Substitute Lover [Entertainment Industry] - Chapter 71

I hope there is an afterlife for you.

Jiang Cha folded and unfolded the will repeatedly.

After staring at it for a long time, she finally slammed it hard against the window glass, then leaned against the wall and covered her face and cried.

It was raining outside. The rain was so cold.

The window wasn’t tightly closed, and a little rain drifted in through the crack, landing on Jiang Cha’s nose. They had been together for six or seven years, why did it have to end like this?

Why didn’t she say anything?

Why did she have to say goodbye in such a cruel way?

Jiang Cha cried out, her eyes filled with tears, and she couldn’t stop crying. She squatted down and tremblingly picked up the will, looking at it softly.

She noticed that one corner of it was wet, and the writing was slightly blurred.

Where did the blur come from?

Jiang Cha suspected it was rainwater but realized after a moment of daze that it was her tears.

Jiang Cha bent down and picked up the white rose from the pile of broken glass. Together with the remaining will, she gently placed them in the innermost layer of the drawer, carefully and preciously.

“Where is Ji Fan?”

Jiang Cha asked Xu Qingzhu, “You know, you must know.”

Xu Qingzhu said that Ji Fan had gone missing. No one knew where she was. When she went for treatment, she was alone, and no one accompanied her, so no one knew where she went or how the surgery went.

She was barely hanging on, and then she took such a hard blow for her. It was already a medical miracle that she didn’t die on the spot.

After so long, there was still no news, and the surgery had probably failed.

She was gone.

Jiang Cha searched everywhere for her, but she realized that people were like snowflakes, and once they disappeared, they were truly gone.

Once they were gone, they were truly gone.

Where did Ji Fan go?

Jiang Cha didn’t know, and no one told her.

She stared at Ji Fan’s will and saw her signature.

Ji Fan had given her all her shares.

No wonder she made her learn economics and read those books. It turned out that she was afraid that she would go to another world and was making arrangements for the future.

Why did she only understand now?

A person like her, even after death, would make her worry for a lifetime.

It was too cruel.

“Honeymoon Trip” aired at the wrong time.

Jiang Cha sat in front of the TV, watching the person lean over in the night and kiss her carefully and tenderly; watching the person put the violin on her shoulder, her long eyelashes drooping quietly, young, serious, and the soft sound of the violin seemed to be telling her the belated confession she had never understood before.

Jiang Cha served two bowls of rice and looked at the one meat and two vegetable dishes on the table. Then she remembered that no one was going to eat millet porridge with her on rainy nights anymore.

Jiang Cha poured out the rice and went out without an umbrella.

Her face was too pale, and her eyes were too red.

“I want to quit the entertainment industry,” Jiang Cha told Yang Yan.

Yang Yan was terrified. She said, “What’s wrong with your brain? Quit? Are you joking? You’re about to win an award, the movie has just finished filming and hasn’t been released yet, and you’re going to quit as soon as it’s released. It’s been so difficult to get to this point, and you want to quit? Are you crazy?”

Yang Yan took her out to relax. They walked to the square, and there were many people in the night. Old people were walking with their children, and laughter filled the air.

In a corner, an apple tree was covered in dense white flowers, in full bloom. Cluster after cluster, the flowers were bursting open, weighing down the branches slightly.

The sound of a violin floated through the night.

The elegant and continuous sound was soft and peaceful.

As Jiang Cha listened, she slowly stopped. The source of the sound was a speaker hidden in the woods. Jiang Cha looked at the square where there was no performer and slowly squatted down as if she had been crushed and could no longer bear the weight.

“Don’t play this!” Jiang Cha covered her ears and slowly squatted down, tears streaming down her face, “Please don’t play this!”

“Jiang Cha?”

Yang Yan leaned in and looked at her worriedly, “What’s wrong with you recently? Are you under too much pressure and not feeling well?”

Jiang Cha raised her face woodenly, “Ji Fan is gone.”

“Ms. Ji?” Yang Yan was surprised. “The other day I heard the assistant director complaining, saying that Ms. Ji went on vacation to enjoy herself and left a bunch of company matters for him to handle. Ji Fan, didn’t she go on vacation?”

“It’s fake.”

Jiang Cha said, “Ji Fan has disappeared.”

Yang Yan figured out what was going on and immediately became exasperated. She said, “You’re doing this for a woman like that? Have you forgotten how she treated you before? Have you forgotten that she took your resources and gave them to that woman surnamed Luo? Jiang Cha, wake up. Besides, maybe that woman surnamed Ji is really out there having a good time, her friend said she was sick, but you haven’t seen it with your own eyes, so you believe it?

Yang Yan even found the contract for “Blind Youth” and turned to the last page to show her, “Look at this for yourself, and be clear-headed.”

The authorized representative of the party A was indeed the name Ji Fan.

Jiang Cha glanced at it, her face turned pale, like paper.

“What’s wrong?”

“This isn’t Ji Fan’s signature.”

Jiang Cha recognized Ji Fan’s handwriting. She had seen her handwriting from her university days, when she had just started working, and even later when she became a corporate director and it became increasingly messy. No matter which one it was, the strokes were sharp but the lines were soft, and it didn’t match the handwriting in front of her at all.

This signature could deceive outsiders, but it couldn’t deceive Jiang Cha.

The rain stopped.

It’s so cold tonight. Could it be autumn already?

Curled up in bed, Jiang Cha suddenly felt an unusual stillness in the night. She waited for some familiar sound. Perhaps someone would come close, hold a blanket, and ask timidly if they could sleep together; perhaps someone would wait for her to fall asleep, then lean in and try to kiss her, thinking she wouldn’t know.

After waiting for a long time, Jiang Cha finally realized something.

It wasn’t going to happen.

She threw off the covers, walked out into the darkness without turning on the light. Pushing open the glass door, she found the rabbit on the terrace was no longer moving. It lay on its side in its cage, its eyes covered in a layer of dust, its limbs stiff and cold.

No one had fed it. She didn’t know how long it had been dead.

It hadn’t even been given a name.

Jiang Cha placed the small corpse in a black plastic bag and buried it under a sweet-olive tree downstairs.

Tears streamed down her face.

This was all that was left of Ji Fan.

And she had even killed the only living thing she had left her.

Suddenly, Jiang Cha thought of another place.

A place she had deliberately forgotten a long time ago.

When she got out of the car, the rain had stopped, but the wind was still cold. Jiang Cha pulled her coat tighter and walked to a small villa, stopping in front of it.

Ji Fan had bought this villa for her.

The jasmine flowers in the yard were in bloom but had been battered by the rain. Several had fallen, lying wet in the mud.

She had sold it at a low price to a couple. They seemed to be laid-back people. After all this time, the flowers in the yard were still blooming: jasmine, camellia, and night-blooming jasmine—some in bloom, some not. It was still the same as before. It was easy to sell a house, but she wondered if it would be difficult to buy it back.

Jiang Cha rang the doorbell but no one answered.

She stood there, waiting for the door to open, not knowing how long she would have to wait. Feeling a little tired, she pressed her finger against the wet fingerprint lock.

The fingerprint lock vibrated slightly.

Jiang Cha’s whole body trembled.

She pushed gently, and the bronze-colored gate creaked open. The garden wasn’t large; a small, gray-blue stone path led inward, straight to the foot of a stone staircase. Only when she entered the garden did Jiang Cha realize that the weeds had already grown to her ankles. After several rains, the foxtails were covered in dew, brushing lightly against her shins.

The red door was tightly shut, but when Jiang Cha pressed her finger against it, the lock vibrated and opened.

She pushed open one door after another. All the windows were closed, and the air was stuffy. The furnishings were covered in dust, just as they had been before. The quiet interior was disturbed by her slow footsteps. Jiang Cha didn’t know when Ji Fan had bought the house, but looking at the wildly growing weeds in the yard, her eyes felt a little sore.

That night, when she got home, she received a call.

“This is Jiang Han.”

The woman on the other end of the line smiled, “Do you still remember me, Xiao Jiang? We met at a class reunion, a doctor.”

Jiang Cha was startled and said, “Dr. Jiang, hello.”

“I’m back in China. I said I would come back before, and I’ve just finished the resignation procedures a few days ago. Are you busy lately? Let’s get together.”

Jiang Cha was about to decline when she heard Jiang Han say indifferently, “Bring your partner with you. It’s okay, we’ll just have a meal as ordinary friends.”

“She’s not here.”

Jiang Cha forced herself to swallow her tears, her voice very calm.

“She’s not here?”

Jiang Han seemed a little surprised and said, “Right, she… is she in China recently?”

“I don’t know.”

Jiang Cha’s voice was hoarse and trembling, and she was already on the verge of tears. “I don’t know where she is. She’s disappeared. I can’t find her, nowhere…”

Jiang Han said, “Oh, coincidentally, I saw someone who looked very much like her at our hospital, but I’m not sure if it was her because she didn’t seem to recognize me.”

Jiang Cha stood up abruptly, her fingers curling up, “Really?”

“Why don’t I take you to see?” Jiang Han asked.

She bought a ticket for that day and arrived in the evening.

As the plane broke through the clouds and descended, the distant sun was slowly setting, gradually eroding the silver-gray wings, leaving behind a pure white expanse.

Jiang Han said that the hospital where she used to work was the best in New York, and that even if something had happened to Ji Fan, she would have been successfully operated on if she had gone in for surgery. She kept trying to persuade Jiang Cha not to worry.

But Jiang Cha was scared.

“We’re here.”

Jiang Han pointed to the long, cold corridor and said she remembered seeing her in a ward on this side.

Jiang Cha walked in step by step.

She looked into the room on the left side.

In one room, there was a woman with black hair and a thin figure.

Her heart pounded so fast and irregularly that she felt a little dizzy.

Jiang Cha hid and carefully looked over. The woman in the ward was slowly peeling an apple, her knife skills were something to be desired. She was half-lying on the bed, feeding herself, and soon she had eaten it down to the core.

The woman was wearing loose hospital gowns. She pulled up the covers, put on her slippers, and seemed to be feeling cold. She picked up a white windbreaker from the sofa and put it on lightly. The windbreaker didn’t match her outfit very well, but Jiang Cha thought she looked good in it instantly. She had long legs and a thin waist, but she seemed to have lost weight.

The woman went out and turned left, not knowing where she was going.

Jiang Cha stared at her back, dumbfounded.

As if sensing something, the woman turned around and slowly revealed a smile.

Jiang Cha looked at her quietly for a long time, and finally, she mustered up her courage and trembled, “Ji Fan.”

She called out twice, but the woman didn’t respond.

Jiang Cha’s nose was sore, and she almost burst into tears.

She walked forward and suddenly hugged her from behind when the woman was about to turn around.

Her body temperature was warm, and although she was thin, her slender waist felt very warm and comfortable to hold. Jiang Cha tightened her arms, turned her head, and rested her face against her back, but tears slid down her cheek, wetting her clothes.

The woman paused, turned around, and her eyes held a strange look. She looked at Jiang Cha quietly, a little surprised.

She slowly pulled her body away from Jiang Cha’s arms, her gaze guarded and distant.

Under such a gaze, Jiang Cha slowly loosened her arms.

The woman didn’t speak, she just smiled. Wearing a white windbreaker, she walked slowly and unhurriedly to the end of the corridor. Standing far away, she suddenly turned around and asked in Chinese, “Hey, what’s your name?”

Jiang Cha looked at her and said softly, “Jiang Cha.”

The woman smiled very gently and said, “What a beautiful name.”

Jiang Cha pressed her lips tightly together.

The woman was startled, her long eyelashes fluttered, and she asked helplessly, “Why are you crying?”

T/N: Does she have amnesia?