Chapter Twenty-Four

  "Your meaning is that, before finding the last person, you can also let a woman temporarily be your travel companion, and then part ways after a while? If being together isn't necessarily because of love, then there must be reasons that brought you together, each taking what they need?"

  "Xiao Wei, did you hear some unfounded rumors or did someone say something to you?" Lin Jing's face began to show a worried expression.

  "Shouldn't someone have told me something?" Zheng smiled innocently. "No one has ever told me anything, it's just a sudden idea of mine."

  Lin Jing said, "A person who has been walking for too long will inevitably feel lonely. I admit that before I'm certain about spending my life with someone, if someone proposes to walk with me temporarily and this person meets all the conditions, I might not refuse. As for love, my capacity for love is limited, so it's not that I want to give it to just anyone." Zheng Wei gave him an admiring expression, "Your love is truly at your beck and call, I wonder who will be lucky enough to receive your precious emotions."

  Lin Jing pretended not to hear the sarcasm in her words and gently stroked her face, "Who is this person? Actually, you know it in your heart."

  Zheng Wei's smile carried a hint of melancholy, "A lifetime is so long, and every day you haven't reached the end, you can't determine who will be the one to accompany you to the very end. Sometimes you meet someone and think it's them, but looking back, they were just someone who gave you what you wanted for that particular stretch of road. Lin Jing, am I right?"

  Lin Jing evaded and did not answer, "Why are there so many questions tonight?"

  "Because I suddenly felt afraid."

  "What's wrong?"

  Afraid of the secrets and desires hidden in people's hearts.

  Lin Jing lay back beside her, staring at the ceiling. Zheng Wei didn't say anything else, and her breathing gradually became shallower. Just when Lin Jing thought she was about to fall asleep, she murmured a question, "Will Zhou Qu go to prison?"

  "Is this the reason you're being so enthusiastic with me tonight?" For a few seconds, Zheng Wei seemed to feel that Lin Jing's tone had an inexplicable sense of loss, but he quickly recovered. "If I said that I couldn't answer this question, would you be very disappointed?"

  To his surprise, Zheng Wei shook her head and said, "No."

  Zhou Qu overestimated her. But she had self-awareness. In a man's world, women are just a decorative white cloud, he occasionally admires its beauty and elegance, but will never give up the vast sky for it. Of course, there are also more clever men who can step on the ladder of clouds to reach the sky, or hope to have a place to settle under the clouds before the storm comes. Zheng Wei said, "Have you ever heard a saying? An enterprise is like a tree, don't shake it unless necessary, otherwise it's hard for it to grow luxuriantly."

  Lin quietly said, "But if this tree is crawling with insects. Not shaking it will only make it die faster."

  "Which tree doesn't have worms? Are you now choosing the one with the most severe worm infestation?"

  Lin Jing didn't expect her to ask this question. He hesitated for a moment. "It's not the most severe one, but who let it grow on the edge of the forest?"

  Zheng Wei nodded slightly and said slowly: "So every time you're about to knock down a tree, you always pick off one of its leaves first, is that your usual style?"

  Lin Jing's face suddenly changed color, and she sat up from the bed, her breathing also becoming urgent. The anger in her eyes flashed by. Zheng Wei stared at him stubbornly, he tightly pursed his lips, avoiding eye contact, finally bent down to pick up the clothes that had fallen on the ground, while putting them on, he said indifferently: "You think so, there's nothing I can do."

  Zheng Wei also sat up, looking at him tidying himself up, holding the keys in his hand. He walked to the door and came back, half squatting on the bed edge, letting his line of sight be level with Zheng Wei's, "Wei Wei, you can scold me as much as you want, but do you think I'm the kind of person who will accompany you for a lifetime? You're not treating me like a piece of driftwood, hoping someone would accompany you through the darkest period, are you? I dare say, at least I thought about walking to the end with you, but you didn't."

  He finished speaking and straightened up, "I still have things to attend to, you get some rest."

  "Lin Jing." She called out to him. Lin Jing almost immediately stopped in his tracks, but didn't turn around, only hearing Zheng Wei ask from behind him, "One last question - do you love me?"

  This is the most stupid question in the world, and also the one that women love to ask the most. Men always laugh at how boring women are, but women know they're asking something silly too. Yet, they still seek an answer again and again. Why? Because people's hearts are hard to fathom, because women care too much, and because they can't find enough evidence from another heart to make them feel secure. Even if the answers men give are mostly empty, they need that one second of comfort.

  Lin Jing said that he had thought of going to the end with her, Zheng Wei was convinced. But she found herself unexpectedly caring about him, whether his promise of a lifetime was because he wanted to recall the beauty after having gone through thousands of hardships, or if she just happened to be the right person at the right time.

  Lin Jing replied, "If you don't believe it in your heart, what's the use of me giving affirmative answers again and again? Same question, do you love me?"

  Perhaps this is the emotion of adults, carefully measured on the scale, you give me a few points, I return to you how much, the things we can afford to pay are so limited, and can no longer afford to be wasted and squandered. And where have those of us who loved without considering the cost when we were young gone?

  Zheng Wei was disappointed, and her disappointment came not only from Lin Jing but also from herself. She had lost her most precious treasure, and when she turned around to look for it, she realized that she didn't even know when it had left her - the name of this treasure was "Courage". Lin Jing, who was facing away from her, also didn't get an answer, so he said, "I'll come over in a few days and call you again."

  "In a few days you won't need to come over." Zheng Wei felt him slightly surprised and turned his body.

  "Why?"

  "Because those days just happened to be my period."

  He left, and the gentle Lin Jing, the vice prosecutor who remained unmoved even when Mount Tai collapsed in front of him, slammed the door shut with a loud bang that made the window glass vibrate. The startled mouse, Bao, scurried under the bed with its tail fluffed up. Zheng Wei had thought no one could provoke Lin Jing, but it turned out he was just an ordinary person with flesh and blood after all.

  She turned on the light, but even her favorite lamp couldn't warm her up.