Jin checked the ti where it had already been well past an hour but there was no sign of Alix yet. He trusted her promise to be back but his restless heart failed to calm down. In the silence of the loneliness, he backtracked and wondered if he did the right thing by confessing to her.
Did I ruin everything between us?
Should I have just kept quiet and only continued to be her good friend?
But he was aware that that wasn't any viable solution. Sooner or later, his feelings were bound to co out in front of her. It was impossible for them to remain as friends when he had fallen so hard for her.
"I think I am going to die…" he covered his face.
"Don't die so soon already."
His head jerked up and his eyes widened. A breath of relief escaped his lips, joy overflowing his heart.
"You are back."
"I said I would return. Did you not believe ?"
"I did but…"
The wait was the most agonizing I have ever endured.
Jin held his breath and asked, "The thing you wanted to do…are you done with it?"
Alix answered after a long mont. "Yes. That's why I ca back. To do the sa thing with you or rather…have the similar conversation with you."
"I don't understand…"
"I went to et Lin."
He felt as if he just brutally collided against an iceberg, the chilliness blasting at him in all directions. He couldn't point it out but he felt Alix saw Lin differently despite not knowing anything about him at all. She had exchanged numbers with him that day and was strangely passionate about proving him innocent. It was also why Jin wasn't too thrilled to check her presence at his cafe. He was more afraid of finding her there than not.
"Oh…" he didn't know what kind of an expression to make.
"Hou Lin huh..But…why did you have to et him right now?" He asked with a thousand needles stabbing his throat.
"I wanted to tell him the truth before I told you, before I told anybody else because he deserves to know it first."
That left him even more befuddled. "What truth?"
"The reason why it is impossible between us. It's not about your feelings or my feelings. We simply cannot be together because once you know who I am, you will walk away on your own."
He stared at her. "I will never walk away from you."
A wry smile ford on her lips. "You will. You will have to. You won't have a choice."
"It doesn't matter what it is."
"It does. My identity matters a lot."
"Identity?"
Alix stared at Jin in silence for a long ti. She looked into his black eyes, which she knew would soon be filled with hatred instead of the love they held right now.
"I am Zhan Yahui."
Jin blinked rapidly. "I am sorry?"
"I am Zhan Yahui," she repeated. "I am not Ren Alix. No, the correct way to say it is that I am physically Ren Alix but the soul inside belongs to Zhan Yahui's. The real Ren Alix died with that fall from the stairs. The woman who woke up from the coma was not her. It was - Zhan Yahui."
Jin could only et her dead serious expression with a blank stare. He heard her supposed 'truth' but his mind struggled to make sense of it.
"I…I don't get it. How do you know about Zhan Yahui?"
"Because I am Zhan Yahui."
"That's not possible."
"If your rebirth can be possible, so can my reincarnation."
Jin froze hard. A steep silence fell as he tried to connect two and two together. There was no way that Alix or anybody outside the Liu family knew about his, Jun and Ai's rebirth.
"In your case, the golden clock went ten years back for the sole purpose to defeat . In my case, I got reborn into a different body almost seven years after my death. You went back into the past. I jumped into the future."
That only further drained every last bit of any color remaining on his face. The details about the mystical golden clock were even more private.
"N-No, that is not…possible. Standing before is Ren Alix, not her."
"That is just my face. And yes it is possible. I know what you are going through. Her parents had the sa reaction. It's unbelievable for the outside world."
Suddenly, Ren Luoyang's words echoed in his ears.
'We have already…l-lost our daughter once. You won't understand it, but just know that we have. That is why, we cannot afford to lose her once again.'
"If you still don't believe , then you can ask anything you want about the past life where Lin and I died at your father's hands or this life where I had killed myself."
Jin stumbled back, the last of her words crashing upon him like a mountain shattering apart. The things Alix uttered in the last five minutes were only known in his family. The past life was a tight-knit secret, yet for Alix to claim so many things only proved that she wasn't lying. She couldn't be. And with that one dawn of the truth, everything suddenly beca crystal clear to him.
What had brought such a stark change in Alix after she woke up from her coma?
Why she wasn't interested in chasing after Yuze anymore?
Why she felt so different from the Alix he had t six years ago?
Because the real Alix was long gone. A completely new person had taken over her, who exhibited her own personality and beliefs - the sa beliefs that Jin hated at one ti. The sa woman he loathed for destroying his family in the past.
It was the sa woman he had fallen in love with so hopelessly at present.
Alix watched the tears fall down his cheeks with a self-deprecating smile.
"I told you, Liu Jin. You will walk away on your own."
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