I Still Remain (Completed)

IX - Two Weeks

Shen Yue would like to think that she's better than a fool for allowing herself to be manipulated into this trip.

But the reality is that she knew what was coming. At the back of her mind, she didn't really believe his tale about an old, sick man dying but somehow, she forced herself to buy it.

She subconsciously fell for an obviously fabricated (or twisted) story because he told it so convincingly. Or maybe simply because he was the one who told it.

Now, she's stuck not only in a house but in a room thousands of miles away from the comfort of her own home—with him. It was suffocating... yet comforting. It was oddly thrilling, even if she knew just how wrong everything was.

She had her back turned fiercely away from him, as if it would shield her from the deafening silence enveloping the room. She could very much feel the intensity of his gaze from the mattress where he was lying on, but she paid no attention to it.

"I'm sorry," he finally spoke. "I'll drive you to the airport first thing in the morning. Good night."

She heard ruffling of sheets which meant he must have changed his position and turned his back on her, too.

Yueyue should have just let it go. She should have just slept her anger away and called it a night. That's what she always did anyway, which irked him whenever they had little misunderstandings before. She hated confrontations, but he thought it's better than bottling feelings up, so they always ended up talking things through even if it was impossibly difficult for her. In the end though, it always worked because no hard feelings were ever buried too deep and no tiny conflicts resulted to horrible fights.

But for some reason, she couldn't let this one just slide away. She couldn't bury her questions to sleep. She couldn't escape that bugging feeling eating her from the inside out, so she shot up to a sitting position and spoke, still without looking at him.

"Is this your way of getting back at me?"

She heard labored breaths before she heard his answer. He moved again, this time laid on his back one hand under his head, and stared directly at the room's ceiling. "It was supposed to be my way of getting you back," he said nonchalantly. "Or you know, just getting a proper explanation."

She hugged her knees tighter and sighed. "You didn't have to lie, you didn't have to ruse me and involve other people who don't have anything to do with our problems."

"Just to clear things up, the only lies I told were the reason how I met *Xiān sheng Ran, him being a Tibetan and the most horrible of them all, his illness," he said. "Everything else was real."

"Do you realize the things that you lied about were the most important things?" she asked.

"Only now," he mused. "But look, Shen Yue. I genuinely just wanted to get you to talk. Yes, I planned everything from your birthday party down to this trip, but I harbor no hard feelings whatsoever, just wanted to clear that up."

"Why? What's there to know? Aren't you satisfied with what you heard during the party?"

"I..." Didi had to swallow. "If anything that made me more confused. I just... I'm still trying to find the light, you know? Still hoping to hear an answer that actually amounts to something and isn't just a two-word sentence or plain cries."

"You heard the poem, didn't you?" she argued.

"I did," he said. "But it was more torture than relief. I wish I'd never heard that poem. God, I wish I hadn't. Especially that last stanza."