Although They're Mentally ill, They're Extremely Easy to Comfort - Chapter 96

Stepping hurriedly out of the airport exit, Qiao Boer’s heart grew more tormented with every passing second; she was unwilling to waste even a single moment.

“Miss, please slow down,” Chu Xi followed behind at a light jog, while Qu Ye followed with both their bags, gasping for breath.

Waiting at the arrival gate, Ji Nancen and Qin Yun looked pale and grim. Seeing Qiao Boer appear, they didn’t even know where to begin.

“Why do you both have those expressions? Shouldn’t you be giving me a grand welcome?”

Qiao Boer’s tone was light, because she was about to see the “scoundrel” she had been pining for.

Qin Yun’s lips trembled, but it was Ji Nancen who was bolder. She grabbed Qiao Boer’s hand and began striding forward, no longer hiding the truth: “Come with me to the hospital. Ling Xi has been hospitalized.”

“What did you say?”

“That Qiao Di—who can’t even let people be in peace after death—sent Ling Xi a package. The video on the USB drive caused her old illness to relapse.”

“Why are you only telling me now!?”

“If you want to blame someone, wait until you see Ling Xi. Let’s go.”

The atmosphere turned instantly tense. Qiao Boer didn’t lash out; she could only follow Ji Nancen in silence toward the parking lot.

Settling into the car, Qiao Boer was about to call Xiao Mo when she unexpectedly received a short video from him.

Her pupils shook violently the moment she saw Ling Xi’s silhouette.

“To the hospital! Fast!” Qiao Boer screamed in a breakdown, desperately urging Qu Ye to drive faster, and faster still.

The rest of the group didn’t know what had happened until Ji Nancen and Qin Yun leaned in to see the images on the phone. Instantly, a wave of terror enveloped their world.

Ling Xi was standing all alone on a high-altitude terrace, looking as if she might fly away at any moment.

Qiao Boer couldn’t accept it; she was going insane.

Constant urging turned into pleading, and pain made her speak recklessly: “I can’t lose her, I can’t… why did you hide this from me… save her, save her…”

“Miss, please stay calm!” Chu Xi immediately prepared Qiao Boer’s medication, only to have it swiped away with a backhand. Qiao Boer gritted her teeth with absolute resolve: “If she wants to die, I will die with her!”

On the narrow ledge outside the railings of the hospital’s top floor, a thin figure stood on tiptoe with arms outstretched, swaying as if crossing a single-log bridge.

This terrifying spectacle of life and death had already lasted for over an hour. Ling Xi’s eyes were vacant; she didn’t know what she was doing.

Her pathologically racing nerves created a shifting, unpredictable world, where flashes of eye-straining grey, white, and black flickered through a kaleidoscope of colors.

Her brain was like a short-circuited program, unable to connect logical thoughts; her walking-corpse of a body had lost its last shred of cognitive ability.

Why was the sky red? Why was the ground white? Why did the dark mass of people below look like demons?

She murmured to herself in a daze: “The wind is so light, and I am so light… why won’t it take me away…”

Xiao Mo lunged forward wanting to climb over the railing, but he didn’t dare move recklessly. From tension, he felt like a string about to snap.

“Ling Xi, come down first. No matter what happened, you still have us. I beg you… don’t do anything foolish!” Xiao Mo’s anxious, trembling shouts were accompanied by Su Yunjin’s broken sobbing.

Ling Xi stopped in her tracks, leaning down to admire the suspended, alien scenery. If she just took one light leap, the torture of her illness would never catch her again.

A chilly wind swept by, fluttering her oversized hospital gown. Even though Xiao Mo pleaded behind her, she remained deaf and indifferent to it all.

In her fantasy world, a blink of an eye caused the scene to flash by.

At this moment, she suddenly felt as though she were standing atop a precipice. The crowd of onlookers below was dense and packed, eventually merging into a surging black tide, relentlessly battering the shore—and her irreparably damaged spirit.

Ling Xi slowly turned back to look at Xiao Mo. She gave a gentle smile to her two best friends. Her tone was so soft, yet it was unthinkably tragic: “If I step into the void, will I turn into a bird and fly into the dream I long for?”

“In my dream… Mom and Dad are still at home waiting for me to eat. Boer will come home with me… the four of us will have a simple dinner…”

“The fruit after the meal is watermelon, so sweet. There’s the sound of summer insects… no death… no pain… no silent goodbyes…”

Yes, where had Ling Xi’s “sunshine of the four seasons” gone? The world of mental chaos was empty.

To avoid triggering Ling Xi’s emotions, Xiao Mo didn’t dare mention her parents too much. Just as he stood there helplessly, the hurried sound of high heels echoed from behind.

“Boer!” “Miss!”

Amidst the gasps of the crowd, Qiao Boer fought through those trying to stop her and climbed over the railing. A stir rose from the crowd below.

“Ling Xi…”

Hearing the familiar voice, Ling Xi looked toward Qiao Boer with vacant eyes. She instinctively pulled a dazed, silly smile: “Wife…”

“Let’s go home, okay?” Qiao Boer’s exhausted face bore only the crimson flush of crying. She tried to appear relaxed, offering a desperate invitation.

Ling Xi’s head twitched, she didn’t understand: “Home? Where is my home?”

“Didn’t we agree to watch the sunrises and sunsets together? To have three meals a day together? That was your promise to me. How could you leave me behind? Let’s go home, okay?”

Ling Xi slowly crouched down. This movement startled Qiao Boer so much she froze; she had forgotten that she herself, wearing high heels, was also struggling on the edge of death.

“I don’t have a mom or dad anymore… I don’t have a home…” Ling Xi shook her head, murmuring to herself with her head tilted pitifully. Even in this state, she harbored no resentment toward Qiao Boer for hiding the truth from her.

“I—I will give you a perfect family. Let’s get married. If you want, we can have a sweet baby, raise a puppy, go traveling, eat delicious food, and live this life freely… Ling Xi…” Qiao Boer’s voice cracked, eventually dissolving into uncontrolled sobbing: “I beg you, don’t leave me behind…”

While the two were locked in this emotional tug-of-war, the rescue team finally arrived. Below them, a life-saving air cushion inflated like a white flower—blindingly bright yet appearing miniscule from such a height.

Hearing Qiao Boer cry brought a flicker of clarity to Ling Xi’s fractured mental world. She glanced down at Qiao Boer’s slender high heels, and a sense of suffocation and panic followed: “Don’t come over! Don’t come any closer! Stop trying to save me… I can’t be saved…”

“I won’t listen! I won’t! What gives you the right to just throw me away? Why are you being so irresponsible? We endured so much pain and were finally about to start a new life—how can you just leave me to live in agony alone?” Qiao Boer refused to accept Ling Xi’s weak rejection. She stubbornly stepped forward, inching closer.

“If we live, we live together. If we die… we die together!”

Ling Xi clutched her head in terror, screaming through heart-wrenching tears: “Qiao Boer, you’ve already done enough for me! It’s not worth it, it’s not worth it! Someone like me isn’t worth all this suffering for so many people!”

“You aren’t the one who’s wrong; I am! I should have been brave enough to break into your world and tell you directly that I love you! Instead, I deceived you under the guise of ‘protection.’ I’m the one who deserves to die—I should have died twenty years ago!”

In a shattered life, how can I use a body riddled with holes to warm someone as broken as you?

Ling Xi stood up and shook her head. She didn’t blame Qiao Boer. Her voice was soft and gentle: “Even if I were given another chance, I would still choose to save you, even knowing I would pay a tragic price. But I can’t forgive myself for causing my parents’ death… I just can’t…”

Ling Xi stood tall in the wind, her hair a mess, her life fragile and battered. A smile of liberation spread across her lips. She moved her mouth to speak, but the words “I love you” never made it out.

In the blink of an eye, she stopped struggling. With unwavering resolve, she stepped out into the void, letting her center of gravity shift as she threw her arms wide to embrace her final freedom.

Everyone held their breath, followed by gut-wrenching screams that greeted the lingering warmth of impending death.

“Ling Xi!” Qiao Boer’s voice tore as she screamed. She lunged forward, grabbing Ling Xi’s wrist and using every ounce of her strength to violently pull her back.

Driven by the momentum, Qiao Boer’s heel snapped. Losing her balance, she stumbled and began to fall backward. She flashed a pale, satisfied smile at Ling Xi: “This time, it’s my turn to save you…”

It turned out that the one who became the bird was Qiao Boer. She soared through a momentary flash of pain, yet even in her confusion, she had resolutely chosen to push Ling Xi toward the light.

Qiao Boer desperately gripped Ling Xi’s hand—just as Ling Xi had once reached through the cellar window to grab hers. After twenty long years, their souls and lives finally merged into a single act of redemption, their hands finally locked tight.

Qiao Boer was satisfied with this ending. Deeply, truly satisfied.

She had long since prepared herself to face death. But suddenly, her smile turned into one of pure horror. Her eyes widened as she shrieked hysterically: “No!!”

The moment Ling Xi was pulled back, she finally found the exit toward “life through death” within her collapsing mental world. With a clear consciousness, she looked into the abyss.

Seeing the woman she loved falling freely toward the bottom, Ling Xi didn’t hesitate. She threw herself into the air, her heart screaming: I love you—I love you so much I would trade my life for yours!

The crowd clinging to the railings could do nothing to save these two battered women. They were mad—everyone was goddamn mad!

Ling Xi struggled in mid-air, reaching out desperately to grab Qiao Boer.

Before the impact, before the breaking of bones and the blurring of flesh, she succeeded. She caught Qiao Boer’s hand, the sensation of those cold fingertips magnified infinitely.

The wind whipped Qiao Boer’s long hair as she wailed in agony: “Why!”

The sensation of the plunge combined with weightlessness. Let there be a rebirth that fears no death; let that cursed past die forever in the past!

Or rather, let us break together and bloom into magnificent, crimson flowers, so that from this moment on, no one can ever tear us apart.

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