After Failing to Reverse the Plot, I Made My Escape - Chapter 7

“Do not take him away from me. Do not take him away…”

Yu Fuqiu looked up, his beautiful eyes resembling shattered glass, quickly clouding over with a layer of mist. His long eyelashes trembled violently as if fighting to hold back the impending flood of tears.

“Do you not want to maintain the ‘loving couple’ persona? Do you not want to continue playing the role of the devoted, inseparable ‘good wife’?”

The words carried a flirtatious lilt, but their substance made Yu Fuqiu’s heart sink.

“Since you are so skilled at performing for the media and so desperate to be Mrs. Chang, I will let you play the part to your heart’s content.”

He suddenly reached out and pinched Yu Fuqiu’s chin. The force was so great that Yu Fuqiu knit his brows in pain.

Yu Fuqiu’s eyelashes quivered intensely. Tears finally slid down uncontrollably, yet he stubbornly refused to make a sound.

“But remember,” Chang Tingzhi leaned down toward his ear, his voice as cold as ice, “this is only a transaction. I will cooperate with your acting and play the role for the media. Naturally, I will give you the status and resources you want. All of this is merely for the benefit of the company.”

“Do not crave what you should not. I do not know what schemes you used to get me to touch you.”

He released his grip and wiped his fingers as if he had touched something filthy. “The mere thought of touching someone who calculated their way into my bed makes me feel disgusted.”

Yu Fuqiu’s face instantly turned as white as paper, and even his lips lost all color. He opened his mouth to speak, but only a few words struggled out. “I did not…”

“You did not?” Chang Tingzhi sneered. “Then tell me, why would a man marry another man? Besides lusting after the power and wealth of the Chang family, what else could it be for?”

“Could it be for love?”

He looked as if he had heard the greatest joke in the world, his eyes curving. “That kind of thing.”

“It truly disgusts me.”

“Such an ethereal thing is the most worthless existence in the world. It is nothing but a pile of trash.”

Yu Fuqiu froze completely, looking as if his soul had been hollowed out, leaving only an empty shell.

He could not believe that those poisonous words and cruel speculations had actually come from Chang Tingzhi’s mouth.

“Chang Tingzhi! You have gone too far!” Zuo Chenshuang could no longer stand by. He grabbed Yu Fuqiu’s cold, stiff arm, shielded him behind his back, and glared at Chang Tingzhi.

“Let us go, Fuqiu!” Zuo Chenshuang suppressed his fury and, without allowing room for argument, led the despondent Yu Fuqiu away, quickly leaving that suffocating hospital room.

The door shut behind them, isolating that chilling battlefield.

In the hallway, Yu Fuqiu was still trembling all over, the red marks on the back of his hand vivid and startling. Seeing him like this, Zuo Chenshuang felt both heartache and anger. He took a deep breath and spoke in a solemn tone.

“Fuqiu, calm down and listen to me.” He held Yu Fuqiu’s thin shoulders, forcing him to look up. “Originally, I wanted to be certain. When the test results came out, I did not want to believe them.”

“But looking at it now, there is no need. That report cannot be wrong.”

Yu Fuqiu’s hollow eyes flickered slightly.

“There is nothing wrong with his physical functions, but judging by his current behavior,” Zuo Chenshuang lowered his voice, “have you ever heard of ‘Dissociative Identity Disorder’?”

Yu Fuqiu lowered his gaze. How could he not know? The plot of the original book, delayed for fifteen years, had finally arrived at this moment.

“There was once a woman in Country A who developed eight personalities after a car accident. A car accident is a severe stress event. This accident served as a trigger, inducing a disorder that already existed within Chang Tingzhi.”

“It is a way to escape pain and protect oneself. It is a self-protection mechanism of the brain.”

“So, I suspect that a completely new personality has emerged in Tingzhi.”

An escape from pain? A protection mechanism?

Creating a new personality?

Yu Fuqiu vaguely remembered the rainy night in the alley when he brought the young boy home. Back then, Chang Tingzhi had been like a wolf cub, biting him immediately and watching him with intense suspicion. That personality was exactly like the Chang Tingzhi he saw now.

Was the Chang Tingzhi who had spent every day with him, the one who loved him and married him, merely a false personality created to escape pain and protect himself?

Had he fallen in love with a fake Chang Tingzhi? A Chang Tingzhi who was not needed?

Would his Chang Tingzhi disappear from the world forever?

Yu Fuqiu suddenly felt a massive surge of panic. They had been together for seven years. The Chang Tingzhi who smiled at him tenderly, who clumsily prepared breakfast for him, who held him tightly on stormy nights, who wept with joy at the birth of their son, and who spoiled him beyond reason…

Had he fallen in love with a mere phantom that was not needed, one that might even be rejected and loathed by the primary personality?

An existence… destined to be erased?

“No…”

He was afraid.

He was truly terrified.

When he first learned of the car accident and the amnesia, he had not been this panicked. When the “original” Chang Tingzhi appeared, he had not been this scared, because he always held a faint hope that the Chang Tingzhi who loved him would return. He thought this was all temporary.

But now, Zuo Chenshuang’s words had shattered those illusions, telling him that the one he loved was merely a fleeting persona.

He looked up, his gaze moving past Zuo Chenshuang to stare intently at the closed door, as if he could pierce through the wood to see the unfamiliar soul inside. He desperately wanted to find that familiar shadow.

He wanted his Tingzhi.

“It cannot be.”

The tears he had held back for so long finally broke through.

Large droplets fell like fragments from a total internal collapse, rolling down his pale, almost translucent cheeks. Those eyes, which usually held soft starlight, now stared hollowly at Zuo Chenshuang, the red at the corners of his eyes strikingly vivid.

“It cannot be like this.”

Yu Fuqiu grabbed Zuo Chenshuang’s sleeve and shook his head frantically. “Chenshuang, Chenshuang, you are a doctor. Help me. Please help me, okay?”

He called Zuo Chenshuang’s name over and over, his voice choked and trembling, filled with total dependence and desperate pleading.

His dark hair was dampened by tears, clinging to his forehead and cheeks, making him look exceptionally disheveled and fragile.

“I do not want Tingzhi to disappear. I do not want it.”

He sobbed. “I want my Tingzhi. I want the Tingzhi who loves me, not… not…”

Not the Chang Tingzhi who looked at him like he was trash.

He could never forget that look.

“I am not a mistress, and I never wanted the wealth or power of the Chang family.”

Yu Fuqiu’s voice shook. His thin, fragile back and the suppressed sobs in his throat revealed the mental torture he was enduring.

“I only… I only wanted to be by his side so much.”

“Do not take him away from me. Do not take him away…”

“I just wanted to stay by his side. I wanted to see him every day when I woke up and hug him when I came home. I just wanted to be with him.”

He had struggled so hard to escape the cage of that mental hospital fifteen years ago. Was he now to be heartlessly stripped of everything again?

Yu Fuqiu cried until his body lost all strength, yet his slender fingers still gripped Zuo Chenshuang’s collar tightly, like the final obsession of a dying man. Tears soaked his thick eyelashes, making his paper-white face appear even more fragile—a breathtaking, heart-stopping beauty on the verge of shattering.

His breathing grew more rapid, his gaze became unfocused, and his body began to spasm uncontrollably.

“Fuqiu, look at me. Look at me.”

Zuo Chenshuang ignored everything else and tightened his arms, practically holding Yu Fuqiu in his embrace. He stroked the boy’s violently trembling back with one palm while his other hand circled the slender waist for support, trying to transmit a sliver of warmth to calm him down.

He lowered his head, his lips close to Yu Fuqiu’s ear. His warm breath brushed against Yu Fuqiu’s skin as he whispered words of comfort in a voice only the two of them could hear. “Fuqiu, listen to me. I will not let him disappear. I will not.”

“I promise. I will find every possible way to bring Tingzhi back. Just calm down, okay?”

“Yes, take a deep breath with me.”

The body in his arms was tense from crying and agitation, but under the guidance of Zuo Chenshuang’s steady voice, it finally began to soften. His thin shoulders started to move in rhythm with the doctor, slowly adjusting his erratic breathing.

“If you continue like this, you will break yourself. I…”

I would be heartbroken.

He swallowed the second half of that sentence, letting it turn into a silent sigh. However, the intense concern and tenderness in his eyes were too clear to hide.

Yu Fuqiu wept uncontrollably, clutching Zuo Chenshuang’s clothes and sobbing. His eyes were red, and his eyelashes fluttered like butterfly wings, feeling like feathers falling on Zuo Chenshuang’s heart, stirring a restless itch within him.

Their posture was intimate. From a certain angle, it looked as if Zuo Chenshuang only needed to lower his head a fraction more to kiss that fair, soft skin.

As if bewitched, Zuo Chenshuang reached out his fingertips, wanting to touch the reddened corner of Yu Fuqiu’s eye.

Crack!

A sharp, nauseating sound of bone snapping suddenly exploded in the silent corridor.

“Ugh!”

Zuo Chenshuang let out a suppressed cry of pain. His face turned instantly pale, and cold sweat poured down his forehead. The index finger of his right hand was bent at an unnatural angle.

It was the very hand he had just used to try and touch Yu Fuqiu.

Startled by this sudden violence, Yu Fuqiu trembled and raised his tear-stained face.

Looking past Zuo Chenshuang, who was curled up in agony, he met a pair of eyes.

They were dark eyes, like a deep abyss.

Chang Tingzhi had appeared at the hospital room door, leaning lazily against the doorframe.

He had watched his wife crying in another man’s arms.

He tilted his head slightly, his thin lips parting to speak. His voice was not loud and carried a faint trace of a smile, yet each word struck the silent air with heavy impact.

“You two.”

“What exactly are you doing?”