Jian Jing didn't stay long at the hospital after visiting Ji Feng. She drove directly to Kang Mu Cheng's house.
As she had guessed earlier, she was very familiar with the Kang family. As soon as she entered, she knew where to put her shoes and where the bathroom was located. Muscle memory was more profound than memory stored in the brain.
Aunt Wang greeted her, "Jing Jing, you haven't been here for a long time."
"Aunt Wang," she even called out the name of the housekeeper. Smiling, she said, "You look exactly the same."
"Oh my, you're much more lively than when you were little." Aunt Wang said with a smile, "Mu Cheng called and said you were coming over for dinner tonight. I made your favorite dishes specially, so you have to eat more."
Jian Jing said, "Thank you, Auntie."
Aunt Wang went to cook with a smile on her face.
Before long, Kang Mu Cheng came home from work early, which was rare. After chatting briefly, he called her into the study to talk in detail. He looked solemn, seemingly full of worries, hesitating over and over about what to say.
On the contrary, Jian Jing, after more than a year, was calm and said, "Mr. Kang, go ahead and say what you need to. Don't worry about me."
However, Kang Mu Cheng did not relax. On the contrary, he sighed lightly, "I really don't want to tell you about this."
"Why?"
"This is not a pleasant memory for you. Jing Jing, you finally forgot about it. I don't want you to go through that again." He said slowly, "I feel sorry that Ji Feng is injured, but this is not something you can resolve. It's better to hand it over to the police."
Jian Jing suddenly fell silent.
So it turned out that she had forgotten not because of transmigration, but because she had forgotten in the first place. Even so, she didn't change her mind at all.
"He won't let me go just because I forgot." She said.
Kang Mu Cheng said, "The police will protect you. I can apply for a restraining order for you."
Jian Jing shook her head and pleaded earnestly, "They can't protect me for a lifetime, but he can hide for a long time until there is no one around me."
"I understand how you feel." Kang Mu Cheng also put forward powerful reasons. "I admit that you've changed a lot this past year, become braver, more confident, and more resilient. But Jing Jing, what happens to yourself is completely different from what happens to others. You have suffered great misfortune before. I can't just stand by and watch you go back to that state again."
Jian Jing took a deep breath, "Even if I really want to know, you still don't want to tell me?"
He said, "Yes, I don't want to tell you."
The air suddenly turned silent.
Jian Jing pressed her lips tightly, suppressing the irritation and helplessness that welled up in her heart. She quietly took two deep breaths.
She didn't want to argue with Kang Mu Cheng. There was no point in arguing.
"Exhaling slowly, the tense skin on her face relaxed. "If you really don't want to tell me, I won't force you. Mr. Kang, I told Brother Yingjie that no matter what, I would never dislike you. You've been very good to me, so it's okay if you don't want to say it."
Kang Mu Cheng did not expect to hear such words. He was slightly at a loss, with complicated feelings lingering in his chest, unable to spit it out or swallow it down.
He felt a little uncomfortable, but was unusually lost for words.
Jian Jing had already recovered as usual, and said, "I won't force you, and I don't want to deceive you either. But while you do what you want, so will I."
"Alas." He sighed deeply, leaning back in the leather chair, his eyes slightly tired, "Jing Jing, do you no longer trust me?"
Jian Jing asked in return, "Mr. Kang, do you really understand the whole story?"
Kang Mu Cheng stopped short.
"If you understand his pattern of behavior, you wouldn't have just upgraded my security system." Jian Jing's thinking was clear. She calmly elaborated, "You only know that something happened to me and that you took me to the hospital for treatment, but you don't know exactly what happened, right?"
She said, "You know me, just as I know you. He's not an opponent you're familiar with. You can't understand at all what this kind of dangerous character is thinking."
"Since you know he's very dangerous," Kang Mu Cheng frowned and spoke faster, "this is not something an ordinary girl like you can deal with. Why take the risk? I don't want anything to happen to you, do you understand?!"
Jian Jing asked, "Do you think that if I hide, nothing will happen?"
Kang Mu Cheng said, "At least you don't have to confront him directly."
"Don't worry, I won't fight him one on one." She made a joke.
But Kang Mu Cheng's attitude did not ease at all. He was brief and to the point, "You know what I mean."
Jian Jing could only say, "Mr. Kang, if the police could catch him, they would have caught him long ago. As a result, in Liu Baofeng's case, there are still no clues so far. They can't catch him."
"If they can't, you can?" Kang Mu Cheng always encouraged her before, rarely questioning her like this. It was clear he had no time to consider anything else and was no longer as calm as usual.
"As long as he doesn't surrender to the law, I will live under a cloud every day. If I'm lucky, I can hide for years. If not, who knows when he'll come looking for me again." Jian Jing argued, "To catch him, I'm needed. I want to regain my lost memories and see his true face. This is the best way."
Kang Mu Cheng was rendered speechless.
Everyone knows it's better to drain the pond to catch all the fish than to just scoop out the boiling water. But it's easier said than done.
He took a deep breath to calm down, and said slowly, "You make sense, but this is not easy for you. What you call the best solution does not necessarily mean the least harm."
Jian Jing persisted in silence.
"If I tell you the price you'll have to pay," Kang Mu Cheng looked at her face and said in a low voice, "is to become a demon?"
She frowned, not understanding his meaning, "A demon?"
"St. Angel's is very far away. I didn't want to send you so far for treatment, but you...you had become very dangerous at the time." Many years later, Kang Mu Cheng could still clearly feel the shock and anxiety when he recalled the past. It was as if invisible hands clutched his heart, suffocating him, and cold sweat kept pouring out.
He finally revealed a little, "The doctor said you were under strong hypnosis."
Jian Jing was surprised, "Hypnosis?"
"That's why I don't agree." He said, "Once you start, no one can protect you, not me or Ji Feng either."
She thought about it.
Hypnosis.
Right, if it was hypnosis, it could perhaps explain many questions.
"Before this happened, Mr. Kang should have known me already. What kind of person was I?" She asked a seemingly irrelevant question.
Kang Mu Cheng thought about it and answered, "Very quiet, a little introverted, but occasionally with surprising courage. Your parents strongly disagreed with you writing books. You had an argument with them and ran away from home. You took a long-distance bus to Jinwu to find me."
Jian Jing was stunned.
He didn't realize how shocking his words were, but she knew.
This had also happened in the other world.
Her parents tore up the notebook she used to write about the white cat. At that time, she didn't say a word. The next day, she silently ran away from home. But there, there was no Jinwu or Kang Mu Cheng. She could only go to the library and stay until closing time.
When it got dark, the huge library didn't have a single person left. She didn't want to go home and had nowhere to go. Feeling wronged and afraid, she curled up in a chair and cried for half the night before falling asleep groggily.
Later, in the second half of the night, the lights suddenly turned on and her parents' anxious voices came calling for her.
She looked at them in disbelief. But they didn't scold or beat her. They only said, "As long as you're alright."
After saying that, they busied themselves with thanking the police officer and the librarian who had worked overtime in the middle of the night to open the doors for them. Their words were so sincere it was enough to move one to tears.
The police and librarian were good people and quickly said, "Don't mention it. The main thing is the child has been found."
Her parents took her home and told her that the family's financial situation was average and they probably couldn't afford private high school. The scores required to get into the best public high schools in the city were extremely high, so there would be great pressure on her studies.
"Your father and mother can't help you. You can only rely on your own efforts." Ordinary parents said this.
At that time, Jian Jing was not yet able to understand their bitterness, but chose to forgive them. She no longer wrote about the white cat and concentrated her energy on studying. The next year, she got quite a good score on the high school entrance exam and was admitted to a top high school as she wished.
"What happened after that?" She couldn't help asking.
Kang Mu Cheng said, "I was shocked. I sent you back home and persuaded your parents until they finally signed the contract."
Jian Jing smiled. Ripples rose in her heart. Ah, so this was where the divergence between the two worlds began.
The two took separate paths in their simple life, but they were still the same person.
She thought for a moment and said, "I understand, but I still insist."
The just relaxed atmosphere was like a fully drawn bowstring, tense again with a buzz.
Kang Mu Cheng opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but he swallowed it back, with his lips pursed tight. He rarely spoke to her with such a serious expression, even after her suicide, he was not so guarded.
"You're afraid I'll become that way again, but that probably won't happen," Jian Jing sighed lightly. "That Jing Jing is already dead."
Kang Mu Cheng's expression changed drastically. "What did you say?"
"She was already dead when I committed suicide," Jian Jing said. "I'm another Jing Jing."
He furrowed his brows, looking her up and down, trying hard to digest the shock she had given him. After a good while, he finally found a reasonable explanation: "You mean personality?"
Jian Jing had no intention of explaining the real reason, so she readily nodded her head: "You can put it that way."
Kang Mu Cheng said, "No wonder."
He knew very little about psychology. Things like personality, he had only heard the basics, but since she had been hypnotized before, and had gone through the life-and-death moment of suicide, it was normal for her psychological state to change.
And he believed this explanation because of what he had seen with his own eyes over the past year.
She had changed a lot, but fundamentally, she was not a different person.
"No one can protect me, I will protect myself," Jian Jing said ambiguously. "Tell me."
Kang Mu Cheng's attitude visibly softened. He no longer adamantly refused: "Let me think about it."
Jian Jing naturally said okay.
She had a sumptuous dinner at the Kang family's house, and at Kang Mu Cheng's strong urging, she stayed overnight at their home. According to Aunt Wang, the guest room was the room she had lived in before, kept exactly the same.
Of course, the bedding was all new. After a few years, the old stuff couldn't be used anymore.
However, the bookshelves and desk showed the passage of time, and the few books that were kept were all popular titles from many years ago, as if time had stood still here.
Jian Jing felt a sense of nostalgia that she hadn't experienced for a long time welling up inside her, even though she didn't have any details in her memory, the feeling was real.
She randomly pulled a book off the shelf and started flipping through it with great interest.
At the same time, a few walls over.
Kang Mu Cheng was talking to his mother who had just come home late.
Unlike ordinary families, Kang Lei had given birth to Kang Mu Cheng when she was only 20 years old, and had no idea how to be a mother at all. Sometimes she was like an older sister, sometimes like a boss, and other times like a friend.
Having been brought up so casually, Kang Mu Cheng went through his childhood without a father figure, and grew up to be a son who took care of his mother in place of his father.
Also a domineering kind.
So their mother-son relationship was neither the common doting parent-filial child, nor the often seen tiger mom-weak son. Their positions were more equal.
However, when the President Kang heard the whole story, she raised an eyebrow and asked, "Jing Jing wants to know about things in the past, and you don't want to tell her - is this worth losing sleep over and standing on the balcony in a daze?"
