Chapter 166 (1/2)

Xue Zi Xuan Extra:

After his sister’s death, Xue Zi Xuan realized that he was a monster. That year, he was only eleven years old, and he practiced in the piano room every day in order to participate in the Chopin International Piano Competition. He remembered, one day, his mother suddenly rushed in and choked, “Zi Xuan, your sister passed away, go see her.”

He walked out of the piano room to find that his home had already been arranged into a funeral hall, his less than a year old sister lying in a small coffin, wrapped in new swaddling. She was born with erythroblastosis, and still passed away after several months of treatment. His mother was lying on the table, crying bitterly, yelling out his sister’s name with heart wrenching wails. His father was silently crying, his eyes red, his expression similarly grief-stricken. Xue Zi Xuan touched his heart, but it truly was awfully tranquil. He couldn’t feel their grief, he couldn’t blend in with this family. When they were busy rushing back and forth to treat his sister’s illness, he never even asked about her well-being.

“Take a good look at her! What’s that look on your face? Don’t you feel sad?” His mother had apparently noticed his abnormality, she pressed his indifferent face to the small coffin, so he could look at his dead sister’s face. He stared at her indifferently, his eyes dry, after a long time, his mother let him go and regarded him with new, doubtful eyes.

After his sister’s burial, his mother took him to visit a psychiatrist, from then on, he started a five-year treatment. He slowly accepted the fact that he was a monster would couldn’t feel empathy, such people couldn’t understand the feelings of others, didn’t understand what it was to feel their sadness or joy. He had scoffed at this, because he knew that music could make him feel sad, and even make him feel happy. In the world of music, he was complete.

But many years later, when that fated boy appeared, he understood what it was to feel truly complete. Prior to this, his world was black and white, like the jumping piano keys, but after his arrival, the world’s most beautiful colors were brought into his monochrome world, loveliness and beauty that he had never appreciated before.

His mother was suffering from depression, and even had suicidal tendencies, in order to help alleviate her condition, his father adopted a baby girl. But unfortunately, when the girl was three-years-old, she was diagnosed with congenital heart disease. Because Xue family already had one dead daughter, they refused to give up on another, so his parents spared no effort for her treatment. Xue Zi Xuan already understood that he was different from ordinary people, and had learned to cover it up. Even though he felt nothing for this sister, he reluctantly accepted her intimacy, but this eventually led to a habit of wearing gloves, which was his last layer of defense.

When she was six years old, her piano talent started showing, and he saw her for the first time, he even thought that she’d appeared in Xue family by the will of heaven. He was willing to teach every talented child, and he looked forward to their growth. The country needed more people to uphold music, because it was the only place that could make him feel emotions, it was his bridge to the real world. If there was no music, it felt like he was living in a vacuum, and would eventually suffocate.

As his sister grew to sixteen years old, her heart gradually became unable to support her increasingly maturing body. When his father asked him to secretly bring her twin brother back to Xue house, he knew what they were going to do, but he didn’t feel anything. His sister needed a healthy heart, and someone could provide such a heart, that was all.

The first time he met the boy was in a rundown loess cave, to tell the truth, the first impression was not good. He never imagined that the waxy skinned, yellow dirt stained boy standing in front of him would became his most beautiful dream, and his most regretful predestined fate. On the way back to the capital, he didn’t say a word to him, and after he took him back to Xue house, he treated him with extreme apathy and warned him, one, don’t touch me; two, don’t call me brother. After all the dust settled, he often recalled this sentence, and felt like his bones were being crushed and his heart was being clawed out.

The boy looked up at him, his black eyes full of fear and confusion, faint tears glittering in his eyes, as if he would cry at any moment. Every night, every night for the rest of his life he dreamed of being able to travel back to that point in time, to hold the boy tightly in his arms and tell him in the gentlest tone. “You can, you can do anything to me. Don’t be scared, I’ll protect you.”

But in reality, he’d done nothing for him. He threw him to his scheming family and left, until he came back home after his tour and found him sitting before the piano. He couldn’t believe that it was the first time the boy had touched a piano, his ‘Good Morning’ made him feel as if he was smelling the fresh morning dew and the dawn, the exhaustion from the long journey immediately dispersing. That was the first time he’d truly looked into the boy’s eyes, suddenly realizing that they were extremely beautiful eyes, and as he stared deeper into those eyes, it felt as if he could glimpse another gorgeous world in his bottomless pupils.

That world was so mysterious that it fascinated him. He began teaching the boy to play piano, and was forever captured. The boy was even more outstanding than he’d imagined, and when he sat in front of the piano, cheerfully dancing his with fingers, he simply couldn’t look away from him. He was like a magnificent bridge, like a surging tide, charging into his heart with irresistible force.

When he saw the boy fondly lying on Xue Yan’s knees and chatting happily with him, he felt jealousy. He hated his original self for being so indifferent to him, turning his heart away from him and letting him give it to another. If he’d taken care of him after bringing him back to Xue house, and listened to his anxiousness and confusion, maybe he would’ve become the most important person in his life.

But this ‘maybe’ had never existed from the start. When his sister and parents squeezed and exploited the boy, he gradually became conscious of why he’d originally brought him back. The boy stood on the Vienna Golden Hall’s stage, shocking the world with his superb skills, but also shattering his heart. The boy’s tears and sweat that had sprinkled onto the keys had also fallen onto his heart, watering a seed called love, letting it quickly take root and sprout. His barren, desert-like heart was gradually covered in green vines and beautiful flowers, and each flower was condensed from his love for the boy and his music.

He was a lovely high note, he was the most beautiful melody, and also the most touching love song. Through him, he realized the beauty and warmth of the real world. He ran onto the stage and firmly embraced him, announcing to the world that he was his pride. If he could, he wanted to freeze time at the moment of their embrace.

The boy made his hollow chest grow a heart, gushing out blood, becoming a flesh and blood man capable of feeling. However, wherever life had a beautiful side, there was naturally an ugly side. When he brought the boy back to Xue house, he was once again suddenly conscious of his original purpose for bringing him there.

His sister asked him if he wanted her to live, this sentence made his blood condense into ice. He naturally wanted her to live, but if he could only choose one, he knew which one he would choose. He tried to protect him, but it was all too late.