ABSTIWTVMST Chapter 96

Xu Chenghao was like a liberated bird as soon as he was discharged from the hospital, his joyful shouts could be heard from afar. If the circumstances had permitted, he would have rolled in the snow to celebrate.

However, his joy didn’t last long. Ruan Chenxuan appeared in his field of vision, smiling, “Congratulations on your discharge, Mr. Xu.”

Xu Chenghao’s mood instantly plummeted, “What are you doing here?”

Ruan Chenxuan handed him a bouquet, “I came to wish you well on your discharge.”

Xu Chenghao refused, “Thanks, but given our relationship, I don’t want to see you.”

Ruan Chenxuan replied, “But in my memory, although we’re merely acquaintances, our relationship wasn’t this bad.”

Xu Chenghao retorted, “You said it yourself, it’s in your memory.”

Ruan Chenxuan squatted down helplessly to meet his gaze, “I’ve said before, the Ruan Chenxuan who lost his memory is from a year ago. If Mr. Xu minds past events, I can make amends. At the same time, I hope Mr. Xu can give the Ruan Chenxuan from a year ago a chance. I genuinely admire you.”

Xu Chenghao looked at him blankly, “Why should I give you a chance? I don’t admire you.”

Ruan Chenxuan: “Precisely because my admiration is one-sided, I should work harder to earn your favor.”

Xu Chenghao: “I don’t have any favorable feelings towards you.”

Ruan Chenxuan replied, “But I have favorable feelings towards you, even potentially beyond friendship.”

Xu Chenghao’s expression grew colder. He stared at Ruan Chenxuan for a while and suddenly said, “Ruan Chenxuan, let me tell you something.”

Ruan Chenxuan indicated he was all ears.

Xu Chenghao continued, “I’ve mentioned before that you stole my fiancée. Haven’t you looked into where she is?”

Ruan Chenxuan smiled, “To be honest, Mr. Xu is the only one who has told me about this, so I reserve judgment on the matter.”

Xu Chenghao sneered, “I think you’d better investigate it, you might find an unexpected surprise.”

Ruan Chenxuan sighed, “Currently, everyone around me is on probation, and I don’t have trustworthy personnel to support an investigation.”

Seeing Ruan Chenxuan’s unyielding demeanor, Xu Chenghao felt a surge of inexplicable anger. He threw the flowers in Ruan Chenxuan’s face and shouted, “Can’t you investigate? I’ll tell you! An Rouyu is pregnant with your child and is now abroad. You’re already a father, so stop bothering me!”

Ruan Chenxuan was stunned, “Is Mr. Xu joking?”

Xu Chenghao snapped, “Who’s joking with you!”

Ruan Chenxuan was silent for a long while. Just when Xu Chenghao thought he had shocked him enough to drive him away, Ruan Chenxuan suddenly asked, “Did we used to be together? Did you become estranged from me because I betrayed you and had a child?”

Xu Chenghao: “???”

Xu Chenghao wanted to crack open Ruan Chenxuan’s head to see what he was thinking about all day: “You think too much. We have no relationship at all. It’s only because you poached someone that we became enemies. Who was ever with you!”

Ruan Chenxuan reserved his thoughts about matters of the heart—he didn’t rule out the possibility that Xu Chenghao was speaking out of anger or saying the opposite on purpose. He didn’t believe what others said about him, nor did he trust Xu Chenghao’s emotionally charged words. He believed more in his feelings.

At the very least, from the time of the car accident until now, he had seen countless familiar strangers, but only Xu Chenghao gave him a different feeling.

So regardless of whether he had liked or secretly loved him before, he wanted to seize this opportunity to use his lost memory as an excuse to rebuild their relationship.

Xu Chenghao was already desperate with this guy, feeling like he was playing the lute to a cow¹ “Playing the lute to a cow” (对牛弹琴, duì niú tán qín) is a Chinese idiom that means explaining something to someone who is incapable of understanding it, similar to the English expression “casting pearls before swine.” The image conjures up someone playing beautiful music on a lute, but since the audience is a cow, it doesn’t appreciate or understand the music. The idiom suggests a situation where one’s efforts are wasted because the recipient cannot comprehend or appreciate what is being offered., completely useless. Fortunately, Li Nian and the Xu family elders arrived one after another to take him away, or else he would have exploded on the spot.

Back home, Xu Chenghao began to nag: “Find me a bodyguard, preferably one who can take down Ruan Chenxuan in a one-on-three fight!”

Mother Xu wandered around inspecting his room, frowning: “I’m more worried about you living alone here. Why don’t you want to come home?”

Xu Chenghao: “It’s fine. I have an auntie who cleans and cooks. I’ve signed a labor contract with a caregiver; he’ll be moving in this afternoon to take care of me. Most importantly, this place is close to the company, so it’s convenient for work.”

Mother Xu: “Male or female caregiver?”

Xu Chenghao: “Male, he’s strong enough to move me.”

Mother Xu was still not reassured: “Men aren’t detail-oriented. How about I move in too?”

“Isn’t there an auntie at home? You’ve been quite tired these past few days; you should go home and rest more,” Xu Chenghao said helplessly. “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.”

Li Nian proactively suggested, “I can come over and stay for a few days, go to and from work with President Xu.”

Xu Chenghao: “Triple protection now, Mom, you can relax.”

“I know you think I’m nagging…” Mother Xu sighed, “Alright, but you must take care of yourself. I’ll check in on you from time to time.”

Xu Chenghao: “You’re welcome anytime.”

Mother Xu was reluctantly satisfied, leaving only after the caregiver arrived.

The house suddenly had just three big men in the living room: Xu Chenghao in a wheelchair and the other two on the sofa.

Xu Chenghao tried to resume the previous topic: “Brother Nian, find me a bodyguard who can beat Ruan Chenxuan. He’s really too annoying!”

Li Nian, eating an apple absentmindedly, asked, “What did he say to you this time?”

“Don’t even mention it,” Xu Chenghao indicated for the caregiver to leave. Once he had gone to another room, Xu Chenghao vented to Li Nian: “He confessed to me! I told him that An Rouyu is carrying his child, and he actually asked me, ‘Did we use to be together? Do you feel betrayed because I have a child, and that’s why we became strangers?’ I felt like spraying blood three feet at that moment!”

“Cough, cough,” Even the seasoned love expert Li Nian nearly choked on his apple, coughing twice before saying, “That’s an unbelievable leap in logic… He doesn’t believe what you say, why doesn’t he investigate?”

Xu Chenghao, in despair, replied, “Because he has no memory now, doesn’t trust people around him, and refuses to investigate… I feel like every conversation with him is like playing the lute to a cow. I can’t understand his way of thinking.”

Li Nian crunched his apple: “My god, I haven’t seen such a dramatic situation in a long time. TV shows usually depict memory loss as not recognizing people. How come in your case, it turned into memory loss but fixating on you? Is he pretending to be dumb to chase you?”

Xu Chenghao rested his chin on his hand: “I don’t know. Anyway, I just want to get rid of him now.”

Li Nian: “It’s a bit difficult. If it were Jing…”

Realizing something, Li Nian quickly stopped himself, coughed twice, and said, “I’ll get you a bodyguard. We’ll make sure to keep him away from you.”

Xu Chenghao knew what he meant by the latter half of his sentence, and his expression immediately turned indifferent. He said coldly, “I’ll leave this matter to you. I’ll get an early rest, good night.”

Li Nian: “Good night…”

Silently watching Xu Chenghao and the caregiver enter the room, as soon as the door closed, Li Nian began to regret bringing up Jing Yicheng so casually!

So many days had passed without a word from Jing Yicheng. Xu Chenghao must be feeling terrible… The more Li Nian thought about it, the more he regretted it.

In the room, Xu Chenghao’s mood wasn’t as bad as Li Nian imagined. It had just been a long time since anyone mentioned Jing Yicheng, so his reaction was more intense than usual.

In fact, he was in a fairly good mood. With the caregiver’s help, he washed up, changed into his pajamas, and did some functional exercises before lying down and quickly falling asleep.

As for Jing Yicheng…

Well, there were still three months left until the six-month reconsideration period. Whether he could come back depended on him.

Xu Chenghao had a good night’s sleep.

The next day, Xu Chenghao officially returned to work. While organizing documents, he was momentarily distracted by the A4 papers filled with “crazy” scribbles in his drawer. Finally, he crumpled them up and threw them into the trash can before continuing to sort through his things.

It took a lot of effort to forget a certain “crazy person” through work, but then his phone suddenly buzzed with a reminder. Xu Chenghao glanced at it and saw it was the schedule he had set for harvesting chili peppers. He immediately hugged his little yellow duck and, accompanied by the caregiver, left the company for the greenhouse.

That’s right, in the days since he left the hospital, Xu Chenghao had successfully taken on the “Little Chili 4.0” task. He had to harvest 1,000 chili peppers within a month—30% of which had to be seeds.

The difficulty of the new task was self-evident. Despite fully utilizing all the land in the greenhouse to maximize yield, the results were still quite impressive. When Xu Chenghao arrived at the greenhouse and learned that they had harvested over 200 chili peppers, he breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that the effort spent on 1,000 seeds had not been in vain.

After replanting the seeds and activating the automated watering system, Xu Chenghao watched as one little yellow duck after another popped up and sprayed water with its pouty beak. He couldn’t quite describe his feelings.

He found that the more he expanded his activities, the more traces of Jing Yicheng he discovered in his life. Whether it was the A4 papers full of crazy scribbles in his drawer or the gathering of ducks in the greenhouse, it seemed that without his knowledge, Jing Yicheng had already intertwined himself into Xu Chenghao’s life in a way that couldn’t be easily removed.

Xu Chenghao’s previously stable mood started to feel heavy. Even holding the harvested chili peppers didn’t bring him much joy. After making sure the seeds were replanted, he left with the caregiver, planning to go home first to store the chili peppers.

Then, he saw Ruan Chenxuan downstairs—he was moving his luggage!

Xu Chenghao immediately had a bad feeling, suspecting that Ruan Chenxuan was moving back in… which seemed very likely.

Xu Chenghao was speechless and, after holding his head for a while, decided not to get out of the car and had the caregiver bring the chili peppers to his bedroom. He’d had enough of Ruan Chenxuan; if he could avoid him, he would!

However, the more he wanted to avoid him, the more Ruan Chenxuan appeared. After the caregiver passed by him and seemed to recognize him, Ruan Chenxuan came straight toward Xu Chenghao’s car and knocked on the window, “Mr. Xu?”

Xu Chenghao pretended to be dead.

Ruan Chenxuan helplessly reminded, “The glass isn’t opaque, Mr. Xu. I know you’re inside; don’t hide.”

Xu Chenghao continued to play dead.

Ruan Chenxuan sighed, “I know you have a bad impression of me right now, so when I heard about this apartment, I specifically moved in, hoping to get closer to you and ease the tension between us…”

The car remained silent. If he hadn’t seen the silhouette inside, Ruan Chenxuan would have thought he was talking to himself. He knew Xu Chenghao didn’t want to see him, but he also knew that this was the worst time to back down, so he continued, “This apartment was bought months ago. I believe my buying it has something to do with you.”

Xu Chenghao rolled his eyes. It was indeed related to him, but not in the way Ruan Chenxuan thought!

Ruan Chenxuan: “So, I refuse to believe we’re enemies. Instead, I’d rather believe that we were once together, and because of the child, we’re now like strangers… This apartment is proof of my pursuit of you!”

Xu Chenghao angrily pounded on the car window, “You’re talking nonsense!”

Ruan Chenxuan’s eyes lit up at the response, seizing the opportunity to confess, “Even if that’s not the case, I can confidently say, based on my habits and feelings… Xu Chenghao, at the very least, I used to have feelings for you!”

The person in the car played dead again. Ruan Chenxuan sighed in disappointment. Just as he was about to say something else, he suddenly felt a hard object pressed against the back of his head. A man’s voice menacingly threatened, “Say that again!”

T/N: Cheng-ge, is that you? Sob*

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  “Playing the lute to a cow” (对牛弹琴, duì niú tán qín) is a Chinese idiom that means explaining something to someone who is incapable of understanding it, similar to the English expression “casting pearls before swine.” The image conjures up someone playing beautiful music on a lute, but since the audience is a cow, it doesn’t appreciate or understand the music. The idiom suggests a situation where one’s efforts are wasted because the recipient cannot comprehend or appreciate what is being offered.