The immense pain was like the sharpest icicle, instantly piercing through Pei Jiangmu's heart and bringing a suffocating pang.
He could almost hear the sound of his world collapsing and shattering once again, more thoroughly and despairingly than ever before.
But he forcefully suppressed the pain that threatened to tear him apart and managed to squeeze out a smile that looked worse than a cry.
His voice trembling, he tried to comfort her, as if also comforting himself.
"Zhaozhao... Don't scare me. I'm Jiangmu... Pei Jiangmu, your... boyfriend."
He said the word "boyfriend" with difficulty, with a hint of humble pleading.
Meng Ruozhao frowned even tighter. She seemed to be trying hard to recall, but her eyes were filled with a blank and dazed look.
After a long while, she shook her head. Her voice was still weak but carried a clear sense of estrangement.
"I don't have a boyfriend in my memory."
Bang!
Another heavy blow!
Pei Jiangmu staggered back half a step and barely managed to steady himself by holding onto the wall beside him.
No boyfriend? She didn't remember that he was her boyfriend?
Holding onto the last shred of hope, he began to babble about the past incoherently, trying to awaken her memory.
"Zhaozhao, don't you remember? I worked in your shop. You accepted my pursuit. We had a great relationship..."
He said anxiously, observing her reaction.
However, Meng Ruozhao's look gradually changed from the initial blankness to a bit of... clarity?
As she listened to his words, she would occasionally nod or softly agree.
"Yeah, I remember I had a shop..."
"I also remember there were more than one employee in the shop... I lived in an apartment..."
She remembered!
She remembered those past events!
Moreover, she remembered more than just these.
She even remembered what happened before she was injected.
She remembered the fear of being kidnapped, the warmth of her adoptive family, the hardships of learning design...
She even remembered the car accident in France that caused her to lose her memory and being brought back to China by Du Feng.
But...
She just didn't remember him, Pei Jiangmu!
She didn't remember that they had been together twice.
She didn't remember their more than a decade of depending on each other.
She didn't remember his paranoid protection and deep - seated love.
She didn't remember that he was the most special and indispensable existence in her life!
It was as if an invisible hand had precisely and cruelly erased all the traces of "Pei Jiangmu" from her memory!
"Doctor! Doctor!!"
Pei Jiangmu rushed out of the ward like a madman, shouting hoarsely.
The expert team quickly rushed over and conducted a comprehensive examination and evaluation of Meng Ruozhao.
Finally, the attending doctor, with a look of indescribable confusion on his face, explained to Pei Jiangmu, who was almost on the verge of collapse.
"Mr. Pei, Miss Meng's physical functions and most of her memories are recovering. This in itself is a miracle."
"However... this kind of selective amnesia, although rare in medicine, is not without precedent."
The doctor chose his words carefully.
"Usually, the forgotten person is often the one whom the patient subconsciously considers the most important and profound, but who may also be associated with some great emotional shock or trauma."
"Out of an extreme self - protection mechanism, the brain may selectively'separate' or'seal' this part of the memory to avoid touching the possible pain again..."
The most important... the most profound... self - protection... separation... avoiding pain...
Each word was like a poisoned dagger, stabbing deeply into Pei Jiangmu's heart.
So, in Zhaozhao's subconscious.
Was his existence equivalent to "trauma" and "pain" to her?
That's why her brain so resolutely abandoned only him?
This realization made him feel more desperate and... a deep - seated self - doubt than when Meng Ruozhao was in a coma.
The strength he had been struggling to hold on for more than four months was completely exhausted at this moment.
The nerve that had been tightly stretched suddenly snapped. Coupled with this fatal blow, Pei Jiangmu had a high fever that night. The illness came on fiercely and quickly.
But he refused to leave the hospital and refused systematic treatment. He just randomly took some fever - reducing medicine and stubbornly stayed in the hospital like a ghost.
But he didn't dare to appear in front of Meng Ruozhao easily again for fear of stimulating her.
He could only peek at her greedily from afar through the small window on the ward door or when she was pushed out for rehabilitation.
He saw that Meng Ruozhao was working very hard to cooperate with the rehabilitation. Although her body was weak, her eyes had a kind of tenacity he was familiar with.
This made him both heart - ache and feel a faint sense of comfort.
However, three days later, he noticed that she began to be absent - minded.
During the rehabilitation, her eyes would drift towards the door from time to time, as if waiting for something. A faint and imperceptible melancholy clouded her delicate eyebrows.
He didn't know that Meng Ruozhao actually didn't lose her memory at all.
She remembered everything, including him of course.
How could she forget him?
She was just angry, angry that he had injected her to erase her memory!
And he even pretended to be a student to get close to her.
He was actually two years older than her, but he still called her "sister" all day long.
Did he think she was a fool?
Moreover, her consciousness had already awakened. Many times, she could hear and sense things, but she just couldn't wake up.
So before she opened her eyes, she had already decided to teach him a lesson.
She told him that she didn't remember him.
But it had already been three days. Why hadn't he appeared again?
This was completely out of character for him.
Was he really hurt?
Just as she was lost in wild thoughts, Qin Mu and Yan Sisi, who had received the news, came all the way across the ocean to visit her.
So when Pei Jiangmu secretly came to the rehabilitation room again, this was the scene he saw—
Meng Ruozhao was sitting in a wheelchair. Qin Mu was squatting in front of her, gently saying something to her.
And Yan Sisi was smiling and handing her a glass of water on the side.
On Meng Ruozhao's face, there was a relaxed and... happy smile that she hadn't shown since she woke up.
At that moment, Pei Jiangmu was struck by lightning. The blood in his body seemed to freeze instantly!
So... her absent - mindedness and the melancholy between her eyebrows were all because she was waiting for Qin Mu?
Yes... she remembered everyone but him.
In her "complete" memory, Qin Mu was the one she had a crush on since high school.
He was the one who had made an agreement with her to get into the same university, a sunny, warm person who shared her interests.
And what about him, Pei Jiangmu?
He was a paranoid, controlling... stranger whom her brain had judged as the "source of pain" and forcibly forgotten.
Countless voices echoed in his mind—
His elder brother Pei Jingdu had said, "Giving her space is actually good for her."
Qin Mu had said, "What you give is not love but bondage."
Even the psychologist had once subtly reminded him that an overly close symbiotic relationship might make the other person feel suffocated.