Xu Duyan looked at Su Ziyan in front of her with a face full of worry. Only after checking and confirming that he wasn’t injured did she finally breathe a sigh of relief.
But right after she relaxed, Xu Duyan noticed that something was off with Su Ziyan.
The smile on Su Ziyan’s face had disappeared. That should have been completely normal—after all, no one could smile after falling like that. Yet Xu Duyan could sense that something was wrong.
She was the person who understood Su Ziyan best in the entire world, so she could keenly detect his abnormality.
Su Ziyan’s abnormality wasn’t because he had lost his smile, but because he had lost his vitality.
It wasn’t that Su Ziyan had died, but that he had lost that vibrant, flourishing life force he used to have.
She could clearly feel the change in him because she had been the one taking care of him from the moment he woke up until he was discharged from the hospital.
She had watched with her own eyes as Su Ziyan gradually became quiet and withdrawn because of his blindness. Bit by bit, he lost his “vitality,” lost the liveliness that life should have, and slowly turned into a pool of stagnant water.
Although she saw it and felt pain in her heart, she was powerless to do anything about it. There was nothing she could do.
She watched the gentle and upright boy she once liked so much slowly shatter and turn into a silent, withdrawn person.
This deathly aura only started to improve after he was discharged. For some reason, after leaving the hospital, Su Ziyan regained that fresh vitality. As they got closer and closer to home, the change in him became more and more obvious.
Xu Duyan once thought that the environment in the hospital was simply too oppressive, and that Su Ziyan was slowly getting better because he had left that high-pressure setting.
And the facts proved her right. Su Ziyan became lively and cheerful again. He even made self-deprecating jokes in the elevator to make her laugh.
Although the change was too sudden, Xu Duyan was genuinely happy. It felt like her younger brother had come back.
The boy who had been full of a broken feeling seemed to have been “reborn from the dead.”
Those shattered pieces appeared to fly back and reassemble into the complete Su Ziyan, turning him back into the person he was before the injury.
Xu Duyan was really, really happy. She truly believed her younger brother had begun to slowly walk out of the shadow of his blindness, until…
Just now, when Su Ziyan fell to the ground and Xu Duyan helped him up again, she felt as if he had once more lost his vitality.
The boy who had just been pieced back together seemed to have been shattered again.
Xu Duyan helped Su Ziyan back to the sofa like this. For a moment, she didn’t know what to say and could only ask softly, “You must be very tired after not coming home for so many days, right? Do you want to lie down on Elder Sister’s lap for a while?”
Su Ziyan was stunned for a moment. Before he could answer, Xu Duyan had already gently pressed him down onto her black silk legs.
The familiar touch suddenly filled him with an inexplicable sense of emotion.
“Yeah… I’m tired and sad,”
Su Ziyan gently closed his lifeless eyes and replied, “Elder Sister, do you know? Ever since I went blind, I’ve really been suffering.”
“That feeling of powerlessness surrounds me every single moment, making me feel like I can’t do anything and can only rely on others while being consumed by impotent rage.”
“I feel like I’m in deep despair, afraid every day in this boundless darkness that I’ll lose my way, afraid that one day even my hearing and sense of touch will disappear and I won’t be able to feel the world anymore.”
“I know these things probably won’t happen, but I still can’t help being scared.”
“Elder Sister, you know… I’ve been most afraid of darkness and loneliness since I was little…”
“I know,”
Xu Duyan said as she reached out and gently covered Su Ziyan’s closed eyes. Two drops of pained tears fell onto the back of her hand.
“You don’t have to be afraid anymore. I’m always by your side. I’m not just ‘someone else’ to you. The two of us have always been one, haven’t we?”
Su Ziyan paused for a moment. He noticed the strange tone in his sister’s voice and said, “I know. You’ll always be by my side, no matter what.”
“That’s right. I’ll always be by your side,”
Xu Duyan said firmly.
“So don’t be afraid, and don’t despair.”
“I know. Actually, I stopped being afraid a while ago.”
Su Ziyan continued softly:
“At that time, I was really desperate. And the more desperate a person is, the more they need an emotional anchor. Otherwise, they won’t be able to keep living.”
“So I placed my emotional anchor on our home—this place that belongs only to the two of us.”
“Until just now, when I fell to the ground. That fall shattered my filter, and only then did I realize that my emotional anchor wasn’t this house at all, but the version of ‘home’ that I had overly idealized.”
“But that idealized home I created was fake. The real home isn’t the same as the one I imagined.”
“At that moment, I really felt despair. It was like every drop of blood in my body had turned cold.”
“Actually, thinking about it now, I was overthinking it. I already had an emotional anchor that could let me survive in despair.”
“I only realized this when you pressed me onto your lap. What’s important isn’t the home belonging to the two of us, but the two of us ourselves. Because you’ve been by my side ever since I went blind, I somehow forgot something so important.”
“Actually, I didn’t need to exhaust myself searching for so-called emotional anchors in this despair. My emotional anchor has always been right beside me.”
He reached out and grabbed the hand Xu Duyan had placed over his eyes. He could clearly feel her hand tremble slightly when he touched it, and he could also clearly feel the wetness on the back of her hand.
Xu Duyan was crying.
Su Ziyan fell silent. For a moment, he couldn’t say another word.
Everything he said was something he had only just realized, so he spoke without thinking too much. After all, he had never needed to overthink when talking to Xu Duyan.
But after feeling her tears, he suddenly realized one thing.
Using “home” as his emotional anchor instead of Xu Duyan actually had one huge advantage.
That was because a home was an inanimate object, while Xu Duyan was a person.
This was very important. An inanimate object didn’t fear pressure or the heavy expectations of others.
But Xu Duyan was a living person. She had her own memories and values, her own emotions and thoughts.
She was already under enormous pressure. The accident they suffered had made this strong woman cry in front of him more than once—just like she was doing now.
And now he had become a cripple and a burden. Not only did she have to earn money to support the family, she also had to take meticulous care of him. She had to look after his physical health and constantly pay attention to his emotions.
Her pressure had already reached the breaking point, hadn’t it?
So… should he really continue speaking?