After My Rebirth, My Husband Pampers Me Everyday!

Chapter 148: I AM NOT GOING TO LET THAT BE YOUR STORY

The door opened again.

Ren Hao didn’t look up right away, still staring at the ceiling and still shaking.

Haiyan’s quiet presence beside him was the only thing keeping the room from tipping into something unbearable.

Then he turned his head, and the air left his lungs.

He knew that face.

He’d seen it on Shen Zihao’s phone and on his private laptop, pulled up in the dark when Shen Zihao thought no one was watching. He’d heard that name spoken in a tone that made his skin crawl often enough to understand exactly what it meant, what role had been carved out for him without his consent, and why his life had unraveled the way it had.

The person standing in his doorway was the reason Shen Zihao had ever looked at him at all.

Something detonated behind his ribs, and the word tore out raw and ugly: "You."

He tried to sit up, but the IV tugged at his arm and the bandages pulled at his skin, though he didn’t care. "Do you know what he did to me? Do you know what your existence cost me? Every time he couldn’t have you, every single time, it was me. It was always me."

His fingers twisted in the sheets until his knuckles went white. "I lost everything because of you. I lost myself because of you. I hope Shen Zihao finds you, and I hope he destroys you the way he destroyed me. I hope you suffer every single thing I suffered, and then I hope you die."

His voice snapped, and he collapsed back against the pillows, sobbing—ugly, airless, helpless. He hated himself for falling apart in front of this person of all people, and he hated that even now he couldn’t hold himself together.

The tall man by the door didn’t move, but Guiying stepped forward.

Ren Hao tensed up, his vision blurring with tears and his hands shaking as he braced himself for anger, for coldness, for that careful, measured tone people used right before they told you their pain was misplaced.

Guiying stopped at the bedside and laid his hand gently on top of Ren Hao’s head, resting it there—steady and unrushed.

Ren Hao froze.

"I know," Guiying said quietly. "I know he hurt you in ways you don’t have words for, because Shen Zihao damages things simply because he can. He does it without reason and without remorse, and he makes sure there’s nothing left for you to stand on." His hand didn’t move. "I know what it feels like to have no door, no floor, no way out."

He paused, then added, "I’m sorry. I’m sorry it was you."

The room went still, and the monitor kept beeping.

"But I found you now," Guiying said. "And I’m going to make sure you go somewhere he can’t reach you. Somewhere he doesn’t exist." He met Ren Hao’s eyes. "Would you like that?"

Ren Hao stared at the person who was supposed to be the enemy, the name whispered in the dark while Ren Hao paid the price for someone else’s obsession, and something in his chest cracked open—not from the accident, but from something else entirely.

His face crumpled, and he turned into the pillow and wept.

It wasn’t the tearing, desperate sound from before, but something quieter, older—the sound of someone who had stopped believing anyone was coming and had just been proven wrong.

Guiying didn’t move his hand until the weeping slowed, and he stood there with his palm resting on Ren Hao’s head, letting the silence hold what words couldn’t. When the shaking finally eased and Ren Hao’s breathing settled into something ragged but survivable, Guiying withdrew his hand and stepped back.

Ren Hao turned his face from the pillow. His eyes were swollen nearly shut, his face was blotched and wet, and he looked at Guiying with an exhaustion so complete it had gone past feeling.

"Why would you help me?" he said, flat and genuinely lost. "I just told you to die."

"I know," Guiying said.

"I meant it."

"I know."

Ren Hao stared at him, and something else moved across his face. It was not anger this time, but the dull, ground-down pragmatism of someone who had stopped being able to afford illusions.

"Even if I wanted out, Shen Zihao would find me," he said, and his voice was hollow. "He always finds people. He is not some nobody. He has money, he has connections, and he has people everywhere, and that is why he gets away with everything he does." His jaw tightened. "So what exactly are you offering me? Pretty words won’t keep the man away."

Guiying didn’t flinch. He glanced back once, and Liuxian stepped forward from where he had been standing to stop at the foot of the bed. Liuxian looked at Ren Hao with an expression that was entirely level and entirely calm, the kind of calm that didn’t need to announce itself.

"Liu Liuxian," he said simply. He said only his name, and nothing else.

The name landed in the room the way it always did, with weight and recognition, and with the particular quality of a thing that didn’t require explanation. Ren Hao looked at him, and he knew that name, because everyone knew that name.

Looking at this man now, Ren Hao saw the stillness of him, the way he occupied space, and the way he had said two words and somehow made the entire room feel different. In that moment Ren Hao understood, in a way that went beyond logic, that this was not a person Shen Zihao could simply outmaneuver.

The silence stretched, and Liuxian spoke again. "Shen Zihao has power, and that is true, but power has a ceiling. I have already had my legal team begin pulling his corporate filings, and by the time you are discharged from this hospital, there will be very little left for him to stand on." He paused, and his eyes never left Ren Hao’s face. "He won’t be looking for you because he will be too busy trying to hold himself together."

Ren Hao’s throat moved, and he looked back at Guiying, with something raw and unsteady moving behind his eyes. "Why?" he said again, but it was a different question this time. It was not suspicious, and it was not angry, but it was bare and honest and tired. "Why would you do any of this for someone you don’t even know?"

Guiying held his gaze. "Because I know what it is to be exactly where you are, and I know what it is to have no one come." He didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t need to. "I am not going to let that be your story."