Transmigrated as the CEO's Top-Tier Stand-in - Chapter 54

Chapter 54

Before Meng Rendong could formulate the correct way to answer this question, Ji Yu’s next fatal follow-up arrived:

“…Do you have any news about her?”

Meng Rendong remained silent.

Ji Yu, however, had already found the answer she needed in this brief silence. She nudged herself up slightly from the cot, pulling the blanket down, as if she were struggling to get up. All the after-effects of choking on the water were suppressed; all that remained in her mind was that one person.

Hearing the movement from the bed, Meng Rendong quickly turned around. Seeing Ji Yu’s desperate look—as if she would rush there without hesitation, even if it was at the ends of the earth, if Meng Rendong gave her the address—her emotions became overwhelmingly complex.

It was strange; she actually felt a touch of jealousy towards her past self from a few years ago.

“That’s enough—”

Meng Rendong raised her hand and gently pressed Ji Yu’s shoulder back down. Her long, straight eyelashes lowered, concealing the turmoil in her dark eyes. Meng Rendong’s jaw tightened, but she still let the truth slip out:

“Yes, I found your friend.”

Ji Yu no longer maintained her previous distance and avoidance. She grabbed Meng Rendong’s wrist, and an unprecedented hope blossomed in her peach-blossom eyes. That hope was like a flash of light suddenly rising into the night sky, dispelling the darkness, almost making her face look unusually radiant and captivating.

In the past four years, Ji Yu’s quietness, compliance, and resigned acceptance had given Meng Rendong a habitual impression, making this sudden appearance of Ji Yu feel both strange and familiar.

Following closely was a wave of heartache.

After learning the entire truth, Meng Rendong could no longer simply feel dissatisfaction or jealousy when looking at Ji Yu, whose state of mind and temperament were so influenced by the matter of “Si Tian”…

She felt profound distress.

Ji Yu didn’t remember anything before the age of sixteen. So, when she woke up in the hospital after drowning, she was in a foreign world, unable to feel the love given by family or friends. She was like a rootless, soil-less duckweed, forced to cling tightly to whatever she could find, even the edge of a cliff, whenever the wind blew.

“Si Tian,” in the three years following Ji Yu’s amnesia, played an overly important role in her life.

Regardless of whether the past Meng Rendong was intentional or not, unbeknownst to both of them, Ji Yu had formed a deep dependence on her. And because of “Si Tian’s” subsequent death, that person left a lasting, significant mark on Ji Yu’s heart. No matter who Ji Yu met later or what stories unfolded, she would never forget her.

But she wasn’t supposed to be like this.

If she hadn’t gone to that resort with her friends when she was sixteen, if she hadn’t insisted on sitting by the lake to fish with her sister on that hot afternoon, what kind of person would she have grown up to be today?

…Alas, there were no ifs.

Meng Rendong could only vaguely envision the spirited, confident Chu Jianyu at twenty-three, but that kind of confident, vibrant girl had drowned by the side of the homestay lake when she was sixteen.

The one who survived became Ji Yu.

Amnesia inevitably leaves an indelible mark. Due to the sixteen years of memory loss, Ji Yu was mostly silent when she woke up in the hospital. Meng Rendong, in order to coax her into speaking, essentially transformed herself from a taciturn person into a chatterbox.

Initially, Ji Yu was indifferent to the cold, deadpan jokes Meng Rendong read from the internet. Only very occasionally, when listening to Meng Rendong subtly recount her own life story, would she show a slight emotional response. But Meng Rendong didn’t want to see her always sitting there like a silent statue most of the time.

At that time, Meng Rendong was unwilling to watch the light that once illuminated her extinguish itself. So, watching the fading daylight, she racked her brain, trying to restart the dawn. She tried building fires, catching fireflies, and even wanted to artificially create a sun…

Ji Yu thought that “Si Tian” also emitted light.

In fact, she didn’t.

It was like humans seeing the sun and then the moon, assuming they were equal rivals in the sky, one governing the day and the other controlling the night. However, the bright moonlight that lit up the night sky was merely the sun’s light that had shined upon it billions of light-years ago.

Chu Jianyu was the sun high in the sky, and Meng Rendong was only the moon.

Later, Ji Yu felt the residual warmth from her, believing it to be the brightest and warmest light in the world. In reality, it was only a small part of the mark that Chu Jianyu had left on Meng Rendong’s life.

And Meng Rendong looked at this little sun in front of her, who had forgotten how to shine. The brilliance of the past Chu Jianyu only remained in her memory and could not be retrieved, yet she felt no regret, only heartache.

She actually didn’t expect Ji Yu to turn back into Chu Jianyu.

As long as this person could live safely and happily, no matter which world she was in, it would be enough…

But why did someone always try to hurt her, repeatedly?

Once certain words were spoken, the shackles in her heart unlocked, giving her a sense of relief, allowing her to face whatever happened next with composure.

Ji Yu held Meng Rendong’s wrist. Too many unspoken words struggled on her lips, yet the first thing she finally uttered was:

“…Is she doing alright?”

But as soon as the words left her mouth, Ji Yu, as always demanding of herself, felt it was inappropriate. What if Meng Rendong had only incidentally learned about Si Tian’s current situation? Wouldn’t she have asked for nothing?

Moreover, she hadn’t intended to let Meng Rendong help her find Si Tian’s news before. Now, this loss of composure seemed to violate her own principles.

Ji Yu gradually calmed down. As she let go, she realized that she had gripped Meng Rendong’s wrist so hard that the bone area was red. The wrist, already slender, had a round joint where the plain white skin couldn’t conceal it, protruding slightly, looking even thinner than before, making the redness even more obvious.

She belatedly wanted to compensate for something, but Meng Rendong’s answer followed right at that moment:

“…She’s alright.”

Ji Yu suddenly looked up, thinking she had misheard. Meng Rendong stared into her eyes, standing over her by the bed, but having deliberately restrained her imposing aura in front of Ji Yu, her attitude was unusually calm.

She repeated her answer again.

Only then did Ji Yu realize that the person she had worked so hard to find and attempted to reunite with for so long had been found by Meng Rendong first.

A blockage formed in Ji Yu’s heart, though she couldn’t pinpoint the reason. Although she had received news of Si Tian, hearing it from Meng Rendong’s mouth made the situation feel somehow wrong…

Was it because the after-effects of her drowning hadn’t subsided yet?

She looked at Meng Rendong’s eyes with a hint of inquiry. As their eyes met, her mind was dull, as if stirring up a thick paste. Her instinct told her that Meng Rendong’s reaction was too abnormal, but reason was slow to kick in. She felt like a machine that was only half wound up, half-awake and half-sinking.

After a long pause, Ji Yu replied stiffly: “T-That’s good then.”

Meng Rendong, however, guessed her intention.

As if wanting to see this person’s thoughts more clearly to make a judgment, Meng Rendong propped one hand on the edge of the already narrow, hard bed. As she leaned in, the familiar, light scent of Si Tian’s perfume wafted into Ji Yu’s nose, giving her a sensory rebirth from the nearly anesthetic smell of chlorine in the pool.

In the imperceptibly reduced distance, Ji Yu heard Meng Rendong’s naturally cool voice trickle into her ears:

“You want to find her?”

Ji Yu hadn’t wanted to expose her intentions in front of this person.

But perhaps some water had also entered her brain, or perhaps she had been searching for Si Tian for too long, and the several near-misses had made her unable to control her emotions any longer. Like a fallen leaf stubbornly seeking its roots, Ji Yu could no longer control her thoughts, nodding very slightly. Even with such a small movement, Meng Rendong noticed it.

The next moment.

Ji Yu heard a sound from Meng Rendong that was close to a sigh.

She fluttered her eyelids, meeting Meng Rendong’s gaze at close range, seeing this slightly sharp-featured face so close to her, their breaths almost intertwining.

But Meng Rendong was the one who pulled back slightly first.

“Are you sure you want to see her? I’m afraid you’ll regret it.”

Ji Yu heard her say this.

This time, the anomaly in Meng Rendong’s words was even harder for Ji Yu to ignore.

It seemed as though Meng Rendong anticipated that this meeting between her and Si Tian… would lead to something bad, something that would surely make her regret it.

Yet Meng Rendong had clearly said that Si Tian was doing alright—

So what else was there that should make Ji Yu hesitate?

Ji Yu suppressed the jumbled worries in her mind, barely maintaining her composure, and spoke to Meng Rendong again with her husky, slightly painful voice:

“What do you mean by that, CEO Meng?”

Meng Rendong couldn’t explain in more detail. She diverted her attention, as if no longer dwelling on Ji Yu’s potential reaction upon learning the truth. Instead, she reached out and lightly touched Ji Yu’s neck, asking: “Does it hurt a lot? Will hot water irritate it? I’ll ask the doctor here if there’s any other medicine.”

But Ji Yu was unwilling to let her turn away so easily after bringing up the topic she cared about most.

It felt as if Meng Rendong and Si Tian had reached some agreement, and she was the only one kept in the dark.

This thought made Ji Yu feel a little panicked.

She called out to the person who was about to leave again:

“Meng Rendong.”

Although she no longer used the professional title, Meng Rendong heard something even colder than “CEO Meng” in this address, though she wasn’t sure if it was just her imagination.

She prolonged her departure as Ji Yu wished.

Then, looking at the snow-white sheets covering Ji Yu, she inexplicably thought of the long white cloth that had covered Chu Jianyu seven years ago. She realized she genuinely disliked this color.

It was too much of an eyesore.

But she didn’t show it, only pursed her lips. After a long moment, she whispered:

“Ji Yu.”

“This is the last time I will ask you this question. In the past four years, was there ever a moment when you loved me?”

Ji Yu was stumped by the question.

The blank silence once again filled the room.

She instinctively looked away, toward the floor beneath the bed, noticing a crack in the old tile. The crack was crooked and winding, yet it spoiled the overall look of the tile.

Meng Rendong heard her say: “What is the point of asking this question now? I thought you already knew the answer.”

As expected.

A somewhat helpless, bitter smile appeared on Meng Rendong’s lips.

She said: “Yes.”

She had known the answer for a long time.

In the past four years, Ji Yu had never loved her, nor harbored any affection. Her behavior had been too awful, so much so that no one who was once familiar with her could argue on her behalf after hearing the story of those four years.

But precisely because of this.

Meng Rendong thought.

After learning the truth, what complex emotions would Ji Yu have towards her? Would it be love or hate? Or disgust, never wanting to see her again?

She sighed again.

Then, she spoke: “After the next public performance, the winner will get a chance to film an outside variety show. It’s a travel-themed variety show, where you can interact with ordinary people and will be allowed to use your phone—”

“If you can secure that spot, the production team won’t be able to restrict your movements anymore.”

“I will notify her then, and arrange for you to meet.”

Facing Ji Yu’s suspicious and confused gaze, Meng Rendong smiled again. She raised her hand, intending to touch her face, but pulled it back under Ji Yu’s watchful eye. She said to Ji Yu:

“…From now on, you can dislike me, hate me, whatever you want.”

“I’ve realized that my only hope for you is that you remain safe. As long as you are never in danger again, I will give you whatever you want.”

I used to want to regain your love, resolve the misunderstanding between us, and laboriously conceal or subtly coax you into accepting me. But now I realize, I only want you to be safe and live well.

Whether you love me or not, it no longer matters.

As long as I love you, it is enough.

Meng Rendong silently added this final sentiment in her heart.

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