Meng Chu tidied up the home once more, and although she was moving away, the items on the floor were all things that had been neatly organized on her workbench, so even though some of them had been shattered, Meng Chu still did not want to throw them away.
It was just like this little robot of hers.
Cheng Jinyu did not say anything at all, he just stayed by her side and accompanied her as she cleaned up.
Afterwards, Meng Chu went back to her own room, took out her suitcase, and began to pack up her daily necessities.
It did not take long before her cell phone, which she had placed on the dressing table, suddenly started ringing.
Meng Chu walked over and answered the incoming phone call.
“Is this Meng Chu?” The person on the other side was a man, and he took the initiative to introduce himself, saying, “I am the police officer who received your report last night, my surname is Yue.”
“Hello,” Meng Chu immediately responded into the receiver.
“At present, we have failed to extract his fingerprints from your clothes, but his forced entry into your home still counts as picking quarrels and provoking trouble after drinking, so this person has already been detained here with us, and he will receive an administrative penalty of 7 days.”
Officer Yue explained this very patiently over the phone.
“This man obviously used his drunkenness as an excuse to follow me upstairs,” Meng Chu was still unwilling to give up as she asked, “At that time, I pressed the elevator button for the twelfth floor, and he pressed it for the thirteenth floor. As a result, when I was unlocking my door, he followed me out, pushed me directly into my home, and tried to force himself on me.”
In fact, she had already stated these words very clearly last night when she was making her statement at the police station.
“I understand how you are feeling, but the community you live in is an old one, the elevator surveillance is broken, and there is no surveillance at your door,” Officer Yue on the other end of the phone patiently listened to her words before saying, “We have to rely on evidence when handling cases, so at present, we can only administratively detain him for 7 days for picking quarrels and provoking trouble while intoxicated.”
Meng Chu actually understood this as well, she was just completely unwilling to resign herself to it.
But there was nothing she could do about it, because the law demanded concrete evidence.
“I hope you will not be too deeply affected by this incident, and if you want compensation, we can always mediate,” Officer Yue said out of the goodness of his heart.
After all, a great many things had already occurred and could not be undone.
Receiving actual compensation was sometimes another form of making amends for the victim.
“I do not need it, and I absolutely will not agree to a settlement,” Meng Chu said immediately.
“Try to be as careful as possible at night from now on, as women living alone are indeed very prone to facing all kinds of problems,” Officer Yue on the other end immediately expressed his understanding, but he still made sure to give her this warning.
However, Officer Yue immediately remembered that this Miss Meng was a married woman.
After she had her accident last night, her husband rushed over to the scene right away.
Seeing that the relationship between the two of them was not bad, he wondered why she was still living all by herself.
“Thank you for your concern, I will be living with my husband from now on,” Meng Chu thought for a moment, and feeling that this sounded a little strange, she explained, “We have not been married for very long, which is why we were not living together before.”
“That is good, that is good, we also frequently receive reports about women living alone being harassed, so we always recommend installing surveillance cameras at the front door.”
Officer Yue said a few more words of advice before finally hanging up the phone.
Meng Chu hung up the phone and lowered her head to look at the screen of her cell phone.
Her slender fingers still clenched together tightly in a completely involuntary manner.
Waiting until she had taken a deep breath to calm her emotions, she was just about to continue packing her things when she saw Cheng Jinyu standing in the doorway.
The two of them stood there with their eyes locking onto one another.
“Was that a call from the police station?” Cheng Jinyu opened his mouth and asked.
“Yes,” Meng Chu raised the corners of her mouth to reveal a brilliant smile, “That piece of scum was detained for 7 days, which is truly very satisfying.”
“Administrative detention? What was the reason used?” Cheng Jinyu asked her another question.
“Picking quarrels and provoking trouble while intoxicated,” Meng Chu replied to him.
With that, the smile she had originally been struggling to maintain completely vanished from her face.
Cheng Jinyu walked over, reached out to pull her into his embrace, and gently stroked her back as he comforted her in a low voice, “You do not need to force yourself.”
Meng Chu buried her head in his embrace, feeling the grievances she had originally suppressed at the bottom of her heart.
Under his gentle comfort like this, every single bit of it completely poured out.
“I am just unwilling to accept this result,” she murmured to him in a low voice.
This kind of person should be locked up in a prison to pay the price for his own actions.
But the harsh reality was that the punishment suffered by bad people was simply too light.
She did not blame this Officer Yue at all, as she knew that this administrative penalty of 7 days was already the heaviest punishment the other party could fight for.
This entire incident caused Meng Chu’s heart to sink to the very bottom in complete depression.
Afterward, she reluctantly packed up a few more of her belongings and then completely left this place.
Downstairs, Cheng Jinyu put her suitcase into the trunk and suddenly reached out his hand, “Give me the keys you have to this place.”
Meng Chu took the keys out of her bag and obediently handed them over into his waiting hand.
Cheng Jinyu grabbed hold of the keys and waved them in the air right in front of her.
“Now, you have given all of your bad memories from this place over to me,” he said.
Meng Chu was stunned, but after she fully realized what he had just said, she began to burst out laughing.
However, that bright smile of hers lasted for absolutely no more than a single second.
For some unknown reason, she once again felt a sudden and overwhelming urge to cry her heart out.
She was an independent and brave woman, not the type who would constantly cry and weep whenever she encountered a problem.
But over the course of these past 2 days in particular,
The events that took place just yesterday.
And then there was this very moment, when he said he wanted to take those memories.
In truth, Meng Chu had always been someone with very heavy defenses, and although she seemed gentle and easy to get along with, there was actually almost no one who could easily get close to her.
From childhood to adulthood, she had a beautiful appearance and excellent grades, making her the most popular type of student at school.
Regardless of whether they were girls or boys, they were all more than willing to become friends with her.
If it was because she was strictly disciplined that she did not make friends with boys at all.
But after so many years, the only person by Meng Chu’s side who could barely be counted as a female friend was Song Yumian.
Meng Chu had even been previously complained about by female classmates with whom she had a decent relationship, asking why other classmates still kept in touch after graduation, yet she completely lost contact with everyone.
Meng Chu actually understood this problem of hers as well, but it seemed as though she simply could not change it.
She was incredibly afraid of the feeling of being completely betrayed after wholeheartedly dedicating her feelings to someone.
Before Meng Haichuan had his affair, her favorite person had actually been her dad, and she would talk about her dad all day long, making Xu Qingying feel helpless about the fact that their father-daughter relationship was much closer.
But the father she had loved so wholeheartedly had suddenly, one day, turned into a person she did not recognize at all, someone who was completely beyond recognition.
She was only 11 years old at that time.
The situation was probably just far too painful for her to bear.
After Meng Haichuan moved away, she actually still missed her dad very much.
So she hid it from her mother and secretly ran off to the community where Meng Haichuan lived later on.
As a result, she happened to run into Meng Haichuan pushing a stroller around downstairs, and it was not long before Xiao Nan appeared, holding a baby bottle in her hand, as the child was clearly hungry and she had gone home to mix some formula.
Meng Haichuan then picked up the little baby from the stroller and gently handed the child over to Xiao Nan.
Xiao Nan held the child in her arms to feed it milk, while Meng Haichuan stood closely by her side watching.
Occasionally he would smile and reach out his hand to lovingly tease the little baby who was drinking milk.
Meng Chu was not the slightest bit unfamiliar with that kind of warm and loving smile on his face.
Because a smile like that was something that had once belonged exclusively to Meng Chu.
Yet now, when he looked at another child, he also revealed this exact same kind of loving smile.
At that very moment, Meng Chu truly felt that the father who belonged to her at the bottom of her heart really did not exist anymore.
The child, who was only 11 years old, felt the agonizing taste of being completely and utterly betrayed for the very first time in her life.
Therefore, Meng Chu became very, very afraid of dedicating her feelings like this, only for the other party to suddenly pull away from her.
She would much rather that she herself had never given anything at all in the very first place.
This way, at the very least, she would absolutely not be hurt ever again when the time came for parting ways.
Xu Qingying had always been very deeply concerned that the messy affairs between her parents would have a negative impact on Meng Chu.
She was worried it would make her feel entirely too afraid to know how to properly like another person.
But what she did not know was that many, many years ago, Meng Chu’s heart had completely dried up and withered away.
It was exactly like a dried-up spring that could not even produce a single trace of spring water, so how could she possibly like anyone else.
Thus, her life appeared to be perfectly complete and fulfilling on the surface, but she actually had nothing at all.
She possessed almost no close friends to speak of in her entire life.
She had also never once encountered a single person that she truly liked.
All this time, Meng Chu had also deeply felt that she did not need these things at all.
She could easily accept this kind of indifferent and peaceful existence, needing absolutely no ripples, nor any surging waves.
Meng Chu additionally never felt as though she was actively repressing anything inside of herself.
She had simply become thoroughly accustomed to living her life in this particular manner.
But this kind of apathy had now been completely shattered; the moment he appeared last night, she hazily heard the roaring sound of a tsunami in her ears, making her shed tears in an instant and cry until she lost her voice.
And there was also her rapidly beating heart that was leaping violently in her chest simply because of him.
It was the kind of ripple rising from the very bottom of her heart that could not be covered up and was entirely impossible to hide.
It was an incredibly violent sound that he could clearly hear even through the barrier of her flesh and blood.
It felt as though she had finally managed to sort out a tiny bit of a clue from among millions of tangled balls of yarn.
Meng Chu slightly lifted her head and looked directly at the person standing immediately in front of her.
The bright and warm afternoon sunlight gently sprinkled down upon their bodies, and it also seemed as though it was precisely because this ray of sunlight had parted the years of accumulated fog in Meng Chu’s heart, completely allowing her to see clearly what had been hidden in the absolute deepest parts of her heart.
She had actually fallen entirely in love with Cheng Jinyu.
The moment this thought appeared in her mind, it was exactly like a fuse being abruptly ignited.
It thoroughly and completely blew everything she had known completely upside down.
Such an intensely strong and burning thought was more than enough to incinerate absolutely everything.
The truth of the matter was just as plain and clear as the day itself.
She undeniably held deep affections for this person standing right in front of her eyes.
It was not merely a thought that only appeared today, but rather, ever since her heartbeat began to accelerate because of him, everything had already been laid down on this path.
It was simply because she had been deliberately and consciously choosing to ignore all of it this entire time.
She pretended that she could treat Cheng Jinyu’s proactive approaches with the same aloofness and self-restraint as before, managing to perfectly control all of her emotional responses toward him.
But this time around, absolutely everything had long since deviated entirely off of its original intended track.
Before she even fully realized what was happening, Meng Chu’s heart had completely formed its own natural response.
It was just like that spring that had long dried up, which, under the nourishment of affection, unexpectedly began to genuinely gush with fresh spring water bit by bit, causing her heart lake to ripple once again, and her emotions to surge continuously alongside it.
It surged to the point where a single sentence from him could easily pull at her heartstrings and stir up her emotions.
It made her completely unable to hold herself back from experiencing the overwhelming desire to cry.
“Cheng Jinyu,” she called out his name in a soft and meaningful voice.
When Meng Chu finally recovered her train of thought after a long period of being lost in a daze, she suddenly raised her head to look directly at him.
“Hmm?” Cheng Jinyu softly responded as he still firmly held that set of keys tightly in his hand.
Meng Chu took a small step forward, and since the two of them were already standing close to begin with, this action brought them even closer together.
Cheng Jinyu was just about to open his mouth to ask her what exactly was wrong.
Before he could even speak a single word, the person in front of him suddenly raised her hands and tightly hugged him in a warm embrace.
It was exactly as if Meng Chu was trying to confirm something, and she heavily pressed her soft cheek directly against his broad chest.
Meanwhile, Cheng Jinyu, who was currently being hugged by her, simply stood perfectly still in his original spot, entirely unmoving.
Because he was deeply afraid that once he moved his body, it would instantly awaken them from this deeply beautiful scene that was exactly like a wonderful dream.
Meng Chu was absolutely confirming a very specific feeling deep within herself.
She was confirming an overwhelming thought that had taken root at the very bottom of her heart.
Yes, she knew with absolute certainty that this was the undeniable truth.
She deeply regretted her past choices regarding the arrangement between the two of them.
She had previously said that the marriage partner she was looking for did not require her to be responsible for the other party, much less require her to respond to the other party’s emotional needs.
She used to pledge her words in such an incredibly confident and self-assured manner.
But now, she had completely overthrown and discarded absolutely everything she had once believed.