I Will Always Love You

Chapter 58: The Sound of Wind and Rain at Night V

Cheng Zhiyan was sitting next to his mother, and, upon hearing what she’d just said, he started to tear up as well.

As he thought about Xiaotu, he couldn’t help but lift his head and glance upstairs in the direction of his bedroom.

And there, in the spaces between the stairway handrails, he caught sight of a chubby little face.

Under the dim lights of the wall lamp by the stairway, Xiaotu’s fair-skinned and rosy-cheeked face was illuminated by a lustrous glow. Her large, animated eyes were full of tears as she stared fixedly in his direction without even blinking.

“Xiaotu…?” Cheng Zhiyan blurted out her name without even thinking.

Upon hearing him call out Xiaotu’s name, Zhou Ling and Zhou Yue immediately stopped talking.

Zhou Ling quickly wiped away the tears from her eyes, and she lifted her head, following the direction of Cheng Zhiyan’s eyes.

The stairway was empty, with no one in sight.

“Yan Yan, did you just see Xiaotu sitting up there?” Zhou Yue turned toward her son and asked him in a choked voice.

“I…” Cheng Zhiyan hesitated. Then he glanced toward the stairway again, and he shook his head as he said, “I’m not sure either.”

Zhou Ling and Zhou Yue exchanged glances, and their eyes were full of worry.

“Yan Yan, can you go upstairs to check and see whether or not Xiaotu is still sleeping?” Zhou Yue asked him. “It’s getting late anyway. You should go to sleep as well. I’ll stay and talk to Auntie for a little while longer. Don’t tell Xiaotu about this, understand?”

“…”

Cheng Zhiyan was silent for a moment, then nodded his head.

He stood up, paid his respects to Zhou Ling, then quickly climbed upstairs and headed toward his own bedroom.

When he arrived in front of his bedroom door, he paused, not sure how to go forward.

His eyes stared at his mahogany bedroom door, and he took a deep breath. He could feel anxiety and a kind of disorientation getting worse and worse inside him.

This was probably the first time ever that he didn’t know how to face Xiaotu.

After lingering at the door for a long while, he finally reached out and gently pushed open the door.

Inside the bedroom, everything appeared as quiet as usual.

The lamp on the nightstand still emitted a dim, warm glow, and on the huge bed in the center of the room, a little figure appeared asleep with her back turned away from him.

Cheng Zhiyan couldn’t help but let out a breath of relief.

He slowly walked up to the bed, and he reached out to caress Xiaotu’s soft hair. The next second, his entire body froze.

On this scorching summer night, his cold, wet palms starkly contrasted with the heat in the air.

“Xiaotu?” His heart couldn’t help but sink, and he reached out to turn Xiaotu toward him. Sure enough, her babyish face was covered by tears.

WAH! WAH! WAH! “Oh…Brother Orange Juice…” Xiaotu had been holding herself back and silently weeping for a long time, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer upon seeing Cheng Zhiyan. She flung herself into his arms and started to wail at the top of her lungs. “My daddy won’t ever come back again. He promised that he would take me to school and attend the sports meet with me, but everything he said to me was all a lie.” WAH! WAH! WAH!

Cheng Zhiyan held onto Xiaotu’s soft little body, and he felt her tremble in his arms as she wailed. Drop after drop, the tears flowed from her eyes and drenched his shirt. The tears wrapped around his heart tightly, encircling it, and his heart couldn’t help but ache.