A Top-Tier Green Tea Actress Enters a Dating Reality Show - Chapter 64

“Doll, I only want you.”

The night light was faint. The warm yellow light from the desk lamp was soft, and a small flying insect hovered near the flame, trying to get closer to the light.

The soft light shone on little Qin Yue’s profile, dissolving much of her sticky, melancholic aura.

“I don’t want anything else. You don’t have to worry that I will take anything from you. On the contrary, I will give you what is mine.”

“I will give you everything I have.”

Little Qin Yue promised Meng Ziqing. Her pure blue eyes were bright and focused, filled with an obsession for Meng Ziqing. Although she was still an adolescent, the earnest look in which she made the solemn promise was remarkably beautiful—or perhaps, exceptionally trustworthy.

It made people believe she simply wanted to be good to her.

She had no ulterior motives, no intention of causing any negative emotions. She just wanted to be good to her, giving her everything she possessed.

So that under her protective wing, she could be happy and joyful, free from any worries or bitterness.

“Doll, don’t be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you, never.” Little Qin Yue lowered her eyes, her fingers unconsciously tapping the ballpoint pen. “If I could, I’d like to be someone like Ms. Song—warm, someone who can protect you well.”

My wife is saying she wants to be my mother.

Is she serious?

“Qin Yue, you…” Meng Ziqing opened her mouth, but couldn’t utter a single word for a long time.

Qin Yue, instead, looked at Meng Ziqing expectantly.

Meng Ziqing: …

There were too many things wrong with the situation; she couldn’t find the right point to address.

More importantly, Meng Ziqing felt very uncomfortable hearing Qin Yue say this.

As a person, one shouldn’t lack self-identity and tie all their emotions to another person. If something were to happen to the other person, it would be the day her emotions completely collapsed.

An inexplicable feeling of blockage accumulated in her heart.

Her temples, too, felt as if some mechanism had been triggered, aching terribly.

The two stared at each other for a long time. The air grew heavy with the silent tension, and little Qin Yue’s expectant eyes gradually dimmed.

—They even showed a trace of panic.

“Doll, what don’t you like about me? I can change. Please don’t stay silent.” Little Qin Yue reached out to take Meng Ziqing’s hand, seeking a sense of security. Her voice was laced with grievance and a subtle panic.

She was genuinely afraid that the doll would leave her.

In that instant, Meng Ziqing seemed to see the crimson spider silk threads on little Qin Yue again.

They wrapped tightly around her, almost enveloping her, signifying a desperate hopelessness, a massive cocoon that felt suffocating just to look at.

In the afternoon, when they first met, she was only halfway wrapped, but now she was about to be devoured.

Little Qin Yue was spinning a cocoon around herself.

A wave of nausea surged up.

It was directed at Qin Yue, and also at herself.

“Qin Yue…” Meng Ziqing took a deep breath, trying to overcome the unpleasant feeling in her heart, but the throbbing pain in her temples intensified.

The strong sourness made her eyes moist. She lifted her eyelids and met little Qin Yue’s gaze.

Her childlike voice, full of disgust, was sharp, “Damn it, you are really a bastard.”

The moment Meng Ziqing’s words fell, she flung little Qin Yue’s hand away. Little Qin Yue’s eyes widened slightly in panic, and she wanted to grab Meng Ziqing again. But before she could touch Meng Ziqing’s hand, her body began to shatter.

“I’ve had enough of this dream. It’s time to end it.”

The cold, exhausted voice was particularly abrupt in the quiet room. Not only was little Qin Yue shattering, but the entire room began to dissolve into fragments. The plaster peeled away, exposing a pure black shell with fine sparkles.

“No! Doll, don’t go!”

“I can’t live without you! I’ve already lost my mother; I can’t lose you too, Doll!”

Little Qin Yue looked desperate, tears involuntarily streaming from her eyes. She cried and pleaded to get closer to Meng Ziqing, even as her body broke into pieces.

But the more she behaved this way, the more inexpressibly Meng Ziqing looked at her.

There were too many types of emotions in Meng Ziqing’s heart: disgust, infatuation, desire, resentment… The multitude of emotions blended together, creating an inexpressible fatigue.

As the dream finally shattered, she couldn’t help but ask, “Qin Yue, do you really… like me?”

Meng Ziqing: “Was it love at first sight for you?”

“Of course it was—”

“I don’t like you.”

“And it wasn’t love at first sight.”

In reality, Qin Yue lovingly stroked Meng Ziqing’s tightly furrowed brow, while simultaneously answering the question posed by the CP System.

The CP System was even more puzzled. It shook its light-ball body, which was slightly underpowered, and determinedly continued to ask, “Then why were you so good to Meng Ziqing when you were little, so good that you’d give her anything?”

“If that’s not liking, then what is it?”

As it spoke, a flash of lightning struck outside, like a silver-white whip suddenly cleaving the murky sky. The room briefly became intensely bright, then suddenly returned to darkness.

In that split second of intense light, the CP System clearly saw the gloom in Qin Yue’s eyes.

“I was good to her when I was little not because I liked her,” Qin Yue slowly replied, smiling mockingly.

She turned her head to look at the surging wind and rain outside the window. “I was a bastard back then; I didn’t treat Meng Ziqing as a person at all.”

The CP System was shocked: “What?!”

“I didn’t treat Meng Ziqing as a person when I was little,” Qin Yue repeated, as if acknowledging her own sin. “Do you understand now?”

“No… You were so good to her, but not because you liked her, and you didn’t even see her as a person. What were you after??” The CP System was completely confused now.

In its machine brain, human emotions were complex.

But the childhood phase was relatively simpler than adulthood. Hatred and affection were clear: liking meant good, hating meant bad.

It couldn’t analyze the reason for Qin Yue’s behavior of being good to someone she didn’t like.

“I was after many things,” Qin Yue answered, her slender eyelashes fluttering. Her gaze deepened, as if she was looking through her blurred reflection on the window glass, returning to the past, and meeting the eyes of the twelve-year-old Qin Yue.

“I had just lost my mother not long before. You know that. During that kidnapping, I watched my mother being tortured and killed with my own eyes.”

Qin Yue’s voice trembled slightly, yet her tone remained calm as she narrated, as if she wasn’t talking about her own story.

“You’re a system; your emotions are shallow. You will probably never experience the powerlessness of watching a loved one suffer next to you while you are tied to a chair and can’t even move.”

“I couldn’t do anything; I could only feel.”

“Warm blood splashed onto my calf.” Qin Yue pointed to her calf, then to her snow-white cheek. “And pieces of flesh splattered onto my face.”

“Those were my mother’s flesh and blood.”

“You also can’t experience the helplessness of coming home and watching my father break down, unable to do anything myself.”

“He was already very strong. As an adult, he was truly very strong.”

“But when he was wailing for my mother, I didn’t even dare to step forward and give him a hug. Because I was afraid of my bloody and bruised mother, and I was also afraid of my father in that desperate state.”

Qin Yue took a deep breath, recalling that dark and desperate time. “The twelve-year-old me was so weak. I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t change anything. I was forced to accept everything. I had no ability to protect anyone.”

“I had severe paranoia and an unreleased desire to protect.” Qin Yue said, then suddenly smiled, “Until I met Meng Ziqing, who came to my house and invited me to play in the flower room.”

“I found a container for the transfer of my inner emotions.”

In that moment, the CP System was so scared that its entire ball of light flared up.

Qin Yue gestured, “Meng Ziqing was just seven at the time. Her height only reached my stomach. She was fierce and delicate/spoiled, like a Chihuahua.”

“Chihuahuas are small dogs. Because of their size, they can’t protect themselves, so they are sensitive to their surroundings and have a grumpy temper.”

“The moment she appeared; she gave me the illusion that maybe I could protect something.”

“She was a Chihuahua that even a useless person like me could protect.”

Qin Yue spoke softly, her possessiveness thick in her tone.

The CP System listened quietly; its back feeling numb. It swallowed and asked, “And then?”

“Then, after my psychological problems improved, I didn’t want to stay in the country, so I asked my father to take me abroad to settle down,” Qin Yue answered as a matter of course.

“What about Meng Ziqing? You just abandoned her like that?” The CP System was astonished. “Are you even human?”

Even if the child was young and didn’t know that the older sister who played with her for several months treated her as a real doll, she had genuinely and enthusiastically invested her feelings. When the sister left, little Meng Ziqing must have cried for a while.

Qin Yue’s behavior was nothing short of bullying a child.

Qin Yue accepted the criticism: “That’s why I said I was a bastard back then.”

“I understand! When Meng Ziqing lost her mother in a car accident at age fifteen, she was in the same mood. When they met again on the dating show years later, she came to her senses and realized you hadn’t treated her as a person when she was little!” The CP System suddenly thought of this point. “No wonder her attitude toward you was so bad back then.”

There are no true ‘I understand you’ moments in the world. Without the most heart-wrenching and miserable pain, even empathy is shallow.

The fifteen-year-old Meng Ziqing in the first timeline had a devastating experience and even tried to copy Qin Yue’s actions. That’s why the moment she saw Qin Yue, she instantly turned cold.

She was disgusted by Qin Yue at the time.

And she was also disgusted by her past self, who had tried to imitate Qin Yue and look for a psychological container.

“Probably… yes…”

Qin Yue shrugged and smiled wryly. She still remembered the night Meng Ziqing in the first timeline saw her; she cornered her in the room.

The young girl smiled elegantly, yet revealed a hint of adorable, wicked, and scheming malice. She declared, word by word, “I remember you.”

“The pervert sister who treated me like a doll when I was little!”

“Just wait, I won’t let you have an easy time for these three months.”

This threat was a psychological battle. Meng Ziqing in the first timeline intended to scare Qin Yue, but unexpectedly, Qin Yue felt excited.

It was like an addict encountering a long-desired object after many years.

Qin Yue was excited and thrilled that her doll still remembered her.

She hadn’t forgotten her.

“So, all that stuff in your first timeline was self-inflicted, right?” the CP System complained.

“What do you mean by self-inflicted?” Qin Yue countered.

“You don’t call that self-inflicted? You were made to sleep in the hallway every night by Meng Ziqing at the beginning!”

Qin Yue denied it, “No. If there hadn’t been contact when we were little, I wouldn’t have fallen for her even if I met her when I was older. If there was only contact when we were little, and we hadn’t met again when we were older, she would always just be a former ‘therapy doll’ in my memory.”

“I was a bastard when I was little, and what I did was wrong, but I never regret it.”

“I don’t regret my actions, and if I could do it all over again, I would do the same thing.”

She paused, then added, “But I wouldn’t run away and leave the country again.”

Unlike now, when she can reflect on the right and wrong of her past actions.

In truth, the little Qin Yue back then didn’t know what her feelings for Meng Ziqing were either.

But strangely, after her mental state improved slightly, she wanted to distance herself from Meng Ziqing.

It was like a blind person immediately dropping their cane the moment they see light. Although Meng Ziqing was the light in her dark time, once she felt a little better, she didn’t dare to look at Meng Ziqing again.

She panicked and wanted to escape.

The adult Qin Yue naturally understood. It was because the twelve-year-old her was feeling guilty. She felt guilty toward Meng Ziqing.

Because she had used Meng Ziqing as a rope to save herself and escape the psychological vortex.

This rescue was her grasping onto Meng Ziqing.

But the twelve-year-old Qin Yue didn’t understand these things. She just felt she had to leave, and leave quickly.

She fled desperately and awkwardly.

Then she adopted a completely new living environment, forgot everything that happened in the country, and devoted herself entirely to her new life.

Even when her father suggested checking if she wanted to go back to China, she firmly refused.

In the fifteen years from age twelve to twenty-seven, Qin Yue studied painting, engaged with art, and eventually became the executive officer of a high-end company like RY.

She had ostensibly forgotten the person, yet the shadow of that person’s influence was everywhere.

She had never returned during all those years.

Qin Yue’s father had some understanding of his daughter’s worries, and he had once advised her not to be so afraid.

Schrödinger’s cat must have the box opened to know if it’s dead or alive. Going back to China was the same. Maybe the psychological trauma wouldn’t resurface at all.

China had changed rapidly. In fifteen years, maybe City A was already completely different from before.

That way, she would have truly overcome her childhood trauma.

But Qin Yue insisted on not returning, no matter how much her blue-eyed uncle (father) advised her.

For her blue-eyed uncle, returning was just Schrodinger’s cat, but for Qin Yue, returning was Pandora’s box.

And inside Pandora’s box, there was a fierce and delicate Chihuahua.