Reborn To Be The Imperial Consort [BL]-Chapter 104: Crimson Spider Lily — IX

Hu Lijing let out a snort. "You really are a doctor, aren’t you?" He smiled while rolling his eyes, his voice laced with the saccharine of fondness.

Li Xinyuan smiled, letting out a snort as well. "That I am, thank you for noticing."

Hu Lijing waved his hand. "Oh dear, you do not even need to mention that. I tend to notice such finer details all the time."

Li Xinyuan scoffed. "I can see that. So—" he plopped back on the ground "—back to the topic at hand. I tend to get carried away a lot."

He looked up, the light-hearted emotions on his face and his golden eyes receding like a drying tide as the swirling whirlpool of storm of less than positive emotions took over the air around him shifting to a more sombre atmosphere as his aura turned solemn, prompting Hu Lijing to turn serious as well.

In a soft voice, the nine-tailed divine fox spirit spoke, nodding ever so slightly. "I am listening." He could distinctly sense that whatever Li Xinyuan was about to — willing to — share with him was not going to be a joking matter or a light-hearted matter at all.

At the gentle urging and encouragement, Li Xinyuan nodded somewhat shakily as he let out a sigh, long and drawn out while his right hand reached up to rest on his chest, splaying right where his heart was beating, the rhythm of it increasing in tempo as waves of anxiety curled in his guts, making him press his hand on his chest a little harder.

"You know why I decided to talk about this? Why I decided to let you in on the secret of my memories that I would otherwise have liked to take to my grave with myself?" The surgeon asked in a deep and solemn voice. Then, he glanced at Hu Lijing, his lips curling upwards into a trembling but unfalteringly gentle smile.

"It is because I want you to know, I want you to understand that you are not alone. I too have been through the same horrible predicament as you have. I too have experienced the great loss of a close relationship." He paused and took a deep bracing breath and closed his eyes for a brief moment as if to compose his thoughts. "I too have experienced the crushing weight of self-blame, of self-loathing, of pain, of grief and of mourning. I have felt hollow too. And yes, I have taken to self-harm as a way to cope with the overwhelming nature of my emotions or the lack of them."

Hu Lijing sucked in a cold breath, his throat feeling incredibly tight as a sharp pain in his chest rose.

Li Xinyuan gave him a few moments to let his words sink.

"Am I ashamed of it?" He asked, more to himself than to Hu Lijing. "I guess so. I do feel ashamed. But at that time, the world just felt so extremely bleak that I just wanted the pain, the desolation to go away. I don’t know if I wanted to live during that time." He paused for a few moments. "But thankfully, I didn’t succeed. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been a doctor in my previous life." He smiled helplessly. "I was too young back then, at least by the standards of the future."

Hu Lijing licked his lips, feeling his throat parching at the mere thought of Li Xinyuan killing himself for whatever reason.

He hated it. He didn’t want to so much as imagine it. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm

"How... How old were you?" He asked in a cracking voice, almost dreading the answer he had yet to receive. "Whom did you lose, if I may ask that? Xinyuan doesn’t have to answer of course."

Li Xinyuan shook his head slightly. "No, I do not mind." He paused, waving his head with the most amount of nonchalance he could muster up for the action. "It happened a long time ago. I was sixteen. And I had lost my best friend."

They both knew that the loss of one’s best friend and one’s lover — whom you lived with every fibre of your being, whom you spent the most vulnerable and intimate times as well as nights with, with whom you conceived a child — were two completely different things. Nowhere near similar, in fact.

But it did not mean that it made the loss any easier. In fact to some people, the loss of a best friend would be greater than anything else.

Not to mention that Li Xinyuan had been just a child when he lost his best friend.

Hu Lijing closed his eyes and took a deep breath, swallowing thickly, he let out a shaking sigh. "I’m sorry for your loss."

Li Xinyuan pursed his lips, shadows of grief briefly crossing his ethereal features as he frowned and shook his head once more. "Do not be. It was a long time ago."

"You were just a child."

At that, Li Xinyuan found himself falling silent completely as the painful memories he wished he could forget — but never really did — came rushing back to him, resurfacing like an old ache as he clenched his teeth.

"That I was," he agreed in a quiet voice, eyes watering as he sat up and gathered his knees to his chest, hugging them close as he propped his chin on the dip between the place where his legs close together. "He died in front of my eyes—" he closed his eyes, feeling stray tears escaping the enclosure "—I could have saved him." He admitted. "But I didn’t."

Hu Lijing let out a strangled noise of disbelief. "You could have saved him and you did not?" He paused, letting the silence settle between them before shattering it. "You want me to believe that? I’m sure you were helpless, there is no way that you would not save someone if you could help it."

Li Xinyuan let out a wet chuckle, the sounds of alive nature, of the gurgling stream and Hu Lijing’s words suddenly all too loud to his ears. "You’re right." He conceded, nodding in a stiff manner. "It was not that I did not save him intentionally but that I could not. I was not allowed to."

Li Xinyuan roughly wiped his cheeks as he sniffled loudly and continued. "I had to watch him bleed to death all while his life grew to be an increasingly distant thing to wish for." He let out a choked noise. "In the end, right in front of my eyes, I watched him die in the pool of his own blood."

Hu Lijing sat up as well, hands clenching on his lap as he ducked his head, lips pursing together as he glared at the grass under him. "Why?" He dared to ask. "How did it happen?" He added.