Reborn: The Return of the Villainous Mr. Liu-Chapter 1227: Regret

The cafe had gone unusually quiet after Zhong Sihan left. The door hadn’t been slammed, but his absence lingered like a bitter aftertaste.

Lin remained seated on his chair for a long time, hands resting on the table’s surface without purpose. His gaze was unfocused as he stared ahead.

Shui had been observing him from a distance this whole time. She didn’t rush over. She knew better than to interrupt the kind of silence that left a heavy void. He was already dealing with his perplexities over his parents’ situation and Zhong Sihan now made everything more complicated.

When she finally approached, she didn’t speak at first. She simply took the other chair where Zhong Sihan had been until sometime ago.

"Do you want tea," she asked softly, "or coffee would be a bad idea right now?"

Lin blinked, as if remembering where he was. "It’s okay. I’ll make it later."

"No, you won’t do it. I will. Just tell me what you want."

"You don’t have to-"

"You tiptoe too much around this stupid stuff," she pinched his ear as if punishing him. "I also make delicious coffee, you know? You are supposed to be my boyfriend later on so stop seeing yourself as the owner or some butler every time."

Lin felt restless for a beat but he eventually caved in.

"Something light."

She nodded and went to prepare it. The familiar sounds of water heating and cups clinking slowly softened the tension in the air. When she returned, she placed the cup in front of him and took her seat again.

He stared at the steam rising from the cup. "I didn’t plan for it to turn out like that."

"I know," she replied. "That doesn’t mean it’s your fault."

He gave a small dry smile. "Everything seems to circle back to being my fault somehow."

She frowned. "That’s not true."

"It feels true." He looked at her. "I tend to keep disappointing people. First, Mom and Dad who couldn’t really be happy with me. I tried and tried but couldn’t become what they wanted me to become. I left them because I thought that was the best thing to do. Now seeing them again feels like I am back to being eighteen."

He stared down at the cup, pressing against its handle.

"She is sick," though he said it with a neutral expression as if he was stating a mere matter of fact, his feelings within were as entangled as they could be.

"I didn’t pay much attention in the park when I met her. I couldn’t really look at them. It was too sudden. But I saw them taking a walk that day. She could barely walk without feeling breathless. Dad was with her all the time. I..."

A hint of glassiness enveloped his eyes.

"I think I should have been with her, walking on the other side, supporting her like Dad was. I wanted to walk over and approach them, but I couldn’t."

After a moment of a quiet, she said, "Is it because you cannot forgive them?"

He took a long time to respond to that. At first, he almost mouthed ’No’, but then he held himself back and went into deep thought. There was no point in lying.

"I guess yes. Yeah, I think...that bitterness is still there, just like it has been for Cai. It was...a hard time living with them. Our thoughts and beliefs always took two very different tangents, and they never tried to understand mine. On top of that, their continuous fights. We felt miserable. We just never felt connected. So now, I.. don’t know how to face them. Too much time has passed. We’re practically like strangers now."

He pinched his lips and then parted.

"But she is dy-" he breathed out and stopped as if he couldn’t complete the sentence.

He shifted uncomfortably. Shui could tell that no matter how bitter he still felt about how they treated him in the past, the prospect of Hou Fa’s death had shaken him.

"I don’t think...I want to hold onto the past. I-If it’s inevitable that she would..." his voice cracked under the mounting pressure of the grim future, "then she shouldn’t suffer is what I feel..I think I won’t be able to forgive myself that knowing everything, I wasn’t there for her in her last..."

Silence.

She softly smiled. "Then you should meet her."

"I don’t know how to," he grew restless.

"...With the short time, we have to act and not think. You don’t have to practice like to have the perfect conversation with them. Just be there for her. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. Your presence alone would be enough for her."

Lin thought about it. It sounded fairly simple.

"You make it sound simple but I am not sure."

"It’s not simple, it’s necessary."

Silence settled between them again, but it felt a little less suffocating this time.

She then asked, "Do you want to take Cai with you too?"

He stared at her. "It’s not about if I want to take him with me, it’s about if he wants to come with me or not. I might want to meet her, but it doesn’t mean he would too, and I don’t want to force him, but...at the same time, I don’t want him to regret anything later either. So I want him to decide that for himself."

"So you are not angry at him for hiding it from you?" She asked.

He was taken aback. "No. I will never be. He gave me the strength to stand on my own feet. He was always there by my side. He didn’t have any ill-intentions. I know that."

She shook her head. "Then you should reiterate that to him because he still feels that you are super, super mad at him."

He nodded.

After a while, Lin straightened, seemingly coming to a decision. "I think... I should go see them. Tomorrow."

Shui held his gaze and gently nodded. "Okay."

He hesitated for a moment and swallowed.

"Would you come with me?"