Chapter 147 — The Long-Awaited...
Years of Heartflutter · Page 352 of 501
The underlings swung into action, but digging a single person out of a city this vast was no easy thing. And with so few people on the job, they could only go hotel by hotel, making inquiries at each.
Because of gang ties, many hotels with no direct connection to them paid them no mind; most of the hotels here had gang shadows behind them too, so by and large they gave these men short shrift.
And so, after a whole night, progress was negligible, which left Liu Jihao anxious—yet there was nothing else he could do. He wasn't the police; he couldn't very well put up wanted notices.
Tonight, he would likely get to see Shu Ya. Yang Juehuan's heart had never been this nervous. What sort of feeling was this? Yang Duo couldn't quite put it into words himself.
Excitement, bewilderment, nostalgia, anticipation—perhaps all of them. In short, Yang Ce longed for the moment to come sooner, yet also shrank back a little; after all, it had been years since he'd seen her.
In this foggy daze he waited until nine-thirty at night, when his phone buzzed with a text. Yang Ce fumbled for the phone and opened the message with some excitement. It was from Shu Ya, as expected:
"The concert celebration dinner just ended. I'm at the Macau Forum. Where are you?"
Yang Heng smiled to himself and texted back: "Wait for me. I'm coming to find you."
When Shu Ya had sent that first text today, Yang Ce had known a kind of understanding had already formed between them. Shu Ya's number had changed, and whoever sent the message hadn't said who she was, but Yang Ce was still certain—this person was Shu Ya.
After a word to Zhang Bin, Yang Ce hurried downstairs. Taxis waited outside the hotel around the clock for fares; Yang Ce got into the one in front, gave the name "Macau Forum," and the driver started the car and pulled swiftly away from the hotel.
"Wait for me at the back entrance of the Forum." Shu Ya's text arrived just as he got in.
"Driver, the back entrance of the Macau Forum," Yang Ce amended.
"Right." The driver didn't understand why Yang Ce wanted the back entrance, but he didn't ask. Apart from the staff who worked there, few people ever went to the back entrance.
Yang Ce got out, looked around—no one nearby—and found a bench to sit on. He supposed Shu Ya still had things to wrap up on her end.
Sitting on the bench, Yang Juehuan's thoughts could not help drifting back to that winter, when he and Su Ya had sat on a bench too—only the place had been the seaside at Songjiang.
The sea breeze in their faces, dreaming aloud about their future together. That tender, green romance—the feeling of it was something he had never been able to forget.
How long passed, he didn't know, before soft footsteps sounded and Yang Ce returned from memory to reality. Someone was coming.
Yang Ce looked up instinctively. A girl in white was walking slowly toward him. Though she was still far off and Yang Shuoxtan had not used his ability, Yang Ji could tell for certain—she was not Shu Ya.
Even unable to see clearly, the outlines of the two faces were different. Yang Ce was about to look away when his gaze suddenly fixed—a figure from memory surged up in his mind and gradually merged with the approaching person.
Yang Ce was stunned, rooted to the spot, so that even when the girl came close he was still staring at her blankly.
Though the person before him was more delicate and beautiful now, the childishness gone, Yang Ce could still recognize her—she was Su Ya, the real, true Su Ya, and not the star Shu Ya.
Su Ya seemed rather pleased with Yang Ce's reaction; the corners of her mouth curved up in a playful little smile.
It was only when Su Ya sat down beside Yang Juehuan that Yang Ce recovered from his shock and said, hardly able to believe it, "It really is you."
"It's me." Su Ya nodded gently.
The voice was still the voice of Shu Ya he had heard before, but the person before him had become the woman from his memories, the one who meant so much to him.