After My Death, Everyone Repented (Transmigration) - Chapter 34.3

The air hung silent for a full ten seconds. Xie Guangqi’s withered face flushed red, his fingers stiff with tension.

Jian Qing didn’t intercede. In fact, she seemed like an opportunistic fence-sitter, taking pleasure in everyone else’s suffering, she was even smiling.

Chi Yi glanced at her, losing patience.

With no useful information forthcoming, she had no interest in wasting more time. She stood up, and Xie Shaojun’s view from within the skull widened. She saw the two by the tea table tense up, rising to their feet in unison.

They followed Chi Yi for a few steps.

Xie Guangqi hastily reached out to stop her. His tone was no longer as forceful as before; in an instant, he seemed to age, his pleading eyes begging Chi Yi to sit back down.

“Chi Yi, no matter how much you hate us, that’s fine. But have you ever considered that the property holds Xie Shaojun’s childhood memories? When she brought you home back then, she probably never told you that the ivy on the walls was planted by her when she was little. And that set of sectional sofas in the living room, she scratched them up with her tattoo gun.”

Every time Xie Guangqi asked Chi Yi for a favor, he invoked Xie Shaojun’s name.

It made Xie Shaojun want to laugh bitterly, recalling the last time Xie Guangqi had kicked her out.

The ivy covering the walls was no longer thriving untended, its leaves had withered and yellowed. A rotten loofah dangled halfway down the wall, half of it decayed. Flies buzzed around the rotting gourd under the dim light. At the time, she had thought: I’m just like that rotten loofah.

Snapping back to the present, Xie Shaojun heard Xie Guangqi say, as expected: “For Xie Shaojun’s sake, Chi Yi, I’m begging you as your elder.”

Chi Yi’s expression remained unmoved. She lifted the teacup, sipping a floating tea leaf.

She chewed it slowly, swallowing the bitterness that spread through her mouth.

Then she turned to Jian Qing. “Aren’t you going to beg me too?”

Jian Qing smirked darkly. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

She was more straightforward than Xie Guangqi, but also more cunning. After saying this, she didn’t speak immediately. Instead, she turned her gaze to Xie Guangqi.

Chi Yi didn’t care who spoke first. All she wanted was the full truth of what had happened that day.

After two years of waiting, she could finally find out whether Xie Shaojun had willingly or, more tragically, been forced to donate her kidney.

Chi Yi wasn’t in a hurry. Like tea leaves steeping in water, she had already endured the long wait. this brief moment of anticipation did nothing to test her patience.

Xie Guangqi covered his face with a look of resistance. He recoiled from revisiting the events of that year, especially the day Xie Shaojun died after donating her kidney.

Something floated and sank in the tea. Xie Shaojun stared at it for a long time.

Beside her, Xie Guangqi’s hands trembled uncontrollably. His voice was hoarse, and he didn’t lift his head as he muttered dazedly, “After someone dies, many people start to remember only the good in them.”

This was the most dignified opening Xie Guangqi could muster.

He said to Chi Yi, “When Junjun was very young, not even a year old, she suddenly called me ‘Dad’ one day clear as day, faster than other children. Everyone said she was a prodigy, but her mother and I just smiled.”

“Most of the time, we felt like that tiny bundle could understand everything we said. She refused breast milk, preferring formula, and would obediently suck on her bottle. She loved staring at us, and those soft, curious eyes melted any adult’s heart.”

“Her birth was a surprise to us. She was beautiful as a baby, with natural curls and a pair of endearing puppy-dog eyes. When she smiled slightly with those downturned eyes, I thought she was an angel from the moment she was born.”

“But your aunt and I were busy. First-time parents, we only knew not to let her go cold or hungry. As she grew older, her personality and temper didn’t resemble ours at all. She started running with the wrong crowd. But do you think we ever believed our child was no good?”

Xie Guangqi’s clouded eyes welled with tears.

“Really? Did you ever think she was good?” Chi Yi interrupted him.

Facing Chi Yi’s calm, unreadable gaze, Xie Guangqi bristled at the accusation. He glared at her, ready to argue, but when he opened his mouth, he found no evidence to prove they had ever truly accepted Xie Shaoyun.

He had nothing to say.

His chest heaved violently, forcing him to pause and catch his breath before the brick-red flush faded from his face.

Raising his voice, Xie Guangqi began defending himself loudly: “No parent wishes ill on their child. We just, just wanted her to improve to be obedient, well-mannered, like the daughter we raised.”

His voice cracked. “But she kept straying further from the right path. The year we adopted Jian Qing, her mother and I didn’t think much of it. We just wanted a companion for her, someone to grow up with, to excel alongside. From childhood, they wore the same clothes, the same shoes, ate the same rice.”

Xie Guangqi couldn’t continue. He looked up, scanning the faces of the other two beside him, desperate for validation, proof that he hadn’t failed as a father, that he hadn’t wronged his child.

But no one gave him that reassurance. Jian Qing smirked scornfully, mouthing the word disgusting silently.

No one noticed Jian Qing’s cruel smile, except Xie Shaoyun. Yet, whether it was an illusion or not, the most agonized person in the tearoom wasn’t Xie Guangqi.

It was Chi Yi.

Hanging from Chi Yi’s neck, Xie Shaoyun heard her heavy, uneven breaths, saw the rigid tension in her jaw.

For a fleeting moment, Xie Shaoyun thought Chi Yi must be in unbearable pain, not the grief from yesterday at the airport, but a deeper anguish, a mix of fury and heartache after hearing Xie Guangqi’s words.

Then Xie Shaoyun watched as Chi Yi opened her eyes and spoke, each word deliberate, telling Xie Guangqi that everything he had done was wrong.

“Xie Shaoyun was never the problem. You were.”

“It was me who failed.”

Chi Yi’s scorching gaze made Xie Guangqi lower his head. His shoulders trembled as he pleaded in a barely restrained tone, “What’s the point of arguing about all this now? She’s dead. Your aunt and I can’t bring up the past anymore, can’t think of her”

Xie Guangqi was in a terrible state, his entire body shaking, his lips turning purple.

Xie Shaojun thought Chi Yi would switch to questioning Jian Qing.

But Chi Yi showed no mercy. She stared fixedly at Xie Guangqi, and Xie Shaojun sensed she was even more heartbroken—her expression briefly went blank before she asked in a hoarse voice, “Did she donate her kidney willingly?”

That single sentence shattered Xie Guangqi completely. His tears hit the ground.

A long silence followed. Even Jian Qing stopped smirking. Four pairs of eyes were fixed on Xie Guangqi.

Everyone wanted to know what Xie Shaojun had been thinking when she donated her kidney, but Xie Guangqi and Feng Cinian had always refused to speak of it.

Today, Chi Yi gave him no chance. She tore through his armor with fragments of a past they didn’t know.

In a calm, matter-of-fact tone, she told him, “On September 27th two years ago, a rainy day, you came home from a seminar. At midnight, you kicked Xie Shaojun out of the house.”

Chi Yi watched Xie Guangqi’s eyes. When he nodded, her chest heaved violently before she continued slowly, “But did you know that at 3 p.m. that same day, Zhu Sicheng showed up at your doorstep with a knife, ready to take your entire family down with him?”

“It was Xie Shaojun who stopped him outside, promising to repay the Zhu family’s loan sharks. To hold him back, she took a five-centimeter gash to her leg from his blade. Do you know why she later defied you and skipped her graduate school exams? Because she was broke. Because she had to placate Zhu Sicheng’s rage. She used her tattoo earnings to buy your lives!”

Xie Guangqi looked dazed, then utterly broken as he stared at Chi Yi. “Stop talking,” he begged.

“Please, just leave.”

Xie Shaojun had never seen Chi Yi speak so much at once. Xie Guangqi slid from his seat, but Chi Yi kept going, her voice cracking with sobs.

“After Jian Qing’s miscarriage, you and Teacher Feng doted on her. But when Xie Shaojun was in late-stage cancer, her doctor told her to call her family. She called me, and I said I was busy. Maybe you were too, she didn’t even try calling you.”

“The day you kicked her out, she refused to drink with you because late-stage cancer makes alcohol unbearable. She’d just vomit.”

“She was sick. The drastic weight loss would’ve made her unrecognizable. So she stopped tying her hair up, let it hang loose, wore stiff, structured clothes… just to look normal. Maybe even prettier.”

Every word Chi Yi uttered in that steady voice stabbed at Xie Guangqi’s heart, Jian Qing’s heart and her own. She had to pause, gasping for breath, forcing each syllable out one by one.