My parents were responsible for the death of his parents. Because of this hatred, Asher Vance kept me as his lover for nine years. In those nine years, he told me countless times how much he hated me. Yet, he would drop a hundred-million-dollar project and fly back to the country just to make me soup when I caught a cold. I thought our feelings had long surpassed that old hatred. Until, two months after I gave birth to his child, I overheard a conversation between him and another woman. "Asher, the baby has stopped breathing. How are you going to explain this to Iris?" Asher answered without hesitation: "Explain what? The child of an enemy giving his life for our experiment is his fortune." "It's just right to let that woman see what it feels like to have her closest kin die tragically before her eyes!" It turned out he had been waiting bitterly for nine years just to truly take revenge on me. Holding my child's ashes, I walked to the riverside, distraught, ready to end my own life. But as my body plummeted rapidly, he turned pale and tried to jump with me. Chapter 1 "Since you know everything, there's no need for me to hide it from you anymore." The white laboratory walls carried an impersonal coldness. Asher looked at me, a flash of pain quickly passing through his eyes, yet his words were heartless. "He is indeed dead." "Injected with a large amount of experimental drugs by my own hands." I stared at him in a daze, my hands trembling uncontrollably. "Why..." "That was your child too!" I moved my lips, realizing my voice was hoarse when I spoke. Asher looked at me silently for a few seconds, then turned his head away. "I told you countless times, Iris..." "Because of hate. I hate your parents, I hate you, and I also hate your child." Hate... The familiar word appeared in my ears again. I bit my lip. In nine years, I don't remember how many times I've heard it. He hated my parents for doing nothing during his family company's crisis, dumping the entire mess on his parents. They even took all the funds and fled far away. Leaving his parents with no way out, choosing to end their lives with a bottle of sleeping pills. But he always talked about hating me while treating me well without restraint. He would drive all night to take me to see the sunrise at the beach just because I said I was bored. He would hold my hand in winter, putting it in his pocket for warmth. Sometimes, when the mood struck, he would even take the eyebrow pencil from my hand and draw my eyebrows for me, bit by bit. Then he would look at his clumsy handiwork and laugh embarrassedly. I thought... I thought that the hatred he constantly proclaimed would eventually fade with time. But now, when I questioned him in disbelief, he sneered: "Iris, because I could see that the better I treated you, the guiltier you would feel." "It was just acting out a love drama with you." "What, did you take it seriously?" My body went limp uncontrollably, my hands subconsciously touching my lower abdomen. The scar left by the C-section throbbed faintly, mixing with the pain in my heart, pressing down until I couldn't breathe. With just a few words, he easily destroyed all my inner defenses. My hands gripping his collar dropped suddenly, feeling cold all over. I couldn't help but laugh at myself mockingly. I was really too foolish, foolish enough to believe that between two people with a blood feud, love could grow lush and leafy across that hatred. But I still remember when I was eighteen, approaching college entrance exams but with both parents dead, living alone in a dilapidated rental room. I held a fruit knife, gesturing at my wrist. Thinking about where it would be appropriate to cut, but lacking the courage to really do it. A bed, a set of table and chairs, some pots and pans occupied almost the entire space of the room. Asher stood at the door, looking at the room with barely a place to stand, emotions in his eyes changing for a long time. Finally, he punched the wall behind me angrily and dragged me away by the wrist. I squatted down in despair, crying uncontrollably. Chapter 2 The urgent ringing of a cell phone sounded at that moment. I don't know what the person on the other end said, but Asher glanced at me with a complicated expression. "Then just take him directly for cremation." My heart shrunk as if sensing something, and I understood almost instantly. I desperately grabbed the corner of Asher's clothes, as if grasping the last straw. "What cremation?" "Who are you going to cremate?" He didn't answer me, just coldly pried my hands open, finger by finger. He said: "Go back to the hospital and stay there properly." The way he threw me off forcefully was as if I wasn't the girlfriend who had been with him for nine years, but a piece of useless trash. Although to Asher now, I, this girlfriend, seemed to be just a piece of trash. In this instant, I seemed to lose all strength. From this moment on, the will to die had taken root in my heart. After a long silence, I looked at him with red eyes, my voice already hoarse. "Asher, I want to see him..." But Asher promised nothing. He just gave me an indifferent look and turned his back. "You'd better go back to the hospital and stay put." "Chloe, let's go." He took Chloe away, walking to the end of the corridor without ever looking back at me. I stared blankly at their retreating figures, watching them go further and further away. Just as they were about to disappear from my sight. I wiped the tears from my face and got up to follow them. I ran urgently, almost pushing Chloe down. "You!" Chloe's face turned livid. Just as she was about to accuse me of something, In the next second, she saw me pull out the fruit knife I had prepared long ago. Slowly pressing it against my own throat. I looked at Asher, my expression calm, yet acting like a madwoman. I said: "Asher, take me to see him." Chapter 3 Asher's hand opening the car door paused slightly, his eyes holding some ambiguous emotion. "Want to send him off on his last journey?" I slowly lowered my head under his gaze. "Yes." "Asher, I just want to see him..." "Please, can I?" "If you're still not satisfied, take my life too..." For a moment, a trace of mockery appeared on Asher's face. He seemed to think I was begging him only because I didn't want to die. He pinched the wrist holding the knife, pushing it closer to my throat, and sneered. "Iris, do you think I really care about your life?" "If you want to die, find a quiet place. Don't dirty mine and Chloe's eyes." "Besides, do you really dare to die?" After finishing, he drove away with Chloe, leaving me behind. Before getting into the car, Chloe looked me up and down. The disdain in her eyes made me clench my fists hidden under my clothes. Asher thought the laboratory was far in the suburbs and hard to get a taxi to. As long as he left with Chloe, no matter how unwilling I was, I would behave. But he didn't expect that I, who had always been cowardly, after a moment of silence, lifted my feet and chased after them. I don't know where the strength and courage came from. Through the rearview mirror, he could clearly see my figure running behind the car. Stubbornly, with all my might, chasing his receding car. Falling, getting up, falling again, getting up again... Falling over and over, climbing up over and over. As if I had lost my pain receptors. Asher slammed on the brakes, cursing under his breath. "Madwoman." Seeing the car finally stop in the distance, hope suddenly rose in my heart. In a journey both distant and shallow, I stumbled and ran onto the car. It was clearly a scorching summer, but the temperature inside the car was cold enough to make one shiver. In the back seat, I hugged myself tightly, trying to find a tiny bit of energy from my own embrace. But the result always disappointed me. I couldn't find the strength to support living anymore. Even when the car drove onto the cross-river bridge, I seriously considered it for a moment. If I jumped out of the car here and threw myself into the river to die. It seemed not bad. The laboratory was somewhat far from the crematorium. When we arrived there, it was almost evening. When getting out of the car, Asher reflexively reached out his hand to me. And for the first time in my life, I ignored him and rushed straight towards the morgue. Walking past corpse after corpse, I never found my baby. I don't know how to describe my mood at that time. Was it despair, or relief... I repeatedly paralyzed myself in my heart. Maybe, this is just a dream of mine. In the dream, flowers withered, lifeless. But actually, my baby is still safely receiving treatment. Maybe in a few months, when I wake up from this dream, our family will be reunited. I didn't know, I was just mechanically, numbly looking for my baby. When I came out of the morgue distraught, I happened to meet a staff member pushing a corpse towards the fire pit. I stopped as if feeling something. When I saw the corpse, I recognized him almost at a glance. That was my baby... In the two months since he was born, I had only seen him three times and held him once. They said the baby was weak and needed treatment in a sterile room. So every time I saw him, it was through a thick glass wall. I was outside, he was inside. I hadn't even given him a name yet. In the two months after his birth, I looked through numerous classics but couldn't find two suitable characters. I thought, when he gets better, I must... Must give him the name with the best meaning in the world. But I never imagined that our fourth meeting would be like this. He lay there quietly, being pushed towards the fire ahead by the staff. Chapter 4 The world seemed to have been muted. At this moment, there was no sound in my world. Only the flickering flames dancing in front of my eyes. And my child about to be pushed into the fire, disappearing from my world bit by bit. At that moment, I had long forgotten that the fire was enough to burn me to death. I couldn't even hear the staff's exclamations. Ghosts and gods at work, I rushed forward and threw myself into the fire. I wanted to hug him one more time. "Baby..." Sorry, really sorry. It was me who didn't protect you well. Or maybe, I shouldn't have given birth to you. A life carrying hatred ultimately won't be happy. But, do you know how happy I was the moment I learned you had life in my belly... The scorching flames burned my skin bit by bit. But as if I couldn't feel the pain, I rushed forward recklessly. I thought, anyway, my life is already rotten, dying with the baby like this seems not bad. "Iris, what are you doing?" Asher dragged me back from the fire desperately. By the firelight, I saw my reflection in Asher's eyes. Messy and crazy. His eyes held emotions I couldn't read. Like anger, like panic, and it seemed there was also a little bit of: pity. He gripped my shoulders tightly, his strength terrifying. "Do you want to die?" I collapsed weakly. He was right, I didn't know the meaning of living anymore. "Yes, Asher, I don't want to live..." "I've lived enough." "Asher, let me die with the baby..." Under the firelight, I cried uncontrollably. Asher's expression changed abruptly, a few traces of panic appearing in his eyes where I couldn't see. Then, he grabbed my arm tightly again, forcing me to look at him. "Die?" "Iris, are you even worthy of dying?" "You have to live, live to atone for your parents." His cold, hard expression pierced into my eyes, carrying a thorough chill. Like the substantive wind blades in a snowy night. "Also, don't threaten me with death again." "At eighteen you were too cowardly to die, do you think after nine years, you have the courage?" Looking at my breakdown, Asher felt as if his heart had been pricked by a tiny needle. Not very painful, but the strange feeling was particularly obvious. In a trance, another me appeared before him. The me who once fell asleep on the sofa waiting for him to come home. The me who carefully pulled his sleeve asking for forgiveness when making a mistake. The me who cried to him with red eyes when accidentally cutting a finger. The me who stubbornly ran into the kitchen to hug him from behind, refusing to rest even when sick and weak... These versions of me gradually merged with the me crying hysterically in front of him. Yet they seemed like two different people. For no reason, his heart felt a bit uncomfortable. Asher tightly clenched his hands hidden in his cuffs, forcefully suppressing the wave-like emotions in his heart. He took the urn handed over by the staff and threw it to me without hesitation. Like throwing away a hot potato. Under the night sky, his tone was cold and hard. "Done crying? Then take your son and get lost back home." He left with Chloe, ignoring me behind him, almost crying to the point of fainting. Under the night sky, I held the child's ashes, walking step by step back to the "home" I had lived in for nine years. The summer night wind wasn't cold, but at that moment I felt there was not a trace of warmth left in this world. When I got home, Asher was leaning obliquely against the back of the sofa, thinking about something. He saw me, his gaze swept over the box tightly held in my arms, and his eyelids drooped. The words he spoke were ugly and piercing. "Only you treat him as a treasure." These words were like heavy rain on a summer night, beating on my heart, provoking my anger towards him. For the first time in my life, I retorted with sarcasm. "Naturally can't compare to you, who can even lay a hand on your own son." Asher looked as if a sore spot had been pricked. A flash of pain passed through his eyes when he looked at me, but he refused to admit defeat. Finally, he snorted coldly and went back to his room.
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