Chapter 96: I Heard You Lost a Little Pendant

The suspicion from before struck hard at the bottom of his heart.

Without changing expression, Cheng Xingye tightened his grip on the teacup and turned to Lu Yi as if nothing were amiss.

“Why never mention it?”

Lu Yi, who had not been there and therefore could not join the conversation and did not feel like speaking anyway, folded his arms and gave a cold snort.

Lu Jiacheng, on the other hand, remembered the incident and cut in beside them to explain for Lu Yi.

“He wasn’t there then. That time was rather unexpected, to say the least. A sudden gale came up that day, and several children were playing in the water when the waves swept them away...”

He remembered the beach in complete chaos that day. Several parents were not even sure whether their own children had been carried off, and all of them were frantically searching.

The lifeguards drove out on motorboats and rescued several of them, and everyone had finally breathed a sigh of relief, thinking it was over.

Lu Jiacheng was the only doctor vacationing there at the scene. He had just finished chest compressions on a little girl and was about to leave when his daughter suddenly grabbed his sleeve.

Lu Qingyue was only three then. She burst into tears for no reason at all, and between sobs she kept saying in broken phrases,

“There’s an older boy in the water!”

Lu Jiacheng thought she had been frightened, so he picked her up and soothed her softly.

“There’s no older boy in the water. The lifeguard uncles rescued everyone.”

But Lu Qingyue, buried against his shoulder, began to cry even harder at once.

“But I saw him.”

She was only three years old then and could scarcely speak clearly, yet her tone was utterly certain.

Lu Jiacheng thought that, after all, a life was at stake. Though he could not be sure whether the child was telling the truth, he still found the lifeguard in charge and told them what she had said.

A few minutes later, sure enough, they pulled an eight- or nine-year-old boy out of the sea.

Lu Jiacheng stayed on-site to perform emergency treatment, while Lu Qingyue crouched nearby and bawled her eyes out.

After finishing chest compressions on the boy and confirming that he had regained consciousness and a spontaneous heartbeat, Lu Jiacheng finally let out a breath, picked up his daughter, now a tear-soaked little thing, and said to the startled parents beside him,

“Could you please call an ambulance?”

...

The vast living room fell quiet.

Cheng Xingye pressed his lips together and lifted his gaze toward Lu Qingyue, who sat on the rug across from him.

She was unwrapping a chocolate truffle at the moment, her small hands busy with it, seeming not to have paid much attention to what they were saying.

After all, for her, the memories of age three were probably long gone.

Cheng Xingye’s throat tightened slightly, and his gaze locked deeply on her. He searched his memory with all his might, trying to connect the bright, beautiful girl before him with the noisy little child who had once cried beside him.

Unfortunately, more than a decade had passed, and time had erased too many details.

He had, in fact, done everything he could afterward to investigate and find her, yet he never managed to locate the little girl who had crouched by his side that day. He had never imagined that fate would take such a hand—that, unseen to him, she had already been arranged by destiny to be by his side all along.

The bitterness and bewilderment in his heart were almost enough to make him regret not having opened his eyes back then, not having memorized her face carefully, properly.

And yet, in the next instant, he felt overwhelming relief.

Thank goodness it was not anyone else, but her...

His eyes burned with sourness, his chest surging so fiercely that he could scarcely breathe.

But the girl he held dear in the very center of his heart knew nothing of it. She sat obediently on the rug two meters away, busy stuffing an entire chocolate into her mouth.

Seeing that his expression seemed a little off, Lu Jiacheng and Xi Yu exchanged a glance and were about to ask what was wrong when Lu Jiacheng’s phone rang.

He took the call, and it seemed something had come up on the other end that required Xi Yu to go out with him immediately.

When Lu Jiacheng came back from the call, Xi Yu stood as well.

“Sorry, we have to head out. Let Lu Yi take you home later.”

Cheng Xingye drew a light breath, suppressing the surging emotion in his chest, and forced his voice to remain calm.

“It’s fine. I drove here. I’ve troubled you for long enough; it’s time I left.”

Since the hosts were leaving, it would be rude, both in reason and courtesy, for him to linger any longer.

As for that matter, he still needed to sort out the sequence of events before coming back in person to offer his thanks.

He left the Lu residence, but did not hurry to drive away. His hands rested on the steering wheel, and he stared straight ahead.

Through the floor-to-ceiling window, Lu Qingyue had already brought out half a chilled watermelon from the refrigerator and was seated by the gauzy curtains, shoveling it into her mouth in big bites.

Her manners at table were actually rather careless, but she was so adorably pretty that even her exaggerated gestures did not seem rude or reckless on her; instead, they carried a sort of unstudied innocence.

At that moment, Cheng Xingye felt that the Lu family had done him such a great kindness, yet he was thinking about how to steal away their precious treasure. It seemed, perhaps, a little too much like repaying kindness with ingratitude.

But now he could no longer let go.

...

Twilight gathered; the daylight dimmed.

After sharing a dinner of instant noodles with Lu Yi, Lu Qingyue lazily shambled upstairs in her slippers, ready to play a round of games.

This summer after the college entrance exam was especially long, yet there were also especially many things to do. From the release of scores to choosing universities, from the farewell feast to the graduation trip, she had been busy for an entire month, and it seemed only now that she finally had a chance to catch her breath.

Lu Qingyue opened the game app and was just about to enter ranked mode when a message suddenly popped up at the top of the screen.

[Hoshino]: Dot-dot, can you come out?

Come out?

Lu Qingyue paused at first, then looked out the window in surprise.

Under the dark night sky, the sedan was still parked in the same spot, nearly blending into the darkness.

Lu Qingyue had not expected him to still be there. After a few seconds of stunned silence, she immediately turned and ran downstairs.

In the midsummer night, the chirring of insects rose one after another.

Lu Qingyue took a shortcut directly, running over through the wet grass, her ankles sinking lightly among the roots.

At the boundary between moonlight and the human world, a tall figure stood motionless.

Lu Qingyue ran up to him, slightly out of breath, and looked up in puzzlement.

“Why are you still here?”

It was nearly eight o’clock by now. Had he really not left since morning?

Cheng Xingye looked at her in silence for a moment.

His fine eyelashes lowered slightly, and the faint shadow softening the coolness of his features fell across his eyelids.

Lu Qingyue did not know what he was thinking, but her intuition told her he had something important to say. So she waited patiently, her bright eyes fixed on him.

At last, Cheng Xingye’s lips moved.

The line of his jaw, tense a moment before, loosened somewhat, and he asked in a low, slow voice,

“I heard you lost a little pendant.”

At first Lu Qingyue did not understand what pendant he meant. Then she remembered how he had been staring at her bracelet since yesterday, and only after a few seconds did it dawn on her.

She froze, then said with some dissatisfaction,

“Why are you eavesdropping on a girl’s conversation?”

Cheng Xingye did not answer. Instead, he took a small box from his pocket, opened it, and held it out for her to see.

“I happened to find one here. See if it’s the one you lost.”

How could it possibly be with him? Even her parents did not remember exactly where she had lost it when she was three, let alone how long she had known Cheng Xingye...

So without thinking, Lu Qingyue blurted out,

“I lost that when I was three. How could you possibly have picked it up...”

Before she could finish, she suddenly gave a soft cry, then her eyes flew wide in astonishment.

“Where did you find it?”

Inside the box lay a tiny silver pendant. The streetlamp’s light refracted off it in sparkling points, as though it were holding a star fallen from the heavens.

In that instant of stunned stillness, before she could even begin to understand what was happening, she was suddenly pulled into a scorching embrace.