Chapter 312: The whole truth and nothing else (2)

Nana clutched his shirt and shook him hard. “Liu Jinhai. You know that I was engaged with Jianyu. Even if Huian falsely married you, you were still married to her! So how could you do that? Tell me, Jinhai. Please, this time…tell the truth and nothing else.”

Her voice was more like a plea to Jinhai. Tears continuously streamed down her cheeks.

The hurt of her slap was nothing as compared to how torn Nana looked right now.

He brought the situation where he forced her to beg for answers helplessly. That made him utterly ashamed of himself.

Jinhai slowly raised his trembling hands. He was scared that she would shake him away. He held her face in between his palms.

He whispered. “Nana. You want to know the truth. I will tell you everything…From the beginning until now. I will not hide anything this time. But please…don’t cry.”

Nana didn’t respond.

Jinhai paused for a moment to collect his disarrayed thoughts.

“It all started almost three years back when I saw you for the first time. You were distributing cookies, and you knocked on my car window. I know you don’t remember-“

“I do now,” Nana quietly said.

Jinhai widened his eyes. “Y-you do? Since when?”

“Last night I had a dream, and in that, I saw the same incident. I was feverish that day, and I had collapsed, later on, so I forgot about it. But in the dream, I finally saw your face that was so hazy all this time. That’s when I realized that it you that day.”

Silence.

“…Yes. That was the first time we actually met.”

Jinhai smiled as he reminisced that moment.

“And something tugged my heart for the first time when I saw you. Was it your sweet voice, your delicious cookies, your silly but cute advertising of Natsukashi, or your concern for me that made me fell for you…I don’t know. But with that small interaction, I was sure that I wanted to know more about you. I wanted to spend more time with you. I was sure that you are the only woman I will love for my entire life. So silly, right? I didn’t know anything about you, yet something was drawing me towards you.”

She silently listened.

“I decided to find out about you when I would return home, but there was another shock already waiting for me. It was the same day when Huian came to me with the marriage papers in her hands. It was the same day when she said that we were married then.”

His eyes shone in tears. He laughed, but the pain was evident in his voice.

“And then my whole world collapsed just like that. One moment later, everything was over. I was so eager to know about you. I was so excited to meet you again, but those dreaded papers in my hands extinguished all the hopes I had. Our precious first meeting felt like just a fleeting moment to me. That very second, I lost all the rights to look for you because I was already married.”

Nana clutched his shirt in her fist. His every word stabbed her heart. His pain and the sad realization of his marriage felt as if a big knot was in her chest.

“When it hit me that we couldn’t be together, I felt a sudden emptiness in my chest. I suddenly felt so lonely. I suddenly felt this world turn so black and void. I felt that I lost my heart somewhere. I realized that even if I had no reason for my feelings and even if it made no sense, I had already fallen in love with you. So much.”

Jinhai pressed his forehead against hers.

“I couldn’t come terms to the fact that I was married. For days, I drove aimlessly on the streets in the hope that perhaps I would meet you again. I didn’t know what to do. A whole two months passed by before I finally couldn’t stop myself from seeing you. I wanted to see you just once. A-and then, I thought I would bury my feelings for you. I will go on with the marriage, killing every last bit of my heart. Because what choice did I have?”

“When I finally saw you after two months, you were working in Natsukashi. You looked so pretty and beautiful in that yellow dress. You were smiling so brightly that one glance at you and all my pain I went through the last sixty days felt so distant as if it never happened. I felt the color coming back in my life. I thought that would be the last time I see you so that I move on. But…I couldn’t. I didn’t even realize when my steps took me outside Natsukashi again the next day.”

Nana bit her lip and looked away.

Jinhai continued. “I knew, I really knew that I shouldn’t look for you anymore. I was married. But I couldn’t help it. I would still gaze at you from a distance every day. I fell in love with you, even more, watching how you independently lived your life. This went on for more than a year. Then one day, I heard Huian talking to Grandma, and I came to know how she fooled me.”

Jinhai grabbed her arms. “Nana, do you know how I felt at that time? Everything looked like a big joke to me. If she hadn’t interfered, then we could have been together already! We could have been dating, or we could have been married! My happiness with you and my future; she played a sick joke with it! At that moment, you cannot even imagine how much I wanted to kill her! What right did she have to play with my feelings for you!?”

Nana was stupefied with his outburst.

Then Jinhai laughed like crazy. “But if she wanted this marriage so bad then I thought why shouldn’t I play a game with her this time? Shouldn’t she also understand how it feels when you are standing on the other side? So I did. I started behaving like a good husband. I started acting my part. And she fell for it. She was on cloud nine.”

Nana watched him in silence. Then she asked, “That day, when we bumped into each other, was that also planned by you?”

“No. That was a coincidence. Huian wanted to go shopping, and I would have rejected, but she suggested that place and…it was near Natsukashi. It was near you. So I went along. And see? Even fate wanted us to meet. But the second time in the mall, I saw you heading out with Serena, and I wanted to meet you again. So I bumped into you on purpose and made it look like a coincidence.”

Nana had expected that by now.

“And at that time, I decided that it was time to start with my plan to throw Huian away from our lives. But then something or should I say someone else came in my way.”

Jinhai closed his eyes. A sudden gust of cold wind fluttered his coat.

Nana expressionlessly said, “Jianyu.”

“Yes…”

He opened his eyes. “All this time, I would only look at you from a distance. I wasn’t keeping a tab on your everyday life. I never looked in your past. So I didn’t know that Aunt and Jianyu coincidentally had dinner at your place and she liked you so much that she wanted you as her daughter-in-law.”

He laughed again. “The day after that dinner, Aunt excitedly kept ranting about the girl she met that she liked so much for Jianyu. She was praising her. She was just perfect for Jianyu. I had no idea that she was talking about you. Such a cruel joke destiny played with me.”

“Then, one day Jianyu came to me suggesting a wonderful chef for my marriage anniversary celebration. He refused to tell who he or she was. For a moment, I was afraid that it might be you. But I thought that you and them couldn’t have any connection. So I shrugged it off.”

Jinhai lowered his gaze. He brushed his thumb on her cheek.

“But when we met in the elevator for the third time in Liu Corps, I realized that the chef was indeed you. Otherwise, how could you be in my office? And when Jianyu introduced us, I was so, so angry. I couldn’t even how express how shocked I was to know that the situation spiraled and twisted in such a manner.”

He gritted his teeth. His gaze turned dark. “The woman who I love so much was chosen for my cousin. The woman with whom I wanted to spend my life was going to spend her life with another man. At that moment, I wanted to burn down this whole world!”

“I was going to choose you as the chef for the celebration anyway, but Jianyu was insisting on doing it himself. It could have hampered my plan, but I couldn’t turn him down. But I thought that I can still make you a co-chef in charge somehow. So it didn’t matter. But look?”

Jinhai let out a self-deprecating laugh. “It was you all along.”