Chapter 39: Restraint

Lips clashed, rhythm disordered, movements clumsy and stiff.

Ruan Suhua’s kiss held no technique at all.

Her breath was hot, the sound of water muffled and low.

She relied only on the remnants of instinct buried in her consciousness, fumbling yet urgent in her closeness to him.

Yu Zhu’s bright and clear eyes quietly reflected her dazed expression.

Even as scalding breaths swept across his collarbone, and a haze of ambiguous warmth stretched into a slender thread beneath the glow of dusk, his gaze remained calm and unchanging.

Only when he was slowly pushed back, hair spilling across the bed, did his breathing falter for a single instant.

He did not give her the response she was seeking.

Dark strands tangled between her fingers.

Ruan Suhua froze, lost and uncertain.

She reached out, covering his eyes with her palm, and clumsily brushed a soft kiss against his lips.

Only then did the haze in her gaze regain a point of focus.

She realized belatedly what she had done, braced herself to sit up, and suddenly felt her whole body turn cold.

Hastily, she grabbed the pen and paper she had prepared at her side and began to write.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry…”

“Xihe, don’t be afraid. I’m sorry. Don’t be afraid…”

“It’s my fault. Don’t be afraid. I won’t do this again. I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be afraid. I won’t. I won’t…”

Her grip on the pen was so tight that her very first stroke tore through several sheets of paper.

She wrote quickly, yet her characters remained neat and precise.

Head bent low, teeth biting into her lip, she filled page after page.

“Sorry… don’t be afraid… don’t be afraid…”

Clearly…

She clearly knew everything he had gone through.

She had never hoped for more.

She only wanted him to live well.

She had already planned to take things slowly, step by step.

Clearly…

But her heart felt suspended high above an abyss, with nothing beneath her but endless ruin.

“…Sorry… sorry…”

Ruan Suhua dared not take another step forward.

Yu Zhu’s pale, icy fingertips brushed the paper.

The pen skidded suddenly, leaving behind a meaningless line.

He slowly took the pen from her dazed hand.

And for her pages full of remorse and pain, he drew a single period.

Like a kite adrift in the sky, cut loose from its string, finally caught and brought back down to earth.

Ruan Suhua trembled all over, like a fragile little girl, gripping his hand tightly.

She held back the tears welling in her eyes, letting out a faint sob.

Outside, night had fallen heavy.

Stars flickered sparsely in the distance, and scattered lamps lit faintly on the horizon.

Yu Zhu’s briefly clear thoughts grew hazy again.

Why was she saying sorry to him?

Just this.

No one… had ever said sorry to him.

After that kiss—

Ruan Suhua became calmer, more composed.

She also became busier.

Relying on her talent and her knowledge of the future, she pressed forward, meticulously cleaning up her family’s affairs while also expanding into fields that Changqian Group had never touched before, investing in company after company.

She never forgot—

Them.

Life fell into a steady, ordered rhythm.

In the mornings, Yu Zhu often woke late.

By then, Ruan Suhua would have finished all her tasks.

She forced down the craving that gnawed at her heart, carefully washing him, wrapping him in his scarf, and pushing him into the study.

When she worked, he would sit quietly in the winter sunlight beside her, reading.

His pale, slender fingers rested on the page, like a noble prince raised within a castle.

The book he read was The Little Prince, the very copy she had given him.

Between the pages lay a bookmark.

On it, written in pen, was a line from the story—

“Your rose is the one and only in the whole world.”

Yu Zhu had left that bookmark pressed at the very last page.

At noon, when sunlight grew warm and his mind foggy with drowsiness, Ruan Suhua would slide the book from his lap and hold him against her shoulder to carry him back.

And when night settled in, after removing the needle from his arm, she would sit at his bedside, murmuring softly as she wrote words on paper to converse with him.

Page after page, all filled with her handwriting.

She wrote about planting a rose in the greenhouse.

She wrote about Fu Yuyan, who had just turned thirteen, and his little stories.

She wrote about the stars in the night sky over Fushan, that one day they would go see together.

Yu Zhu had only written on paper twice.

The first time was the day after he regained his sight.

He wrote: “Go home.”

Back then, Ruan Suhua’s expression was utterly calm, without the slightest fluster.

She told him his body was still weak.

If he went home rashly, his parents would only worry.

When his health recovered, she would take him back.

Yu Zhu never asked again.

The second time was after she had finished blow-drying his hair.

“Hair.”

He wrote, his expression calm.

But the two characters on the page were not written as a mere statement.

Ruan Suhua agreed.

Long or short, it didn’t matter—so long as it was him.

Because the temperature had plummeted overnight, melted snow on the roads froze again.

Ruan Suhua had just finished drying Yu Zhu’s hair when she received a message from the hairdresser, saying there had been an accident on the road.

He would be an hour and a half late.

“Xihe, let’s wait for him in the downstairs salon.”

She wrote this on paper, as the scent of neroli in Yu Zhu’s hair drifted toward her in the warm air.

Ruan Suhua suppressed the ill-timed impulse in her chest and lifted him into the wheelchair.

She had been restraining herself so well these days.

She thought this time she could do the same.

But all it took was walking past an ordinary corridor corner.

No cover.

No barrier.

Even the maid’s footsteps were close by.

And yet—

She could no longer suppress the desire that had long been clawing at her heart.

Almost the moment Ruan Suhua leaned down to kiss him, Yu Zhu could no longer breathe.

Scalding breaths were forced down his throat.

His body trembled and went weak, unable to muster any strength.

He could not move.

When he tilted back his head, her hand held his nape, stealing every bit of air from his lips.

“…Xi…he…”

Ruan Suhua’s murmur was blurred and indistinct.

Her body burned with heat, and the neroli fragrance swirling in the warm air grew thicker.

She wanted to devour him whole.

Bone and flesh alike.

To merge him into her body.

Forever—

Forever with her.

At this moment, Ruan Suhua had shed all her usual elegance and cold poise.

Her eyelids half-lowered, her cheeks flushed red, hair tousled in disarray, she leaned over him, gaze clouded and intoxicated.

“Xihe…”

The pressure of her invasion was overwhelming.

There was no escape.

His vision overlapped, blurred.

Consciousness flickered in and out.

Yu Zhu could barely breathe.

A faint flush colored his pale cheeks, tears welling at the corners of his eyes.

His fingers, limp at his side, clenched so tightly they turned white.

After several failed grasps, they finally caught hold of the fabric of her clothes.

Like fireworks exploding across the sky, a tiny spark of brilliance lit before his eyes.

Ruan Suhua’s heart skipped a beat.

“Xihe…”

Her storm-like movements came to an abrupt halt.

Her gaze went hazy, lost.

She braced her hands against the armrests of his wheelchair and leaned forward again, but this time her kiss was light, gentle, guiding him back into steady breathing.

At last, she drew back.

Yu Zhu’s chest rose and fell violently before calming.

The flush on his face faded, though the brightness of his lips remained like luminous petals.

The flush of frenzy on Ruan Suhua’s face also receded.

The emotions buried beneath desire resurfaced.

She brushed back the stray hair at his temple.

Her fingertips trembled as she picked up the notepad she always carried.

“Xihe, I’m sorry. I lost control just now. I couldn’t hold back…”

The pen halted.

She couldn’t hold back.

She could never hold back her love for him.

And she could never hold back the overwhelming urge, in each kiss, to consume him whole.

Ruan Suhua wrote another line.

“I was too impatient. Did I hurt you just now? Do you feel any discomfort? Xihe, should we have Jing Liang come check on you first?”

Her heartbeat faltered irregularly.

Yu Zhu’s thoughts cleared slowly.

He lowered his head, reading the words she had written.

Then he picked up the pen and wrote back.

“Hair.”

His right hand was weak and sore.

His breath was still uneven.

But the two characters, though faintly written, were graceful and fine, elegant as ever.

“Mm.” Ruan Suhua wrote back.

“We still need to cut Xihe’s hair.”

A rare, faint smile surfaced on Yu Zhu’s pale face.

Like starlight glimmering over a boat on a moonlit river.

Ruan Suhua was struck dazed, lips pressed tight.

Suppressing the tremor in her fingertips, she stood and wheeled him forward.

A cascade of hair slipped down.

Concealing, for an instant, the cold self-loathing in Yu Zhu’s eyes.