The Female CEO Falls in Love with Me

However, this time, a few classmates came to meet her too. The figure she hadn't noticed was actually caught by others' attention. Everyone speculated together, feeling it was possible it was him, and tried calling out to him, and indeed, he was stopped. When it was finally confirmed that it was him, she was so excited that she almost put on her sunglasses to hide her emotions. But for some reason, whether he had forgotten everyone or because there were two pretty girls by his side, he refused to admit it.

In the end, it seemed like he was forced to admit it, forced to go to the gathering with us. Then he was forced to send someone back to the hotel, and forced into the guest room, and until now, forced to keep his ears open to listen to stories."

After a series of parallel sentences, Qiao Huanxuan suddenly stood up and laughed loudly, "My story is over, haha, applause!" She then got up to go to the bathroom.

Li Yan didn't realize when his cigarette had finished, but he was staring dazedly at the closed bathroom. Qiao Huanxuan finally finished telling her story, trying to keep it as brief as possible, ultimately explaining why she made sure Li Yan was the one to send her off, why she had him come up to the room, why she wanted him to listen to her story. Just revealing a psychological burden she had carried for twelve years and speaking it out to the person she had been searching for all along, her tone was calm, but her emotions were hard to suppress. She quickly got up and went to the bathroom, laughing and talking about applauding, all just to disguise the tears that had already started to flow.

I bet right now, inside the bathroom, she's in tears.

She went to the bathroom to hide and to stabilize her emotions, and perhaps also to give Li Yan some time to digest. She just said it, she at least was waiting for him to give some kind of explanation why.

But is one explanation really enough?

Not to mention that Li Yan can't tell her why, whatever he would say would only be a lie. Just from the story she just recounted, he'd already understood quite a bit. Perhaps Qiao Huanxuan herself knew, or maybe she wasn't aware, but she had grown accustomed to loving Li Yan!

Yes, accustomed. When in middle school and high school, it might have been just a girl's fondness, or liking defined as friendship, but because of his departure, and because of that music box incident, she felt guilty, feeling it was her fault that led to Li Yan's tragedy. This emotion had hidden in her heart all along. It was also related to the environment at the time, the classmates who went to the same middle school all felt that she had hurt Li Yan, causing him to run away. Therefore, without Li Yan, just these classmates around her kept reminding her of the event every day.

Once she stopped interacting with boys, worked hard on her studies, it slowly became a habit. More than two years of high school made her accustomed to missing and waiting for someone. In college, if she had truly faced it, it might have become nothing. But how could she have found Li Yan like a headless fly? This deepened her habit, and her attitude of keeping boys away might have been justified by saying she already had a boyfriend from middle school.

The deep influence, the inner habit, the lies to people, the frantic searching... all these things together gave her an illusion—the existence of a once genuine love that she didn't value until it was lost, leading to lifelong regret... She felt as long as she found that person, she could be freed, everything would be perfect.

To put it simply, because of the years and various reasons, she has already fabricated a "Li Yan" in her mind, loving and waiting for that Li Yan.

That Li Yan is not the current Li Yan, as she met the grown-up Li Yan just today; that is an amalgamation of her middle school era Li Yan and her fantasies and expectations. Perhaps this fictional Li Yan is an ever-evolving and changing image from her university days to study abroad, to now.

Therefore, it's not something Li Yan's explanation could solve. This has already impacted her life, and now that she truly sees him, it may not resolve her problem well, if not dealt with properly, it will definitely affect her future life.

How to solve it?

Don't know… Li Yan was pondering.

No matter what, twelve years of persistence, twelve years of searching and expectation, it's a heavy emotion. Talking about these things, he can't be completely unaffected, but he also has no good solution.

He has already told her, back then it didn't count as a crush, and the gift explanation should suffice. But weaving a reason or saying nothing can both suffice to deal with her why. Yet what she wants isn't just an answer, she herself isn't clear either…

Perhaps, it was a collision that shouldn't have happened today. Without this encounter, whether it was twelve years or twenty, whether she loved or resented, there would still be a hope. Driven by familial obligation, she might have found a boyfriend, someone to marry, and then it would slowly fade, eventually, upon reuniting, it would merely evoke sighs of nostalgia. But now the reunion has brought dreams into reality, puncturing the bubble of fantasy; the straightforward result is being at a loss!

No matter how you solve it, she will become bewildered, directionless in the days to come, and might even doubt the truth of life and the meaning of living.

There was once a movie about a police officer who spent his whole life chasing a big criminal and both sides enjoyed the chase. When he finally caught him, the criminal said to the police officer, all these years, what kept you with such good energy and zeal? It was actually my drive. Your life goal was to catch me. Now you've caught me; you have no life goal. What will you do? The police officer was dazed, thinking of retirement, being in a daze, doing nothing, existing like a zombie…

(Twelve years are twelve years, twelve springs…How literary. Haha, actually, when deciding on the title for twelve years, suddenly remembered a book called "Eighteen Springs," so wrote twelve springs. Speaking of it, have been reading it since the last century and haven't finished because, halfway through, the plot was depressing, so peeked at the ending, the end wasn't perfect, stopped there. Ps: Though 18＋spring might cause misunderstanding, young friends don't assume it's an H book, it has a more well-known name "Half a Lifetime." Further PS: Big bosses, give a Monthly Pass, it's single digits again today, Old Lai is almost depressed, 555...)(To be continued, for more chapters, please login at www.qidian.com, support the author, support legitimate reading!)