"I didn't really want to do it, but Yuguang Ge, did you know? Since the first day I joined the cast and crew, I've practically been hungry every day. I'm sick of eating instant noodles. When I wanted to go to the restroom, it was always occupied. I didn't dare delay filming, so all I could do was hold it in. Once, I held it in until the end, and my stomach was in so much pain. Then I didn't dare to drink water so I wouldn't have to go to the toilet too often to avoid any mishaps, but I started to get dehydrated and get nosebleeds…"
As He Jichen read the long passages of text, the image of seeing those instant noodles and bloody tissues in her room flashed across his mind. It felt like waves of pain had come over him as if something clutched his heart and squeezed it.
Ji Yi seemed like she still had more to say because the screen still read: "typing…"
He Jichen hadn't snapped back from his immense pain when a long passage of text popped onto the screen. "I'm not some kind of naive girl, and I can't let someone bully me and not do anything about it. I just wanted to make my days go by easier, so when I got the chance, I decided to go for it."
"Yuguang Ge, I never thought about using tricks to make it to the top and I never imagined fighting with other people. I just wanted to protect myself, because if I don't protect myself, nobody in the world is there to protect me."
He Jichen always thought he understood Ji Yi well enough, so when she sent those words, he realized for the first time just how much sadness and loneliness were hidden deep inside the woman he loved.
An indescribable pain penetrated his body as his fingers started to shake gently.
On the other side, there was no sign of Ji Yi after she finished typing those words.
Perhaps she was deep in thought or perhaps she was waiting for his reply.
It wasn't clear just how much time passed - probably a minute or ten minutes even. He Jichen hadn't thought about how to reply to Ji Yi when his phone suddenly lit up. Ji Yi sent him another message. Compared to the long messages she sent before, this one was particularly short: "If I could live a simple life, why would I rack my brain trying to think of schemes?"
The blood drained from He Jichen's face as his eyes quickly ran through the words, and his tightly pursed lips turned white.
He had to admit that when he learned she hurt herself, he was enraged.
He couldn't understand why she would do such a thing. Was there anything that was more important than her own safety?
But now, he was just filled with heartache.
It was just as she said - if she could live a simple life, why would she rack her brain scheming?
Just how desperate and hopeless could she have been to use herself as bait?
She was the same woman he kept in his heart after a catching a quick glimpse of her back in the schoolyard at Sucheng Yizhong. She was the woman he secretly vowed to protect for life, so how could his woman be suffering so much now?
He Jichen's heart felt like it had been brutally torn apart; his blood flowed endlessly and the pain was neverending.
He once thought that the pain he felt after having sex with her that night four years ago was enough to make him not want to live through the night…
But today he realized that there was a pain far greater - realizing that she was in pain.