Chapter 257: Conversation

Chapter 257: Chapter 257: Conversation

"Actually, it was a huge mistake for me to use the word ’complete.’ A child who, from such a young age, before she even learned to speak, could only call out ’Mom’ to your photograph and tombstone—even if her life was happy afterward, how could her entire life ever be described by that word?"

Luo Hongyi’s voice was low and sorrowful. "When Shengnan was little, she was more mature than other children. No one had to teach her; she just knew not to bring up the word ’Mom’ at home. She understood that it would inevitably lead to heartbreak and tears. So no matter how much she missed you, she never dared to mention you or even ask about you. But Mom said she heard Shengnan crying out for her mother in her sleep several times. Then, she’d wake up and not dare make a sound, just hiding under the covers and crying all by herself..."

"...Stop." Gu Nuannuan finally broke down, covering her face with a choked sob as tears seeped between her fingers. She fought against the wrenching pain in her chest and forced the words out. "Don’t say any more... We were a mistake from the very beginning. This life is our chance to fix that mistake. There will be no Haoyang, and no Shengnan. If they’re reborn into a different family, their lives will surely be better than the last one..."

"But if we’re not together, will they really have the chance to be reborn into another family? Nuannuan, stop fooling yourself." Luo Hongyi stepped forward, reaching out to pull Gu Nuannuan into his arms. She dropped her hands and took a sharp step back, glaring at him with resentment. "There’s no chance for us anymore. If—if it weren’t for you and your so-called family, Haoyang and Shengnan wouldn’t have... So don’t you dare use our children as an excuse. You don’t have the right."

"I know I was wrong. You punished me for it in our last life, and you punished yourself, too. Wasn’t that enough? We’ve been given this rare chance to start over. Do you really want to go through all that again?" Luo Hongyi’s hand dropped in disappointment. It pained him to see Gu Nuannuan like this, but the thought of letting her go—of living day and night in the same gut-wrenching agony as his last life—made him shudder.

He took a deep breath and asked, "Nuannuan, put everything else aside and ask yourself, deep down. In your heart, do you truly not have a single shred of feeling left for me, for our home, for our children? Don’t you want a chance to turn it all around and make things right?"

"Turn it all around?"

Gu Nuannuan sneered. "Easy for you to say. People always think what they’ve lost is what was best. In our last life, you lost Haoyang and you lost me, so you felt indebted to us and spent your entire life drowning in guilt. But what if you get us back this time? What happens in a few years? Or in ten, twenty, or thirty years? Will you look back then and decide your parents, your brothers, and your nephews were the most important after all, and that you’ve wronged *them* instead?"

"Is that really what you think?" Luo Hongyi seemed stunned for a moment. "Nuannuan, do you know what I spent the most time reflecting on in my last life?" Without waiting for her to reply, he answered his own question. "Communication."

He gave a bitter smile. "We communicated far, far too little. That’s why there were misunderstandings between us from the start. But the fault wasn’t yours. I know you always loved me a little more, and I was smug about it in the beginning. I was so complacent that I ignored your feelings. I failed to realize in time that you believed my parents and siblings were more important to me than you and our children. That was the first misstep, and it led to one wrong move after another."

"Hah. What’s the point of saying any of this now? As if our child and I could ever be more important to you than your parents and siblings?" Gu Nuannuan scoffed and turned away. ’Damn it, I almost let his words get to me.’

"You are. In fact, from the very beginning, you were on the same level as my parents in my heart. You were always just as important as them, and far, far more important than any of my siblings." Luo Hongyi reached out and took her hand, gazing at her earnestly. "Then, after Haoyang was born, I found the scales in my heart tipping more toward you and our son every day. Nuannuan, do you know what my biggest regret from our last life was? It was that I never told you to your face, just like this, that my love for you was never a single bit less than your love for me."

"Stop lying to me. Don’t think I’m a fool. What you felt afterward wasn’t love—it was guilt. You don’t have the right to even say the word ’love.’ If you had truly loved us, if you had cared about us even one bit, none of the things that followed would have ever happened..." Gu Nuannuan couldn’t bring herself to mention her son’s death. It was a wound so deep she hadn’t dared to touch it in two lifetimes. The agony of it was hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of times worse than her mother’s disfigurement, her eldest uncle’s car accident, and the miserable last years of her maternal grandparents.

She struggled to pull her hand back but found she was too weak; at this crucial moment, she couldn’t summon any strength. Her tears began to fall faster, blurring her vision as she looked at Luo Hongyi. "Do you have any idea how many times I compromised for your sake in our last life? But in the end, the person I hated most wasn’t you. It was myself. For countless days and nights, I cursed the day we met. All I could think was how much better it would have been if we had never gotten together in the first place... You don’t understand. You could never understand the kind of despair that comes from completely rejecting your own life, your own choices..."

"Nuannuan, I do understand." Luo Hongyi pulled Gu Nuannuan into a tight hug, his scalding tears falling onto her shoulder and seeping into her clothes. "Even if I didn’t understand at first, I learned to, over those long decades I spent without you. Nuannuan, don’t you see? Having this chance to fix our mistakes is the greatest blessing we could ask for. Are you absolutely certain that if we let each other go this lifetime, you won’t eventually come to regret it?"

He lifted his head and cupped her face in his hands, forcing her to meet his gaze as he said, his words deliberately harsh, "If you insist on this, what will you do if you regret it later? I don’t believe we’ll get a second do-over after this one. What if... what if one day you do regret it, but by then, our Haoyang and Shengnan have truly and irreversibly lost their chance to be reborn? What then? Could you really live with that? Could you ever forgive yourself?"