Chapter 9

A sharp pain from the depths of my soul almost made me fade away.

I had a strange premonition.

If I experienced this kind of pain two more times, my consciousness would completely vanish from this world.

I floated into Fu Liuchuan’s office and saw him sitting expressionlessly at his desk. I called out to him from a distance. “Brother.”

He couldn’t hear or see me.

So I drifted lightly into his arms, my lips gently touching his cheek.

This was something I had only dared to do in my dreams when I was alive.

Back then, every meeting we had ended in a fight.

Fu Liuchuan hated me.

And I tried my best to act as if I despised him to the core.

No one knew.

In those unspeakable, girlish dreams, my brother and I were as intimate as could be.

He would pull me onto his lap, kiss my neck, and call my name in a hoarse voice, “…Liuliu.”

“Let me look at you.”

I would wake up with a burning face, my back slick with sweat.

“Fu Liuliu, are you a pervert? He’s your brother.”

“…What’s there to be afraid of? You’re not even related by blood.”

Two conflicting thoughts tore at my heart.

In this torment, I wrote a long love letter to Fu Liuchuan.

But that night, when I knocked on his door, his face was shrouded in shadow as he looked at me calmly. “Is something wrong?”

“Can I come into your room to talk?”

His voice grew even more distant. “No.”

My hand, hanging at my side, touched the letter in the pocket of my nightgown. I suddenly found a sliver of courage and softened my voice like I did when I was a child. “Brother, I…”

Before I could finish, Fu Liuchuan slammed the door shut.

Through the door, his cold voice drifted out. “Don’t call me that.”

I stood there in a daze, and then it hit me.

His father and my mother were both dead, killed in that car accident.

Fu Liuchuan and I were no longer connected in any way.

Of course he wouldn’t want me as his sister anymore.

…

“Liuliu.”

The man in front of me suddenly spoke, his voice a little hoarse.

I snapped back to reality.

I saw Fu Liuchuan’s gaze fixed on my face.

For a split second, I almost thought he could see my soul.

He closed his eyes, his voice trembling as he called out again, “…Liuliu.”

I realized something and quickly turned my head.

On Fu Liuchuan’s desk was a photo frame.

The picture was a cascade of purple and pink, shimmering with light.

It was from when I was fourteen, before the Fu family fell apart.

Fu Liuchuan and I were standing in the garden of our old house, in front of a wall of roses.

It was the last photo we ever took together, close and without a care in the world.