After a long silence, Long Aotian sighed softly. "I don’t consider myself a good person, but if I encounter something I believe is wrong, I’ll do my best to help."

"So, Shen Mengjie, life offers more than one path. You still have choices."

"Is there really?" Shen Mengjie chuckled in response. "It took me so, so long to escape that place. I thought I’d gradually get better, but now you see how it is."

Long Aotian didn’t know what else to say. When the knife doesn’t cut your own flesh, you can never truly understand the pain...

Everyone, including Long Aotian himself, could tell Shen Mengjie was hurting inside—but that was all. The real agony, perhaps, was something only she truly knew.

For a while, no one spoke. The hospital room grew heavy with silence.

"Can you tell me now what Huang Fei meant by his words?"

"He thinks the child in my belly is yours."

The words struck Long Aotian like a bolt, instantly clarifying why Huang Fei had treated him that way earlier...

Long Aotian couldn’t fathom why Huang Fei would think such a thing of him, nor who could have spread such a rumor...

His voice lowered. "Was it worth it? Why won’t you say who the father is? He should take responsibility."

Shen Mengjie let out a light laugh. "There’s no ‘worth it’ or not. This was all my mistake to begin with."

"At first, I wanted the man to take responsibility. I knew, no matter the reason, if I told him I was carrying his child, he’d step up—because he’s a good person."

"Sometimes I’d secretly think, I’m not bad-looking. Even if I forced him into this, I could still make him happy."

"But then... when I was about to confess to him, seeing his clueless expression, how grateful he looked toward me... I suddenly regretted it."

As she spoke, Shen Mengjie gently touched her abdomen. "It wasn’t until I felt my body’s reluctance that I realized... I already had him or her inside me."

"I didn’t know what to do..."

Long Aotian’s gaze followed her hand to her stomach.

When their eyes met, Shen Mengjie scoffed softly, a small, proud smirk playing on her lips—just like when they’d first met, if he remembered correctly, at the badminton court.

Among the four girls in her dorm, she was the only one radiating confidence, carrying that unique self-assured charm.

At this age, with her youthful, alluring figure, she had every right to be confident...

Yet despite her smile, an inexplicable heaviness lingered.

"Get some rest."

"Are you leaving?"

"Yeah, it’s time to go."

Just as he turned, her hand caught his arm.

Her face was pale, but it couldn’t mask her natural beauty—no wonder Huang Fei was so devoted to her.

The look she gave Long Aotian was indescribably complex.

So complex that he instinctively averted his eyes.

"Do I look pretty?" She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, flashing a sincere, girlish smile—one that belonged to someone her age.

Long Aotian froze. Her sudden earnestness burned like a flame, almost scalding.

"Thank you."

"Thank you for coming to my side when I needed help. Thank you for drinking all my beer. Thank you for telling me the fault wasn’t mine alone..."

"Thank you for giving me an outlet when I was hurting—even if it was just a small gesture for you, even if you only wanted to prove none of this was your doing..."

"And thank you... for making me feel safe for the first time..."

"I’m not as fragile as you think. That day by the lake, I just wanted some quiet. I love the ocean, but there was no ocean..."

Back then, Long Aotian hadn’t overthought it. He’d just seen a girl—a sad girl drinking by the lake. He assumed her sorrow was because of him... He truly hadn’t considered anything deeper.

Her fingers brushed her abdomen again. "You always say I argue with you, that I’m ungrateful... but that’s not true."

"If I didn’t argue, you wouldn’t notice me. If I didn’t cause trouble, we’d be like two parallel lines, never crossing. I just... might have fallen for you a little."

"I’m not bad-looking, and my figure’s decent. We’d make a good pair, don’t you think? But then I saw that girl—Hu Yuying. The moment I laid eyes on her, I knew. No one in this world could ever compete with her. It’s a woman’s intuition..."

"Her eyes, her heart—they’re all filled with Long Aotian."

"But who am I? I’m Shen Mengjie. Even if I have to crawl out of hell inch by inch, nothing’s impossible for me. Every ‘can’t’ is just another challenge worth fighting!"

Long Aotian was stunned. He’d had no idea about any of these inner thoughts.

But when Shen Mengjie continued, his strength drained away entirely.

"But I was wrong. Even when he was drunk, even when his mind was hazy... when I was on top of him, he still called out someone else’s name. In that moment, I knew I’d lost completely. So I regretted it..."

"Because I realized... even if I forced him to take responsibility, I could never make him happy in this lifetime."

"He’s a good person..."

As she spoke, Shen Mengjie looked at Long Aotian’s shocked, frozen expression—then rose onto her tiptoes...

The soft warmth of her lips against his sent his mind spiraling back to that night after the sports festival...

He pushed her away abruptly, stumbling back.

His thoughts were chaos. He couldn’t think straight.

He needed to cool off.

"If life could start over... I wouldn’t let myself go. I wouldn’t show you my worst side. Would you see me differently then...?"

Standing outside the hospital room, Long Aotian’s emotions were a storm.

The memories of that post-sports-festival night—fragments lost to drunkenness—resurfaced piece by piece, triggered by Shen Mengjie’s kiss...

It was him. He was the one who’d wronged her. He was the cause of everything that followed...

His heart refused to settle. All he wanted was solitude—somewhere quiet to clear his mind.

With one last glance at the hospital room, he turned and walked away, his heart in turmoil.

He didn’t go home. Didn’t return to campus.

Cigarette butts piled up, crushed one after another, but the storm inside him refused to subside.

The last cigarette burned down between his fingers as the sky darkened imperceptibly, heavy with the threat of an impending storm—its arrival uncertain, yet inevitable.

He crushed the stub and crumpled the empty pack.

Just as he stood, his phone rang.

The caller ID left him puzzled.

The moment he answered, the phone slipped from his grasp, uncontrolled—