Sharing One Life with My Nemesis - Chapter 13

Chapter 13

In the end, Xie Huaiyan accepted his punishment.

Demotion, twenty strokes of the cane, and a year’s salary suspended.

Gu Heng said the emperor had already gone easy on him in light of his merit in overturning the case.

I went to the Ministry of Justice to watch him get beaten.

Xie Huaiyan was lying facedown on a long bench. When he heard my footsteps, his shoulders and back visibly stiffened.

“Why are you here?”

I held up my medicine kit.

“To enjoy the show.”

The bailiff carrying out the sentence nearly fumbled the cane.

Xie Huaiyan closed his eyes.

“Jiang Tingyun.”

I sat down beside him.

“You do your beating. Don’t mind me.”

The bailiff looked to Gu Heng.

Gu Heng’s face remained expressionless.

“Proceed.”

When the twenty strokes were done, Xie Huaiyan’s back was covered in blood.

I said nothing. I only treated his wounds.

When the medicinal powder fell over them, his fingers dug hard into the wooden edge of the bench.

I asked, “Does it hurt?”

He said, “It’s all right.”

I sprinkled on a little more powder.

He let out a muffled groan.

I said coldly, “Liar.”

Xie Huaiyan fell quiet.

A long while later, he said in a low voice, “It hurts.”

My hand stopped.

He continued, “That day at the execution ground hurt too.”

“It hurt when I cut my wrist.”

“These past few days, when the gu flared up, that hurt too.”

He turned his head to look at me, his eyes faintly red.

“Jiang Tingyun, I used to think that as long as I endured it, that would be enough. Now I’ve realized that even if I endure it, no one knows.”

My throat tightened.

“So?”

“So from now on, if it hurts, I’ll say so.”

His voice was very soft.

“If I want to see you, I’ll say that too.”

I lowered my head to wrap gauze around him, and my tears nearly fell.

“Who said you were allowed to see me?”

“You didn’t.”

“Then what are you saying it for?”

“I’ll owe it for now.”

He made me laugh in spite of myself.

On the day the Jiang Family reopened their residence, a heavy snow fell over the capital.

Father put on his official robes again, my elder brother returned to the army, and Mother lit lamps for the dead before the ancestral hall.

We did not hold a grand banquet.

We simply set out a few tables of hot food in the courtyard to thank those who had helped the Jiang Family during this time.

Xie Huaiyan arrived very late.

He wore an old blue robe, and the wounds on his back had yet to heal. He stood at the gate without coming in.

I walked over.

“Why aren’t you coming in?”

He handed me a wooden box.

Inside was the old name plaque from the Jiang Mansion.

In our previous life, when the estate was seized, someone had trampled off one corner of it.

In this life, he had repaired it.

“Returning it to its rightful owner.”

I stroked the old name plaque.

“Where did you find it?”

“The old storeroom at the Ministry of Justice.”

“Your back is still injured, and you went running to the old storeroom?”

“It wasn’t far.”

I looked at him.

He immediately added, “It hurt a little.”

Only then was I satisfied.

Snow fell onto his lashes and quickly melted into water.

I asked, “Xie Huaiyan, the gu has been broken. Now that you’re standing here, is it because it hurts, or because you wanted to come?”

He looked at me.

“I wanted to come.”

“Who did you want to see?”

He was silent for a moment.

Then the tips of his ears slowly turned red.

“I wanted to see you.”

Those four words were spoken so softly, yet they weighed more than every word left unsaid in our previous life.

Holding the wooden box, I stepped aside.

“Come in.”

“As what?”

I lifted my eyes.

“An old friend of the Jiang Family.”

His gaze dimmed slightly.

I added, “For now.”

Xie Huaiyan looked at me, and finally smiled.

Many years later, people in the capital would still bring up the old Jiang Family case.

Some said Xie Huaiyan had been a traitor back then. Others said he had swallowed humiliation to shoulder a heavy burden.

I couldn’t be bothered to argue with them.

In this life, how could a person’s crimes or affections be decided by a few words from others?

I only remembered that year in the death cell, when I drove a knife into his shoulder and hurt so badly that I dropped to my knees.

Back then, I thought it was the heavens refusing to let me kill him.

Only later did I learn that it was not that I could not kill him.

It was fate throwing us back so that, with our own hands, we could reclaim the truth that had been owed, the explanations that had come too late, and the pain we had never had time to speak aloud.

Xie Huaiyan once asked me, “If there had been no Soulbound Gu, would you still have believed me?”

I thought about it for a long time.

“No.”

He was not surprised at all.

Then I said, “But I would have investigated.”

“And after you investigated to the end?”

I looked at him.

“After I investigated to the end, I would decide whether to believe you.”

Xie Huaiyan held my hand. His palm was very warm.

“And now?”

I held his hand back.

“Now, I’ll believe thirty percent for the time being.”

He smiled.

“What about the other seventy percent?”

“That depends on your performance.”

Outside the window, snow fell all night.

This time, there was no execution ground, no belated cry, and no one dying in another’s place.

There were only two people who had crawled back from an old dream, sitting beneath a lamp, speaking their pain aloud and slowly settling the accounts between them.