After The Divorce, My Ex-Wife Is Consumed By Regret - Chapter 4

When Chu Yuan called Yan Dai, it was past midnight, twelve o’clock Beijing time. Meanwhile, in Berlin, Germany, it had just gone past five o’clock in the afternoon.

Having just wrapped up an entire afternoon of meetings, Yan Dai was preparing to undergo psychological therapy at a private hospital. However, the moment she glimpsed the caller ID, she answered the phone without a second thought.

The call connected, but before Yan Dai could even utter a single word, she heard a voice laden with resentment from the other end say: “I hate you!”

Hmm?

Why the sudden hatred toward her?

Yan Dai’s delicate brows furrowed slightly. With a subtle wave of her hand, her assistant and private doctor, possessing excellent situational awareness, immediately stepped aside to wait.

She remained quiet for a couple of seconds. Detecting a faint hint of drunkenness in Chu Yuan’s tone, she couldn’t help but ask, “Are you drunk?”

She rarely extended care or concern to others, even though Chu Yuan was her wife and, in a legal sense, her closest person. Being incapable of forming intimate relationships made it difficult for her to offer even basic verbal warmth. This was also one of the reasons why she had been quietly receiving psychological treatment abroad for the past six months.

However, the person on the other end didn’t answer her. Instead, they hung up right away.

Yan Dai was left listening to the repeated beeps of a busy tone. It took her several seconds of staring at the disconnected screen to snap back to reality.

Chu Yuan had actually hung up on her.

Chu Yuan rarely initiated hanging up on her; even if she had, the occurrences were few and far between. In fact, throughout their years of marriage, the number of times Chu Yuan had proactively hung up the phone could probably be counted on three fingers. Almost every single time, it was Chu Yuan who took the initiative to call, chattering away and outputting a stream of words all on her own, while Yan Dai would offer a few occasional responses.

Sometimes, the conversation would hit a lull, the topic would fall flat, or Yan Dai would need to get ready for work, pushing the call to the brink of hanging up. But every single time, Chu Yuan would reluctantly hold on, saying:

“Sister, stay and chat with me a little longer…”

“Sister, I want to hear your voice for a bit more…”

“Sister, sister, sister, please don’t hang up on me, okay? Even if you’re busy with work and don’t have time to pay attention to me, you can just leave your phone right next to you.”

Every time she spoke to Yan Dai, Chu Yuan’s tone sounded as if she added a tilde (~) to the end of every sentence. It was hard to tell if she was acting cute on purpose or what, but there was definitely a slight, deliberate softening of her voice.

But in front of the beautiful sister she liked, what was wrong with putting on a little act and being mindful of her image? Chu Yuan wished she could be even more dramatic, if only it would capture Yan Dai’s attention.

During their calls, even if Yan Dai didn’t say a word and silently left the phone aside, Chu Yuan could happily chatter to herself for a very long time. Therefore, the conclusion of almost every call featured Yan Dai hanging up first.

This time was an absolute anomaly.

Intuition told Yan Dai that either Chu Yuan was so completely wasted that she had unconsciously hung up the phone, or something wrong had happened at home that ruined her mood. Regardless of which possibility it was, neither was something Yan Dai wished to see.

“Did something happen at home?” Yan Dai couldn’t ask Chu Yuan directly across thousands of miles. She pocketed her phone, turning her head to question her assistant, Yang Wen.

Yang Wen had been following Yan Dai for a long time and possessed exceptional competence. Although they were currently abroad, Yang Wen was generally aware of anything that occurred back home.

Yang Wen replied, “Everything is normal with the family company.”

After speaking, Yang Wen read between the lines, realizing that Yan Dai’s words weren’t entirely about the domestic company, but were more likely inquiring about the one back home.

Thus, showing her high emotional intelligence, Yang Wen added another line: “As for Miss Chu, Sister Qin Man mentioned that after her book signing session wrapped up this morning, she didn’t go straight home. Instead, she went to Wink Bar. There is a high probability that she is drunk and has not returned home.”

Having said this, Yang Wen stopped just short of over-explaining, leaving it at that. Smart people only ever need to speak in half-sentences.

With this information, Yan Dai could basically guess the rest. Chu Yuan had gotten drunk at Wink Bar and was now highly likely staying at Ji Xiran’s place.

Yan Dai put her phone away, her tone nonchalant: “Then it’s fine. Ji Xiran is her good friend; someone will take care of her even if she’s drunk.”

Yang Wen observed Yan Dai’s expression, thinking to herself. How does this look like an ‘it’s fine’ expression? It clearly looks like she’s on the verge of becoming a little upset.

No matter how skilled Yan Dai was at concealing her emotions, she couldn’t hide them from Yang Wen. After all, Yang Wen had been by Yan Dai’s side for nearly ten years and could be considered to know her inside out.

Yang Wen still remembered the year she first met Yan Dai. The twenty-year-old Yan Dai hadn’t even graduated from university when she took over the shambles of the Yan family enterprise in the face of danger. She turned the tide, breathing life back into a Yan corporation that had been on the brink of bankruptcy.

In the years that followed, Yan Dai had driven the Yan corporation to become one of the top fifty enterprises in the country. Who wouldn’t praise her as a commercial genius?

She ruled the business world like a storm, and in her personal life, she was stern and unsmiling. There was no one in the company, from top to bottom, who didn’t fear her, no one ever slighted her because of her youth.

A person like Yan Dai could be described as young, promising, and highly successful, yet Yang Wen rarely saw her genuinely happy. Forget happiness, she didn’t even show anger. Most of the time, Yan Dai was just detached and expressionless, making it impossible to gauge her true feelings.

However, ever since she married the young heiress of the Chu family, the expressions on Yan Dai’s face had become much richer. Even though, on the surface, her default state was still expressionless, various micro-expressions would betray her.

Just like right now, Yan Dai’s delicate brows were slightly knit, and the corners of her mouth were turned downward a fraction. Having worked by Yan Dai’s side for years, Yang Wen recognized the shift in her mood at a single glance.

In their line of work, the most critical skill was learning to decipher the big boss’s true mood. Yang Wen knew with absolute certainty that the cause of Yan Dai’s emotional shift was entirely related to Miss Chu Yuan.

Yang Wen tested the waters: “Should we give Miss Chu a call later to check on the situation?”

Yan Dai: “No need.”

Yang Wen, however, had already pulled out her phone, saying, “Sister Qin Man happens to be free. We can have her pick up Miss Chu and take her home.”

“Qin Man is free at this hour?” Berlin was at five in the afternoon, but it was the dead of night back home.

Yang Wen replied, “She’s free.” To do something that makes the big boss happy, one has to be free even if they aren’t!

A flicker moved through Yan Dai’s eyes, though her tone remained indifferent: “Mm, alright then.”

Yang Wen quietly breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that Yan Dai ultimately still wished for Chu Yuan to be brought home, rather than staying out alone overnight. Even if she was staying over at a good friend’s house, it still wouldn’t do. After all, this particular timeframe was somewhat sensitive. Who could feel at ease in the middle of the night?

With that matter settled, Yan Dai finally walked into the psychological consultation room with peace of mind.

She had lost track of how many years she had been undergoing psychological counseling. The stretch of time was so vast that even she couldn’t recall the exact duration.

The private doctor, Ye Xingchun, conducted some routine checks on Yan Dai as usual, and Yan Dai cooperated with each one.

“Is the primary issue still an inability to establish an intimate relationship with anyone?” Ye Xingchun had asked this question many times.

“Yes.”

“Close your eyes,” Ye Xingchun said, guiding Yan Dai into the hypnosis phase. “Now, try your best to think of a person in your mind. Who did you think of?”

“Her.”

“Still her?”

“Yes.”

Ye Xingchun began steering Yan Dai into a state of deep hypnosis. For the subsequent questions, the respondent would be incapable of lying.

“That indicates a very strong desire within your heart to get closer to her.”

“I don’t know.”

“You should be certain.”

“I don’t know.”

“Then let me phrase it differently. Are you happy when you are with her?”

“Happy.”

“Do you miss her when you leave her?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like her?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to return to the country to see her?”

“Yes.”

“Can you feel that she likes you very much?”

“…Yes.”

Ye Xingchun continued to guide her systematically: “Then you ought to return to the country to see her, end the long-distance separation, and be with her. Your heart is very honest, this is exactly what you are thinking.”

Silence. A prolonged silence ensued.

In the end, Yan Dai only uttered a single line: “Will she leave me in the future?”

“No, she loves you very much.” As Yan Dai’s long-term therapist over the years, Ye Xingchun was fully aware of the emotional state between Yan Dai and her wife.

Chu Yuan liked Yan Dai, liked her very, very much. Everyone around Yan Dai knew it. You could probably search the heavens and the earth and still fail to find a second girl who liked Yan Dai more than Chu Yuan did.

Yet Yan Dai lapsed into silence once more, and this time the silence stretched even longer than before.

She said, “Even if she won’t right now, she will in the future, right?”

“Everyone leaves eventually,” she murmured again.

Ye Xingchun let out a soft sigh. The session was stuck at this bottleneck again, unable to progress.

Ye Xingchun didn’t know what Yan Dai had gone through in her past, so she couldn’t comprehend what her patient was being so stubborn about. When someone loved her deeply, her immediate reaction was to feel insecure, her very first thought being the assumption that the other party would abandon her. Because of her fear of separation, she chose to reject the beginning altogether.

In fact, six months ago, the sudden reason for Yan Dai going abroad was that she realized she seemed to have fallen in love with Chu Yuan. She feared that if she continued to stay, she wouldn’t be able to leave her for the rest of her life. She wanted to force a withdrawal ahead of time.

Pushing away the person she loved with her own hands was not what she desired, but she had indeed done it.

Wouldn’t you say a person like this is ill?

Then again, if she weren’t ill, she wouldn’t have been continuously receiving psychological treatment. Objectively speaking, falling in love with someone like this would be exhausting.

Ye Xingchun was merely a psychologist, not a deity. Beyond offering guidance, everything ultimately depended on Yan Dai herself.

In the end, Ye Xingchun made an effort to guide Yan Dai into a dream.

In the dream, there was herself, along with the person she yearned to approach most from the depths of her soul, yet never dared to draw close to. That person was Chu Yuan. Unsurprisingly, Chu Yuan had entered her dream once again.

There were only two people in the dream, herself and Chu Yuan.

Chu Yuan was staring at her with starry eyes, her hands tightly clutching Yan Dai’s arm, swaying it back and forth as she flashed an incredibly charming smile:

“Sister, you are so beautiful. I like you so much, do you like me?”

“I really want to kiss you. You’re my wife, so you’ll let me kiss you, right?”

Yan Dai pressed her lips together and nodded gently: “Yes.”

Yet in the very next second, Chu Yuan abruptly flung her hand away. Standing with her hands on her hips, her face transformed into a mask of complete indifference. Curling her lips, she looked at her with a face full of disdain:

“It’s already been stated that it’s a business marriage, so how could there be any real feelings for you? Sister, you didn’t actually believe it, did you?”

Yan Dai was instantly jolted awake by the scare, a layer of cold sweat breaking out across her back. When she opened her eyes again, what met her sight was the ceiling. There was nothing else.

Everything just now had been nothing but a dream. And within that dream lay the thing she feared above all else.

She was terrified that one day, Chu Yuan would suddenly stop liking her.

Rather than facing that outcome, she would prefer to have never possessed it from the start. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in love. She was simply more afraid that love was fleeting and ever changing.