[Remaining lifespan: 1 hour 11 minutes 41 seconds]
Qi Zhimu finished telling his life story.
Clarisse felt as if something was lodged in her chest—an ache throughout her body that wouldn't ease.
Mr. Qi's life after salvation had been calm as water. Until the very end, nothing terrible happened again.
So why did she still feel such pain for him?
Why…
She searched for an answer and found only confusion.
Wasn't an ordinary life good?
"Mr. Qi… don't you have anything you want to do? Any dream you want to realize…?"
"I do. I finished them all. I told you just now."
And in that sentence, Clarisse finally understood the source of her suffering.
—Mr. Qi had never lived for himself.
His entire life was drifting with the current.
His teacher taught him; he studied with manic diligence, drinking in everything.
His teacher assigned tasks; he worked earnestly, solving every problem, striving for perfect completion.
His teacher told him to do something; he did it.
His teacher told him to leave; he left.
He lived here in silence for a hundred years, never going far, until death.
Until death—guarding the road home for his teacher.
He was like a puppet that willingly lived for someone else, willingly bound by invisible strings.
Seemingly free—yet never free.
You shouldn't be like this, Mr. Qi…
Even if she was the only light of your life, you should have had your own ideals, your own self—rather than willingly letting yourself be bound.
Clarisse wanted—wanted so badly—to envy his teacher.
But the person who saved him wasn't her. What right did she have to envy?
If anything—
She was the one Mr. Qi had saved.
If her mother's amnesia erased everything, then Clarisse would have nothing at all.
So why did her heart ache? Why did it grieve?
She understood.
Because she had no right to judge. Because nothing could be changed. Because she could only swallow these words.
How could she bear to say any of this to him?
Was he wrong? He wasn't.
Was his teacher wrong? She wasn't.
If she had to blame something, she could only blame the world that had already turned to cosmic dust—yet left him scarred for life.
Was it only that? Only these reasons?
Clarisse closed her eyes, powerless.
No.
Perhaps the most important reason—the reason even Mr. Qi hadn't realized—was what she truly wanted to envy.
Mr. Qi might love his teacher deeply.
But he didn't know it. He hadn't even recognized it. He didn't understand love.
He treated love as something obvious—mere respect.
Clarisse remembered a visit not long ago, when she had overheard him singing a song.
"…Mr. Qi, I want to hear you sing that song again."
"Which one?"
"I don't know its name. Just… the saddest one."
Qi Zhimu had always indulged requests that weren't excessive. He rose, took up his zhongruan, and began smoothly.
The melody. The verse. The chorus. The interlude. The ending…
From the first few seconds, Clarisse already knew.
Mr. Qi was slow to emotion. He couldn't name what he felt. He didn't even think it was love.
His life had been occupied by his teacher. He didn't understand.
But songs don't lie.
What one thinks by day, one dreams by night.
Likewise—if you've never been in that state of heart, how could you write lyrics and music that make listeners ache?
And the last line of the song—
Perhaps it was the most honest wish buried in Mr. Qi's subconscious.
Yet everything before that ending was loneliness, yearning, love that could never be fulfilled.
That song was about him.
And what made Clarisse feel even more suffocated—
It was also about her.
Both of them walking deeper into a road destined to end in separation, their hearts full of holes.
Only she knew… and he did not.
The cruelest thing was that she could say nothing.
And the greatest regret in the world was exactly this.
Her divination hadn't been wrong. It had been perfectly right.
Three of Swords. Ten of Swords. The Star reversed.
A profound heartbreak ending a relationship, carving despair into bone—
And finally, losing all hope for the beautiful future once imagined.
Only…
Mr. Qi didn't know. That was all.
He didn't know his heart was broken. He didn't know he had once imagined… or perhaps he never dared to imagine.
He didn't know his subconscious had already sunk into despair.
He lived for his teacher—and he clung to his teacher's last words, waiting until the end.
Bound willingly to the memories of the past, never thinking to free himself.
How tragic.
The zhongruan in his hands. The white lab coat in the bamboo house.
They were ironclad proof.
So many years—and still kept like new.
No wonder, on the day they went to the back mountain to tend the earth, though the weather had already turned cold, Mr. Qi still took off the lab coat.
He didn't want even a speck of dust to touch it.
Mr. Qi… you didn't have to be this humble.
At last, Clarisse couldn't hold it in.
She rose and wrapped her arms around Qi Zhimu's head, pulling him into her chest.
"Clarisse?"
"…Let me hold you. Just for a little while…"
Perhaps no one had ever truly ached for you—ever held you with tenderness and pity.
Then let me.
Before you die, let me give your cold, unaware body a final warmth.
Even a little. Even for an instant.
Qi Zhimu froze.
Something strange rose in his chest.
Wrapped in that warmth that felt so familiar, he relaxed—completely.
....
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