Trapped in the Same Day for a Thousand Years

Chapter 078: The Rebound After Extreme Repression Is Truly Terrifying!

by cnwebnovels

The roads in the northern suburbs were in excellent condition, but the traffic was thin. The area was so remote that there were hardly any cars out at all.

Wu Chen put the accelerator to the floor and the Lamborghini’s speed climbed in the most violent way possible.

In under ten seconds it broke two hundred kilometers an hour.

Su Qingying sat in the passenger seat, her back pressed hard into the seat, her feet braced forward without her meaning to. Her heart had been slamming from the moment she got in and sat down. Not from the running. From the nervous thrill of it.

She had never imagined a day would come when she ran off with a man she had known for less than an hour. Ran hand in hand.

For an ordinary girl this might be normal behavior after love at first sight, or a normal outing after a blind date that went well.

For her, it broke a taboo.

And now—

The speed climbing and climbing pushed her adrenaline up with it. Her breathing came heavy, her heartbeat harder still.

“Scared?” Wu Chen glanced over with a smile as he drove.

“N-no!” Her face had gone pale, and still she said she wasn’t.

Empty road or not, driving like this was terrifying. Everything past the windows on both sides streamed backward in ribbons of light. At this speed the smallest error meant the car totaled and the people in it dead.

It wasn’t that Su Qingying wasn’t afraid. She simply wasn’t especially afraid.

Mostly, she found it thrilling.

It was an experience she had never had.

Wu Chen had street-raced with Mu Qianqian too. Mu Qianqian liked excitement as well, but once the excitement went too far and she sensed danger, she got frightened and told him to slow down. Su Qingying didn’t.

The greater the repression, the greater the rebound.

Su Qingying was the kind of woman who could swing very easily from one extreme to the other, because she had lived at one extreme far too long.

The better behaved she was, the wilder she could become.

Still, for all the thoughts she’d had over the years, she had never dared step even half a pace beyond the forbidden line. Almost anything could give her pause. The more she hesitated, the more she repressed.

Ring, ring, ring…

A phone.

Hers. Even over the wind noise at this speed, it carried.

Su Qingying picked it up, looked, and her expression changed drastically.

Wu Chen didn’t need to look to know it was her mother.

She didn’t dare answer.

“You might consider being yourself for one day,” Wu Chen said, easing off the speed.

She glanced at him, then at the phone still ringing, and hesitated a few seconds more before finally working up the nerve to answer and put it to her ear. “Mom.”

“Where are you?”

“In a car.”

“With whom?”

“A friend.”

“Su! Qing! Ying! Is this how I taught you? A friend? Since when do you have friends like that? Do you not understand your own standing? Is he worthy of you? Did I raise you all these years so you could run off with a man? Holding his hand while you ran! Where is your restraint? Where is your upbringing? You have disappointed me utterly! I’m telling you, Su Qingying, you come back here! Right now! This instant! Come back!”

She had begun with cold, hard questioning. Two sentences in, she erupted. No endearments, no “daughter”—she used the full name.

Her voice was loud enough that Wu Chen caught traces of it.

Su Qingying’s eyes reddened at once. It had been a very long time since her mother had shouted at her like that, because she had always been obedient, always outstanding.

Wu Chen slowed further, finally holding the car at sixty kilometers an hour.

Then he raised a hand, pressed a button, and lowered the window.

Wind burst into the car.

The rush of it carried into the phone.

Wu Chen turned his head and looked at her.

She turned and looked at him.

“Why aren’t you speaking? Playing mute with me, are you? Su Qingying, don’t forget what your surname is! You do something this shameful and you still have the face to be seen in public?” Wu Chen could still make it out faintly.

This counted as shameful?

Running hand in hand with a man counted as shameful?

In the eyes of Su Qingying’s mother, it did.

She was a deeply traditional woman out of a high-ranking cadre family, with an overwhelming need for control.

Wu Chen glanced at Su Qingying again and said nothing.

Certain choices had to be made by Su Qingying herself in the end. Only a decision of her own would let her truly let go.

“Mom, I’m a person. A living, breathing person. I’m not your puppet!”

“What did you sa—”

The shrill voice in the phone drifted off on the wind and then cut out entirely, because the moment she finished speaking, Su Qingying flung her arm and threw the phone out the window. The car was still moving forward, so the phone struck the ground a dozen-odd meters behind them and shattered.

Inside the car.

Wu Chen pressed the button again and raised the window.

He had slowed and opened it for exactly this: to let her throw the phone. She had understood, and she had decided.

Once something had a first time, it would have a second.

From the moment she chose to run with Wu Chen, Su Qingying had already begun to change.

“I’d guess your mother will mobilize everything the Su family has to find the two of us,” Wu Chen said with a faint smile.

“She cares about face. She won’t… she won’t make too much noise about it,” Su Qingying said instead, turning to look out the window. Her mood in that moment was very low, but there was a thread of stubbornness in her face.

The truth was that she had stopped understanding her mother a long time ago.

Why could everyone else do what she, Su Qingying, could not?

She had to live in a way that looked glorious in front of others. Not a single flaw permitted. Her mother’s expectations for her were infinitely high, and infinitely high demands came with them.

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll kidnap you and sell you?” Wu Chen asked, smiling again. There was obvious humor in it—with Su Qingying’s profile in Donghai, the idea was impossible.

But the point came across clearly enough, and she took it.

“Aren’t you Li Ruobing’s boyfriend? A man who knows my weakness, who knows the real me… and who came to disturb my life on purpose,” Su Qingying said, cutting a look at him.

She wasn’t stupid. Her IQ was very high.

She understood perfectly well that certain things Wu Chen had done had not been accidents.

For instance—

Hitting her.

“You knew that and came out with me anyway?” He wasn’t surprised she’d figured it out. The whole reason they were meeting was that he knew her secret.

“What does it matter… if I know?” she answered. She turned back to the window, paused, then murmured, “No one has ever dared come near me. I’ve always lived inside the light. Alone.”

“Everyone. Even some of my relatives. When I was little they praised me, said I was the finest, the child who could always score a hundred. When I was older, they thought I was different from everyone else. Later… I grew up, started my own venture, joined the company and began working. Then they started respecting me. Flattering me. Complimenting me…”

“Everyone compliments me. And my parents—my father is buried in work, but he always says the greatest achievement of his life isn’t Jinfu Group. It’s me. Raising me. That’s the greatest achievement of his life. He says it to anyone: at business banquets, at birthday parties, even at the negotiating table…”

“My mother… she wants me to live as the person she imagines. She wants me more outstanding, always better than I was yesterday. She even… won’t let me eat a second bowl of rice, because I can’t get fat. Not even a little. She thinks I should be the most beautiful. Always.”

As she talked, her eyes reddened again.

It was because Wu Chen knew her secret that she could say these things from the heart to him.

Wu Chen knew he was surely the first person to hear her say them, and should be the last.

She sniffed, fell silent a moment, then turned to look at him again. “I understand you’re doing this deliberately. But I also know you may be my only chance. And… you… you make me feel very comfortable. Truly.”

Of course he made her comfortable. He understood her far too well.

And he knew the reason Su Qingying was knowingly walking into the tiger’s mountain: she had wanted to do this for a long, long time.

“I think you’ve made the right choice. Changing early always beats waiting until the illness is beyond cure,” Wu Chen said, smiling.

“Stop the car!” Su Qingying said suddenly.

“Hm?” Wu Chen turned to look at her, foot going to the brake. The speed dropped to zero and the car came to rest at the roadside.

“You’re Li Ruobing’s boyfriend. You don’t dare tell anyone about today, do you? You’re afraid of her finding out, aren’t you…” She was murmuring it as she snapped off her seat belt, her breathing quickening. She leaned across, hooked an arm around his neck, and kissed him full on the mouth.

Wu Chen froze for a fraction of a second.

Because this moment had come a little earlier than he’d planned for.

The rebound after extreme repression truly was terrifying.