Reborn: The Return of the Villainous Mr. Liu-Chapter 1176: To look beyond

Lin honestly hadn’t thought that Shui would appreciate this side of him. He was already in her bad books because of the crimes he had committed. Seeing him in an underground ring which basically reeked of violence was far from the Hou Lin that he was.

"May I?"

His daze broke when he saw Shui holding a cotton ball dipped in antiseptic.

"..Sure."

She nodded and pressed the cotton ball against the small cut on his jaw. She assumed to see a change in his expression but the stinging pain didn’t cause any reaction within him.

"This is about Cai, isn’t it?"

He glanced at her once and then looked away. "No it isn’t."

"Then what is it about?" She asked, "I can only think of beating someone to a pulp as a way of venting out your frustrations."

She discarded the used cotton and applied some cream. Lin hadn’t responded to her yet.

"I wonder if it was a mistake to come back."

She blinked twice.

"I was quite naive. I thought it would be a good life to live with my brother after prison. Open a cafe and run it together. I hadn’t really thought or hoped about my life that way..the one where I would spend it with the woman I love. I kind of projected the same assumptions onto my brother. I feel like an idiot, thinking that his life still revolves around me. Then it hit me."

He looked down at his hands. "Ah...he is at the age to get married. Be a husband. Be a father. Have his own life. Then I realized that having a brother serve prison was a big blot in his life. He might not feel that way, but the others around him did. I...don’t know what to do about that. I cannot change my past or undo the mistakes I made. When I feel this way, I feel like punching a hole in the wall."

He smiled that didn’t quite reach his eyes. "I think I shouldn’t have returned to his life. Perhaps over time, my existence from his life would have faded away and it wouldn’t have mattered anymore if he had Hou Lin as a brother."

All this time, Lin’s lens of seeing his crimes was only from Jun and Shui’s point of view. He betrayed Jun and tried to ruin the Liu family, his and Yahui’s actions forever brought a huge gap between Shui and Jin that was impossible to bridge. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

But now his mistakes had hit home. Suddenly, he understood Shui’s anger from the art exhibition day as clear as daylight. Because that was exactly how he was now feeling toward himself. He felt himself slipping away into the abyss farther and farther. The only source of light in his life was Cai, but now he would have to probably lose the only light he had that was tethering him together.

His daze fell apart when he felt his nose being pinched out of nowhere.

"I thought you were a quiet person but sometimes, you talk too much."

He blinked.

Shui dabbed the antiseptic on a cut on his cheek next and said, "First of all, Ru Yi actually respects you. Let’s forget about her family for a moment. She met you, realized you were a good person and was willing to talk back to her family for you. You cannot just disregard it like that. Yes, there were some misunderstandings before, but she wants to mend those now. Does that count for nothing?"

Lin stared into her eyes. "Cai shouldn’t have suffered because of me in the first place."

She frowned. "Well, I quite vehemently disagree with that then. Life is a rollercoaster and family members cause each other trouble all the time."

"I indeed caused him trouble..." he felt way worse than before now.

"Of course you did. You went to jail, left Cai alone for six years and he would have missed you a hell lot so yeah, that’s a looooot of trouble. But that also doesn’t let you give up on your family so easily. I mean, if Cai was in your position, would you have agreed to letting him take an exit turn from your life?"

Exit turn, his brow twitched.

Though it was supposed to be a serious conversation, he felt a little light headed now.

"I know you wouldn’t have and that’s exactly what Cai is trying to do. You are brothers and you love each other. Those are familial bonds that are beyond prison time. You leaving him will only make his life more miserable, not easier."

His hand clenched automatically. "But I didn’t want to see him giving up on his relationships because of me."

"That’s what you have to help him with. I think Cai was a little too quick to give up on Ru Yi. Instead of drifting apart, he should have brought her to meet you. All this time, you were just a name for her. If she never met you, then how was she supposed to understand what kind of a person you are? Look, as much as you are a good person, prison is a scary word for most of the people in this world. She wasn’t wrong in feeling hesitant or cautious about you."

He had to admit that Shui’s logic made sense.

"And her father is acting like any other normal father worried for his daughter’s future. But that also doesn’t mean everything is over."

"Ouch!"

Shui applied a tad bit more pressure on his cheek than necessary and he looked at her, dumbfounded.

"That’s because you are being an idiot. If parting ways is supposed to be the answer, then by your logic, Alix, too, should have never accepted Jin. She should have left him, somewhere far away, never to see him again. But then, would she have been living a happy life as she is now?"

He stiffened.

"Do you think she didn’t deserve to be looked past her past and have a loving husband and a family? So if she can embrace a new life, so can you. With your family, not away from it."