Criticizing Love - Chapter 33

Chapter 33

Perhaps even Gu Nianyin herself had forgotten that when She Ning tossed the butterfly specimen down at her feet, Lin Xi hadn’t left yet.

The woman’s long, slender silhouette unilaterally shrouded the young girl’s thin frame, her interrogation coming ruthlessly.

Lin Xi had just turned her bicycle around when she saw She Ning intercepting Gu Nianyin outside the door, tossing something to her.

The lighting in the courtyard was dim, but even so, Lin Xi could still see that woman’s cold eyebrows and eyes.

If Gu Nianyin’s coldness was merely aloof self-restraint, then the chill emitted by this woman carried a kind of oppressive weight.

Guilt over doing something wrong was perfectly applicable to Lin Xi right now. Her first reaction was to think that her affairs with Gu Nianyin had been discovered by the woman.

So her gaze was tense, and even her heartbeat began to quicken.

The evening was quiet, so quiet that she could hear the rhythm of her heart beating faster and faster.

This was the closest she had ever been to taking revenge on Lin Deyuan.

Her heart was filled with astonishment and surprise, tense and lingering, but the only thing missing was pleasure.

The young girl’s dense, long eyelashes blinked and lowered. Usually one to take responsibility for her own actions, she actually developed a mindset of not daring to face it.

Right at this time, a gust of wind swept face-first toward her.

The thing thrown onto the ground was exceptionally light, flying up the moment the wind swirled.

Withered and broken, it flickered in the darkness with deep indigo light spots.

Lin Xi’s gaze froze abruptly.

She recognized this thing. It was the wing of a Menelaus blue morpho.

It was the wing of the butterfly that Gu Nianyin liked.

In the deep night, amidst the sound of the wind, there was the faint sensation of a sigh of relief.

—The reason that woman didn’t wait for Gu Nianyin to enter the house but interrogated her at the doorway wasn’t because she discovered her daughter going out to play with Lin Deyuan’s daughter, but because she discovered the butterfly specimens hidden at home.

The butterfly wings fluttering in the air were like shattered dignity. Each time they reflected a bright spot, it was exceptionally piercing to the eye.

That woman didn’t allow Gu Nianyin to do these things, being absolutely furious, not caring about the young girl’s self-esteem as she casually smashed and ruined her things on the ground.

There were many kinds of butterflies in nature; Gu Nianyin’s collection couldn’t possibly consist of only this one.

Looking at that woman’s actions just now, there was a high probability that she had thrown away the other butterflies as well.

The relief from letting her mind ease didn’t last very long before a sense of suffocation immediately rushed over her face afterward.

Lin Xi’s gaze fixed tightly on the woman in front of Gu Nianyin, her hands also gripping tightly.

For a moment, she really wanted to rush forward and question that woman thoroughly, just like how Lin Deyuan used to want to manipulate her in the past.

But her usually impulsive feet seemed to have grown roots. Though she moved them quite a few times, she still stood in place.

A sense of rationality born from nowhere held Lin Xi back, forcing her to become clear-headed and sensible.

She knew that doing this would not only be entirely unbeneficial to Gu Nianyin, but it would also make Gu Nianyin’s situation even worse.

This woman was different from Lin Deyuan.

And Gu Nianyin wasn’t her.

In the cold wind, Gu Nianyin remained silent, her thin silhouette leaking a touch of stubbornness.

She stood at the entrance of the courtyard just like that. The woman’s voice, along with the cool wind of this night, blew onto her body, unable to set off any ripples in the dead water, silent to the point of making one feel despair.

It was also at that exact moment that the understanding Lin Xi had constructed toward Gu Nianyin in the past collapsed.

It turned out that Gu Nianyin wasn’t like what she had imagined either—getting wind when she wanted wind, and rain when she wanted rain.

She was a princess in a glass house, she was a dodder flower.

Yet at the same time, she was also someone forcibly plucked from a high ridge and locked away.

A flower without freedom.

The cold wind urged people along. Not knowing whether she still possessed a sliver of maternal love and pity toward Gu Nianyin, the woman didn’t keep her standing in this cold wind for long.

She gathered the coat draped over her outside, her dignity shaking in the wind, and after saying something more to Gu Nianyin from high above, she took her back inside.

The light in front of the villa door turned on and then dimmed. Lin Xi stood in the shadow. She didn’t know if what she felt right now was powerlessness, but no matter how she tightened her five fingers, the only thing she held onto was a clump of cold air.

—She ought to do something for Gu Nianyin.

The thought appeared suddenly in Lin Xi’s mind, and this time she didn’t hesitate and deny it like she used to in the past.

Her dark baseness and her sun-facing righteousness reached a rare alignment at this exact moment—even if it meant she owed Gu Nianyin.

The moonlight stretched a person’s shadow very long, slanting into the trash sorting area behind the villa.

Lin Xi had lived here for nearly ten years. Where the household master’s discarded items would be temporarily placed by the servants was something she knew very clearly.

As expected, after she turned over several bags of trash, a butterfly exposed its wings to her.

That delicate frame had been violently squeezed and stacked by someone, and the glass had shattered in several places.

Shattered then shattered, aren’t there still parts that aren’t shattered?

Besides, Gu Nianyin could definitely fix it.

Holding onto such a thought, Lin Xi placed that entire box of things onto her bicycle, then tidied herself up, bringing it before Gu Nianyin: “Take a look, everything I could salvage, I salvaged back.”

Gu Nianyin found it hard to believe, walking over to these things.

The things she didn’t care about had been found back by Lin Xi.

She Ning was cold-hearted. When she had the servants throw these things away, they had already been intentionally damaged, so the specimens salvaged back were basically all shattered.

That tilted glass sliced across Gu Nianyin’s line of sight. The case that originally should have played a protective role had squeezed and destroyed the butterfly specimens instead.

Gu Nianyin watched silently. The moment her hand touched the shattered wings of the butterfly, it felt as though this time the lepidopteran fragments pricked with pain.

It was pure pain.

She stood before these things just like that, her originally dried up, calm heart back-flooded with a water source.

Aching, suffocating, unable to struggle free, she suddenly discovered that she actually cared about these things very much.

Lin Xi had asked her many times just now, telling her not to be unhappy, and she had answered her that she wasn’t unhappy.

But she was merely suppressing herself, using clarity to tell herself that being unhappy was of no use either. Before she did these things, she understood that She Ning would find out sooner or later.

Gu Nianyin clearly knew their ultimate fate, clearly letting herself rush toward a pursuit destined to have no result, clearly telling herself not to be sad for them.

She understood everything perfectly, yet she alone couldn’t see her own feelings and thoughts.

But Lin Xi helped her remove the hand that was playing the ostrich.

The heavy sinking sound that rang out as the shattered glass frame was moved aside was the sound of a butterfly dragging its broken wings to struggle.

It was also her weeping.

The rebellious bone that had been pressed down and hidden during that deep winter night struggled restlessly inside Gu Nianyin’s bones once more. Over these years, the submissive obedience she had named biding her time was bit by bit starting to turn into rebellion.

Restless and about to move.

“But aren’t some of them completely ruined?” Lin Xi was an outsider to this; seeing Gu Nianyin’s gaze linger on them for a long time, she couldn’t help but ask.

Gu Nianyin nodded her head, letting out a very quiet “Mm.”

This voice was different from usual. Listening to it, Lin Xi felt highly uncomfortable in her heart, subsequently asking Gu Nianyin again: “Then can they be repaired?”

As the words fell, Gu Nianyin shook her head.

Remaining silent, she reached her hand over to take these things, her cold voice leaking a deep tone: “Probably, they can only be thrown away…”

These words were no different from a death notice.

Lin Xi watched from the side, her heart unable to bear it.

Unable to bear it for the butterflies, unable to bear it for Gu Nianyin.

She was sad, she could tell.

Lin Xi paused slightly, saying to Gu Nianyin: “I have a proposal that might not be very professional.”

Gu Nianyin’s expression was serious as she looked toward Lin Xi: “Go ahead.”

“I saw in a video before that the creator used broken wings to piece together a massive butterfly.”

“Of these butterfly specimens of yours, can you also pick out some good and complete ones to piece together into a picture?”

As Lin Xi spoke, she looked at Gu Nianyin tentatively.

Gu Nianyin’s expression froze. Looking at these shattered wings, she nodded in agreement with Lin Xi’s words: “It is indeed possible.”

“Then, do you want to do it?” Lin Xi asked next.

She knew that woman’s harshness, subsequently expressing: “If you want to think about it, just do it here at my place. There is no one at my place, you can come anytime.”

“You don’t find me disturbing you?” Gu Nianyin seemed somewhat hesitant.

“If you came every single day, of course that wouldn’t do.” Lin Xi said, “Only on weekends.”

Subsequently realizing she still had to go to Xing Xiu’s place, she added: “And it’s for half a day.”

Thinking about it, she stated it even more concretely and accurately: “Sunday afternoons, open from 2:00 to 4:30.”

Listening to the time in Lin Xi’s mouth changing back and forth before finally landing on an accurate point in time, Gu Nianyin, for some reason, hooked her lips.

The sun finally came out. The haze that had hung in the young girl’s eyes, making things gloomy all morning, was gradually dispelled under the shining of the sunlight.

Gu Nianyin nodded her head, bringing politeness and a smile to say to Lin Xi: “I will be disturbing you on weekends from now on.”

“As long as you stop being stubborn with your mouth, it’ll be fine.” Lin Xi leaned against the door to tease her.

Looking at Gu Nianyin’s finally improved mood, and considering she had already taken her to skip class anyway, she felt making an exception didn’t matter much either, so she said: “There, today is a trial opening. You can do it for as long as you want before going to school this afternoon.”

“I’ll be in the living room, look for me if you need anything.” As Lin Xi spoke, she tilted her chin to give Gu Nianyin an indication.

“Okay.” Gu Nianyin nodded her head, not proactively closing the door that allowed a view into the living room.

The sun flooded the small room with brightness and warmth. The butterflies had been rescued from a world-ending catastrophe last night.

Gu Nianyin unhurriedly sorted the butterflies according to their different degrees of damage, her brain divided in attention as memories surged.

“Alright, stop being unhappy, I’ve already beaten away that annoying dead fatso!”

The little girl’s childish voice carrying a few fractions of pride traveled out from beneath the sunlight, her rolled-up sleeves exposing arms that were still stained with a bit of blood.

But it wasn’t hers.

Gu Nianyin, who was still studying in elementary school, had red eyes, looking at the corpse of the butterfly in the grass without saying a single word.

The more she didn’t say a single word like this, the more that little girl became both anxious and angry.

She didn’t seem to understand why this person wanted to be like this, yet she truly cared as well, subsequently expressing: “Oh my, isn’t it just a butterfly, don’t be like this, about to cry but not crying, alright!”

“…I’ll just lure another one over for you! Don’t be like this!”

Saying this, the little girl hurriedly picked up the simple prop used for attracting butterflies that had been thrown on the ground, waving it around within the clusters of flowers.

That white paper made into the shape of a butterfly darted and fluttered about, and very soon a butterfly fell for the trick.

The little girl’s patience that had just been worn down instantly turned into excitement. Waving the prop, she walked toward Gu Nianyin’s side, turning her head and being unable to wait to shout to her: “Hey, look quick, a butterfly is coming!”

The sunlight dried the colors clean, spreading a blanket of green within Gu Nianyin’s line of sight.

Meanwhile, the white butterfly waved its tiny wings to land amidst the green, lingering and attracting, only to buy a smile from someone.

Clean, pure white.

Possessing the most beautiful wings illusioned out by the sunlight.

Later on, when Gu Nianyin was consulting reference materials, she accidentally read a British proverb.

She felt it fit her state of mind back then very well.

“Butterflies in my stomach.”

—My stomach has butterflies.