Chapter 14: A Cry for Help from the Deep Sea

“Because I’m afraid he won’t be able to hold on by himself.”

Jiang Wan’s voice came through the line—clear and calm, yet like a heavy stone crashing into the turbulent hearts of Xu Yuan and Lin Feifei, stirring up endless waves.

The dorm room fell into a deathly silence.

Lin Feifei’s eyes, usually bright and lively, now stared wide like copper bells; her mouth hung open, almost large enough to fit an egg. She glanced at Xu Yuan, then at the cracked phone screen, her expression one of unprecedented shock and disbelief.

Jiang Yi’s... sister?

Why would she call Xu Yuan?

And why would she make such an unfathomable request?

“Why... why are you looking for me?” Xu Yuan finally found her voice, dry and hoarse, each word seeming painfully forced out from her throat.

She didn’t understand.

She and Jiang Yi were merely strangers who had just signed a “cooperation agreement.” In the eyes of Jiang Wan, his true family, what was she?

On the other end of the line came a faint, weary sigh.

“Because I have no one else to turn to.” Jiang Wan’s voice was laced with undisguised bitterness and helplessness. “Xu, I know my request is sudden, even rude. But Jiang Yi... he only has you around now.”

“He won’t tell me anything and refuses all my help. I don’t even know how he’s been lately, if he’s eating properly.”

“I just... a few days ago, I happened to hear from one of his professors that he participated in a competition with you as his partner. The professor said he seems to be doing a little better than before.”

“So I had no choice but to take the liberty of calling you.”

Every word Jiang Wan spoke was like a gentle blade, slowly yet precisely cutting through all of Xu Yuan’s pretenses.

So all her clever, money-driven approaches had, in his sister’s eyes, become proof that his condition had “improved a little.”

That seemingly unbreakable rock was, in the eyes of his closest kin, so fragile and so... in need of company.

“The trial next Wednesday will be a public dismemberment for Jiang Yi,” Jiang Wan’s voice dropped lower, trembling with a barely suppressed emotion. “All the media will be there. Everyone will watch him and our Jiang family with the cruelest eyes, seeing how we fell from grace.”

“I will be swarmed by reporters, unable to be there for him.”

“I can’t imagine how he will face that scene alone.”

“So, Xu,” she paused, her voice filled with the most sincere, almost pleading tone, “I don’t need you to do anything. I just hope that on that day, you can stay by his side as his ‘competition partner.’ Even if you just stand there and say nothing, that would be enough.”

“At least it would make him look less... lonely.”

The call ended.

The dorm remained deathly silent.

Lin Feifei looked at Xu Yuan’s pale, shocked, and bewildered face for a long time before finally regaining her voice.

“Crazy... absolutely crazy...” she muttered, then suddenly grabbed Xu Yuan’s shoulders and shook her violently. “Xu Yuan! Snap out of it! You can’t agree to this!”

“Why?” Xu Yuan lifted her head, her eyes hollow as she stared at her.

“Why?!” Lin Feifei was so furious she almost jumped. “Do you even have to ask why?! That’s the Jiang family’s mess! A den of danger! You’re an outsider—why on earth would you get dragged into that?!”

“Do you know what the trial will be like? Reporters from all over Binhai City will be there! If you stand with Jiang Yi for even ten minutes, your photos, your identity, and your family’s little secrets will be exposed to the world!”

“How will you face your classmates then? Do you still want to finish college peacefully?”

Lin Feifei’s words were like a bucket of icy reality dumped over Xu Yuan’s sympathy-fuddled mind, sharpening her clarity instantly.

Yes.

She had forgotten.

She herself was just someone struggling to survive in the mud.

What right did she have to be someone else’s lifeline?

“Besides,” Lin Feifei, seeing the flicker of doubt in her expression, pressed on, “do you know what kind of person Jiang Yi is? He’s a stubborn, foul, and hard rock! If he found out you’re the one his sister begged to help, do you think he wouldn’t turn on you in an instant and erase you from his world forever?”

Xu Yuan’s heart sank deeply.

She believed it.

With Jiang Yi’s unbending pride, he was absolutely capable of such a thing.

“So you can’t go!” Lin Feifei said firmly. “From start to finish, just pretend you know nothing! That’s the best protection for him and the best protection for yourself! Got it?”

Xu Yuan remained silent.

Her reason told her every word Lin Feifei said was right.

Staying out of it was the only correct choice.

But...

Her mind uncontrollably flickered back to that dream.

The little boy in a small suit, sitting alone before an unlit birthday cake, told that “your very birth was a mistake.”

He had already faced too many storms alone.

This time, was she really going to join everyone else and just look away?

...

The next morning at eight o’clock, in the library.

Xu Yuan had not slept all night.

With two huge dark circles under her eyes, she sat in the familiar spot from yesterday, clutching the hefty proposal Jiang Yi had revised.

Exactly at eight, Jiang Yi appeared at the reading room door.

He wore the same simple black hoodie, carried a laptop bag, and with a cold expression, walked over to sit opposite her.

“Have you finished reading the proposal?” he asked, his voice as cold as ever, as if the awkward boy who had clumsily bandaged her wounds in the park last night was merely a hallucination.

“...Yes, I have.” Xu Yuan nodded and pushed the proposal toward him. “The worldview you added is excellent. Much more complete than my original concept.”

“Hm.” Jiang Yi responded, opening his laptop, apparently ready to discuss the details.

Watching his focused, emotionless profile and his slender, bony hands poised to type, her heart pounded uncontrollably.

She knew if she didn’t speak up now, she might never find the courage again.

“Jiang Yi.” She suddenly called out.

He paused his typing, looked up with deep black eyes filled with a trace of confusion.

Taking a deep breath, meeting his gaze, Xu Yuan asked calmly yet with unprecedented steadiness:

“Is your sister called Jiang Wan?”

The air seemed to freeze completely in that instant.

For the first time, Jiang Yi’s face—always frozen in eternal frost—showed a real, crack-like shock.

He stared at her, and in his usually still eyes, a raging storm erupted. The coldness and wariness in his gaze instantly transformed into the sharpest blade, capable of dissecting a person alive.

“How do you know?” his voice dropped low, each word squeezed through clenched teeth, heavy with the danger of a violated territory.

The library was quiet; the surrounding students were engrossed in their books, unaware of the tension thick enough to cut in this corner.

Xu Yuan’s heart ached under his gaze, but she did not flinch.

“She called me last night,” she said, choosing the most direct and cruel way to lay everything bare before him.

Jiang Yi’s face instantly turned deathly pale.

His knuckles on the keyboard whitened from gripping tightly, veins bulging.

He stared at her, his eyes filled with the anger of betrayal by a loved one, the shame of his darkest secrets exposed, and a despair so naked it left him nowhere to hide.

“What did she say to you?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“She said,” Xu Yuan looked into his suddenly bloodshot eyes, her heart gripped by an invisible hand so tightly it was almost suffocating, “she said your father’s case goes to trial next Wednesday. She hopes I can... accompany you.”

“She said she’s afraid you won’t be able to hold on alone.”

Boom!

The last sentence struck Jiang Yi’s already battered pride like the loudest slap.

He suddenly stood, moving so abruptly that he knocked over the chair behind him with a harsh clatter, drawing annoyed glances from those nearby.

But he no longer cared.

He looked down on Xu Yuan, those beautiful eyes that had once ensnared countless people now filled only with blazing fury and humiliation powerful enough to burn everything to ash.

“So?” He suddenly smiled, a smile uglier than crying. “Are you here to tell me you agreed to her ridiculous request?”

“Are you planning to play the saint and give me your cheap, disgusting pity?”

“Xu Yuan,” he leaned over, hands braced on the table, casting her fully into his shadow, his bloodshot eyes locked on hers, each word deliberate as if to devour her alive, “I’ll tell you, I, Jiang Yi, don’t need anyone’s pity, even if I die!”

“Save your act and get out of my world!”

Without another glance, he grabbed his laptop bag, turned, and strode away without looking back.

Leaving Xu Yuan alone with the suffocating silence and the chair he had knocked over, still in a disheveled state.