pierced through Su Yuanhang’s fog.

“You didn’t know?” Song Junchi frowned slightly, though a realization quickly followed. Given how things had disintegrated—with the Bai family refusing to even grant Su Yuanhang the courtesy of a private notice about the funeral—they certainly wouldn’t bother filling him in on anything else. A bizarre, twisted smile surfaced on Song Junchi’s face. “Never mind. You’ll find out soon enough.”

Watching Song Junchi’s expression, an ominous knot of unease tightened in Su Yuanhang’s chest. What? What else is there that I don’t know?

Song Junchi had no intention of offering any explanations, turning his back and walking away beneath his umbrella. If his memory served him right, the letters and photographs Yichen had arranged were delegated to an overseas corporate agency for automated release; even the Bai parents weren’t privy to the exact scheduling details. Calculating the timeline, the first of those letters should be arriving very soon.

Striding forward with long, purposeful steps, Song Junchi felt a sudden surge of vindictive glee. The very arrangements Yichen had painstakingly prepared out of love—the ones designed to shield Su Yuanhang from the slightest harm, which had once eaten him alive with jealousy—were now going to transform into the ultimate instruments of Su Yuanhang’s psychological torture. Just imagining it filled him with a dark, intoxicating satisfaction. He honestly couldn’t wait to see the expression on Su Yuanhang’s face when that day arrived…

Chapter 23: Epilogue

A month later, a transoceanic package arrived from the other side of the globe. The moment Su Yuanhang accepted the parcel and laid eyes on the sender’s name printed on the label, his eyes dilated uncontrollably.

That familiar handwriting on the return address made his hand shake so violently he could barely keep a grip on the pen. The delivery driver shot him a strange, sidelong glance, verifying that he wasn’t suddenly suffering a neurological seizure before handing over the trembling receipt and walking away.

The instant the parcel was in his grasp, Su Yuanhang pulled it tightly against his chest, clutching it as if it were the entirety of his shattered world.

He had never imagined he would ever receive another delivery addressed from Chen-gege. Ever since Chen-gege’s funeral, the physical items left in this world connected to Chen-gege that he was permitted to touch could be counted on one hand.

The Bai family had blacklisted him entirely; he hadn’t been allowed to cross the threshold of the house that held the highest concentration of memories between him and Chen-gege, not even for a single step.

His sole consolation was the meager collection of trinkets and fragments he had accumulated during the years he spent side-by-side with Chen-gege. He had long since abandoned any wild hope of ever coming into contact with anything new relating to Chen-gege again.

Carrying the package back to his room, Su Yuanhang stood in the quiet space, dragging in ragged, deep breaths until he managed a semblance of composure. He placed the parcel gently down on his bed, his movements laced with an exquisite, terrified reverence—treating the cardboard box as though it contained a priceless, fragile relic.

The contents of the package revealed themselves smoothly: several vacation photographs set against a tropical island backdrop, a few straw hats woven in some exotic local handicraft style, and a letter.

Su Yuanhang stared with ravenous greed at the bright, radiant smile of Chen-gege captured in the photographs, his fingertips trembling as they brushed lightly over the glossy paper. As for the woman standing beside Chen-gege in the pictures, she was edited out of his focus entirely. Since the background clearly showed a couple’s island getaway, Su Yuanhang naturally assumed these were snapshots mailed from that past vacation with his fiancée, though international mail delays had stalled delivery until now.

Clinging to that comforting illusion, Su Yuanhang tore his gaze away from the photos and finally picked up the envelope. Pulling out the folded stationery, the sight of that instantly recognizable handwriting struck him with such a violent wave of emotion that he felt tears prick the corners of his eyes. He blinked fiercely to clear the mist clouding his vision, holding his breath as he stared down at the final words Chen-gege had left behind for him.

However, the very moment his eyes processed the opening line of the letter, his entire body froze solid:

[Happy birthday, Xiao Hang. I’m so sorry I couldn’t make it back in time to celebrate with you…]

Clutching the sheet of paper, Su Yuanhang remained paralyzed from his fingertips to the roots of his hair. His eyes stared blankly at the ink on the page, completely swallowed by disbelief. Happy birthday… couldn’t make it back in time for his birthday?

Though Su Yuanhang had been living in a hollow, agonizing haze for weeks and hadn’t kept track of the calendar, he knew with absolute, agonizing clarity: his birthday fell in April. Yet Chen-gege had passed away on March 2nd. Furthermore, he knew—just as Chen-gege and his family had known from the doctors—the exact expiry date of his lifespan. Therefore, under no conceivable law of reality or physics could Chen-gege have possibly been alive to catch his birthday in April.