There was no conversation between them. The air seemed to have frozen solid, heavy enough to suffocate them. Rau Le Creuset's mocking laughter could no longer be heard; that demon seemed to have completely left the area. At this moment, the only sound in the huge, empty facility was their footsteps. The monotonous tap, tap, tap echoed through the deep corridors, each reverberation striking Xia Ya's taut nerves.
"------"
Along the way, Xia Ya looked at Jiliang for some reason and felt their gazes meet.
That glance was very brief, yet Xia Ya's heart abruptly skipped a beat. Under the dim emergency lights, Jiliang's profile looked especially pale and fragile. The light had vanished from those violet eyes, leaving only bottomless confusion and sorrow. In the instant their eyes met in the air, Xia Ya saw not a lover's dependence, but a profound scrutiny and distance, as though she were looking at a stranger. Her gaze held too many things: fear of her own origins, confusion about the future, and... perhaps some doubt toward him, someone who had known the truth and kept it hidden from her?
He immediately looked away from Jiliang. Maybe it was only his imagination.
Xia Ya turned his head away in panic and stared at the road ahead as though there were something extraordinarily worthy of attention there. His throat was dry, and his palms were slick with cold sweat. That look was too frightening—more frightening than facing Rau Le Creuset's gun barrel. He did not want to believe that gentle Jiliang would look at him that way, so he chose to avoid it, choosing to dismiss it as an illusion.
Xia Ya could no longer look at Jiliang. He was afraid she would say something to him. He was afraid she might leave him,