An 80s female translator was spoiled rotten by a rough and jealous man.

Chapter 197 What Happened Afterwards...

Inside, there was only a letter with just a few words: "My heart already belongs to another. Please don't wait any longer. I wish you find your perfect match soon."

Tears soaked the letter paper, and Jiang's mother hurriedly took out a handkerchief to wipe Chu Yao's tears.

After that day, Chu Yao never saw Jiang's mother and Yingzi again. It was as if the mother and daughter had moved away from Jiangjia Village overnight and disappeared without a trace. No one knew where they went.

When Chu Yao heard the news, she didn't show much surprise; in fact, everything had been foreshadowed. She hadn't read the letter "he" wrote to Jiang's mother, but she could roughly guess some of its contents.

Especially that afternoon, before Jiang's mother saw Chu Yao off onto the farm bus, she handed Chu Yao a ceramic jar she was holding, saying it was rice sausage dried at home, and told her to take it back to the army to eat.

Chu Yao lowered her eyes to look at the pottery jar that Jiang's mother had been carrying all the way. After a few seconds of silence, she finally took it.

The moment she received it, Chu Yao knew clearly that this was all the rice sausages the family had.

Back at the military base, Chu Yao opened the ceramic jar and found that besides being stuffed full of enemas, there was also a small pink cloth bag tucked inside. Opening the bag, she found it contained banknotes of various denominations, totaling 236 yuan and 5 mao.

This was the best farewell ceremony that Jiang's mother could think of. It wasn't perfect, but she hoped to have a clear conscience.

Chu Yao did not believe that the reason they gave her all the rice sausages in their house before moving away was because they were pressed for time, had to travel long distances, and found it inconvenient to carry them, so they did her a favor.

It was because she had repeatedly praised her rice sausage as the best sausage she had ever eaten.

This woman, who was over fifty years old, wondered if she would ever have the chance to make her enema again. So she left all the few remaining enemas in the house for her.

and so……

Did Jiang Ying get into her dream university? Did she, as she said, want to heal and save lives like Chu Yao, and ultimately choose to study medicine?

Has Jiang's mother's lumbar muscle strain improved, or has it worsened? Is she still consistently following the exercises I taught her before?

Chu Yao had no way of knowing any of this.

They vanished from their world, along with the faint connection between her and "him".

She became a lone traveler once again.

Later, Chu Yao kept that heartless letter with her. Over time, the places in the lower right corner of the letter that had been soaked with tears turned into a small, faint, irregularly shaped abstract ink painting.

He never actually expressed his feelings to her directly, let alone made any promises. He never said he liked her, never asked her to wait for him, and never said he would come to find her. He never said anything.

We only spent a little over ten days together.

Nothing seemed to have happened between them, except for that kiss, a kiss that, strictly speaking, wasn't really a kiss.

It was her last night at the manor, and also his last night there. He thought she was asleep, but she wasn't.

Chu Yao knew he had been standing by the bed watching her for a long time. In the darkness, Chu Yao closed her eyes and quietly adjusted her increasingly flustered breathing, afraid that he would find out that she was pretending to be asleep.

Then she heard him turn around, one step, two steps, three steps... the sound of his footsteps heading towards the door, very soft and slow, the distance gradually increasing, but then suddenly stopping. The footsteps seemed to suddenly change direction, and then approached the bedside again, one step, two steps, three steps... Chu Yao felt a familiar scent coming towards her, and he stole a kiss on her lips.

It was a very light and shallow kiss; Chu Yao couldn't remember if her heart skipped a beat at that moment.

He stole a kiss from her, and then left for a long time.

However, the tears that welled up in her eyes upon seeing the letter were not because he said he had someone else in his heart; it was simply because she was so perceptive and adept at reading people's expressions.

Whether it was the worry that Jiang's mother tried so hard to hide, or the "Transfer Certificate" that Chu Yao caught a glimpse of when Jiang's mother opened the drawer and took out the envelope, and then the words in front of her that vowed to sever ties with her, everything reminded Chu Yao of the night he gave her the map and said he would help her escape. Everything was so similar.

She wrote a letter urging Jiang's mother to move overnight, and even disregarded the fact that Jiang Ying was in the crucial period of her senior year of high school, insisting on transferring schools, severing her ties with the Jiang family without any room for negotiation.

Those who need to be transferred should be transferred, and those who need to be cut off should be cut off. He did his best to settle everyone properly.

So... how difficult must your situation be this time?
Chu Yao dared not think further, yet she couldn't help but keep thinking—have they found you?

Are they about to find you?
Or... are you going to take action? Is it... very dangerous?

Will someone ever again snatch your life back from the jaws of death?

……

As children, we often ask many questions. For example, when listening to adults tell stories, we like to ask—"And then what?" "What happened next?" "And then what?"
Did the young hero Nezha eventually defeat Lady Shiji and save the world? Did Cinderella eventually find the lost glass slipper?

Did Chu Yao eventually meet the person she loved?

……

In 2003, the movie "Infernal Affairs" was released in mainland China. Some time after the movie's release, Chu Yao's workplace organized a group screening event.

On the day the event notice was issued, a young man in the office sighed to the heavens: "Sigh, once you enter the medical field, it's like falling into a deep sea, especially at a military medical university. How long has it been since I've stepped into a movie theater!"

On the big screen in the theater, undercover police officer Chen Yongren roared at Superintendent Huang Zhicheng: "It was clearly agreed to be three years, but after three years it was another three years, and after another three years it was another three years. It's been almost ten years, boss!"

Seeing this, Chu Yao couldn't stop her tears from falling. A male colleague next to her, who was also the deputy director of the department, saw this and jokingly said with a hint of surprise, "Our military hospital's top general surgery doctor, the female demon who doesn't even blink when she's doing craniotomies and amputating legs, how come she's almost forty and still so sentimental while watching a movie?"

On the other side sat Chu Yao's graduate student, who, perhaps noticing the commotion, promptly handed over a pack of tissues and whispered a reminder, "Professor."

Chu Yao thanked them and accepted the gift, wiping away her tears. The huge screening room was packed, but Chu Yao was the only one who showed unusual emotionality when watching this part of the film.

Throughout the entire film, the atmosphere was shrouded in mystery, with a tense and exciting tone that ran throughout, and the plot was captivating.

When the movie ended, my colleagues were still chatting about the plot. Some people just talked about the surface, saying things like, "Andy Lau is so handsome!" Others went deeper into the story: "Hey, before Big B fired the gun, did you guys suspect anything about him? I didn't realize he was an undercover agent for the gang at all."

The colleague who had just teased Chu Yao walked beside her and casually asked, "What did you think of this movie?"

Chu Yao sincerely praised, "Tony Leung's acting is truly superb!"

"Three years after three years, and then another three years after that," he portrayed the hardships and struggles behind the character's journey, as well as the most genuine breakdown, very well.

What's wrong with the police? Don't police officers ever break down?

After turning thirty, Chu Yao almost never cried again. Even with her calm personality in her youth, she was prone to being sentimental. In the past years, she had experienced too many separations and deaths.

In comparison, everything I encountered in my later life seemed insignificant.

She has become increasingly mature and rational, and few things can stir up her emotions. In the eyes of her colleagues, she is always calm and composed when facing work.

Years later, she cried her eyes out again after watching a movie. It would only make people laugh if they told others, and even she herself found it quite unbelievable.

The exit corridor of the screening room was packed with people. Chu Yao's male colleague, walking to her left, echoed her words and began praising Tony Leung's acting. Just then, a "ding" sounded; her phone had received a message. Chu Yao looked down and opened the text message:

Sender: Mr. Yao
"Is the movie over? I'm coming to pick you up."

Chu Yao kept her head down as she typed, and walked out of the screening room with the flow of people. Unexpectedly, she ran into an old acquaintance in the cinema lobby.

Lu Feng walked towards her carrying two large buckets of popcorn. Chu Yao stopped and teased with a smile, "Director Lu actually likes to eat this stuff? And he bought two big buckets of it."

Lu Feng shrugged the two buckets of popcorn he was holding and said helplessly, "The kids love to eat it and keep asking for it. I can't do anything about it. They get upset if I don't buy it for them, but if I only buy one bucket, they'll fight over it."

Chu Yao smiled and said, "Oh right, I haven't had a chance to congratulate you yet on your promotion to director!" Then, she added jokingly, "You're already a director, and you still find time to take your child to the movies. You're a role model for us all!"

"Stop teasing me, Colonel."

Just as Chu Yao was about to say something more, her Nokia phone suddenly rang—"The rain falls all night, my love overflows like rainwater. Fallen leaves in the yard, piled high with my longing. A few words of gossip cannot cool my passion, you appear in my..." every page of the poem.

This was one of the most popular ringtones of the year. Chu Yao answered the call, held the phone to her ear, and waved it at Lu Feng to indicate that she was leaving first.

"Hey, I'm out already, where are you?"

"I'm coming downstairs now, you..." The woman's voice on the phone faded into the distance.

As Lu Feng watched Chu Yao's departing figure, his wife's chilling voice drifted from behind him the next second: "Is this the girl who used to wait for you at the entrance of your brigade's base every day when you were young?"

Lu Feng protested, "No, she didn't block me to pursue me, and how did it become 'everyday'?"

After much thought, I've decided to place this interlude here. Don't be confused yet; the next chapter will return to the normal timeline.

Also, I'd like to ask for some votes~