SABA Chapter 59

Chapter 59: Who is that person? What am I…

Chapter 59: Who is that person? What am I…

When Huo Shen arrived at Rubber Soul bar, Jiang Tiao was completely drunk. He stood on the stage, hogging the lead singer’s microphone and singing with all his might: “I love you deeply, but you love a stupid idiot. This stupid idiot doesn’t love you, yet you still knit him sweaters.” [Note 1]

Chu Yanhao stood below the stage with his arms crossed, his eyes twitching. Around him were staff members who had been forced to become audience members but were now getting more and more into it, some even starting to sing along tearfully.

Chu Yanhao didn’t want to recall the process from when Jiang Tiao, drunk, insisted on singing on stage, to when he cleared the venue and, to prevent his store from being trashed, had to call all the staff to be his audience and support Jiang Tiao.

Wearily, he handed Jiang Tiao over to Huo Shen. Amidst Jiang Tiao’s fierce protests, he called several cars and sent home the staff members who were crying their hearts out due to the emotionally resonant song.

Jiang Tiao was furious. He hadn’t finished singing! Chu Yanhao, that unfilial son, had driven away his audience!

Huo Shen stood below the stage, looking at Jiang Tiao, who was the focus of the stage lights. He felt that Jiang Tiao had lost a bit more weight in just over ten days.

“Do you still want to sing?” Huo Shen’s voice was very gentle.

“Yes,” Jiang Tiao said, his hand resting on the microphone, looking a little wronged. “But the band members are all gone.”

Huo Shen walked onto the stage and sat in front of the electronic keyboard, with a hint of indulgence and tenderness. “What do you want to sing?”

Jiang Tiao almost burst into tears. Ever since that night, he hadn’t seen such an expression on Huo Shen’s face in a long time. He lowered his eyes. “I want to sing ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’.”

“Okay,” Huo Shen took out his phone, found the sheet music, and placed it on the music stand. The jumping and unrestrained melody flowed from his slender fingertips.

Jiang Tiao listened quietly, holding the microphone, but didn’t sing a single word.

Since you took your love away…

You abandoned me, leaving only daydreaming life to accompany me. I once enjoyed all the beauty of life because you were by my side. Nothing can erase my sorrow, except for you… [Note 2]

“Nothing Compares 2 U,” unlike other popular songs on the theme of “unrequited love,” has a bright and cheerful tune, like a carnival of self-healing.

After the song, Huo Shen looked at Jiang Tiao good-naturedly, seemingly unbothered that the person who insisted on singing didn’t open his mouth once during the entire song.

“What else do you want to sing?”

Jiang Tiao’s heart felt as if it were being grasped. He looked at Huo Shen, his eyes filled with unspoken bitterness and subtle obsession. “What do you want to hear?”

Huo Shen thought for a moment, his fingertips falling on the black and white keys, and a soft, deep chord progression flowed out. Jiang Tiao immediately recognized it as “Someone You Loved.”

Someone you loved, those important presences that are lost or no longer belong to one’s life.

This song was familiar, and the suppressed yet restrained lyrics echoed uncontrollably in Jiang Tiao’s mind with the melody.

I’m going under and this time I fear there’s no one to save me…

I want to sink and fall, but I fear there is no one to save me. This love, which is win or lose, is gradually making me lose my mind. I was defenseless, and your departure caught me off guard… [Note 3]

The veins on Jiang Tiao’s temples throbbed, and he felt like his lungs were about to explode with anger.

He felt as if his heart were being flooded with who knew how many liters of bile, so bitter that his blood was blocked, and every blood vessel ached.

He kicked the power cord of the electronic keyboard and fiercely grabbed Huo Shen’s clothes. His eyes were red, and he looked fierce, as if he wanted to tear Huo Shen apart and devour him.

Just as Huo Shen thought a violent outburst was about to be fueled by alcohol… a tear suddenly fell from Jiang Tiao’s fierce eyes.

Huo Shen’s heart was pierced.

Jiang Tiao seemed to realize it himself, quickly turned away, and wiped his face haphazardly. The sudden commotion accelerated the metabolism of alcohol, and the world seemed to be spinning. One tear followed another, and no matter how much he wiped his tears away, they wouldn’t stop. The dizziness, coupled with the great shame of making a fool of himself, made him bury his face in his hands and squat down in frustration and depression.

Jiang Tiao’s tears were like a dense, fine net, tightly gripping Huo Shen’s heart, causing him pain and making it difficult to breathe. He suddenly felt that he had gone too far and no longer wanted to push Jiang Tiao.

He squatted in front of Jiang Tiao, pulled away Jiang Tiao’s hand, and gently wiped away the tears clinging to his eyelashes with his thumb.

Jiang Tiao’s eyelashes trembled, brushing against Huo Shen’s fingertips like feathers sweeping across his heart. Jiang Tiao’s voice, still carrying the muffled nasal tone after crying, sounded dull and muffled, “Don’t ignore me anymore, okay? It really makes me feel terrible.”

Huo Shen said earnestly, “I’m not ignoring you.”

Jiang Tiao accused him with all the grievance in his heart, “You are.”

He hadn’t contacted Huo Shen during this period, and Huo Shen had never proactively contacted him. Even when he initiated contact, their conversations would quickly run out of things to say. Since childhood, he and Huo Shen had never been so outwardly harmonious but inwardly distant.

“Don’t think I can’t see it, you’re doing it on purpose.”

Huo Shen really wanted to say that this didn’t count as ignoring him, but seeing Jiang Tiao’s red eyes, he sighed and gave in without any bottom line. “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.”

If someone had to suffer in this relationship, then let him suffer. As he endured the pain, people would become numb, and their threshold for enduring pain would naturally increase.

A drunk person’s thoughts couldn’t be judged by common sense, and Jiang Tiao wasn’t appeased by Huo Shen’s words. His eyes were as red as a rabbit’s, and he stubbornly looked at Huo Shen, “Who is that person? What am I lacking compared to him?”

Huo Shen painstakingly pulled Jiang Tiao up from the ground, half-carrying him, and stuffed him into the car. He gave up in exasperation. “There’s nothing you lack compared to him. You are both my ancestors.”

Jiang Tiao sat cross-legged in the passenger seat, with his arms crossed, very displeased with Huo Shen’s words.

He actually compared him to someone else? And put them on the same level! And what did he mean by “you are my ancestor”?

“You are my ancestor!”

Huo Shen didn’t intend to argue with a drunk person about who was whose ancestor, a rebellious statement. He was afraid that Jiang’s father would cross the Pacific to beat him.

Jiang Tiao wasn’t as satisfied as he expected without getting the expected affirmation. He looked at Huo Shen’s profile as he drove quietly, his high nose bridge, his sharp jawline leading to his long neck, his prominent Adam’s apple, catching the hazy neon lights, casting a sexy and alluring silhouette.

Huo Shen reached over to turn Jiang Tiao’s head back, blocking his gaze, which seemed to hold warmth. “Don’t look at me like that, it affects my driving.”

Hmph, as if that were true. Jiang Tiao pushed Huo Shen’s hand away. Don’t think he didn’t see it; Huo Shen had turned on the autopilot as soon as he got in the car.

“What were you thinking just now? You were lost in thought.”

Huo Shen was silent for a moment. “I remembered when you were little, you took a cold shower in the freezing weather to give yourself a fever so that I wouldn’t have to live at my uncle’s house anymore.”

Jiang Tiao hadn’t expected Huo Shen to be thinking about this.

After Huo Shen moved into the Jiang family, his uncle, to force him to return home, deliberately spread rumors in the business circle that Jiang’s father and mother wanted to use Huo Shen to seize the Huo family’s assets. Huo Shen, unwilling to drag the Jiang family down with him, compromised after his uncles and aunts visited several times to “reason” with him and cry and make a scene, and returned with his uncle.

Jiang Tiao naturally refused. The intentions of the Huo family relatives were obvious to anyone. He couldn’t imagine what would happen to Huo Shen if he were taken back by them. He immediately threw a tantrum and got into the Huo family’s car with Huo Shen, acting as if wherever Huo Shen went, he would go too, and that the Huo family couldn’t possibly deny him a meal. When it came to being unreasonable, Young Master Jiang had never been afraid of anyone. If you have no shame, then I have no shame either.

The Jiang family started as an industrial enterprise. When Jiang’s father took control of the company, they rode the wave of real estate. At that time, the Jiang family was at its peak, and Huo Shen’s uncles and aunts dared not offend them openly.

Perhaps they hadn’t expected Huo Shen’s mother to tell Huo Shen those things before she died. So, they treated Huo Shen no differently than before, showing great care and meticulous attention.

At the dinner table, they were like all those kind and amiable elders, fearing that Huo Shen wouldn’t eat enough outside. They asked about his well-being, served him food, and affectionately recalled Huo Shen’s parents, even shedding a few tears when their emotions ran high.

No matter how intelligent and precocious Huo Shen was, he was just a twelve or thirteen-year-old boy protected under his parents’ wings. He thought he could see through people’s hearts, but he never knew that the true human heart could be so dark and disgusting.

People who haven’t experienced such things might find it difficult to understand that those relatives who were usually kind and honest to you could turn into ferocious demons with a single gesture. On the surface, they hoped you would grow up well, but in their hearts, each of them wished you would die quickly.

Huo Shen vomited after returning to his room. He vomited out the food that he had forcibly swallowed, the food they had served him, along with everything else in his stomach. In the end, only stomach acid and bile were left.

Jiang Tiao stayed by Huo Shen’s side, flustered and helpless. He patted Huo Shen’s back, trying to make him feel better, but his hands were trembling. He understood Huo Shen’s inner pain better than anyone, but he was utterly powerless. It was the first time he hated his own powerlessness so much.

In the following month, Huo Shen visibly lost weight. Jiang Tiao saw this with concern and heartache. During that time, he barely dared to let Huo Shen out of his sight. But the situation only worsened. Sometimes, Jiang Tiao would wake up in the middle of the night and see Huo Shen lying in bed with his eyes open, still and silent, unable to sleep no matter what.

Huo Shen’s uncle and aunt learned of this and were very diligent, immediately calling a doctor to prescribe a pile of medications for him.

Jiang Tiao was uneasy and found the doctor who had been treating him since childhood the next day. After asking, his hands were trembling—those were actually medications with very severe side effects, and some could even affect intellectual development—that night, he returned and smashed the bottles and jars of medicine in their faces.

Jiang Tiao secretly had the Jiang family’s doctor examine Huo Shen during class time. After a series of examinations, it was discovered that Huo Shen’s insomnia was caused by the intake of trace amounts of dextroamphetamine, a stimulant drug for the central nervous system. They didn’t even know where those scoundrels in the Huo family had gotten it to make Huo Shen ingest it!

Jiang Tiao was furious on the spot. However, Huo Shen calmly sat up from the examination bed. His tone was tinged with a faint weariness, as if he were extremely tired. It seemed he no longer wanted to struggle or even wished to live.

“Jiang Tiao, go home. Don’t stay with me anymore.”

…