Translator: Lonelytree Editor: Millman97

  Song Qingchun really didn’t understand why she was crying.

  At the end of the day, Su Zhinian had merely denied her suspicion that he was the person she was looking for and said that his kindness toward her was because he felt indebted to her. Was that worth her tears?

  The answer should have been no, but when she returned to her bedroom and saw the toll receipt and bloodied shirt, her heart fractured, and she crumbled onto her bed. She buried her face into the soft pillows and started weeping softly to herself……

  Su Zhinian leaned against the sofa, maintaining the same posture he had been in when Song Qingchun left his room. His gaze fell blankly on the television attached to the wall. His ears were filled with the sound of her tears.

  His palms were gripping the armrest so tightly that the veins were popping up.

  She had started to notice the person who had been protecting her, and that meant that her heart was starting to fall for that individual. However, she could never know that the person who was protecting her was the only person she couldn’t show any interest in.

  He had made the mistake and fallen into the dark abyss without the chance of salvation, but she was different. She was still at the start; there was still a chance for her to turn back; she didn’t need to follow him down this path of no return.

  Therefore, to shatter the suspicion at the bottom of her heart, he had to say those ruthless things without hesitation. No one knew that, even though he might have looked unaffected on the surface, when he said those words, his heart was lacerated with wounds.

  His passion toward her was overflowing, but he had to be cruel to her. She was his most treasured person in the world, but he had to hurt her the most.

  But would she ever know that the hurt and pain he had caused her was actually the best protection that he could give her.

  The sound of crying kept drifting in from the room next door, and his heart fell apart, piece by piece, following the sniffling of her tears.

  The questions that she had posed earlier reverberated in his ears.

  "Are you the person who has been sending me these messages for the last five years?"

  Yes.

  "Are you the person who has been wiping away my tears whenever I cried?"

  Yes.

  "Are you the person who has been secretly protecting me for these past few days?"

  Yes.

  Yes, I am all those things, but I can never let you know that fact……

  Song Qingchun didn’t know how long she had cried, but she realized she had cried until her throat was sore, and her whole body was drained.

  She lay in her bed, too tired to even move a muscle. It was not until the sun set and the moon rose that she slowly picked herself up from the bed.

  She picked up the bloodied shirt and toll receipt and dropped them into the trashcan inside the bathroom. Then she stood before the bathroom mirror, staring at her red-rimmed eyes. She opened the faucet to wash the dried tear stains on her face away.

  When she was applying the face-cream on her face, her eyes caught the edge of the shirt that was peeking out from the top of the trashcan. Her movement stopped before she slammed the tube of face-cream back onto the counter surface and dashed out of the bathroom. She merely took two steps before she went back into the bathroom to dig the shirt and receipt out of the trashcan, rolled them up, and shoved them back under her bed again.