If You Could Hear My Heart

“Do you expect me to invite you?” Shen Chi frowned, his obsidian-like eyes intently fixed on her.

“What do you want?” Xu Chaomu retorted, watching him warily.

As the saying goes, once bitten, twice shy.

“Why so much nonsense, get in!” Shen Chi said irritably.

“I have a glorious future ahead, I…”

“I know you have a glorious future, prospects bright as brocade, but if you don’t get in now, I’ll make sure your future ends today!”

This wretched girl, always with the same few phrases, she started saying them since she was ten, and he knows them by heart.

“Are you taking me to school?”

“Yeah.”

Only then did Xu Chaomu reluctantly open the car door, knowing she couldn’t escape from him.

When she sat in the passenger seat, she actually smelt a hint of tobacco in the car. She sniffed, yes, it was the scent of tobacco.

He smokes? She remembered that he did not smoke.

Suddenly, a sentence from Ji Shengxuan last night came to mind, “Smoking relieves worries, little girl, you are still too young.”

Turning her eyes, she glanced at Shen Chi. His face, though cold and forbidding, was always so good to look at.

He showed no expression, just started the car and drove away from the hotel.

Perhaps her nose was playing tricks on her.

The car was quiet inside, neither of them speaking a word. In the past, it was always Xu Chaomu who talked incessantly at times like this.

Helpless, Shen Chi had to break the silence first: “How is your study going these days?”

“Not so great.”

“Can’t you give me some peace of mind?” Shen Chi was exasperated but didn’t mean to reprimand her.

“Making you lose face is more like it,” Xu Chaomu mumbled.

Shen Chi said no more; if he said something, she would have to argue. But…

that was okay, at least she didn’t avoid him like a mouse evading a cat.

After a long silence, the car fell quiet once more.

Rain pattered against the car windows, the wipers swishing non-stop, but everything outside was shrouded in mist.

Shen Chi let out a sigh, almost imperceptibly saying, “Anyway, I can afford to keep you.”

Xu Chaomu, who had been looking down and fiddling with her fingers, turned her head towards him with confusion, not sure if she had heard him right.

His hand rested lightly on the steering wheel, perhaps from a night without sleep, his complexion wasn’t very good.

His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked forward, cars rushing by like flowing water, but his face was devoid of ripples.

Since last night, he had thought long and hard. If any other woman had spoken to him that way, the milder cases might have been driven out of C City by now, the severe ones, might have been utterly eradicated.

But the one who spoke to him that way was Xu Chaomu.

Even if she told him her motives were bad, even if she said she clung to him just to escape a life of poverty, even if she told him to scram… he couldn’t bring himself to be harsh, because she was Xu Chaomu, unique.

There was only one Xu Chaomu in this world. If she left, if she was gone, whom else would he dote on…

Xu Chaomu, however, was not much in a contemplative mood, though sitting beside Shen Chi, she no longer possessed the attitude to bicker and joke with him as before.

In the past, she would counter every word he uttered with ten of her own.

He was aloof and arrogant, yet she would always joke with him.

He forbade her approach, and she would insist on scratching him with her little claws. Whenever he got angry, she felt delighted.

Just like before, when he was driving, she could never sit still in the passenger seat, occasionally stealing glances at him, and, looking on, would crack a smile.

She would laugh by herself, and after her laughter, she would say, “Big Brother

Four, you’re so handsome, isn’t that unsafe?”

And then, that certain someone would always respond with a stony face, throwing her a sharp glance.

Or else, she would reach for a plush cushion in the car, pull its two hands, and tease Shen Chi, “Big Brother Four, this is your daughter, isn’t she cute?”

Once more, that certain someone would throw her a sharp glance with a stony face, “Don’t mess around, I’m driving!”

At that time, she would be over the moon, chuckling nonstop.

Teasing Shen Chi was one of her greatest pleasures.

How much she liked him. She really, really liked him so much. But he… he did not like her back.

Really, who wants to be so shameless? It’s just that she loved him too much. But he didn’t understand.

And if he didn’t understand, so be it.

She liked him, and it wasn’t fair to demand he like her in return. Forced affection is never sweet, which she understood.

At this moment, Xu Chaomu leaned against the window, quietly watching the rain outside. The downpour obscured her vision, but she still turned her head to look…

Due to the temperature difference inside, the car windows gradually fogged up.

Xu Chaomu stretched out her hand and started writing on the glass with her finger.

“Xu Chaomu…” she whispered her own name as she wrote it.

Once, someone said, the “Xu” of “Xu Nuo,” and the “Chaomu” of “morning and dusk.”

I promise you a lifetime of mornings and dusks.

After writing her own name, she stared at it foolishly. The handwriting wasn’t pretty and somewhat childish.

Actually, she really wanted to write Shen Chi’s name beside hers…

Just like in her diary, where she had written his name over and over. With each written instance, each spoken word, her heart filled with joy.

The feeling of liking someone was so wonderful. Even if it was a faint and endless unrequited love with no end in sight…

In the desolate years, she faced turmoil alone.

Droplets trickled down the letters, and soon the name “Xu Chaomu” blurred.

She wiped the name away with her hand, and the window cleared up. Although the rain outside continued pouring, it didn’t obstruct her view.

Just when the Maybach halted at a red light, Xu Chaomu happened to see a family of three crossing the street.

A young couple was holding the hands of a little girl, shielding her between them.

But the three of them shared only one umbrella, so the tall young father wrapped one arm around his wife and held the umbrella with the other, while the young mother protected the little girl.

The little girl was young, at most five or six years old. With her hair in twin ponytails, she was adorable and seemed very sensible.

In such heavy rain, Xu Chaomu saw that the couple’s clothes were wet, yet the little girl remained dry.

The sidewalk was long, and the family walked together, leaning on each other, faces showing contentment and unaffected by the heavy downpour.

Reaching the end of the walkway, the little girl looked up as if she was talking to her parents.

Of course, Xu Chaomu couldn’t hear, but she watched them, her lips curling into a faint smile.

Likely tired of walking, the young father passed the umbrella to the woman and, bending down, lifted the girl into his arms. The family slowly vanished into the rainy veil…

Even as the family disappeared, Xu Chaomu’s gaze remained unfixed.

Perhaps sensing her still and focused gaze out the window, Shen Chi followed her line of sight.

And with that, he too saw the scene..