Forgotten Love - Chapter 3
On the day of his discharge, the amnesiac Gu Huaian mentioned Uncle Gu for the first time.
“Shen Qingruan, take me… to see my dad.”
On the way to the cemetery, he remained silent the entire time.
When the car stopped, he blocked me with a cold expression:
“Wait here. You don’t need to go up.”
Looking at the obvious rejection and alienation in Gu Huaian’s eyes,
I, exhausted physically and mentally from his torment these past days, couldn’t help but feel a little annoyed:
“Gu Huaian, I’m your wife. Is it not allowed for me to pay my respects to Father-in-law?”
“You’re my wife at thirty, but I’m only eighteen now. I’m not even of legal marriage age.”
Gu Huaian, with his mature and stern face, kept saying things in a strange, sarcastic tone.
This sense of incongruity made me deflate.
Seeing that I stopped arguing,
Gu Huaian turned his head and touched the tip of his nose.
After a while, as if explaining,
he said rather reluctantly:
“Well, I have some things I want to say to Dad alone.”
Before I could react, he strode away.
……
When he came back, Gu Huaian sat in the passenger seat.
I glanced at him in surprise.
Seeing his eyes were terribly red, I wisely kept quiet.
But I didn’t expect him to speak first.
“Tell me, what exactly happened in these twelve years?”
His deep voice was a little hoarse.
In my mind, I thought about the people and things that mattered to Gu Huaian at eighteen.
After considering for a moment, I tried to keep it concise:
“After the incident where you fell down the stairs, you confessed to Lin Jiao. But not long after you got together, the Gu Family’s business ran into trouble.”
“Later, Dad… Uncle Gu found out that Lin Jiao had been bought off by the Ji Family. She approached the Gu Family because someone misled her, blaming Uncle Gu for her father’s death.”
“You couldn’t handle the blow and fell apart. Uncle Gu struggled to keep the company afloat, and finally found leverage against the Ji Family, but one day on his way to work, he got into a car accident and… died on the spot.”
I glanced at Gu Huaian out of the corner of my eye.
Seeing his face grow paler, I couldn’t help but worry:
“Huaian, are you okay?”
“So, it was the Ji Family who did it… right?”
“Mm.” I nodded:
“Ji Tang went to prison for hiring a killer. In recent years, the Ji Family has been plagued by scandals, and not long ago, they officially declared bankruptcy.”
“As for Lin Jiao… after Uncle Gu died, she disappeared. There’s been no news of her all these years.”
Gu Huaian’s chest heaved violently.
He closed his eyes, and after a long silence, asked me again:
“What about us? Why did you and I get married?”
“To revive the Gu Family, after Uncle Gu died, you came to me…”
I paused.
I didn’t mention that when Gu Huaian sought help from my father,
it was I who suggested marriage.
“So, it was a business marriage?”
Gu Huaian laughed at himself, with a trace of suppressed humiliation.
“No, my family was bankrupt. It should’ve been me marrying into yours, right?”
……
I have to say, eighteen-year-old Gu Huaian has quite the imagination.
I was a bit speechless:
“Gu Huaian, if you’d used your imagination for writing, you wouldn’t have failed the Chinese exam in the college entrance test!”
“Between you and me, it did start as a business marriage, but after all these years, we’ve long since given each other our true hearts. We’re even more loving than ordinary couples.”
Hearing my words, Gu Huaian’s face alternated between blue and red.
Clearly, he still couldn’t accept it.
The person he’d disliked for so many years had become his beloved wife.
He stubbornly pressed on:
“Then tell me, how did we fall in love?”
I couldn’t help but recall the daily life of loving and hating with Gu Huaian.
Honestly, it’s hard to pinpoint when these feelings began.
So I hesitated and said:
“I suppose… it was love that grew over time?”
‘Time’ can be a noun or a verb.
The naive Gu Huaian clearly didn’t catch my double entendre.
He crossed his arms over his chest and snorted coldly.
That expression made it obvious he didn’t believe me.
After that, he closed his eyes and said no more.
I don’t know how much time passed; I thought he’d fallen asleep.
Suddenly, a resentful voice sounded in my ear:
“Hey, Shen Qingruan, did I really fail the Chinese exam in the college entrance test?”
……
