Old Master Xu's face flashed with surprise at his granddaughter's uncharacteristic offer to see Shen Che off.
“Hmm? There's still a chance?” he mused.
The heavy gloom that had settled over them due to the annulment of the engagement seemed to quietly dissipate a bit.
“Alright then, take care. A Che, be sure to come visit when you have time,” Old Master Xu said, smiling and waving goodbye.
Even with the engagement annulled, Shen Che remained, in his heart, his nominal “grandson.”
The two walked side by side towards the door, silent the whole way, the air filled with an ineffable subtlety.
Xu Qiuchi's heart inexplicably skipped a beat; she bit her lower lip, several times words came to her lips only to be swallowed back down.
They hadn't walked far before they stepped onto the cobblestone path leading to the garage.
The clean white stones gleamed with a soft luster in the sunlight, winding and twisting as if endlessly.
They walked side by side, their footsteps out of sync, never quite falling into the same rhythm.
Xu Qiuchi silently followed behind Shen Che, her expression complex.
Her gaze involuntarily fixated on his tall back, her lips silently parted several times, the words she wanted to say ultimately turning into a bitter taste in her throat.
A voice repeatedly questioned in her heart: Does he… truly no longer like me?
The long-desired freedom was within reach, and she should have been ecstatic about Shen Che letting go, but at this moment, her heart felt tightly bound by a tangled mess, with bitterness and loss intermingling and surging.
Shen Che strode ahead, keenly sensing the unspoken words from the person behind him.
He subtly glanced sideways, a quick peek at her—her brow slightly furrowed, her eyes full of struggle and entanglement.
Shen Che understood; she definitely had something to say.
However, this thought only flickered in his mind for an instant before falling silent.
Never mind, everything… was no longer relevant to him.
From the moment the engagement was annulled, their life paths had completely diverged.
After this, no matter what happened to Xu Qiuchi, or what she would do in the future, Shen Che would not care, nor did he want to care.
Xu Qiuchi's steps paused slightly.
Her heart was in turmoil, her nails almost digging into her palms, before she finally mustered the courage, her voice trembling almost imperceptibly as she called out:
“Shen Che, that…”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted them immensely, wishing she could bite off her own tongue.
But words spoken are like water spilled.
Her mind was a jumble, and she desperately searched for a topic she could speak about, her heart pounding like a drum, almost bursting through her chest.
Her frantic gaze swept around, trying to grasp a hint of inspiration from the surrounding scenery.
Finally, in extreme tension and embarrassment, a forced reason came to mind.
She took a deep breath, feigning composure, trying to make her tone sound natural:
“I wanted to ask you… if we annul our engagement in the future, will the cooperation between our two Families… still proceed as usual?”
After asking, her anxious gaze was tightly fixed on Shen Che's profile, afraid to miss even the slightest change in his expression.
Upon hearing this, Shen Che's steps suddenly halted, a flicker of surprise in his calm eyes.
He turned slightly, his gaze falling on Xu Qiuchi's face, as if trying to discern the deeper meaning behind her words from her expression.
The Shen and Xu Families had been close for generations, and this friendship had long extended to close business cooperation.
Those projects, every single one, concerned the Foundation of both Families; if they were interrupted due to personal matters between their children, it would undoubtedly be a lose-lose situation.
With so much at stake, the shrewd elders of both Families would certainly not make such a self-defeating decision; their deep friendship was not something that could be severed overnight.
Therefore, Xu Qiuchi's question at this moment looked, in every way, like… making conversation, futilely trying to maintain this subtle and awkward connection.
“No, it won't,” Shen Che said calmly. “The cooperation between the Families will not cease. The annulment of the engagement is merely a private matter between us.”
“That's good,” Xu Qiuchi responded, her face quickly returning to its usual coolness.
Why did she have to ask that? She already knew the answer!
Her heart churned, secretly regretting it.
The two continued along the clean white cobblestone path, quickly covering some distance.
It remained as before—Shen Che walked steadily ahead, Xu Qiuchi followed closely behind, her expression cool.
The familiar silence descended once more, unbroken by either of them.
Having read the original novel, Shen Che knew the root cause of Xu Qiuchi's resistance to him.
She had an unresolved knot in her heart, a knot that acted like shackles, restricting her ability to reciprocate love. That tender heart seemed to have lost its instinct to love.
When she was fifteen, her parents began endless arguments and cold wars.
Her parents, who were loving in her childhood memories, were now like strangers, even confronting each other like enemies.
This vast difference made Xu Qiuchi feel unfamiliar and fearful.
When she was seventeen, her parents' conflict completely erupted.
After a fierce argument, her mother slammed the door and left.
Although her mother returned home the next day after her father apologized, a few days later, both Xu Father and Xu Mother were involved in a car accident on the Fifth Ring Road and died.
At her parents' funeral, seventeen-year-old Xu Qiuchi, dressed in black, cried until she almost fainted.
Three months after the funeral, Xu Qiuchi, sick with grief, sorted through her parents' belongings, trying to ease her pain.
In a drawer of a bookshelf in her father's study, she accidentally found a note— “Mo Yanxi, I want you dead!”
Mo Yanxi was her mother's name.
The note appeared in her father's study, and the handwriting was indeed her father's; this coincidence was too glaring.
Stimulated by this horrifying coincidence, Xu Qiuchi, unwilling to believe it, immediately hired an expert to determine the note's age. The result confirmed—the note was written a few days before her parents' car accident.
A terrifying thought instantly seized her: Her parents' car accident was not an accident!
Immense fear and confusion overwhelmed her.
Even with intense arguments, how could her father hate her mother enough to want her dead? She immediately hired a top private detective for a thorough investigation.
The truth eventually surfaced: when she was seventeen, her mother had an emotional affair with someone else.
It was this betrayal that ignited the raging fire of her father's love turning to hatred, leading to two years of endless antagonism.
A few days before the car accident, her father's resentment towards his wife reached its peak, and he secretly planned that “accident,” intending to kill his mother to vent his hatred.
However, an accident occurred, and both ultimately went to the Yellow Springs.
The moment the truth was confirmed, Xu Qiuchi felt as if she had fallen into an ice cellar; immense fear and an indelible psychological shadow were deeply rooted in her heart.
As she grew older, the various ideologies she encountered in college, her instinctive resistance to arranged marriages, plus Shen Che's relentless, almost suffocating pursuit… all made her feel suffocated.
Even more terrifying was that Shen Che's fervent love was strikingly similar to her father's almost pathological obsession with her mother back then!
This sense of similarity was like a nightmare, always inadvertently dragging her back into the shadow of her parents' tragedy.
Her father once loved her mother so deeply! But in the end, he even wished her dead!
Thus, twenty-year-old Xu Qiuchi stubbornly concluded: Marriage is the graveyard of love.
Multiple factors combined, coupled with her cool personality and no one to confide in, Xu Qiuchi ultimately completely closed off her heart, keeping her distance from love.
It was precisely because of this that she consistently responded to Shen Che's years of persistent pursuit with indifferent disregard.
As time passed, Xu Qiuchi's inner resistance to Shen Che's fervent emotions intensified daily.
She chose to escape, as if that scorching temperature would burn her to ashes.
Especially in the past half-month, Shen Che had visited almost daily, yearning to meet and pour out his heart.
However, faced with such persistence, Xu Qiuchi's responses were mostly perfunctory.
Sometimes, she would just say a few noncommittal words and then hastily leave on some excuse; more often, she would simply lock her door, completely shutting him out, letting him wait in vain without seeing her.
“Qiuchi, you’re finally willing to see me.”
Shen Che's voice was filled with a mixture of relief and exhaustion.
“A Che, don't… don't be like this.”
Xu Qiuchi's voice was barely a whisper, her eyes avoiding his intense gaze.
“Why? Qiuchi, why are you always pushing me away?”
He reached out, trying to take her hand, but she instinctively recoiled.
“I… I just don't think we're suitable.”
“Not suitable? After all these years, after everything we've been through?”
His voice was laced with pain, his eyes searching hers for an answer she couldn't give.
“I'm sorry, A Che.”
That was all she could manage, her heart aching with a familiar, suffocating feeling.
“Sorry isn't enough, Qiuchi. I love you. I've always loved you.”
His words were a desperate plea, but they only served to reinforce her inner turmoil.
“Please, A Che, just… let me go.”
Her voice was barely audible, a fragile plea for freedom from a love that felt like a cage.