After Being Widowed For Ten Years - Chapter 4

“Teacher, do you still need to keep revising that painting? It looks perfect to me.”

Her agent, Yu Shan, said tentatively, “How about we submit this one first, and then for your next piece…” Yu Shan didn’t dare say more, carefully observing Pei Chongxi’s expression from the corner of her eye.

Pei Chongxi pressed her throbbing temples and said, “I’ll take it back and revise it some more.”

Pei Chongxi possessed an obsessive, paranoid pursuit of art. Ordinary people didn’t understand it, nor could they detect the subtle discrepancies between the gradients of color.

“Alright, of course.” Yu Shan brought over a cup of black tea for her.

Pei Chongxi picked up the teacup and took a sip, unable to suppress the sharp, rhythmic throbbing in her temples.

“That’ll be all for today. I’m heading back.”

“Ah, naturally.” Yu Shan stood up quickly to escort Pei Chongxi out.

As they passed through the gallery, Pei Chongxi never once slowed her pace. It was as if the expensive oil paintings lining both sides weren’t the blood and sweat of her own hard work, but rather something entirely irrelevant.

“A major client came by this morning to inquire about the pricing. The offer they made wasn’t low. If you’re willing to sell, it might be good to do them a favor,” Yu Shan mentioned a staggering figure.

Without breaking her stride, Pei Chongxi got into the car. With a sharp thud, she shut the door.

“I got it. If anything comes up, contact me via email.”

Her final words scattered into the wind.

In the blink of an eye, even the rear view of the car had vanished from sight.

Yu Shan stood on the spot, calling out several “alrights.” It wasn’t until the car completely disappeared from her field of vision that she finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Pei Chongxi’s reputation preceded her, her paintings had to be sent abroad for various international exhibitions.

Yet, her personality was undeniably eccentric. Perhaps all artists had a peculiar obsession with their own creations, it was entirely normal for her to revise a piece not just once, but four, five, or even seven to eight times.

Pei Chongxi had far more important things to attend to.

“Are you saying you saw an… illusory apparition of your lover appearing in your home?” Sitting across from Pei Chongxi, the psychiatrist frowned slightly, penning down lines of the condition’s description on a notepad.

“Yes. After I finished visiting my lover’s grave, she appeared in the alleyway.”

Pei Chongxi described everything that had transpired on that rainy night.

The more the doctor listened, the tighter his brow furrowed.

“This lover you speak of… did you two ever hold a wedding ceremony?”

Pei Chongxi’s fingers continuously rubbed the pearl necklace around her wrist. She paused for a moment, her gaze instantly turning dark and gloomy as her long eyelashes cast shadows, concealing the fading light in her eyes.

“No. We were both still in school at the time.”

Knowing this line of questioning couldn’t go any deeper, the psychiatrist asked instead, “Then, in this hallucination, did your lover ever express any resentment toward you?”

Pei Chongxi paused for a brief moment before answering, “No.”

“She likes me very much. She ate the wontons I made, put on my bathrobe, and even initiated a kiss. She didn’t resist when I touched her.”

The psychiatrist wrote the words Condition worsening on the medical record.

“Have you been taking your medication on time and in the correct dosage lately?”

Inside the bright and spotless therapy room, Pei Chongxi pressed against her persistently aching temples.

Her lips weren’t pale today, she had applied a lipstick that masked her natural lip color, making them look vividly red against her overly pale skin.

The image exuded a strange, bewitching beauty. Paired with her habitual black, white, and gray attire, the scene added a few layers of fragile, broken grief unique to a surviving widow.

Stroking the pearls, Pei Chongxi said, “Sometimes I don’t remember how much I’ve taken.”

She followed up with a question that caught the psychiatrist completely off guard. “How much medicine do I need to take so that I can keep seeing my lover forever?”

The psychiatrist could only emphasize once more, “You may need to start considering the possibility of schizophrenia.”

Pei Chongxi’s fingernails tapped impatiently against the back of her phone.

Glued to the back of her phone case was a photo of the two of them back in high school. She and An Rong were both wearing blue and white high school uniforms, arms linked together, two youthful girls throwing peace signs at the camera.

“I won’t consider it.”

The psychiatrist was stunned.

The doctor paused, using a handkerchief to wipe his heavily wrinkled face. It took a long moment for him to process the response.

Pei Chongxi was saying she wouldn’t even consider the possibility of schizophrenia.

Pei Chongxi didn’t waste any more time on the psychiatrist, nor was she interested in placating platitudes. She stood up, grabbed her bag, and prepared to leave.

“You must follow the doctor’s orders!” the half-century old psychiatrist called out from behind.

Stepping away in her high heels, Pei Chongxi merely waved her hand to signal she had heard him.

Returning to the villa, Pei Chongxi locked herself away in the art studio.

The entire second floor of the villa had been gutted and knocked through to create an incredibly spacious studio.

The floor was littered with various opened and unopened tubes of paint, with easels and canvases scattered everywhere.

The cleaning lady never set foot up here, on rare occasions, her agent Yu Shan would visit.

Mountains of accumulated artwork were draped over with black silk cloths to block them from view.

In front of Pei Chongxi was an oil painting of a thunderstorm.

A beam of light pierced through a tear in the clouds, illuminating a small patch of a silent, barren wasteland.

A storm was imminent, massive clusters of thunderclouds gathered at the edge of the horizon, and dark, looming mountains rose high.

The masterful interplay of light, shadow, and color was nothing short of breathtaking.

Purely from the standpoint of technique and artistry, this painting was already extraordinarily magnificent.

Yet, a harsh and fastidious creator always felt it failed to express the true meaning within her heart.

The trees swayed violently within the tempest, the storm was looming, and standing before the oil painting, one could almost smell the moisture-laden, stagnant air within it.

Pei Chongxi knitted her brows tightly. Standing by the window, she mixed her paints with a brush, set up a fresh canvas, and began to sketch.

When painting, Pei Chongxi habitually removed the necklace from her wrist, holding it in her palm or placing it on a soft cloth nearby. She didn’t dare let the delicate pearls get tainted by even a speck of paint.

It wouldn’t wash out cleanly.

And if it didn’t wash out cleanly, An Rong would surely blame her.

When painting, Pei Chongxi also liked to drink a little.

Wine bottles and paint cans were intermingled and strewn about. The smell of alcohol blending with turpentine wasn’t pleasant, casting a suffocating atmosphere over the dimly lit room.

The next second, a lighter clicked, and a slender cigarette dangled from the corner of Pei Chongxi’s mouth.

Her eyes narrowed slightly, unable to quiet her mind enough to paint.

As she exhaled clouds of smoke, every cell in her body screamed in resistance.

She didn’t actually enjoy drinking or smoking, but there weren’t many methods available to numb her spirit.

“An An, if you saw me like this, you would definitely hate me, wouldn’t you?” Pei Chongxi murmured softly.

Downstairs in the villa.

An Rong muttered to herself, “Where is the danger outside? If you ask me, there’s way more danger inside this house than outside. At least out there, I probably wouldn’t starve to death.”

As An Rong talked to herself, she rolled up her sleeves and gave the entire first floor a thorough cleaning, tossing both empty and half-empty alcohol bottles into a cardboard box piled by the door.

“In a villa this big, there must be a designated cleaner who comes by. When they do, I’ll have them throw all these bottles away.”

An Rong grumbled, “Who on earth was the one who wrote extensively in their high school essay about the dangers of smoking and drinking?”

An Rong dumped all the loose cigarettes into the trash can. She didn’t care whether they were stamped with gold foreign lettering or clearly artisanal, hand-rolled ones, she tossed them all.

“Cleaning it up like this makes it look much better.” An Rong stood with her hands on her hips. “If I can stay here, cleaning and working in exchange for a place to sleep and food to eat, that wouldn’t be half bad.”

“Haha, I’ve finally achieved the dream of working a good job for my best friend to earn a living.”

Just as An Rong was amusing herself, she suddenly heard a sharp shatter, the sound of breaking glass echoed from the second floor.

An Rong tied off the last trash bag, her gaze darting toward the stairs leading up to the second floor.

Could Pei Chongxi be back?

Or could it be a burglar?

An Rong instantly recalled the time she and Pei Chongxi lived together in a rented apartment, and a drunkard came knocking on their door in the middle of the night. Back then, Pei Chongxi had wielded a fruit knife, shielding her.

An Rong grabbed a sharp steak knife from the kitchen.

Step by step, she crept up the staircase toward the second floor.

With a soft click, the moment her hand touched the door, it creaked open on its own.

What met her eyes was a floor covered in paint, canvases, and heavily tilted, chaotic easels.

Most prominent of all, however, was the woman sitting right in the center of the rug.

With her wavy black hair falling loosely, a winding, bloody gash had appeared on the pale woman’s forearm, bright red blood welling and pouring down.

Beside her lay what was clearly a glass picture frame that had been violently overturned.

The glass shards attached to the frame had sliced through her skin, and the blood-stained glass lay shattered across the rug, reflecting a cold, biting light.

“Pei Chongxi!”

An Rong let out a sharp cry, hastily tossing the steak knife aside.

Gathering up her skirt, she rushed forward and dropped to her knees right in front of Pei Chongxi.

The dark red blood slithered down the pale skin to the tips of her fingers, finally dripping down onto the back of An Rong’s hand.

With paint and fresh blood smearing across the skin, An Rong was thoroughly terrified.

“How is there so much blood? Let me bandage it for you, and then we need to go to the hospital right away! Heavens, this is definitely going to need stitches.”

Panic stricken, An Rong racked her brain for the basic first-aid knowledge taught at school.

She hurriedly unbuttoned the white dress shirt draped over her shoulders, intending to press it down to staunch the ceaseless bleeding.

This white shirt belonged to Pei Chongxi, and the matching camisole An Rong wore underneath was also Pei Chongxi’s.

Suddenly, a slick, wet sensation brushed against An Rong’s cheek.

Seeing the sheer terror on An Rong’s face, a wave of panic flashed through the depths of Pei Chongxi’s eyes.

Using a tone one would use to coax a child, she said, “An An, I’m sorry. I scared you, it’s Sister Pei’s fault. I get a little frustrated when I can’t paint… Don’t be mad at Sister Pei, okay?”

The dark, damp blood smeared from her fingers, leaving a five fingers streak across An Rong’s cheek.

An Rong was so anxious she was on the verge of tears. “Are you insane?! You’re the one who’s hurt right now, what’s the use of apologizing to me!”

A wet kiss dropped gently upon the space between An Rong’s brows as Pei Chongxi coaxed softly, “I’m fine, don’t be scared, don’t be scared.”

Don’t hate me, and don’t disappear.