Chapter 164: If We Were Still Together

When you hold someone in your heart, if love fails to bloom, then no matter who you meet thereafter, everyone will bear his likeness. No one understood this sentiment better than Xiaoxiao. Though she knew that seeking a substitute out of a selfish obsession was fair to no one, people were inherently selfish; loving without having—how agonizing it was. As long as she could keep someone by her side for company, it was far better than sighing alone into the empty night.

"Am I truly so useless?" Cai Yirou's eyes welled with tears.

Xiaoxiao shook her head with a gentle smile. "If such enduring loyalty is called useless, then there are far too many useless people in this world. I am even more useless than you." Indeed, she had already gone back to her old ways; what right did she have to judge? It was merely the pot calling the kettle black. As if afraid that Cai Yirou might not believe her, Xiaoxiao added, "It is alright. Loving someone is nothing shameful; those who deserve to feel embarrassed are the ones who betray." In that instant, Zeng Ziyu flashed through her mind.

"Thank you." Cai Yirou gestured to summon the waiter, pulled out her wallet to pay, and revealed a designer wallet filled with various VIP cards, dazzling and faintly radiating an aura of wealth. Xiaoxiao knew she shouldn't pry into another's privacy, but she couldn't help her curiosity, and it was precisely this curiosity that made her shudder involuntarily.

She stared blankly at a passport-sized photograph inside the wallet, a tempest raging in her heart.

Cai Yirou noticed Xiaoxiao's gaze locked onto the photograph, so she simply pulled it out, slid it across the table toward Xiaoxiao, and smiled helplessly. "You guessed correctly. He is my boyfriend."

Though the sky outside was brilliantly clear, Xiaoxiao felt as though countless flashes of lightning accompanied by roaring thunder had cleaved through her flesh; her tongue went numb, and for a long while, she could not utter a single syllable. That silhouette, those brows and eyes, that cynical expression—they had been deeply carved into her mind long, long ago. In this lifetime, the next, and the one after that, she would never forget them.

"During the years I lived abroad, it was fortunate I had him," Cai Yirou sighed. That phrase "fortunate I had him" struck heavily at Xiaoxiao's heart. Those were precisely the most arduous times of her own life, yet fate had filled them with something so rotten it felt like a cruel joke.

It was as if the floodgates of memory had opened for Cai Yirou, and every detail of the past came rushing forth. "The day I met him, the weather was dreadful. I was stepping out of a supermarket when it started to rain. Before I even reached the parking lot, my umbrella was blown away by the gale. Chasing after it all the way, I inadvertently darted out into the street. A piercing screech of brakes sounded by my ear, and he was gripping the steering wheel with composure, just half a meter away from me. It was perilous, to say the least, but at the very least, it ensured I would forever remember that sudden encounter. To have someone in a foreign land with the same skin and eyes as my own—it felt like such an exquisite arrangement by the heavens. If we were still together, we would probably be very happy right now."

Listening to Cai Yirou's description, Xiaoxiao could already guess how the rest of the story would unfold: the man taking the frightened woman to the hospital, being gentle, courteous, and utterly attentive, and then, they fell in love.

Such a cliché plot, such a worthless love story, yet it rendered Xiaoxiao incapable of thought.