Chapter 204: What Do You Want?

It was late November, and the wind blowing from the reservoir carried an icy chill.

Yet Tian Tian Xinhan felt heat all over his body, his heart pounding like a drum; his clean face and ears were flooded with blood, a deep crimson, as if he had drunk too much wine.

He pulled her hand away and stepped back several paces: "Yang... Yang, this is wrong."

"How is the crime of molestation sentenced under the law?" Yang Yi asked with composed leisure.

Tian Tian Xinhan was still stuck in shock and helplessness. "Forcibly molesting the opposite sex by violence, coercion, or other methods constitutes the crime of forcible molestation and insult, punishable by fixed-term imprisonment of not more than five years or criminal detention..." Following her question, the words tumbled out of his mouth.

"Oh, so are you planning to sue me, Lawyer Tian?" Yang Yi was still smiling.

Tian Tian Xinhan came to his senses and tightly shut his mouth.

He took several deep breaths, forcing himself not to think about what had just happened. Only when his breathing stabilized and the heat on his face subsided did he slowly speak: "Yangyang, I know you are in a bad mood, but such behavior... a girl should love herself and not be so casual..."

His voice suddenly stopped.

He suddenly remembered that the person before him was no longer the little girl who used to hide in his house, afraid to go home, but a "superman" capable of destroying a nation with a mere gesture, while his ordinary human body was not even as much as an ant before her.

"Yangyang"—this intimate nickname made Yang Yi pause. It was a name belonging solely to her; apart from this neighborly older brother and his uncle and aunt, no one had ever called her so intimately, so full of pity and love.

This emotion softened her numb heart a little, and even the words "a girl cannot be so casual" did not cancel out this softness.

She involuntarily took a step forward, and Tian Tian Xinhan stepped back one pace.

Yang Yi stopped, tilting her head to look at this respected neighborly older brother.

"Are you afraid of me? Brother Tian Xinhan? Do you think I will hurt you?"

Yang Yi asked with a smile on her face, but deep inside, a groundless resentment suddenly arose—she would never forget him; every detail of their childhood together was deeply carved in her mind, placed like a treasure in a locked box.

But does he remember you? Did he ever care about you? After he left home to study, did he ever think of you?

What you treasured as a precious gem was, to him, merely an interesting time in childhood, perhaps only occasionally surfacing in his mind like a fleeting glimmer.

"Of course not." Tian Tian Xinhan quickly denied, realizing his retreat just now was inappropriate. He stepped forward again, getting closer to Yang Yi. "It's just that you suddenly—did that, and I was at a loss."

"Oh, I see—" Yang Yi smiled on her face, though not with much sincerity: "Then we can take it slow..."

She reached out and placed her hand on his waist, then slowly moved it downward, probing inside his black down jacket.

Tian Tian Xinhan felt as if his whole body was burning; his blood boiled in his veins like boiling water, and he felt his face was terrifyingly hot, his mind a chaotic mess.

Only when her cold hand pressed against the skin at his waist did the chill make him shiver, temporarily slowing his boiling heart.

He suddenly reached out and grabbed her arm.

This strength was insignificant to Yang Yi, but she stopped.

She looked up, seeing the misty red clouds on his face. Not knowing what feelings he held, she smiled: "Brother Tian Xinhan, do you know? A little girl named Yangyang from the neighbor's house has silently liked you since childhood—let me think—since the moment she met you."

"When you first saw her, you handed her a piece of candy, orange-flavored, with blue wrapping paper featuring a blue sea. That candy was especially sweet; she still remembers that taste now. For a very long time, she even thought the sea tasted like oranges... And until now, she still likes orange-flavored things and blue things..."

"Do you remember when you once wrapped book covers for her? Back then, she was always very careful, afraid of damaging them. A few times, when her cousin tore her books, what hurt her most was not the loss of the books, but that the covers were torn to shreds."

"She always hid in your house, unwilling to go back. She was afraid to go back; she was afraid of being beaten. She liked staying with you; she liked the feeling of being with you. She liked lingering in your room, liked looking at your shelf full of books."

"Once, while you were out, she secretly lay on your bed, sniffing the scent on your pillow—lemon-scented laundry detergent mixed with a bit of sweat..."

As Yang Yi narrated in a low voice, Tian Tian Xinhan's breathing gradually quickened.

Besides being moved, there was also a touch of vanity mixed in—being deeply respected by the world, that "God of Humanity" so far away in the sky, was actually the neighbor's little sister from his youth, and she had silently liked him—what could satisfy a man's vanity more than this?

As she narrated, scenes that had slightly faded in his memory reappeared before his eyes: that timid little girl, always wearing old, faded, and hole-ridden clothes, sitting stiffly beside his desk, flipping through his childhood comic books while waiting for him to finish his homework.

She wanted to borrow his books to read; when he agreed, she wouldn't borrow them anymore. He asked her why, and she said her cousin would tear her books. She begged him to let her come to his house to read, and he remembered agreeing.

One time, the little girl came to his house to read and did her homework in his room. He happened to be sorting through old books and old calendars left over from previous years and casually used an old calendar to wrap a book cover for her.

As for the candy, he had long forgotten it.

"The thing she remembers most clearly is when you accompanied her to catch fish. That year there was a great drought; the reservoir dried up, exposing the riverbed. You took her to the riverbed, tied a glass jar with a rope, put in some crumbled mantou, and fished up many small fish."

"That day, you and she played until the sun set behind Luoshan before going home. Auntie fried those small fish coated in flour and seasonings, and you two had a big feast. That was the happiest day of her childhood, even though she was severely beaten for returning home late that day."

Yang Yi recalled with a smile, but a sourness rose in Tian Tian Xinhan's heart; his whole chest felt swollen, and his eyes grew hot.

These ordinary trifles from his youth had become somewhat blurred in his memory, yet she remembered them so clearly, recounting each one as if they were right before her eyes.

He knew, he clearly knew what she had experienced in her childhood. The things he did were based only on some cheap sympathy, yet she had remembered them until now.

This was not because she loved him deeply and could not forget him; it was simply that during her bleak childhood, only these few interesting and warm things were worth remembering, only this little bit of warmth was worth carefully feeling, to help her survive the harsh winter of her entire childhood.

Like a faint light in the darkness, that firefly shone as brightly as the sun and moon in her heart only because she had never seen the sun.

The hand Tian Tian Xinhan held on her arm unconsciously relaxed. His lips moved, and he lowered his head slightly to look at her: "Yangyang..."

Yang Yi looked up to meet his gaze; his eyes were slightly red, as if he had a thousand words he wanted to say.

But Yang Yi no longer cared what he wanted to say. Feeling his hand loosen, she continued to push both hands inside his shirt.

Even though the person before her was no longer the same as in the past, she still wanted to reclaim him completely—or destroy him utterly—who cared?

She almost roughly thrust both hands up from under the hem of his shirt.

He was wearing a belt, so she went to pull his belt.

After all, people live in the present, in this moment, not in the past, nor in the future. Is that not so?

Tian Tian Xinhan tried to stop her a few times, but if she wanted to do something, no one in this world could stop her.

He could only helplessly raise his hand and stroke her hair: "Yangyang, look forward. Those memories from the past may seem warm, but besides a little warmth, they will also bring to mind more unhappiness, right? If it makes you feel uncomfortable, just forget them."

His outstretched hand, across more than a decade of time and space, touched that timid little girl from the past.

Yang Yi's movements stopped.

She raised her head, straining to find even a shred of hypocrisy and pretense in his slightly red eyes, but saw only his gentle black-brown pupils, containing a pain and pity that felt blinding to her.

She should have felt anger and found it ridiculous at this look; she hated others' pity the most, for only the weak are pitied.

But strangely, the anger, resentment, numbness, and the desire to destroy everything, to destroy the past, that had been pent up in her heart suddenly, like a balloon with a hole, slowly deflated.

This deflation made her feel a new kind of displeasure: "Brother Tian Xinhan, are you pitying me?" Yang Yi asked with a surprised tone, deliberately adding a touch of mockery. "Do you know who the person standing before you is?"

"Just a little sister throwing a tantrum." Tian Tian Xinhan grabbed her misbehaving hand again, and this time he finally easily pulled her hand away.

He turned around and fastened the belt that had been pulled open.

Yang Yi forcefully hugged his waist from behind.

Tian Tian Xinhan tugged hard at her arm but couldn't pull her away; he turned his head slightly and said helplessly, "Relying on your awakened superpower, I indeed have no way to deal with you. You've grown up, and you're not as well-behaved and cute as you were when you were little."

He suddenly stopped speaking, realizing why she had been so well-behaved back then: children raised in an environment full of love are mostly mischievous, because they know that no matter what they do, those who love them will not abandon them or stop loving them; children take advantage of this security and act out to their heart's content.

And those well-behaved children? Precisely because they received too little love, they tried their hardest to be well-behaved and sensible in order to survive, so as to win the favor of others.

His heart felt sour, and he hurriedly changed his words: "Of course, you are even better now than when you were little."

Yang Yi didn't know how many turns his mind had taken in that instant; she simply suddenly deflated, feeling that her behavior today was particularly childish, impulsive, and irrational, sudden and utterly unreasonable.

She let go of his waist, stood straight, and her gaze returned to calmness.

"Brother Tian Xinhan, do you have any wishes?" Yang Yi asked.

After she let go, Tian Tian Xinhan felt a faint sense of loss, but he quickly suppressed this fleeting emotion and asked with a smile, "What's wrong? Are you preparing to be Cinderella's Fairy Godmother and help me fulfill a wish?"

"Why not? Anyway, I still have a bit of power now, and there's no point in not using it. Otherwise, if I one day lose my superpower and become an ordinary person, or lose my memory and don't recognize you, it will be too late for you to come find me."

Yang Yi's tone was very indifferent, but Tian Tian Xinhan sensitively detected a hint of something unusual in it.

"What do you want? Power? Money? Status? I can give you all of them," Yang Yi asked again.

Tian Tian Xinhan realized that she was serious.