Belated Romance (Mu Tongrui)

Mu Tongrui pestered, “What do you mean by that? What do you mean when you said that I could make him reappear? What can
I do to let him out?”
Looking at her with his smoldering eyes, he sighed, “From now till I leave, can we not mention that person's name? You belong
to me now.”
“...”
Mu Tongrui calmed down.
Fu Ziye started the car. After a while, Mu Tongrui looked at him and asked curiously, “Can I ask you a question?”
“As long as it's not about that person, I'm fine.”
“Why do you like me so much? We've only met twice.”
She felt that Fu Ziye had a strong passion for her, no less than that of Fu Lingye's.
Fu Ziye looked at her deeply and said, “If it weren't for you, Fu Lingye and I might have died long ago.”
Mu Tongrui's heart skipped a beat. “Are you saying that I saved you before?”
“Yes, that was also the first time I met you.”
“What happened?”
Fu Ziye slowly said, “Ten years ago, Fu Lingye suffered from depression and created me to bear his negative emotions for him.
Whenever he is sad, I will appear. However, he lost consciousness and I became the person who fell into depression and
sadness. I only appeared because of his emotions. The person who bore all the pain for him has always been me.”
So, was this what Doctor Jiang meant when he said that when a person is overwhelmed and unwilling to ask for help, the brain
will automatically go into self-defense and protection mode, splitting out another personality to bear it for him?
Mu Tongrui's heart started to hurt.
She felt sorry for Lingye, who was so helpless, and Fu Ziye, who had suffered all the depression for Lingye.
“What happened then, how did you meet me?”

“That year, I thought about suicide.”
Fu Ziye's thoughts returned to ten years ago...
It was a very dark night. He slowly stepped into the sea. Before he was swallowed by the waves, he heard a loud cry not far
away.
“Hey!”
A girl ran over and grabbed him, “Are you crazy? Don't you know how dangerous this is?”
The girl grabbed his arm and pulled him back to the beach.
“Are you thinking of committing suicide? You are too young to die!”
It was a very dark night, devoid of moonlight. They could only make out each other's outlines and hear each other's voices but
were unable to see each other's faces.
Fu Ziye sat on the beach with the girl and said, “I'm just a shadow of a person. If I'm dead, no one will care.”
The girl chuckled, “How is it possible, how about your family? Besides, why would you likened yourself to a shadow, you are you,
you will not be the shadow of anyone. You must still be very young. If I did not hold you back. it would be such a shame for you
to die this way.”
“I have no family, and I have no... friends.” He was embarrassed.
All of a sudden, the girl reached out her hand to touch his, grabbing it and said cheerily, “I am Mu Tongrui, I don't have many
friends either, shall we be friends?”
He froze.
Not far away, he could see a shimmer of light and hear shouting.
“Tongrui! Mu Tongrui!”
Mu Tongrui stood hurriedly from the beach and said, “My stepmother is searching for me, I won't talk to you any longer. I need to
hurry home before she talk bad about me in front of my father.”

Mu Tongrui turned to leave then she turned and asked him, “Oh right, what's your name?”
“I...”
He did not have a name.
“Well, I will wait for you here tomorrow, and I will tell you my name then.”
He had not figured out what to name himself.
Mu Tongrui was amused, “You're a really interesting person! Alright, I will come here again tomorrow if I have time, I'll go then!”
After thinking for a long time, she finally remembered, “It turns out that the person that night was you?”
“Ever since that day, I waited for you on the beach for many days. Why did you not come?”
Mu Tongrui reminisced, “I caught a bad cold the next day. My dad was not at home and Shen Qiu didn't take me to the doctor.
After a long delay, it worsened into pneumonia and I had to rest at home for half a month. Afterward, I had also forgotten about
it..”
The knuckles of his hands which were grabbing onto the steering wheel turned white, his hands clenched into fists, “Shen Qiu?
Your stepmother? How dare she do this to you?”
Mu Tongrui just felt that the relationship between them is too strange. If she did not catch a bad cold back then, maybe she
would be able to see him the next day. Would things have turned out differently then?
Mu Tongrui’s emotions towards Fu Ziye were complex. She loved Fu Lingye, but Fu Ziye was also a part of Fu Lingye. She was
not indifferent to Fu Ziye. She loved all of Fu Lingye, including Fu Lingye’s split personalities as these were all Fu Lingye.
That night, the person she saved was not only Fu Ziye, but also Fu Lingye.
They are one.
Mu Tongrui probed, “What happened after?”
“Later, I was able to find your house, but all of a sudden your house caught on fire. I was afraid you were inside, so...”
Mu Tongrui's eyes wavered and she looked at him in disbelief, “So, you were the one who saved me ten years ago?”

It had never crossed her mind that the person who rescued her from the fire would be Fu Lingye's other personality.
“Why didn't you wait for me to wake up after you've saved me?”
“After sending you to the hospital, I stood outside the emergency room to watch over you. However, I inhaled too much smoke
and I fainted. Ever since then, I never woke up again. I guess, when I woke up at that time, it should be Fu Lingye, otherwise, I
would not have stopped searching for you.”
Mu Tongrui's eyes were brimming with tears, “Fu Ziye, thank you.”
If he did not come to rescue her then, she would have been burnt to death in the fire.
In the evening, after Fu Ziye came out of the bathroom, he saw Mu Tongrui sitting on the bed waiting for him.
This surprised Fu Ziye. He slept in the guest room, yet she unexpectedly came into the room to wait for him.
Upon seeing that he had only a loose bathrobe on his body, Mu Tongrui's cheeks flushed.
He walked to her side and with a hint of playfulness in his eyes, he asked, “Did you come here to sleep with me?”
Mu Tongrui sprang up from his bed immediately and said, “I came here to take a look at the injury on your right arm.”
Back then, he was injured because of her.
Fu Ziye said coldly, “You only pity me and care for me because I saved your life.”
“Is it wrong to care about my savior? Why do you have to reject my concern for you?”
Doctor Jiang once said that every DID patient wished to be cared for and treated. He believed that if every split personality was
able to be cured completely, their emotional entanglement would be unraveled, allowing them to be treated without medication.
Having to endure so much pain for Fu Lingye back then, Fu Ziye must have felt exhausted and bitter.
Fu Ziye stared deeply at her and said solemnly, “You know that I can't refuse you. But if your concern is not love, I would rather
not. What I want, you can't afford it.”
“What do you want then?”

“You.”
Mu Tongrui stood frozen.
Fu Ziye closed his eyes and assured, “You don't have to sympathize with me because I saved you. You saved my life once then,
so we are even.”
Mu Tongrui’s nose twitched, perhaps his words touched her, her eyes reddened, “Who calculates it this way? We both saved
each other's lives; how can it be called even? We are each other’s savior, and also friends of each other, aren't we?”
Fu Ziye's hand that was grabbing his towel trembled slightly and his eyes darkened.
Pursing his lips, he said in a cold and low voice, “But I don't want to be your friend.”