Back Then, I Adored You

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio  Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Gu Yusheng threw out the subsequent question before Qin Zhi’ai could recover from hearing how he was concerned about her taking care of herself first.

Do you still love me?

She had always loved him ardently and silently for all these years, but she had never mentioned love to him.

Yet now, he brought it up so abruptly that she was thrown off guard and her mind went blank in an instant. As if she had lost her ability to speak, she could not make a single sound.

They stood and faced each other in silence.

Raindrops continued to pelt down from the skies, and the surrounding air became moist.

After a long time, Gu Yusheng blinked softly and turned slowly to look at a nearby lamppost through the rain.

The dim lights made the raindrops appear like a thin veil of mist, and the look in his eyes became distant.

He had never expected himself to discuss this with her so soon. Furthermore, his affairs with Liang Doukou had only just reached a peak, and they had yet to be resolved.

His trip to Hangzhou, however, had stirred up intense emotions in him. He had thought that she had started a new life with someone else, but her brother had told him that she had not.

On the day of his accident, she had wept so hard that he could tell that he obviously had a place in her heart. When he had walked and stood behind her earlier, he could clearly see her shoulders tremble. While she had subdued herself well, he could still hear her stifled sobs through the sound of the pattering raindrops.

At that instant, his heart ached, and he was flustered.

In his lifetime, he had only loved one girl and, back when he had thought that she’d started afresh, he forced himself to repress his feelings for her and let her go abroad out of fear that he would only add to her worries.

Now that she had cried so hard for him, he could not wait another second to discuss their future.

However, because they had experienced so much together, now that they had to be completely honest with each other, everything had accumulated in his heart to the point that he didn’t know how to talk about it all.

He felt like smoking but, being so close to her and knowing that she disliked the smell of cigarettes, he restrained the urge to do so.

He took a long time to formulate his thoughts in his mind, but they sounded exceptionally simple when he eventually said them out loud.

“Do you remember the question that I asked back when you first resigned from Hui Shi?”

He was previously asking if she still loved him, and now he was on a completely different topic.

The tempo of change was too quick, and Qin Zhi’ai’s mind blanked for a moment before she managed to catch up with his thoughts. “Mm,” she replied softly.

Back then, he had diverted Xiaowang away and asked her, “Do you remember the girl whom I mentioned to you on the night when we returned from Hainan?”

“Do you know she is the girl whom I love?” Gu Yusheng continued to face sideways and stare at the lamppost. “I love her very much and very deeply,” he said softly in a slow, emotionless tone.

She had learned through Lu Bancheng that he loved her.

She also saw the words “Little troublemaker, I’m in love with you,” which he had written on that paper currency.

But right now, hearing these words from him without any warning stirred up her imagination despite her attempts to maintain a steady state of mind.