Chapter 217: Are You Scared?
Chapter 217: Are You Scared?
Cheng Xi didn’t feel like she was unconscious for that long, but when she woke up, she saw the familiar view of the interior of a CT scanner.
She didn’t move and merely lay there peacefully as she patiently waited for the scan to finish, gently sensing the state of her body all the while. Her stomach was still slightly uncomfortable, and so was her hand. There were small pulses of pain emanating from her little finger, and she identified it as the symptoms of a swollen finger.
The CT scan finished relatively soon, and she was sent out not long after. When the door to the outside slid open and the doctor walked in, she saw a few familiar faces clustered around the door. In particular, Cheng Xi noticed that Lu Chenzhou tried to follow the doctor in, but Cheng Yang fiercely shoved him aside.
Her brother really had ended up punching Lu Chenzhou again as Lu Chenzhou had two black eyes and a swollen cheek. Cheng Yang raised his hand, about to hit him yet again, when Lu Chenming realized that Cheng Xi was awake. “Icey woke up!”
Cheng Yang instantly let go of Lu Chenzhou and ran over to support Cheng Xi, who had already dragged herself half-upright.
“I don’t want you.” Cheng Xi stubbornly pushed him away and flashed an apologetic smile to Lu Chenming and Baldy, who were also reaching out to her. Then, she turned to Lu Chenzhou, who was still standing outside in a somewhat dazed state. “Aren’t you going to help me?”
Cheng Yang was about to explode by now. “Cheng Xi, what’s the meaning of this!”
“It’s my duty as a woman to get married.”
“......”
Baldy and Lu Chenming both started laughing at Cheng Xi’s witty retort.
Cheng Yang glared at them fiercely before forcefully pulling Cheng Xi up to her feet and supporting her. In the end, however, Cheng Xi managed to stumble away on her own. Lu Chenzhou hadn’t stepped forward to help her, so she had to hobble towards him after reaching the door.
Cheng Yang was afraid that Lu Chenzhou would end up hurting her yet again, so he didn’t dare make a move. He could only watch on as his sister shamelessly leaned against Lu Chenzhou’s body and provocatively asked, “Are you really not going to help me?”
She grasped his hand.
Lu Chenzhou’s hand was trembling weakly, and his eyes were filled with…… fear and desperation.
Cheng Xi felt that it was the right time to have a good long talk with him, so she turned her head and asked, “Can we go home now?”
Cheng Yang was seething with rage. “You idiot!”
“Brother, you seem to be quite agitated. You should stay away from me.”
“......”
If she weren’t his sister, he’d probably have beaten her to death by now!
This was the first time Baldy and Lu Chenming had ever seen a pair of siblings who treated each other so savagely. It almost felt like the door to a whole new world had been opened. But it wasn’t the time and place to watch them bicker back and forth, and Baldy felt compelled to stop her. “Dr. Cheng, you should wait for the results of the examination to come out. Your complexion was really bad earlier.”
“How long will it be before the results are out?”
No one knew.
In the end, it was Baldy who had to run over and ask the staff. He received the response, “The results will only be out tomorrow.”
This wasn’t Renyi; at Renyi, Cheng Xi could have found someone to speed things along, but everyone had been so shocked to see her faint that they had simply rushed her to the nearest hospital.
Cheng Xi didn’t know anyone here, so she could only return home first.
Cheng Xi really felt fine. She had fainted not just because of the excessive physical damage, but also because she had a psychological tendency to do so. She just needed some rest as she was already feeling much better than before.
After they all returned to Lu Chenzhou’s place and Cheng Xi had a half cup of warm water, her complexion returned to normal. Now that she had recovered, Cheng Xi began waving people away. “All of you can go back now. I’d like to talk one-on-one with Lu Chenzhou.”
……
Lu Chenming and Baldy instantly sympathized with Cheng Yang’s earlier grief and indignation.
And Cheng Yang just ignored her.
Baldy glanced at Lu Chenzhou, who was sitting on the sofa and still dazed. “Are you sure that this is a good idea?”
“There’s nothing bad about it,” Cheng Xi said in a calm but resolute tone, “I believe that he’ll take care of me.”
They weren’t worried that he wouldn’t take care of her; they were worried that he’d go crazy again!
That’s right—when Cheng Xi had sunk to the ground and fainted, not only did Cheng Yang punch Lu Chenzhou in his rage, but he also revealed everything about Lu Chenzhou’s mental illness.
But Baldy and Lu Chenming had already experienced so many shocking revelations that day that this truth wasn’t too surprising. When they thought back to their prior experiences with him, they realized that many of his tendencies could be easily explained by a mental illness.
At this point, they were honestly very worried for Cheng Xi’s safety, because Lu Chenzhou was obviously still in an abnormal state.
He was extremely quiet, and an oppressive aura circled around him. His entire demeanor made one instinctively anxious that he’d suddenly explode and do something reckless.
But Lu Chenzhou didn’t seem to hear their words at all, and thus, Cheng Xi was ultimately unable to chase any of them away. She wasn’t even able to handle Cheng Yang by himself; as a responsible brother, it was already lenient enough that he didn’t forcefully drag Cheng Xi away, but to leave her alone with him?
Cheng Xi might be crazy, but he wasn’t.
So the three of them ended up staying in the living room while Cheng Xi brought Lu Chenzhou to the upstairs study that they were in before. Cheng Xi waved her hands in front of his face. “Come back to your senses.”
Lu Chenzhou turned to gaze at her.
Cheng Xi looked right back at him. As she spoke to him, her tone was relaxed, as if he were a regular person. “Were you scared? I’m sorry. It’s my body’s fault. I have a pretty low pain tolerance-”
Cheng Xi was cut off by a sudden hug from Lu Chenzhou.
“I almost…did something unforgivable to you.”
She patted his back and was about to reassure him that it wasn’t too serious, but then she heard him continue speaking. “I almost made you die, just like how I made my mom die.”
Cheng Xi fell silent.
Even though she had previously guessed that Lu Chenzhou’s psychological impediment stemmed from his mother’s death, she had never expected the truth to be this shocking.
The most fundamental requirement of any psychiatrist was to remain calm and unsurprised no matter what the patient said. Sometimes, in order to gain the patient’s trust and cooperation, it was necessary to discard one’s ethics and viewpoint to get closer to them.
And, without a doubt, Cheng Xi was excellent in this aspect.
Her calmness eventually spread to Lu Chenzhou and helped him calm down as well. He slowly released her. “You’re not scared?”
“No, I’m not.” Because she was still slightly weak, her voice was even gentler than usual. It was so soft that she was almost whispering.
Lu Chenzhou’s hand on her shoulder tightened. “The more I care about someone, the more afraid I become that they’ll leave me. At the time, I also thought that I should chain her up by my side, and if not, that I could also kill her. Because then, she’d never be able to leave… aren’t you scared of me?”
This was most likely the root cause of his emotional detachment—he was afraid of becoming too passionate, too close to someone.
Cheng Xi nodded with absolute certainty. “I’m not afraid. I know that you can control yourself. I know you, and while you’re cold, you’re not cold-blooded. I have nothing to fear from you.”
“But I almost killed you just now!”
“I didn’t die.” Cheng Xi looked at him, her eyes firm with immutable resolve. “Besides, that was just an accident. You weren’t deliberately trying to harm anyone, and you only wanted to push my brother away. It was my overreaction that caused your fist to land at an unfortunate timing. Really, I hurt myself. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
Lu Chenzhou’s voice sounded removed as he distantly asked, “Is that really the case?”
Cheng Xi once again reaffirmed it. “Yes, it is.” She then took control of the conversation and tried to lead him into talking more about his mother. “Lu Chenzhou, you said that you caused your mother to die. Can you tell me more about what really happened?”
“It’s only us two here, and I promise that I won’t tell anyone else. What’s more, you’ve been carrying this weight for far too long. It’s time to let it go. Do you want to?”
She had first told him that this was a safe place, and then that the secret he’d been keeping was weighing him down. Then, she offered him a way out by telling her about it and relieving himself of the burden.
And now, she could only look quietly at Lu Chenzhou and anxiously wait for his response.