Seventh Year Of Separation chapter 14
Far Away from Here
Gu Jiahe eventually got up in the middle of the night and went to the local dermatological clinic.
When he left, he glanced at his parents’ bedroom, but neither of them had returned.
He felt like his face was swelling up like a pig’s head, and even speaking felt like his skin was stinging.
The emergency doctor examined him and said it was allergic urticaria, prescribing a bottle of IV fluid. He specifically instructed him not to scratch, as it would leave scars.
Gu Jiahe sat in the small consultation room, surrounded by empty seats, only he had come in the middle of the night for IV fluids.
Sitting there, he felt drowsy, only able to sense the cool liquid flowing into his veins through the thin tube.
After finishing the IV, he felt much better, but the rash hadn’t completely disappeared.
With school starting tomorrow, he quickly ran back home after removing the needle, thinking about the pile of homework he still had to do.
However, as he approached the door, he heard strange noises, voices.
He cautiously unlocked the door, pushed it open, and found no one in the living room.
The sound was coming from Qian Liyun’s bedroom.
He gently pushed open the half-closed wooden door and didn’t see anyone at first. Hanging on the bedside were wedding photos taken many years ago. Qian Liyun wore an old-fashioned red wedding dress, while Gu Jianmin wore a dark blue suit. The photo had faded a bit, and Qian Liyun’s lipstick color had faded over the years.
At this moment, Gu Jiahe looked down and saw Qian Liyun squatting in the corner, her hair disheveled, and tears streaming down her face.
That scene, Gu Jiahe couldn’t forget for more than a decade.
She was crying, not sobbing quietly. She was wailing loudly.
Gu Jiahe was instantly stunned on the spot, unsure whether to advance or retreat.
Qian Liyun covered her face, a few strands of hair wet with tears making her look particularly disheveled. She cried louder and louder, seemingly not caring at all that Gu Jiahe had entered the room.
After hesitating for a long time, Gu Jiahe finally managed to ask two words, “What’s wrong?”
Qian Liyun seemed to have grasped a lifeline and grabbed Gu Jiahe’s ankle.
Gu Jiahe almost stumbled and quickly crouched down.
Qian Liyun threw herself onto his shoulder, crying but not saying a word.
Gu Jiahe felt like a long time had passed, and his thighs were starting to numb.
After a burst of crying, Qian Liyun fiercely smashed the ceramic cup beside her. The shards scattered all over the floor, and Gu Jiahe instinctively shrank his body.
“Gu Jianmin… Why the hell did he get involved with someone else? What kind of person is he?!”
“Bastard!”
As Qian Liyun spoke, her emotions grew more and more intense, her thin fingers tightly gripping Gu Jiahe’s arm.
It turned out that she hadn’t come home all night because she had gone to catch Gu Jianmin.
She turned to look into Gu Jiahe’s eyes. “I’ve been with him since I was eighteen, and he treats me like this!”
“He treats me like this, isn’t he afraid of divine retribution?!”
Qian Liyun hadn’t wiped off her lipstick all night, leaving only a little rosy color on the corner of her mouth, like beads of blood seeping out.
Gu Jiahe’s mind buzzed. The information overload seemed to have overwhelmed his brain capacity at that moment.
The face of Gu Jianmin kept appearing in his mind, tearing at him.
Qian Liyun’s eyes were bloodshot, and every joint in her body was tense. Gu Jiahe had no doubt that if she had a knife in her hand right now, she would have cut Gu Jianmin into pieces.
Qian Liyun kept rambling, repeating two sentences over and over again in the end.
“Why doesn’t he love me?”
“Why does he treat me like this?”
Her voice was so piercing, repeating until Gu Jiahe felt like he was being crushed by two mountains.
“Aren’t you supposed to hate him?” Gu Jiahe said softly.
They fought every day, smashing everything in the house that could be smashed. They hadn’t sat down together for a decent meal in almost ten years.
He couldn’t understand why Qian Liyun hated Gu Jianmin so much, yet longed for his love.
Even this ridiculous wedding photo hadn’t been taken down from the bedside in so many years.
Qian Liyun seemed not to expect him to suddenly say this.
The room fell into a long, dead silence.
Gu Jiahe saw her shoulders trembling slightly and slowly stretched out his arm to embrace her shoulder.
Later, he forgot how Qian Liyun left the house. He didn’t know where she went. In any case, it was another day and night before she returned.
On the 4th, they returned to school. Gu Jiahe hadn’t slept well for two nights, looking like a wandering soul. The rash on his arms hadn’t completely disappeared, looking a bit glaring under the white school uniform.
Li Zhao arrived at school very early and glanced at Gu Jiahe’s arms.
“What happened?” Li Zhao asked.
“Probably an allergy,” Gu Jiahe replied, covering his head with the papers. Then he buried his head in his arms and closed his eyes.
According to the statutory holiday, that day should have been a day off.
But the situation in the third year of high school was special, and they couldn’t possibly have a full seven days off. Pingcheng High School resumed classes earlier than other schools.
As a result, just half a day into classes, three math problems hadn’t been covered yet.
Bang! The classroom door suddenly opened. The head teacher walked up to the platform and whispered a few words to the math teacher.
Then, in front of everyone, the head teacher announced that the full day of makeup classes scheduled for that day was changed to just half a day.
Gu Jiahe sat there, looking bewildered.
At lunchtime, he walked down the stairs, his classmates chatting behind him.
“I heard the classes were canceled because they were reported by parents from No. 3 Middle School?”
“Damn, that’s impressive.”
“No. 3 Middle School didn’t perform as well as we did last year. Of course, they can’t stand us having private makeup classes.”
As the two talked, they squeezed in front of Gu Jiahe, then jumped down the stairs and turned the corner.
Gu Jiahe stepped aside, but after taking two steps down, he turned and headed back upstairs.
He crossed the wide rooftop of the teaching building and walked straight in one direction.
There was an old swimming pool at the high school. The water in the pool would be changed regularly for cleanliness, and no one would bother with it at other times.
Whenever Gu Jiahe didn’t want to go home, he would come here to hang out.
He took off his shoes and sat by the pool.
The pool water was cool, rippling gently. Gu Jiahe closed his eyes, feeling as if he were drifting in the air.
It was quiet all around, but suddenly Qian Liyun’s crying pierced his ears. He opened his eyes abruptly, his heart racing.
For some reason, he rubbed his eyes, and there were actually water stains on his knuckles.
“Why didn’t you tell me about such a good place?”
A voice came from behind.
Gu Jiahe quickly wiped his face, turned around, and Li Zhao threw his backpack behind him and sat down beside him.
“What’s wrong with you?” Li Zhao, noticing his unusual expression, pointed to the corner of his eye. “Why is it red here?”
“Oh,” Gu Jiahe was momentarily nervous, rubbing his palms, “probably still allergic.”
“Eyes can be allergic too?”
“Yeah. Conjunctivitis,” Gu Jiahe casually blurted out.
The ceiling of the swimming pool was made of glass, and the autumn sun was glaring. It pierced straight through the glass into the pool.
The light reflected off the water surface and happened to shine on Li Zhao’s face. Gu Jiahe couldn’t help but glance at him out of the corner of his eye.
“It seems like there’s a career counseling session next week,” Li Zhao suddenly turned to him and spoke.
“Oh, really?” Gu Jiahe’s eyes, however, were fixed on the water surface, as if trying to count every shimmering ripple.
“Yeah, I just heard the teacher downstairs talking about it.”
Gu Jiahe suddenly turned his head to look into Li Zhao’s eyes and asked, “Have you ever thought about where you want to go in the future?”
“To university?”
“Yeah,” Gu Jiahe nodded.
“I’ll probably stay near Pingcheng. My parents have businesses in the surrounding cities.” Li Zhao broke his fingers, seemingly calculating which major cities were nearby. “And you? Where do you want to go for college?”
Gu Jiahe hardly hesitated at all. “I want to go to North City.”
“North City? What for?” Li Zhao’s geography knowledge told him that North City was about 1200 kilometers away from Pingcheng.
Sitting in the sunlight under the glass roof, Gu Jiahe remembered the shattered bottle Gu Jianmin had smashed to the ground, and the extremely disheveled face of Qian Liyun.
“Because it’s far away from here,” he said.