"Honey... how about we stay on this island for a few more days?" Huo Ting Cheng’s voice was soft against her ear, his arms wrapped around her in an intimate embrace that felt both protective and possessive.
"Nope! That can’t work." Tang Fei’s response was imdiate, practical. "We can’t stay here forever. We still have to go back to where we left things. Life has to move forward." She shifted slightly in his arms, her tone taking on a teasing edge. "Even if you had plans to lock away here, it’s not possible. The human brain gets bored eventually. Even yours would."
She had studied him carefully, pieced together his patterns from fragnted mories, from the way he moved through the world. He was possessive, obsessed even, but not in a way that felt dangerous. He controlled himself, maintained boundaries even when his instincts probably scread otherwise.
"Hehe... why do you think of like that?" He laughed, the sound light and sowhat forced, as if trying to deflect from sothing heavier lurking beneath the surface.
"Rember when you locked in a cage?" The words ca out casually, but there was an edge to them. Even without complete mories of what had driven him to that extre, Tang Fei knew instinctively it had been serious. Desperate, even. Like he had no other ans to handle the situation.
"Let’s not talk about that." His voice had changed, losing its playful quality, becoming careful and controlled.
"I’m not saying you’re a bad person," Tang Fei clarified imdiately, sensing the shift in his energy. She sighed, trying to redirect, but he was already speaking.
"That day... you’d gone to the garage. You found petrol." His voice was quiet now, distant, as if recounting sothing that had happened to soone else. "You tied the kids up. Poured it on them. It was only the lighter that was missing." He paused, and Tang Fei could feel the tension radiating through his body where it pressed against hers. "And you’d sliced your wrist. It was... it was beyond anything I could handle normally. I couldn’t do anything apart from that, from locking you away. I couldn’t lock you in a ntal hospital."
Tang Fei’s entire body went rigid. Her hand, which had been tracing idle patterns on his arm, stilled completely. The color drained from her face, leaving her feeling cold despite the warm water surrounding their underwater suite.
How could a mother do that to her children?
If a spark had ignited, if the fire had spread, they would have burned. Her babies would have burned to ashes.
Her body began to tremble, fine tremors that she couldn’t control. Her hands shook visibly.
"Probably it was water," she managed, her voice unsteady and thin, she couldn’t trust her words too. "You probably mistook it for petrol. That has to be it."
"I told you it’s not good to talk about it." Huo Ting Cheng’s arms tightened around her, pulling her closer, as if he could physically hold her together. He must have felt the change in her body temperature, the way she’d gone cold.
"I just wanted to hear about it," she whispered.
"It’s in the past." His voice was firm but gentle, trying to draw a line under the conversation.
"Had you confird it was petrol?" She couldn’t let it go, couldn’t accept it. Soone must have frad her. The original Tang Fei couldn’t have done sothing so monstrous.
"It was petrol, Fei’er." His words were careful, and asured. "I wouldn’t fra you. And there was fire, it had started in the far corner where you couldn’t see it. If we hadn’t acted in ti..." He stopped himself. "These are unpleasant mories. Let them stay buried."
But it was too late. Sothing in his words had triggered sothing else, fragnts of mory that didn’t belong to her, echoes of the woman who’d inhabited this body before.
"You are all idiots..."
"You can’t even make your father change his mind!"
"Your existence is an abomination!"
"How can I give birth to such kids?"
"I hate you all..."
"I will kill you!"
"Hehehe... Hehehe..."
The mories, or were they hallucinations? flashed through her mind in rapid succession, each one accompanied by a voice she recognized as her own but wasn’t. The pain that followed was imdiate and sharp, a headache blooming behind her eyes like a knife being driven into her skull.
Tang Fei pressed her palms against her temples, trying to make sense of what she’d just experienced. Why had the original Tang Fei hated them so much? Huo Ting Cheng had never been violent with her, possessive, yes, controlling certainly, but never cruel. And the children were innocent. Beautiful. What could have driven soone to such darkness?
"Did you rape ?" The question left her mouth before she could stop it, raw and desperate. "Is that how we conceived the kids?"
She needed answers, needed sothing to make sense of the horror. But the mories felt wrong, incomplete. Like they’d been erased or deliberately hidden, leaving only jagged edges behind.
"Why would you even think like that?" Huo Ting Cheng’s voice was pained now, almost offended. "Let’s not talk about that." He gently cupped her face, turning her toward him, and kissed her lips softly, clearly trying to steer the conversation away from dangerous waters.
These weren’t pleasant mories to recall. He’d worked so hard to erase them, to give her a chance at a normal life, at happiness. He wouldn’t let them resurface now.
The truth was complicated, more complicated than rape, more tangled than simple violence. She hadn’t forced him, not exactly, but the situation she’d put him in, the state she’d been in... he’d been trying to save her even as she destroyed them both. Could he say she’d taken advantage of him?
No. He loved her beyond reason, beyond survival instinct. Even with betrayal burning between them, even when death had seed preferable, he’d loved her. Still loved her. But that mont, that terrible, desperate mont, had driven her completely mad.
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