The Year He Hated Me Most - Chapter 4

I watched his retreating back.

“If you ever learn she didn’t die because of me, will you regret it?”

Nan Heting and I spent an unbearably long night in that house.

He woke early the next day, changed his clothes, and set off on foot for the mountain behind the villa.

I heard him tell his assistant over the phone to clear everything out of the place.

He didn’t want to see anything that belonged to me.

Still, I didn’t think Nan Heting would actually move out of the villa.

His first love—the one who’d turned into a butterfly and flown away—was buried on the hill behind our home.

“Xiaodie, she’s dead.”

Nan Heting crouched before the grave and gently brushed his fingers over the headstone.

A photograph was set into it. The sweet-faced young woman smiled brightly, full of life.

Sadly, her life had ended at twenty.

“I finally avenged you.”

He murmured to her, then sat there in a daze for a long time.

For some reason, Nan Heting seemed to drift off more easily now.

As if he’d been hollowed out, his soul gone.

Of course, I didn’t think it had anything to do with me.

I figured he simply felt empty after getting his revenge. He’d lived on his hatred of me for years. Now I was dead; it was only natural that he’d feel a little lost.

Nan Heting didn’t leave the hill until sunrise.

When he got back, he didn’t go into the villa. He headed straight to the garage, got into a car, and drove off.

When I saw him pull up outside a dilapidated apartment building on the outskirts of town, I knew what he wanted.

Following his memories, he knocked on Hu Die’s family’s door.

No one answered.

Nan Heting tried several more times. When there was still no response, he grew impatient and pounded harder.

This time he roused a neighbor.

“What the—” The neighbor’s voice trailed off. He stared in disbelief at the man who’d once been a poor boy.

Nan Heting looked like a big-shot businessman now, so the neighbor swallowed the rest of his curse.

“Where’s the family who lives here?” Nan Heting asked coldly.

“Them?” The neighbor rolled his eyes in disgust. “They’re living it up on the money they got for trading away their daughter’s life.”

Nan Heting frowned, as though he couldn’t bear such blunt, vulgar words.

“Where did they go?”

“How should I know? Why’re you grilling me? Who are you?” The neighbor looked Nan Heting up and down, irritated.

“I’m… their daughter’s boyfriend.”

“Oh!” The neighbor’s eyes lit up with gossip. “You’re the boyfriend Old Hu had wrapped around his finger?”

“Poor little Hu Die was born into the wrong family. Her rotten parents sacrificed her in a deal they made.”

My heart lurched. I immediately looked at Nan Heting.

His eyes were bloodshot. After a long moment, he ground out, “A deal?”

On the drive back, Nan Heting went faster than ever.