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Chapter 51

Xie Jin had not expected Su Tao to react so strongly. He thought he would have to pretend to be weak to gain her sympathy.

He panicked a little and pulled Su Tao\'s hand to reassure her, "It\'s nothing, I just got hurt while playing a game."

Su Tao looked at the spinning top and then at the others around them. Her usually calm tone now carried a hint of irritated questioning, "How could you hurt your hand so badly just from a game?"

Everyone else saw the accident and gathered around. Na Zheng Lai immediately called over the housekeeper to bring the first aid kit. He also asked the performers who had been playing games, "How could you hurt Chairman Xie\'s hand like this?"

Xie Jin allowed Su Tao to bandage him and waved his other hand magnanimously, "Forget it, I\'m not blaming them."

The performers: ......

It had nothing to do with them in the first place.

After Su Tao finally stopped the bleeding and bandaged Xie Jin\'s finger, she recovered from her earlier loss of control.

The now calm and rational Su Tao looked at the ostrich-like performers, then at the broken glass on the ground, and thoughtfully glanced at Xie Jin, as if she understood something.

She said to the worried Na Zheng Lai, "Don\'t worry, Director Na. I\'ll take him to the hospital for a tetanus shot and he\'ll be fine."

Under everyone\'s concerned gaze, the two of them left in the car.

Su Tao glanced at Xie Jin, who was still pretending to be weak, and slowly asked, "So what really happened?"

Xie Jin staunchly stuck to his lies, "Like I said, we were just playing a game earlier. They wanted me to post an embarrassing photo on Weibo but I didn\'t want to. The glass broke during the argument and I accidentally cut my hand."

"Who could force you to post it if you didn\'t want to? You smashed the glass yourself right? Just to get me to leave with you?"

After Su Tao mercilessly exposed Xie Jin\'s lies, she let out a soft sigh, "If you wanted me to leave early, you should have just told me directly. Why hurt your hand over this?"

"I already told you but you still wouldn\'t go..."

He didn\'t dare rush her to leave. Just getting her to put on a coat took kneeling and begging with lychees already. If he forcibly made her leave, he was afraid even kneeling wouldn\'t work anymore.

"Were you...worried just now?" Recalling her earlier anxious reaction, a smile slowly crept into Xie Jin\'s dark eyes.

Su Tao ignored him and drove straight to the hospital.

Holding up her skirt, she ran up and down in Xie Jin\'s suit jacket to register, pay and collect medication under the watchful and admiring eyes of others.

Perhaps due to her exceptional looks or beautiful dress, many people even took out their phones to photograph her.

After going through all the procedures, Su Tao drove Xie Jin back to the villa. On the way, they passed by a Western restaurant and picked up takeout dinner for both of them.

Taking advantage of his injured hand, Xie Jin enjoyed Su Tao\'s meticulous care.

After feeding him dinner, Xie Jin suggested watching a movie. Su Tao washed some fruit and brought it over for him to eat.

Lounging comfortably on the sofa, Xie Jin admired his injured hand again. How clever he was to come up with this scheme! Not only did he avoid kneeling and begging, he even got such special treatment.

Sitting next to him, Su Tao watched the movie together. As she picked up a strawberry to eat it, Xie Jin leaned over to take a bite, his tongue lightly brushing her fingertips.

Holding up the finger he had touched, Su Tao looked at him and calmly took out a tissue to wipe it.

"You...shouldn\'t go home tonight. If something happens to me in my disabled state, there\'ll be no one to help me." Xie Jin scrupulously laid out the reasons for asking her to stay, with hopeful lights shining in his eyes.

"Mm."

Although Su Tao only softly murmured in reply, triumphant background music instantly sounded in Xie Jin\'s mind, along with fireworks bursting, as if celebrating the new year.

Admiring his obliging injured finger again, he raised his eyebrows and turned his wicked gaze on the other fingers, ready to sacrifice them anytime.

They finally finished watching an old foreign arthouse film. Despite Xie Jin\'s irritable personality, he enjoyed these kinds of movies. Su Tao would never understand his taste, and had started dozing off leaning against the sofa halfway through, as if listening to a lullaby.

Suddenly, she felt something press against her mouth and opened her eyes. A face was right in front of her, his eyes closed uneasily, long lashes lightly fluttering, brushing her eyelashes.

Xie Jin had barely touched her lips when he was discovered. His breath hitched.

Figuring he would get a beating anyway, he decisively planted a solid kiss. Su Tao frowned, "You..."

"I\'m wrong." Xie Jin\'s apologies now rolled right off his tongue, so skilled it made one\'s heart ache.

Su Tao was a little more awake now. She dodged him, stretched lazily, and yawned as she got up to go sleep in the guest room upstairs.

Familiar with the place, she picked a room with an attached bathroom but discovered she had not brought anything with her.

Su Tao went to the master bedroom walk-in closet and looked around. She couldn\'t find anything pink left.

But nothing else of hers was missing.

She found a set of her old pajamas and shook them out. Surprisingly, there wasn\'t a speck of dust, evidently they had been regularly laundered.

She also took a new towel from the closet stock. Turning around, she saw the diamond bracelet still displayed prominently in the center of the jewelry stand.

Touching the bracelet lightly, Su Tao recalled Qin Xue\'s hysterical voice, "That was his mother\'s keepsake. It\'s said to be kept for her future daughter-in-law."

Bringing her thoughts back, she remembered there was makeup in the drawer below the bracelet. It shouldn\'t have expired in just a year, right?

She opened the drawer but the first thing that caught her eye wasn\'t makeup, but a white envelope, along with a phone card and a note.

The note said: I\'m leaving, don\'t look for me.

Below the note was the resignation letter she had left behind that year.

Su Tao took out the resignation letter. The envelope was a little crumpled with mottled water stains. Opening it, the letter paper inside was even more wrinkled, as if it had been balled up and then flattened out. There were more water stains on it.

She could almost see Xie Jin taking out the resignation letter again and again to look at, crying as he read it each time.

Su Tao neatly refolded the letter and put it back, taking out a makeup remover wipe. As she closed the drawer, she inadvertently opened the second layer where she saw many medicine bottles.

This drawer wasn\'t originally used to store medicine, and yet all the bottles looked identical.

Taking one out, it was still sealed and full. She didn\'t recognize the drug name and looked at the small print on the bottle.

Indications: This product is only suitable for treating severe insomnia disorders in cases of sporadic, temporary insomnia.

Su Tao\'s heart skipped a beat. Were these...sleeping pills?

She looked at the medicine bottles in the drawer again, at least over ten, all unopened.

Why did he stock up on so many sleeping pills?

He didn\'t have insomnia before.

Holding a bottle of sleeping pills, Su Tao went to the living room to find Xie Jin but couldn\'t find him. She searched the kitchen, dining room, study, growing increasingly anxious.

She didn\'t know if he also searched every room like this when he couldn\'t find her back then, becoming more dejected with each room he looked in.

Finally she found Xie Jin in the very guest room she had chosen to stay in.

He was already lying face down on the bed, eyes closed, seemingly asleep. But his eyelashes kept fluttering lightly, sleeping very uneasily, as if a soft cough could jolt him awake.

Yet she remembered he used to be a very sound sleeper.

Dreaming of something, Xie Jin\'s eyelids fluttered violently, his lips also kept trembling, his fingers seemed to be grasping at something. Suddenly, he woke up from his dream with a start.

His hoarse voice shouted something indistinctly, eyes opening wide, already brimming with tears that rolled down in big drops.

Su Tao immediately grabbed his hand and gently asked, "Had a nightmare?"

Xie Jin blinked away the tears in his eyes. Seeing the person before him clearly, he froze for two seconds before pulling Su Tao into a tight embrace around her waist, burying his head against her as he broke down in sobs.

Su Tao gently stroked his hair to slowly soothe his emotions. The man in her arms gradually calmed down.

"What did you dream about?" Still holding the sleeping pills, Su Tao was curious to find out what exactly his sleep issues were.

Xie Jin rubbed against her, turned his buried face to the side, and breathed fresh air. His voice was muffled: "It\'s nothing."

Su Tao held up the pill bottle in front of him and shook it. "Are you taking sleeping pills because you keep having nightmares, or because you can\'t sleep?"

Xie Jin immediately lifted his head, looking at her with red eyes, and asked hoarsely: "Where did you find them?"

"In the drawer, dozens of bottles. Do you often have nightmares? Is it because of the nightmares that you can\'t sleep? I remember you didn\'t use to have insomnia or nightmares. When did it start?" Su Tao asked him many questions in succession, but Xie Jin only lowered his eyes, hiding the emotions in them, seeming to be thinking about whether or not he should say.

"Xie Jin," Su Tao held his face in both hands, wiping away the tear stains on his gaunt face, feeling that there was no extra flesh on his face. She said gently, "I want to know, tell me about it."

Xie Jin couldn\'t resist such a gentle little Su Tao. He swallowed, trying to make his tone sound more relaxed: "I just take a little occasionally now. The dosage is very small."

"What dose did you need before to be able to sleep?" Su Tao looked at him closely with clear eyes, as if trying to discern the truth in his words.

"Two or three pills." Xie Jin minimized the amount as much as possible.

"Since when?"

"...Just recently, work pressure is big..."

"Tell the truth."

Xie Jin slowly exhaled, gazing into Su Tao\'s clear and bright eyes. After hesitating for a long time, he said softly: "A year ago, the day you left."

"After I left, you couldn\'t sleep?"

"It\'s not that I couldn\'t sleep. It\'s that as soon as I fell asleep, my dreams were full of your departing figure. Later after taking sleeping pills, I started being able to dream about our past happiness again, so I gradually became dependent on them."

Su Tao\'s brows remained furrowed, frowning more and more. She asked uncomprehendingly: "Why didn\'t you tell me about faking your foot and hand injuries to gain my sympathy?"

Xie Jin hesitated for a moment, lowered his eyes, and said softly: "Because that was real."

Because it was real, he couldn\'t say it.

The foot and hand injuries were just excuses to get close to her. He didn\'t really want to worry or sadden her.

From the moment she said she had slept drunk with the young man she first met on the bridge, he knew that little Su Tao still loved him.

It was just because of the misunderstanding from that photo, and her emotional fastidiousness, that made it so she couldn\'t accept him.

If she really didn\'t want anything to do with him at all, she would never have revealed her true feelings while drunk.

So he couldn\'t tell her about his real pain, or she would cry.

She wanted independence, and he supported her.

If she didn\'t want romance, he could wait.

He was even willing to play the role of her shield.

He was confident that he could dote on her until the moment she was willing to let go of her reservations and accept him again.

"I\'ve been much better since finding you, especially when we were sleeping in the same house. Just one pill stopped me from having that nightmare, and I didn\'t need any pills at all sleeping next to you. I really am much better now."

Xie Jin had only wanted to reassure her, but his words made Su Tao even more distressed.

So it turned out he had always wanted to sleep with her because when he was with her, he didn\'t need to take pills.

Misty tears welled up in Su Tao\'s clear eyes, and a glistening tear rolled down her face, falling onto the back of Xie Jin\'s hand.

The warm tear was like magma to Xie Jin, scalding his hand.

Even though it scalded him, he immediately reached out to catch her falling tears, as if cradling a priceless gem, unwilling to let a single drop fall to the ground.

"Good girl Su Tao, don\'t cry. I can\'t catch them all, I\'ll have to go get a basin."

Xie Jin\'s words made Su Tao break into a smile amidst her tears, but the tears flowed even more fiercely. Crying and laughing at the same time, her expression was very complex.

Tears also welled up in Xie Jin\'s eyes, but seeing her like this, he laughed out loud too. He took out his phone and recorded her laughable and pitiable appearance.

"What are you recording?" Su Tao reached out to grab his phone, but Xie Jin nimbly dodged away.

"Your schizophrenic expression is perfect for making emojis." Although tears were still streaming down Xie Jin\'s face, he laughed and teased.

Su Tao wiped away her tears and pouted, casually picking up the small makeup mirror from the table and holding it up to his face: "You should take a look at your own expression, it\'s even more suitable."

Amidst their mutual mockery, they had both stopped crying, and calmed down a bit, feeling a little awkward.

Xie Jin put away his phone and coughed lightly a couple times, concealing his previous loss of composure. "Well, you should sleep early. I\'ll go out first."

Su Tao called for him to wait. "Wait, you, are you going to take pills again?"

Xie Jin honestly nodded. "Now I only need half a pill."

Su Tao pursed her lips, her slightly reddened eyes flickering meaningfully as she asked: "Medicine is one-third poison, isn\'t half a pill still quite damaging to the body?"

Clearly, Xie Jin didn\'t understand her implication, and reassured: "It\'s fine, the doctor said one pill daily, timed exercise to detox, it doesn\'t affect health."

Su Tao patiently hinted again: "Then if there are ways to sleep without taking pills, why insist on taking them?"

At this moment, Xie Jin seemed to have an iron blockhead, still not understanding her meaning: "No, I don\'t want to take pills either, but the key is that apart from sleeping with you, there is no other way to sleep without taking them."

Su Tao looked at him with clear eyes. "Well, so..."

Xie Jin blinked his deep-set eyes. "So...half a pill will be fine."

Su Tao: "..."

Su Tao\'s face went from flushed to pale. She knew she shouldn\'t have tried to imply anything to someone whose mind goes straight at critical moments.

With her left hand, she crooked a finger at him, and with her right, she authoritatively pointed to the bed behind her, "Lie down, sleep."