Wronged me?
How?
The question echoed in the darkness of his mind, but when he reached for an answer, his memories scattered like startled birds.
He tried to grasp them, tried to pull something concrete from the murky depths of the original Lin Feng's past. But it was like reaching through water—shapes he could almost touch, feelings that weren't quite his, images that dissolved the moment he focused on them.
A small girl with angry eyes. A toy in the trash. A door slamming. A hospital bed.
The fragments floated past him, disconnected and elusive. He could feel the emotional weight of those memories sitting heavy in his chest, but the specifics remained just out of reach.
"I hope you forgive me for all the wrong things that I had done to you."
"But I don't remember you did anything bad to me, Weiwei." The words came out slowly. Carefully honest.
Lin Weiwei let out a breath that sounded like it had been trapped inside her chest for years.
"I know." Her voice was quiet.
"I've always known."
"That's what makes this harder," she whispered against his chest. "Because I remember everything, Big Brother. Every terrible thing I did. Every cruel word I said to you."
Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt.
"And you can't even remember anything."
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Outside, the bluish glow from the building behind the mansion cast faint patterns through the curtains, painting shifting shadows on the ceiling.
Her body was pressed against his, and the thin cotton of their clothes did little to hide the warmth between them. Every breath she took, he felt it. Every shift of her weight sent heat pooling where their bodies met.
Lin Feng's hand kept moving through her hair. "Does it matter if I don't?"
His thumb traced slow circles on her shoulder, feeling the tension coiled beneath her skin. The strap of her pajama top had slipped slightly, and his fingers brushed bare skin.
"You don't need to blame yourself anymore. It's in the past. You have blamed yourself enough already."
"The details don't matter anymore. As far as I'm concerned, you matter more than whatever I can't remember."
"As your Big Brother, I'm telling you, put it all down."
--------------------
"You make it sound so simple," she whispered.
"Because it is." His hand continued its slow path through her hair. "You were twelve or thirteen back then. Whatever you did—"
"But it's not that simple." Lin Weiwei's voice was a little raised. "There are things I haven't told you. Worse ones. And it's twelve, not thirteen."
He waited.
"The pool," she said. "When we were seven."
As soon as she said it, Lin Feng remembered something. From the memory, he can feel the sensation of cold, chlorinated water entering through his nose and mouth, while lifting something up and being pushed down at the same time.
But that was all he had.
"I jumped in to prove I was better than you," she said. "And then I couldn't swim."
"And when I couldn't swim, you jumped into the water and tried to save me, when you yourself don't know how to swim either. But you still tried to save me, lifting me out of the water."
"In the end, they had to pull you out. They had to resuscitate you. You were in the hospital for days. Meanwhile, I was left unharmed."
"And when Father asked what happened," she continued, "you told him you pushed me in. That it was a prank. That it was your fault."
Silence.
"You took the blame." Her voice thinned to almost nothing. "And I stood there and let you."
Her hand pressed flat against his chest.
"I was seven years old, and I let you get punished for saving my life. I didn't even feel bad about it for a long time because my mother told me it was the right thing!"
Lin Feng didn't answer. The memory was already gone. Just water, a stinging sensation in his chest and the weight of someone lighter than him.
His hand kept moving through her hair.
Then something else came. It was a different memory this time. There, he remembered grey stones, bright paint and a spray can that he took from a girl of his age.
"I also remembered—"
"Something with paint right? On stone?" Lin Weiwei interrupted him before letting out a self-deprecating chuckle.
She pressed her face harder into his shirt.
But the memory was already gone before he could see it properly — the grey stones, the bright colors and the smell of paint. Then nothing.
"I'm such a bad girl. I was a terrible childbride. I even bullied you for years." Lin Weiwei continued.
"At home, I made your life unbearable. And at school—"
"At school, you protected me anyway."
"The other girls hated me," she paused for a moment, her hand moving on his shirt, desperate to grab onto something. "They all hated me, calling me a social climber. That I don't belong to their group. That I was safe to bully."
"And yet, you always stood in front of me every time. Even though I went home and destroyed your things. Even though I told you I hated you. Even though I never once said thank you."
Her throat moved against his chest.
Lin Feng silently listened to her, his hand still on her hair, finger combing it.
"Why?" The word cracked in half. "Why did you keep doing that?"
"Why would you always come and stand up for me? Why do you try to protect me when those men in that white van tried to kidnap me away. Why did you have to grab that pipe and fight them back?"
"Why did you almost have yourself killed? To spend three weeks in a coma, hauled day after day to the surgery room? To have me watch the machines breathe for you?"
"Why did you have to pay with your memories just so that I don't suffer?"
Lin Weiwei looked at him, waiting. Her breath held against his chest, wanting him to say something.
Yet Lin Feng remained silent. No words left his mouth at all.
But she could still feel how his hand remained on her hair. Finger combing her hair as if she was a very precious person to him.
After that, the two of them were silent. Lin Weiwei's fingers trembled hard against his chest for a moment, then they steadied.
--------------------
As the silence in the room continued, drops of something warm fell onto his chest, one after another. He could feel them soaking through the thin cotton of his shirt.
Lin Weiwei was crying. But no sobs could be heard. For every drop that soaked into his clothes and down into his skin, he could feel her pain. Suffering that no words could describe.
Lin Feng stared at the ceiling.
He had no answers to any of the questions she asked. He searched his memories and the original didn't have any thoughts about it at all. He didn't know why he jumped, why he grabbed the pipe and why he kept standing up for the girl who repeatedly hurt him.
If I was in his shoes, would I also do it?
Then he remembered what happened to him before he got transmigrated into this world. It felt like it happened just yesterday. Every bit of detail was still fresh in his mind.
That he recklessly saved a girl, climbing over ice cold railing. Only to slip and fall down to his death.
But he did it anyway.
And all for a simple reason.
I can't help but save those who are in need. To protect those that need protecting.
Yes that's right, I often find myself in strange situations, taking the blame for others.
I don't know why I kept doing it. I don't even know how I became a counter-intelligence officer even though I have all those flaws.
But I wonder…
Did that Lin Feng also think that way? Did he believe that because she would become his wife, he had to protect Weiwei — even in his futile, childish efforts?
Lin Feng smiled as he continued on gently caressing his stepsister's hair. Looks like he wasn't that bad all along.
Then finally, Lin Feng broke the silence. "Whatever happened in the past, nothing was your fault, Weiwei."
Lin Weiwei turned to look at him. When she was about to say something, Lin Feng continued, interrupting her.
"Whatever I did, I chose to do it. That was mine, not yours."
"And besides, you believed it was the right thing to do because your mother said so."
"You were young back then. How would you know you did the wrong thing? Especially when someone like your mother told you it was the right thing to do?"
"If there is anyone to blame here, it's your mother, Jiang Mei, for making you believe it was the right thing. For not correcting you."
"The child is not responsible for all the wrong things they had done. It is the responsibility of an adult."
After he said that, he could feel more tears falling into his chest, the drops even bigger than before. But she still maintained her composure. He could still hear no sob coming from her.
Then she finally replied to him, "You are just trying to make me feel better, Big Brother. That's so unfair. You are contradicting yourself when you said I can be free from consequences because I was a child, then you quickly pin the blame to yourself."
"How is this different from what you were doing all the time."
Lin Feng's eyelid twitched upon hearing his stepsister's rebuttal. He looked at the tiny slit in between the curtains of his window where a bluish light shone from there.
"You're right."
The moment he said that, Lin Weiwei flinched. He could feel her get stiff on the bed.
"Then it's Jiang Mei's fault. It's not my fault. It's not your fault either. Jiang Mei is all to blame here."
--------------------
The words hung in the darkness between them. Lin Feng's words froze her, her mind ceasing to function like video buffering.
Lin Weiwei didn't say anything for a long time. Her breathing had gone shallow.
After some time, she spoke once more.
"How—" her voice came out different. Smaller. Like a child's. "How could you say that?"
"Because you told me yourself. Just now. Your mother told you it was the right thing. She told a seven-year-old girl that hurting someone was good. That hurting me was good. That there would be no consequences."
"I bet she told you that I was evil. That you were protecting everyone by hurting me. That you were being a good daughter."
She went completely still.
"You think I don't know what this family is like?" His hand resumed its slow path through her hair. "What your mother, Jiang Mei, was like?"
Her breath caught at the mention of that name.
"The pressure. The competition. The regret she has for giving birth to you. Her hatred for you. And her manipulating you to do bad things to me. To push me out so our younger brother can finally take my place."
Lin Weiwei's body shuddered against him.
She hadn't expected him to know. To understand. To see through the layers of poison that Jiang Mei had carefully constructed over the years.
"And to be honest with you, Weiwei, I have no interest in becoming the head of the family in the future. Lin Hao can have it."
--------------------
"You think I don't know that, Big Brother?"
Her voice had changed. The tears were still wet on his shirt, but the trembling had stopped. When she spoke again, it was steady. Clear.
"I figured it out years ago. I'm not stupid."
She lifted her head slightly. Not to look at him. Just to speak without the cotton muffling her words.
"I know exactly what my mother did. I know why she did it. I know I was her tool and I know Lin Hao was always the point."
"But knowing that doesn't fix anything."
"It doesn't bring back your memories. It doesn't undo the three weeks I sat next to your bed. It doesn't change the fact that I kept doing it even after I was old enough to know better."
"I was five when I started being bad to you. But I wasn't five the whole time."
"Big Brother, I—"
His hand left her hair. His fingers traced down the side of her face, along her jaw, and stopped at her mouth.
Then his finger pressed against her lips. Warm. Firm. The pad of his index finger resting right where her words were about to come out.
Lin Weiwei's breath caught against his fingertip. Her mouth was still half-open, trapping whatever she was about to say.
She could feel the callus on the pad of his finger. The slight roughness of skin that didn't quite match the rest of him — the hands of someone who had been cooking every morning for years.
Her eyes went wide in the dark. Her heart slammed once, hard, against her ribs.
She stopped.
--------------------
"Fine." Lin Feng's finger lifted from her lips. "You wronged me. Is that what you want to hear?"
She didn't move.
"Then I'll forgive you. All of it. Everything you just told me. The pool, the paint, the bullying, the kidnapping. All of it. Forgiven."
Her breath hitched.
"But I have one condition."
He looked down at her in the dark.
"Forget about it. Put it all down. Every last piece of it."
"Because watching you carry this — watching you cry like this, blame yourself like this, tear yourself apart over something that happened when you were a child —"
His hand found her hair again.
"That hurts me more than anything you could have done back then."
Lin Weiwei opened her mouth. Then closed it. She could still feel the warmth and the pressure of his finger pressing on her lips even after he already pulled it away.
"You can't just — that's not how it works, Big Brother. You can't just say 'I forgive you' and expect everything to go away."
"Why not?"
"Because I—"
"You asked me to forgive you. I'm forgiving you. Are you saying no?"
She had no answer for that.
Her lips pressed together. Her fingers found the fabric of his shirt and twisted it into a knot near his collarbone. He could feel her knuckles digging into his chest through the cotton, trembling.
"It's not that easy," she whispered. Her breath was hot against the hollow of his throat.
"I know."
"You can't just put down something you've carried for six years."
"I know that too."
Her nails dug into the shirt. Her forehead pressed harder against him, the bones of her skull pushing into the muscle below his collarbone.
"Then why are you asking me to?"
"Because I'd rather watch you try to put it down than watch you carry it like this."
--------------------
The two of them stayed like that for a long time. No one spoke. His hand moved back to her hair. Outside, the bluish glow through the curtain slit had shifted slightly from where it had been.
"I'm sorry, Big Brother."
"Weiwei—"
"Let me finish."
He stopped.
"Even if you forgive me. Even if you tell me to put it down a hundred times." She wiped her face with the back of her wrist, smearing the tears across her cheek. "I can't forgive myself. I don't know if I ever will."
Her fingers loosened on his shirt. Her hand slid up his chest, found his wrist, and pulled the hand out of her hair. She held it with both hands in front of her face, his fingers still slightly curved from where they had been.
She pressed her lips to his knuckles. Her mouth was hot. He could feel the dried salt on her skin catching against his.
"The only way I know how to make it right — the only way I can live with what I did — is to stay by your side."
"To cook your meals. To take care of you when you're sick. To be there when you come home."
"I can't give you back what you lost. I can't undo the coma or the surgeries or the years I wasted being cruel to you."
"But I can give you every day I have left."
She kissed the back of it again, her lower lip dragging across the ridge of his tendons.
"I'll work for you. I'll earn money for you. I'll build whatever you need built. You can have my hands, my head, my time — all of it. Everything I have. Everything I am."
She brought his hand down and held it against her collarbone. He could feel her pulse jumping under his fingers, fast and hard.
"You can have my body too, if you want it."
"We can make as many children as you want."
She looked straight at him when she said it. Her eyes were still wet but her voice didn't waver.
"My life is yours, Big Brother. Whatever you want from me. Whenever you want to use me. For any and all reasons. I'll do it."
She kissed his fingertips. Her breath came warm and uneven against his skin, and he could feel her lips moving slightly before the next words came out, as if she was rehearsing them against his fingers.
"Could you accept that?"
She folded his open hand against her cheek and held it there with both of hers. Her skin was hot and damp. Her eyes were closed. When she blinked, her lashes brushed wet against his fingers.
Her voice went lower. She turned her face further into his palm, half-hiding.
"But I can't share you."
Her grip tightened on his hand, her fingernails pressing small half-moons into his wrist.
"I know that makes me selfish. I know I have no right to ask for anything after what I've done. But I can't — I can't watch you hold someone else the way you're holding me right now."
"I'm sorry. I know it's unfair. But that's the one thing I can't do."
"But you probably won't let me have that, will you?"
A breath came out of her nose, short and sharp. Not quite a laugh.
"I already know the answer. I'm not stupid."
Her lips moved against the heel of his palm.
"Could you accept someone as shameless as me? Someone who is asking the person she hurt the most to let her stay?"
"Someone as selfish as me. As jealous as me."
"Could you accept Lin Weiwei, Big Brother?"
His thumb brushed across her cheekbone, through the wet trail there, and stopped at the corner of her eye. He felt her lashes flutter shut against the pad of his thumb.
"Yes."
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[End of Chapter]