Chapter 1269: The color of sin
His grip on the back of her head pressed as tight as it could be, yet a tremble from his fingers also faintly shook where he held. He swore he wouldn’t lift even a finger to hurt her, but if she tried to escape from him at this moment, would he remain calm?
He couldn’t understand that, not when he was unable to decipher Chunhua’s thoughts and read the emotions that had now settled in her beautiful irises. Was it fear for him?
Of course it is. No woman would stand sane before me after what I...
But she was sane. Neither Chunhua had run away, nor she thought she wanted to run away. Though Hai could only see red all around him, it was now that Chunhua was finally seeing the different colors Hai was actually colored in. The color of mischief, the color of laughter, the color of love and now...the color of danger and the color of obsession. The murkiness that always surrounded Hai was now finally beginning to wash away, revealing the real Liu Hai who stood hidden behind that obscurity.
Chunhua took his hands in hers, slowly and gently, holding each breath for a tiny pause. Her thumb traced the contours of his palms that felt just a little off, faintly rough and abrasioned. The realization then came to her that he had been washing his hands quite a lot - so much so that overdoing it was doing his skin more harm than good.
His hands looked crystal clear to her, but...was it looking red for Hai all this time? Was he seeing it red even at this moment?
She stayed silent like that for a long time, simply staring at his slightly roughened hands. The blue sky outside got gradually blanketed with grey clouds, hinting at a spell of an unseasonal rainfall. The grey cast a layer of dark inside the room, escalating the chill in the air and the mania in Hai’s already black irises.
Lifting his hands, she pressed them upon her cheeks and then looked at him, the height difference between them swaying her chin quite far up to meet his unreadable but piercing eyes.
"What do I...look like in your eyes right now?"
The stubborn streak of crimson that always ate away his peace of mind now slowly spilled onto her, flowing like a ripple of a wave. It was a nightmare he wished he could rip off from existence.
"The red..doesn’t look so good upon you, Chunhua."
Her breath stopped in her throat and an ache in her eyes that brought a mistiness to them.
He smiled. "Are you afraid of me now?"
"No. If I was afraid of you, I wouldn’t have agreed to come here with you. I don’t feel I am in danger with you."
"Would you still say that if I don’t allow you to leave from here?" The hands that held her face pulled her closer towards him with a light jolt, narrowing the distance between them in a moment’s notice. A distance that could put his lips on hers if he just bent an inch forward.
Chunhua stared. "Then what will you do? Force yourself on me?"
He didn’t respond to that.
"Then go ahead. Do it. I cannot physically fight you. I won’t be able to stop you."
He didn’t respond to that either. Neither did he move that last inch.
But she did. Tiptoeing, she consumed the void between them with a heart that thundered in her chest like how the blackened sky roared outside. She wasn’t used to it - being so forward. Being the one to initiate such an intimate gesture. So her lips were quivering as were her lashes. She didn’t know how to kiss, not like Hai did. She knew she was being a terrible kisser. Awkward and all around the place. She tried to remember and follow how Hai used to do it but failed miserably. It was only when she was out of breath that she withdrew.
"I won’t run away," her whisper echoed within the tiny space between them. "I don’t think a man who said that his erratic, chaotic and super messy heartbeats that are all mine would ever hurt me."
"But I have been thinking too. Not because I am scared of you, but...because I want to know more about you. I want to try to understand you. Why you did what you did? Why did you look distraught that evening? What were you gazing at on the road? Was it really just to see your plan come to fruition or were you trying to find something else?"
’There must be something you want that your riches cannot give you. Is there nothing like that?’
’Hm...Probably, there is something. But it’s already too late for that.’
Her breath hitched slightly. "How...bad was your relationship with your brother that you had to do it? Because I feel that you are not an unreasonable person. I won’t say if it was right or wrong. I am not in any place to judge you. I just want to understand the man behind that right or wrong."
She continued, not averting her gaze for the slightest moment. "But I won’t force you. If you don’t want to tell me about Liu Jinhai, if you are not ready to share that part of your life with me, then I won’t force you to. You can come to tell me about it when you wish or you might never come to me. It doesn’t matter because I will always stand here, right beside you. So..."
Her palms pressed upon the back of his knuckles, bringing a tremor to shift in his fingertips.
"So it’s fine if I look red when you hold me. I willingly told the cops what I decided was right to tell. That red is now my sin to bear too."
Hai stared at her.
’You will say you are an unmarried woman and this is shameful to do before marriage, but don’t worry~ This is my sin to bear.’
"So..." a tear glided down her cheek, her voice faintly shaking, "D-Don’t hurt your hands anymore like this. Don’t clean them so much that you bleed. It hurts to see you hu-hurt, Hai..."
