After Rebirth, My Ex-Girlfriend Became Obsessive - Chapter 94
“Lin Duxi! How did you get here?” An Yu couldn’t contain her shock, her eyes brimming with astonishment and unconcealable joy.
Lin Duxi lifted her gaze to meet An Yu’s, her own eyes overflowing with tenderness.
“My girlfriend missed me, looking as pitiful as a puppy over video. How could I not come to her?”
Lin Duxi cupped An Yu’s face and planted a few light kisses before releasing her embrace to help her out of her coat.
Though exhausted from the day, An Yu’s body now pulsed with the fervent beating of her heart. She wanted nothing more than to keep gazing at Lin Duxi, as if she could never get enough.
Lin Duxi pushed her away playfully. “Stop staring.”
An Yu’s gaze was too intense. While she adored being looked at like that, it couldn’t go on forever.
The tips of her ears, hidden beneath her long hair, flushed pink.
With her long-missed lover suddenly by her side, both their hearts surged with emotion, like a pebble tossed into a still lake-everything unfolded so naturally.
Under the soft white light, Lin Duxi’s skin glowed like that of a celestial being descended from the heavens.
An Yu, meanwhile, was the most devoted follower by her side, ready to fulfill her every wish.
In the haze of trembling ecstasy, Lin Duxi felt as though the fragmented gaps in her memory were slowly being pieced together, becoming whole and seamless like a polished pearl.
An Yu had died in the summer-a blazing, fiercely burning summer, as stifling and suffocating as the one six years prior.
That day, Lin Duxi returned home from work as usual and mechanically opened the drawer. To her, once work was done, there was nothing left to occupy her.
Her mind seemed to know only work-perhaps she used it to numb herself.
The doctor’s advice to avoid medication as much as possible had long faded from her ears. Without it, she couldn’t stop herself from seeking An Yu.
Yet she loathed herself so deeply-how could she expect An Yu not to despise her too?
After taking the pills, Lin Duxi sat in a daze as the sunset faded into darkness. Only then did her motionless body stir.
Her phone on the table lit up with a few notifications, and a faint glimmer returned to Lin Duxi’s dull eyes.
It was an alert from An Yu’s Weibo fan group-perhaps An Yu had posted something.
Her heart leaped with hope, only to be met with a feed of black-and-white photos in the otherwise sparse fan group.
Thud.
The sound of her phone hitting the floor.
Lin Duxi stared blankly ahead, her mind utterly empty, as if something inside her had snapped in an instant.
After a brief moment of confusion came overwhelming disbelief. Without a second thought, she bolted from the villa, got into her car, and sped toward the location mentioned on her phone.
By the time she arrived, hours had passed. The victim had already been taken away, and the bloodstains on the ground were barely covered by a cheap, colorful plastic sheet. Beneath it, the dark, dried blood stood in stark contrast to the black night, searing into Lin Duxi’s pupils.
The police had cordoned off the area to keep onlookers at bay. A crowd craned their necks, eager to catch a glimpse, but no one noticed Lin Duxi hidden among them.
Her eyes remained fixed on the bloodstains beside the plastic sheet, unblinking until the wind stung them red.
Her white dress fluttered in the breeze, but in Lin Duxi’s eyes, it too seemed to soak in crimson, merging with the blood on the pavement.
She didn’t care about the line between imagination and reality. Lin Duxi only thought it fitting-in her delusion, she was now drenched in red, just like An Yu.
In the end, Lin Duxi was dragged back-by Ji Qi.
She had tried to see An Yu’s body, but without any legitimate claim-neither as a friend nor as family-her request was denied. She didn’t resist, simply sitting on a chair, her bloodshot eyes locked on the direction of the morgue, isolating herself from the world around her.
Her eyes were bloodshot, yet not a single tear could fall. Her hair was disheveled, and her entire mental state teetered on the edge of collapse.
This was the scene Ji Qi encountered when she rushed over in a panic, leaving her momentarily stunned.
She had always known Lin Duxi had a woman she deeply loved. But after all these years by Lin Duxi’s side, she had only ever caught glimpses of the woman in videos on Lin Duxi’s phone. Lin Duxi had never gone to see her.
Ji Qi had once secretly looked up this woman-An Yu, a minor celebrity. Their professional lives seemed to have no overlap whatsoever, except for having attended the same high school.
First love?
First loves are the hardest to forget, Ji Qi thought. She walked up to Lin Duxi, bent down to meet her gaze, and tried to fill her field of vision, even though she knew it was futile.
“Let’s go back first, okay? We shouldn’t disturb the police while they’re handling the case.”
Lin Duxi seemed deaf to her words, still staring blankly ahead without so much as a glance in her direction.
Ji Qi was well aware of Lin Duxi’s condition. Her current state indicated severe mental distress, so Ji Qi immediately arranged to have her “forcibly” taken back while summoning Jiang Yu for treatment.
The effectiveness of the treatment was unclear, but Lin Duxi no longer exhibited the catatonic obsession of that first day. Instead, she withdrew all emotion, her demeanor so controlled that nothing seemed amiss.
She worked as usual, cooked after work, mechanically chewing and swallowing tasteless food, then washed up and went to bed.
Ji Qi began to wonder if that day had been a hallucination.
As Lin Duxi’s manager, she considered their relationship to be at least warm, if not intimate.
She had feared Lin Duxi might truly break.
But the reality was, aside from her initial reaction upon learning of An Yu’s death, Lin Duxi’s behavior over the next two days remained unchanged.
What the hell?
Ji Qi finally let out a sigh of relief, though not without a tinge of melancholy. First loves were best kept in the heart. An Yu hadn’t been in contact with her all these years-her reaction must have just been shock.
The turning point came on the afternoon of the third day after An Yu’s death. Lin Duxi’s residential property management called to inform her that someone was looking for her.
Lin Duxi felt an inexplicable irritation. Her long-numbed nerves, having avoided reality for so long, instinctively rejected any intrusion. But then the property manager uttered a name that froze her in place.
The visitor, they said, was Wen Zhenhe.
Wen Zhenhe was the butler of An Yu’s family.
When Wen Zhenhe entered the complex, the wind howled violently, whipping the white hair hidden beneath his cap.
Lin Duxi suddenly heard something shatter, the sound reverberating through her dazed mind, breaking through the fragile illusion she had clung to.
“Miss Lin.” Wen Zhenhe greeted her with the same gentlemanly demeanor he had maintained for decades, though his back was now slightly hunched with age.
“These are items I found while sorting through the young miss’s… belongings.” He held a large box in his arms, its opening sealed with tape.
Lin Duxi took it, lowering her gaze to study it carefully, her fingertips lightly brushing the rough surface.
Wen Zhenhe couldn’t bear to watch and turned away. He had never imagined that An Yu would leave this world before him. It had fallen to him to arrange her funeral.
In just a few years, he had witnessed the passing of the family’s master, mistress, and now the young miss. His hair had turned completely white in these past days.
“The police have uncovered some leads regarding the suspect. The young miss’s case… it wasn’t a suicide.” His voice was hoarse, the exhaustion of sleepless nights weighing heavily on his aging body.
Lin Duxi lifted her eyes to meet his. When Wen Zhenhe saw the utter darkness in her gaze, he stiffened-and suddenly regretted handing her the box.
Some truths, once known, could hurt far more than ignorance.
“I understand.” Though it was midsummer, Lin Duxi’s voice was colder than winter, each word laced with frost, her tone even more brittle than Wen Zhenhe’s aged rasp.
Lin Duxi carried the box back inside.
She set it on the table, then went about her usual routine-work, cooking, eating, washing up. Finally, as always, she sat on the sofa, deliberately avoiding the conspicuous box, and picked up her phone in a desperate search for distraction.
Yet her fingers moved on their own, opening Weibo and navigating to An Yu’s profile, just as they had countless times before.
Her hand jerked to a stop.
Tears splashed onto the screen, blurring the familiar page she had memorized over the years.
Lin Duxi frantically wiped the droplets away, but the tears wouldn’t stop. Her heart felt as though it had been gouged with a knife, blood pouring out in torrents. She clutched at the fabric over her chest.
The delayed pain crashed over her all at once. Her heart felt ready to explode, the agony so intense she could barely breathe.
Only in this moment did Lin Duxi finally accept the truth: An Yu was gone.
The An Yu who was always so happy, who always smiled at her-was gone forever.
With trembling hands, Lin Duxi tore open the tape sealing the box.
Inside were drawings-sketch after sketch of her, drawn by An Yu. Her reading, her doing homework, her napping at her desk, her smiling.
The technique was unpolished, even childish, but every stroke radiated the artist’s love for her subject.
Lin Duxi’s fingers shook as she gently touched one of the drawings. The moment her damp fingertips made contact, the paper absorbed her tears. She recoiled as if burned, panic flooding her eyes.
She had damaged An Yu’s drawing. She couldn’t ruin them-An Yu would be sad. She mustn’t make An Yu sad.
Lin Duxi hurriedly let go, wiping her hands and face dry.
She hung An Yu’s drawings on every wall of her room, treating the black-and-white sketches like priceless treasures. She even cut open the cardboard box and placed it by her bed. A faint smile curled her lips as she curled up, as though An Yu were beside her at every moment.
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Who’s cutting onions ಥ_ಥ