“This is my spare cell phone. I thought it might be useful to bring it along, but I didn’t expect there to be no signal here.”
Jiang Lai sighed softly. Her plan to use the phone to contact the outside world had completely fallen through. Once her hand left the phone, she gently shifted her body and moved next to Shen Ruxue. She would have to ask for her help to tuck the phone back in.
Even though the phone was useless now, she absolutely could not let anyone else discover it. As long as she had a chance to escape later, she could use it to contact the outside world. “Can you help me put the phone back?”
Shen Ruxue looked at the approaching Jiang Lai… that face was extremely similar to her husband’s, and the eyes were almost identical. A massive question arose in her heart.
Earlier, Shen Ruxue hadn’t dared to hope that such a simple question would yield the answer she wanted, but it had provided her with powerful evidence. The various anomalies currently laid out before her made her desperate to find out the truth.
If the woman in front of her bore an extreme resemblance to her husband, it might just be a coincidence. But why was she holding the phone that clearly belonged to her husband?
Shen Ruxue was confused. She could no longer figure out the true identity of the person in front of her… Why were there photos of their family of three on that phone? Why was she so devoted to her daughter? Even if she was her sister’s girlfriend, her affection for her sister wouldn’t lead to such a degree of devotion.
Combined with the fact that her husband had been missing and hadn’t returned home for a while, Shen Ruxue didn’t know what to think anymore. A seed of suspicion was planted in her heart, though she didn’t know how to make it take root and sprout.
At this moment, Shen Ruxue simply couldn’t believe her own thoughts; she felt they were too absurd.
She had been gone for far too long. As the person who used to understand Jiang Lai best, she didn’t dare to be certain that she had discovered the truth. Her hesitation and disbelief served as a constant reminder that she was no longer the indispensable person in the family that she used to be.
Although Chi Yingyu had a slight misunderstanding at the start, once Jiang Lai showed even a hint of resemblance, she could accept even the most outrageous facts. Because her most beloved person was standing right in front of her, how could she possibly fail to recognize him?
Shen Ruxue loved Jiang Lai with a profound depth; this was the goal and motivation for everything she had done since her Rebirth. The span of this emotion in her heart was even longer than Chi Yingyu’s. She had long since buried her love for Jiang Lai deep within her body.
But she had been gone for far too long — long enough that she was no longer familiar with her most beloved person. For a time, she had even feared that if Jiang Lai stood right in front of her, she wouldn’t be able to recognize him at first glance.
Jiang Lai saw every bit of Shen Ruxue’s dazed, contemplative state. She thought this blank expression was out of fear — worrying about being unable to contact the outside world and facing potential danger…
Looking at the girl before her, who was even younger than her own daughter, Jiang Lai made an effort to shift her body and press against her, trying to provide the greatest sense of security possible. “It’s all right. We will definitely be rescued. You will return safely, too.”
Looking at Jiang Lai, who had come to comfort her, Shen Ruxue slowly stood up and sat back in her lap just as she had before. Compared to her initial frantic exploration, Shen Ruxue was clearly much more practiced the second time around.
Shen Ruxue’s fingers easily hooked into the lining of the bra. After tucking the phone back in, she prepared to stand up, but Jiang Lai softly called out to her.
“Why don’t you rest your head on my lap for a bit?”
Jiang Lai desperately wanted to gently stroke Shen Ruxue’s head and hold the frightened girl tightly in her arms, just as she used to cradle and comfort her daughter when she was little. However, with her hands and feet bound, she couldn’t manage that.
After some thought, the only thing Jiang Lai could do was offer her lap. She didn’t know if it would offer any peace of mind.
Long ago, when her wife was still alive and she was stressed or under pressure, her wife would always pull her head onto her lap, gently stroke her hair, and sing songs to soothe her heart.
That trick was truly effective; every time it happened, all the negative emotions in her heart would be swept away.
Shen Ruxue gently rested her head on Jiang Lai’s lap. Although Jiang Lai couldn’t stroke her head with her hands, she could still hum a song. When her daughter couldn’t sleep as a child, she would gently stroke her head just like this while singing their most familiar song.
The song most familiar to the father and daughter was the melody that the mother often sang. Because it was so familiar, when she wanted to comfort someone, the song she subconsciously hummed was that Familiar Melody.
If one could argue that looks and eyes could be similar, or that even a phone could be possessed by another, memories of the past could absolutely not be usurped. The melody Jiang Lai was humming now was the one Shen Ruxue was most familiar with because it was the one she had sung the most.
Across both her past and present lives, she had only ever sung this song to her husband and daughter; even her sister hadn’t had the honor of hearing it.
When she sang it to her daughter, the girl had been a mere infant and couldn’t possibly have remembered the melody. Besides herself, the only one who knew this melody was her husband, Jiang Lai.
Jiang…
If Shen Ruxue’s heart had been filled with nothing but suspicion moments ago, then now, with such ironclad evidence, the truth stood before her no matter how absurd it seemed.
The woman staying with her now was, in all likelihood, her husband, Jiang Lai. That was the only way to explain all the anomalies of the past — to explain why Jiang Lai’s reaction had been so intense when facing their daughter.
It also explained why her daughter and sister placed so much importance on this person, why her past birthday was used as the password, and why a family photo was the wallpaper. Only then did it all make sense.
Although she didn’t know why things had developed this way, why her husband was now a woman, or how he had become like this… she also didn’t know how much time had passed.
And why, when her sister introduced them, did she use the identity of her girlfriend instead of telling her the truth? After guessing Jiang Lai’s true identity, the doubts in Shen Ruxue’s heart didn’t decrease; instead, they grew.
At this moment, however, no matter how many doubts she had, Shen Ruxue no longer cared. She only knew that the Jiang Lai she had been yearning for was right by her side.