My Clingy Fiancée Is Forcing Me to Marry Her Again - Chapter 26.1

Visiting Bai Shao in the Morning

Even though she was mentally prepared, Li Fangge was still startled. Her cousin looked like a plant that had long been dehydrated, her eyes hollow and vacant, her limbs weak and floating.

“Sis, what’s with the—”

Li Fangge didn’t finish her sentence before Bai Shao lunged forward, collapsing onto her. She sobbed loudly, like a little girl who had lost her most beloved toy.

Li Fangge wasn’t good at comforting people, nor did she particularly like it. She allowed her cousin to cry on her shoulder while enduring the smell of alcohol on her. No one who has been through a breakup, unless they have truly moved on, can maintain their composure on the day after the split. Her cousin was the one who initiated the breakup, but listening to her heart-wrenching cries, Li Fangge knew that no matter how many times this was, she still couldn’t let go of Guan Xiaoyan.

“Wuwuwu… Waawaawaa…” Compared to Guan Xiaoyu’s delicate, whimpering cries, Bai Shao’s were loud and booming. She didn’t care if she bothered the neighbors across the hall or deafened Li Fangge. Bai Shao cried for five or six minutes. Because Li Fangge remained unmoved—yes, she simply let her cousin sob on her shoulder without offering a single word of comfort—Bai Shao likely found it pointless, and her loud crying abruptly stopped.

When she pushed Li Fangge away, Li Fangge’s right hand subtly adjusted the collar of the shirt on her left shoulder. Bai Shao pretended not to notice the wet patch left by her tears. Without wiping her face, she said as if nothing had happened, “Come in.”

Li Fangge nodded, followed her cousin, who had turned her back, into the apartment, and closed the door behind her. In the living room, her gaze fell upon five or six empty wine bottles on the coffee table. She wasn’t sure if they were all from her cousin’s efforts last night.

Bai Shao pulled out a tissue, wiped her tears, and then unreservedly blew her nose. “I’m so tired, crying so hard is exhausting!” Her voice was somewhat hoarse from crying. She threw the tissue into the trash and looked at Li Fangge, “Do I look hideous right now?”

“Even with swollen eyes, you are still my beautiful Dajie (big sister)—” Li Fangge looked at her cousin but thought of Guan Xiaoyu, as Dajie was also her term of address for Bai Shao.

“Oh, stop humoring me!”

“Do you want to eat something?”

“At a time like this, do you think I can swallow anything?”

“Aren’t you tired from crying?” Earlier, after Guan Xiaoyu finished crying, she had declared she was hungry, leading Li Fangge to subconsciously assume her exhausted cousin would also want to eat.

“You wouldn’t understand how I feel right now.” Li Fangge admitted she had never been through a breakup. Bai Shao knew that the ‘Scummy A’ Li Fangge’s body’s previous occupant had never been serious with anyone, so the comment was a blatant personal attack: you won’t understand because you haven’t experienced it.

“I hate all humanity right now!”

“Don’t be like that.” Li Fangge felt her cousin wasn’t acting heartbroken so much as deranged, rambling for the sake of venting. “You willingly left with Guan Xiaoyan last night, and you were the one who broke up with her later. No one forced you to do either of those things, right?”

“That’s true, but now my heart is full of hatred, and I want to hate the whole world!” Bai Shao shouted unreasonably in her cry-hoarse voice.

“Wouldn’t that be—”

“Wouldn’t that be what?”

“Immature?”

“How dare you talk about maturity with me?”

“If you were mature, would you have slept with Guan Xiaoyu?”

Bai Shao maneuvered herself, slumping onto the sofa like a mollusk, her red and swollen eyes staring straight at the ceiling lamp. “I hate this chandelier.” Without waiting for Li Fangge to ask why, she explained on her own, “Because Guan Xiaoyan chose it.”

“With all your past breakups, did I miss out on a lot of this?” Li Fangge also sat down, turning her head to look at her crumpled cousin. Bai Shao ignored her teasing, continuing to stare intently at the chandelier—she lived in a duplex, the hollowed-out living room ceiling was very high, and the hanging crystal lamp, though ornate, was not overly complicated.

“Now, I want you to curse Guan Xiaoyan with me. Whatever I say, you repeat it!”

Li Fangge shrugged, noncommittal.

“Guan Xiaoyan, big jerk! Bastard! Coward! Selfish pig! Vile, shameless, immoral, faithless, despicable, thick-skinned, worse than a dog or a pig—” Bai Shao was practically screaming the curses; her voice was terrifyingly loud. It was clear that her hoarse shouts contained more frustration and indignation than pure hatred.

“Your turn. The louder the better. Use your beautiful voice to curse this faithless, stinking woman for your sister!”

Bai Shao seemed to have lost her mind. Li Fangge suddenly realized that perhaps she wasn’t fully sober yet.

“Since you’ve had a fifth breakup, you’ll have a next time to start over.” Li Fangge’s voice was calm, pleasant to the ear, and persuasive.

Bai Shao suddenly quieted down. “I’m tired. I don’t think I have the strength to start over again. Do you know why I broke up with her last night?”

“Before that, I’d like to hear why you went to Fu sheng Ruo Meng A Fleeting Dream last night.”

“It was because—” Bai Shao braced herself and sat up straight. “Guan Xiaoyan suddenly called and said she missed me and wanted to see me. We had an argument, and I told her I wouldn’t see her again unless she dared to hold my hand in public and dared to tell the world I was her girlfriend. But do you know? Before, she would at least explain why she couldn’t, but yesterday, she was silent.”

“Yet, last night when she asked you to leave with her, you still—” Li Fangge stopped mid-sentence. The reason was obvious: Bai Shao wanted more, but Guan Xiaoyan couldn’t give it. She changed the subject: “Why doesn’t she dare?”

“Why don’t you dare to accept Guan Xiaoyu?”

“Sis, do you really want to hurt each other?”

Bai Shao lowered her head. “Let love die! Let Guan Xiaoyan die. I’ll have peace then.”

Li Fangge had given up on reasoning with someone whose rationality was drowned in alcohol.

“Hege, do you want to know why I couldn’t refuse her?—”

“I think I’ll go make you something to eat.” Li Fangge stood up.

“Don’t go.” Bai Shao looked up, tears welling up again. Her face looked even more devastated now. “If you’ve ever truly loved someone, you’ll understand why I went with her.”

“If you went with her, why break up?” Breaking up easily will quickly burn out both your passion and hers—Li Fangge did not say this out loud. She thought Bai Shao was simply exhausted and tired of the secret relationship, so her ‘breakup’ might just be a plea for a temporary rest. The pattern of love is not singular; the way lovers interact and protect themselves may vary from person to person.

“After we slept together, do you know what she said?”

“Sis, why don’t you just take some time off? Didn’t you say you were tired?” Li Fangge knew that the reason Bai Shao was so miserable was precisely that she didn’t want to take time off; she wanted more. Advising her this way was pointless.

“She said, ‘We have no future.'” Bai Shao’s voice turned incredibly bleak, so bleak that it sounded as if this breakup was truly the final end for her and Guan Xiaoyan.

“How do you feel about that problem, and how did you respond to her?” Li Fangge asked.

She had also said, “We have no future,” to Guan Xiaoyu. Remembering the Delicate Flower’s determined and confident reply, “If there is no future, then let’s create one,” a strange feeling flashed in her heart. At the time, she hadn’t understood how Guan Xiaoyu felt hearing her say, “We have no future together.” But now, seeing her cousin so heartbroken, Li Fangge understood. In that moment, Guan Xiaoyu disregarded the hurt and the sadness. She, who was so prone to tears and so delicate, should have been heartbroken to hear those words, yet she perfectly hid her broken heart. To give herself confidence in their engagement, she chose to be strong—

“She’s said that too many times—” Bai Shao’s words interrupted Li Fangge’s thoughts. “You know, I don’t like to force things, and I don’t particularly like to strive. At first, the first time she told me that, I would tell her we could work on it together, but now, I’m truly tired. Don’t let me crying like an idiot fool you; last night’s breakup was actually quite calm. We even said ‘take care’ when we parted.

“To hell with ‘take care.’ I want someone to disappear from Ludu. Either she disappears or I do—”

“Is it necessary to go to that extreme?”

“I’ve endured too much for her. Hege, do you know? A person’s most precious time is the decade between sixteen or seventeen and twenty-six or twenty-seven. I’ve spent all that time breaking up and getting back together with Guan Xiaoyan. When we were happy, it was truly happy, but the suffering was also truly painful. This time, I want a different way. There really won’t be a next time to start over.”

“Is that so?” Li Fangge thought that the so-called most precious time varied from person to person; not every life would bloom in that specific decade. But she clearly sensed the despair in her cousin’s heart.

“Thank you for coming to see me.”

“What are you saying? There’s no need for formalities between us.”

“I really seem to be hungry. Let’s go out and get something to eat. I’ve hardly eaten anything since Guan Xiaoyan called yesterday afternoon.”

“Looking like that—” Bai Shao’s eyes were red and swollen, and her dark circles were terrible. She also wasn’t wearing her wig. Li Fangge said, “What’s in the fridge? I’ll make you something.”

“Since when do you cook?”

“Huh?” Oh right, the Scummy A never cooked. As for Li Fangge, she learned to live independently during the period after falling out with her father and before becoming famous.

“Huh what?”

“Aren’t there recipes online?”

“You might dare to make it, but I wouldn’t dare to eat it.”

“Don’t worry, I guarantee it’s edible.” Li Fangge actually quite enjoyed cooking. The aroma of food could relieve the fatigue in her heart: when she was stressed, when she was deliberately slandered, when she couldn’t sleep, when she missed her deceased grandmother… In the kitchen, making food she liked and smelling the distinctive, reassuring aroma of food, she would generally calm down.

“It’s better if you don’t make any guarantees.”

“I’ll make your favorite fruit porridge.”

…

Fruit porridge was Li Fangge’s specialty, and the recipe was simple. As a result, Bai Shao ate two large bowls; she was genuinely hungry.

“I didn’t expect you to be so good at making porridge, besides playing the piano.”

“Sis, I actually know how to do a lot of things, I just never told you before.”

“Boasting!”

Bai Shao looked much better after a shower, and the hot porridge had energized her.

“Do you want to take a nap?” Li Fangge saw that her complexion was still poor and she clearly needed rest.

“I probably won’t be able to sleep, but I do need to lie down.”

“Okay, you sleep. I want to go back home.”

“Why? Acting as if someone is waiting for you at home.”