Waiting For You To Return - Chapter 2

Richard suddenly became well-known for those songs, although he didn’t crave fame at all. People say artists often carry pain. Perhaps this was the pain he had to endure. Richard’s eyes were empty, and his heart ached with a dull, freezing pain every day, as if it was gradually freezing.

“Can you stop like this?” Richard’s manager shouted. He wished he could smash the bottle on the table over Richard’s head to snap him out of it. But that was impossible. The manager stared at Richard, full of regret but powerless to change anything because what he had done caused everything to get worse.

Richard kept drinking his glass like it was water, his stomach churning as if burning and aching. But he felt nothing. He staggered to his room, annoyed and with a headache from the manager’s nagging.

“How long do you plan to be like this? Are you going to let her leaving be in vain?”

The manager yelled. Richard stopped in his tracks. Her? Who was that? Was he talking about Sofia?

“Her? You know Sofia?” Richard slurred, his voice sounding like he was crying, but no tears fell. Suddenly, Richard understood why Sofia had suddenly changed, showing all kinds of bad habits toward him. It turned out someone else was involved.

All this time, Richard had tormented himself, thinking that Sofia was bored with and hated him. He never imagined the reason was so simple. Sofia never stopped loving him. Even her leaving was for his own good.

The manager didn’t want him to get tangled up in romantic troubles and neglect his career, so he asked Sofia to leave. Sofia bore all that suffering alone, even going to great lengths to stage a drama to deceive him, making him feel discouraged and exhausted, causing him to doubt and give up on love. Meanwhile, he only questioned and blamed her.

“Do you know who she really is?” Richard exhaled sharply, the scent of alcohol lingering around his nose, yet he was clearer-headed than anyone. “Leaving, I can’t turn back anymore.”

Though he said that, Richard still unconsciously searched for Sofia. There was no sign of her anywhere. Sofia simply disappeared as if evaporated.

By chance, Richard met the man who had sat beside Sofia, the man who sparked his anger and jealousy, leading him to decide to break up. It was also on a rainy day when that man took Richard to see Sofia.

“That night, after you left, she…”

“Did she try to kill herself?”

The question, and the pain of knowing he was the cause of Sofia’s state, spread through his body, making him curl up as if pierced by thousands of needles. He had abandoned her.

“No. She regretted it. She chased after you and got hit by a car,” the man sighed.

He was a stranger Sofia had hired to play the role of her lover that afternoon. There should have been no bond between them beyond money. But Sofia’s love frightened and inspired him. He couldn’t stand by and watch a girl like Sofia die because of that great heart.

Richard’s heart sank. This time it wasn’t the fierce beating of love blossoming but the guilt of having hurt Sofia. Moreover, when she had tried to reach out to him, he was the one who gave up. He turned himself into a messy drunkard and threw away the career Sofia seemed to have risked her life to secure.

Kneeling beside her hospital bed, the damp mist spread around, keeping the room at the proper temperature, making Sofia look like a priceless jade statue.

It was time for him to live and make up for all the shortcomings and suffering she had endured, whether she woke up or not.

“Wait for me to come back,” Richard whispered, holding her hand.

Tears fell from Richard onto her hand, and he suddenly felt a faint, almost imperceptible movement from Sofia.