Chapter 75: But, I love you, Jiqing, I've always loved you...

Pei Jiqing was indeed deliberately avoiding Chen Huixing.

After he gave her that "thank you gift," they hadn't spoken individually since, except regarding their daughter.

He was, of course, invited to Chen Huixing's award ceremony. He arrived on time, sat in the farthest corner, and left early. Even when they met in public, their eyes were always perfectly averted. Even the handovers after parting were handled by a lawyer. Even

someone as clever as Chen Huixing couldn't fail to notice this deliberate distance.

Some things are past, no need to dwell on them.

Pei Jiqing had much to do now. Now that the outcome was set, rehashing the wound would only make things worse.

The Pei family was under investigation for their involvement, and Chen Huixing told Pei Jiqing not to interfere; he would handle it.

Chen Huixing knew better than anyone that if he said he would handle it, he would do it thoroughly.

Pei Jiqing returned to the downtown area and visited his old haunts.

Pei Jiqing packed up his interview equipment, the lens cap snapping shut with a soft click.

Downtown security was much better now, the streets much quieter, and even the broken streetlights had been repaired.

Those with whom he had once clashed had long since vanished from the neighborhood. It was said that the sweeping cleanup a year ago had rooted out the hidden dangers.

Almost everyone Pei Jiqing had offended had vanished. He heard from a former neighbor that someone had come to pay their respects to his mother.

The former grocery store owner poured him a cup of cheap tea, a few broken tea leaves clinging to the bottom. As the old man recounted the past, his cloudy eyes suddenly lit up. "Someone came to pay their respects to your mother last year,"

he gestured with his finger. "He was dressed smartly, like someone important."

Pei Jiqing didn't need to hear the full story to know who it was. He knew the location of that humble cemetery. Only Chen Huixing could show up so openly there.

It was as if he finally understood who was quietly manipulating the sudden improvement in public security in the downtown area. The sound of patrol car sirens could be heard from the street, approaching from afar and then gradually fading away.

Pei Jiqing asked his colleagues to leave first, and he took a stroll around the area.

The population of the downtown area has been decreasing over the years. Almost every household has someone affected by pheromone pollution to varying degrees. Those who can leave have already fled this wasteland with their families, leaving only a few elderly people, slowed down by illness, stubbornly rooted in this dying land like dead trees.

The bulletin board on the street corner still had the Asian Union's restricted area proposal from a few years ago. The yellowed paper had curled edges, and the words were blurred by wind and rain.

Back then, this proposal was hotly debated in the parliament, but ultimately came to nothing. There were too many things involved, and the wanted criminals hiding there would rather risk their lives to defend this lawless place.

For them, leaving meant imprisonment or even the death penalty, while staying was just a slow death.

Later, the Central Army of the Asian Union arrived several times. Soldiers, guns drawn, searched house by house, but each raid was like punching cotton. They apprehended a few insignificant minions and confiscated some scrap metal and weapons, but soon, new forces would emerge from those shadowy corners. Gradually, the military's actions became increasingly intermittent, until they simply let things slide, setting up only a perimeter cordon, like a caged, dangerous beast.

News of the pheromone contamination, like a ball deliberately kept under the surface, never truly surfaced. Announcements from higher authorities were always vague, attributing unusual cases to seasonal influenza or regional diseases.

The reports in the corners of newspapers were no more than tofu-sized pieces of tofu.

What began as a few scattered cases escalated into a truly significant outbreak of glandular diseases.

Pei Jiqing had always supported the establishment of a restricted area along the river. Otherwise, time would eventually erase the severity of the incident, and who would care about the people returning home?

So, like-minded individuals organized this interview, hoping to garner more support.

Pei Jiqing stood in front of his old house. The red paint on the iron gate had long since faded, and the rusty hinges creaked softly in the wind. He tilted his head and vaguely saw his teenage self running towards him, schoolbag slung over his shoulder. Mrs. Xu Mingzhu always stood on the porch waiting for him, her thin figure stretched out by the setting sun.

When they couldn't afford a piano, Xu Mingzhu would spread yellowed sheet music on the dining table and let her son practice fingerings in the air. Pei Jiqing remembered the crisp sound of his mother's cane hitting the table when he refused to play, and the tense line of her jaw.

Childhood was busy and bitter, but also easily satisfied. Xu Mingzhu wanted to go home, but she didn't want her son to be trapped in the downtown area forever.

Pei Jiqing's childhood was spent shuttling between two worlds on a rickety old bus. Xu Mingzhu always took him on the earliest bus to the more developed city, allowing him to see the domes of museums and the crystal chandeliers of concert halls, and then dragged her reluctant son back to the downtown area at sunset.

During those long car journeys, Pei Jiqing dozed off on his mother's thin shoulders, the smell of cheap soap on her collar lingering on his nose.

The beatings and scoldings Pei Jiqing had endured were all dealt with by Ms. Xu Mingzhu with an ice cream cone. The plastic spoon scraped the sweet cream, and Pei Jiqing licked the chocolate stains on the corners of his mouth, forgetting that the red marks left by the caning on his calves were still aching.

Now there was no one waiting for him under the porch, only the wind blowing dead leaves across the empty steps.

The moment Pei Jiqing turned around, his eyes met Wei Ji standing at the entrance of the alley. The corners of his mouth were covered with a familiar smile, as if they had met just yesterday.

Wei Ji: "I guessed you'd be here."

Pei Jiqing: "Then you really do understand me."

Wei Ji took two steps forward: "Knowing you were captured, I was very anxious. No matter the cost, I would have saved you."

Pei Jiqing's voice was cold: "I was disappointed when I learned you were dealing with those drug dealers."

Wei Ji said helplessly: "I can't refute this point, Jiqing. Everyone has to make choices, just like you chose Chenhui Star. We were born in the Lower City. There are many things we can't choose. People always have to give up something to survive."

Pei Jiqing knew what Wei Ji was thinking. He felt that they were the same in their bones. To climb out of the quagmire, he sold banned drugs, and Pei Jiqing clung to the powerful. In essence, they were both selling their souls by the pound.

When it comes to taking shortcuts, Wei Ji relied on deviant means, while Pei Jiqing relied on relying on others.

Pei Jiqing: "So you think that what I gave up is my dignity, and what you gave up is your conscience."

Pei Jiqing looked at Wei Ji, at his young lover, the person who was engraved in his youth. There was still a scar on Wei Ji's brow bone from the fight he helped him in that year. Now it has been faded by time, but it still reminds him of the other party kissing him with a smile even though he was covered in blood.

Pei Jiqing couldn't tell whether it was love or not because of his stubbornness in youth, but at that time they did depend on each other. Looking back on those years many years later, the tattoo that made Chen Huixing go crazy every time he saw it, and the elopement that he left without saying goodbye, Pei Jiqing himself could even say that it was stupid.

When Wei Ji betrayed Pei Jiqing, Pei Jiqing felt extremely painful. The pain was so sharp that it pierced through all the self-righteous love myths of his youth.

"Wei Ji, when you sold those problematic potions, did you think about the eighteen-year-old Pei Jiqing?"

The draft in the alley suddenly became biting.

"Do you still remember the Omega who trembled in your arms because of the inferior medicine?"

Wei Ji's breathing stopped. He saw the boy in his memory curled up in his arms, his clothes soaked with cold sweat, crying and saying Wei Ji, it hurts.

"Did you develop the cheap Omega inhibitor to atone for your sins?"

Wei Ji's vision suddenly blurred.

Those persistence that were ridiculed by drug dealers, the countless costs invested, but in the end, only Pei Jiqing understood him. Wei Ji raised his hand to wipe his face, his palms were wet, and he realized that he was crying like a fool: "...I'm sorry."

When Wei Ji did those things, he betrayed Pei Jiqing again.

The voice squeezed out of Wei Ji's throat was hoarse and inharmonious: "But, I love you, Jiqing, I always love you."

"I know you loved me back then."

If Pei Jiqing didn't love him, why would she live with him in that kind of place.

If Pei Jiqing didn't love him, why would his condition worsen because of his betrayal?

He now wears a custom-made suit and his watches can buy half a street, but when Pei Jiqing's eyes swept over him, he was still the helpless little gangster before. Pei Jiqing frowned, he wanted to dig out his heart to make amends.

What business upstarts, what pharmaceutical tycoons, in front of this man, he would always be a loser kneeling in the mud and begging for forgiveness.

He really has no future.

Pei Jiqing just said calmly: "I just called the police."

Wei Ji was still wanted in the Asian Union. Sure enough,

the sound of sirens sounded in the distance, from far away to near, piercing the stagnant air in the alley.

Wei Ji's men rushed over in their cars, and the tires made a harsh sound on the concrete ground.

"Boss! The police are here! Go!" The man shouted with a broken voice, and the veins on his forehead bulged.

Wei Ji opened his mouth, and the words he wanted to say rolled around in his throat for a few times, but he finally swallowed them.

He took a last look at Pei Jiqing. The man stood under the street light, his shadow stretched very long, like a river that could never be crossed.

The moment the car door closed, Wei Ji suddenly remembered that many years ago, they were squeezed in a leaky attic, and Pei Jiqing rested his head on his legs and said, "We will always be together."

Now think about it, the vows made in youth have long been invalid.

Pei Jiqing in the rearview mirror became smaller and smaller, and finally turned into a blurry black dot.

Wei Ji closed his eyes, tears fell silently, this time it was real, and they would never see each other again.