Seizing Dreams [B1]

Ch 68.1 - The Key

"Despite the objections of my elder sister, I sponsored Lin Xun." Liang Jinmin said. "At that time, I firmly believed that he was my soulmate for life. I felt a brilliant sunlight illuminate my soul every day I spent with him, and even now when I recall it, it really was wonderful. Yu Hao, you said that I don't understand, and I truly don't. Or you could say that from the bottom of my heart, I had never been willing to admit my cowardice. And it was this cowardice that caused me to sink into an endless cycle of the 'tragedy of life'......"

The living room became quiet. Yu Hao didn't want to cry, yet he couldn't help but shed tears. He could empathize with how much Liang Jinmin had loved Lin Xun at that time, yet when he thought of the Liang Jinmin of today, he felt an incomparable sadness.

Chen Yekai's eyes had also reddened, and the faint sound of him drawing a breath could be heard.

Zhou Sheng looked at Yu Hao. Liang Jinmin drew out a tissue and handed it to Yu Hao. She smiled, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

"No." Yu Hao quickly said, "I'm sorry, Liang Laoshi. It was too presumptuous of me to have said that."

Liang Jinmin said, "Come, have some chocolate." And as she spoke, she took out some premium chocolates from the coffee table and gave it to them.

"Lin Xun and I supported each other. We left our homes and went to San Francisco to study; just like what a marriage vow says - for better or worse, in sickness and in health, whether young and beautiful or old and wrinkly, we always supported and depended on each other in hard times." Liang Jinmin said, "Later on, my elder sister died of lung cancer four years later. And the prelude to the start of many trivial conflicts in our marriage began."

Yu Hao listened to Liang Jinmin recall every small detail of the bloody reality and conflicts between her and Lin Xun - all of which had taken on the form of the knives, axes, blades, saws, and hammers on the huge metallic monster's robotic arms in her dreamscape. The image of Lin Xun and her father gradually overlapped and became difficult to differentiate.

"A girl who had witnessed so much domestic violence in her childhood had also fallen into an endless cycle of tragedy when she grew up." Liang Jinmin sighed, "Is that a kind of habit? Or yearning? It's really humiliating for me to analyze myself, but tonight, I'm willing to bare my soul in its entirety under the illumination of your sunlight and moonlight, and accept judgement."

Zhou Sheng adjusted his posture on the sofa and laughed, "Sunlight?"

Liang Jinmin nodded, "I'm a pessimist. Nietzsche mentioned in《The Birth of Tragedy》that endless cycles of tragedy actually provide a kind of aesthetic attitude towards life, so that we can obtain the final liberation. Ryuusei once said frankly that in my subconscious, because of the psychological shadows that originated from my own family history, there was a sort of imperceptible self-pity within that made it difficult for me to escape this cycle of events."

"Secondly, I think, my tolerance of Lin Xun originated from a feeling of guilt and indebtedness that I felt after witnessing my elder sister killing my father that night. Accepting my husband's repeated acts of violence and enduring them had turned into my atonement."

Chen Yekai said, "If I was the one to put you on trial, I would have only one sentence, 'they all deserve to die'."

Liang Jinmin looked at Zhou Sheng, but Zhou Sheng didn't express any opinions and just said, "Go on."

Liang Jinmin said, "I grew up in that kind of environment and was accustomed to it. My mother told me that all couples, everywhere in the world, will quarrel and may even resort to violence. And at one time, I also unquestioningly believed that to be true. After adolescence, I once told myself that I would never get married......"