Chapter 969 — Feng's Father Seeks Out Wei Zhao
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
All along, Feng Xiaoxiao had shied away from the two feelings that occupy the most important places in a life—friendship and love. She knew her own condition, knew that one day, perhaps without warning, she would simply die. That parting of life and death between friends, between lovers—Feng Xiaoxiao was afraid of it. She did not want to suffer and cling when she died, nor did she want to inflict the same suffering and clinging on anyone else. So in her eighteen years of life, friendship and love had been almost entirely blank.
She had no friends in any true sense—only a pack of fair-weather companions who fooled around with her. If one day she vanished, as she had now, having less and less contact with those street-racing friends, they would not go out of their way to look for her. Soon enough, new people who loved racing would join them.
Feng Xiaoxiao felt that she was merely a passerby in this world, a spectator—hurrying in and hurrying out again. When the final lesson of her life truly came, she would leave quietly and calmly, all on her own.
But her father's words today had stirred something in her long-sealed heart, set it faintly stirring. Though she feared the wounds that friendship and love leave behind at parting, she still harbored some hope and longing—for the sweetness and bitterness, the joys and sorrows those two feelings bring; to have one true friend, one lover whose heart moved with hers. If she had that, perhaps she would die without regret?
Only, Feng Xiaoxiao felt that doing so would be somewhat selfish. Friendship, fine—but love... Was she really to let her lover bear the pain of losing her? Feng Xiaoxiao thought it cruel.
Her father's gloom over the years—Feng Xiaoxiao had said nothing about it, but she had seen it all the same. His longing for her mother ran deep, deep, and yet there was nothing he could do but bury himself in work to dull the ache of it.
Sometimes a tiny thought, planted in the heart, becomes a seed; slowly it takes root and sprouts within the body, until at last it cannot be held back and breaks through the soil as a small tree.
Before, Feng Xiaoxiao had not dared to think of love—she knew she had no right to. But today, encouraged by her father, though on the surface she kept denying it, deep down something in her had already begun to loosen.
How she wanted to fall in love before she died... Mn, even if it were only to taste what love is like...
But no—that would hurt someone else.
Feng Xiaoxiao did enjoy mischievous pranks, true, but those were always within certain controllable bounds, cooking up a little trouble and misunderstanding, and always aimed at people who deserved it. To do such a thing to her own lover—Feng Xiaoxiao truly could not bear it.
"Dad, do you miss Mom?" Feng Xiaoxiao asked suddenly.
"Hm?" Feng Tianlong started, then a flash of recollection and pain crossed his eyes. "I do. Of course I do! Why do you ask that all of a sudden?"
"Then if you make me find a boyfriend, later on he'll miss me too, and he'll be in so much pain..." Feng Xiaoxiao shook her head. "And my child would miss its mother, just like me... I don't want to make any of them suffer..."
"Xiaoxiao..." Feng Tianlong sighed. How could he not understand his daughter's thinking? But her words only hardened a resolve in him—he absolutely must have a talk with Wei Zhao.
"Heh, Dad, don't worry about me. I'm doing pretty well right now. As long as you stop dragging me off to doctors, I'll live happily enough." Feng Xiaoxiao shook her head and spoke with an easy air.
"Xiaoxiao, tell your father the truth—do you like Wei Zhao or not?" Feng Tianlong did not answer her words; instead he turned his head toward his daughter with great solemnity.