Chapter 23: Chapter 23

"You were fortunate that you didn't suffer a severe concussion to the head," Jack Yue said in his typical icy tone as they took a stroll outside the hospital ward. As she was weak, she was seated in a wheelchair while Jack meticulously carted her around the park situated in the vicinity of the ward.

Surprisingly, she had been one of the parties involved in a serious car accident - but her damage wasn't that serious considering the other parties had died. She was the sole survivor, and his speculation was that the trauma of seeing so many deaths around her had caused her to be significantly affected, and hence, she was suffering a post-traumatic loss of memory.

On the good side, it was normally temporary but effects could remain well past a month. He required her to regain her memory (of him) as soon as he could!

"I did have a bandage on my head for some time, still!" Shirley squealed innocently. "It was an abominable sight!" He almost chuckled at her adorableness, and even while dressed in her hospital robe and devoid of makeup, she was so attractive. He couldn't wait until she regained her memory of him. But nevertheless, he still cloaked himself with his cold attitude, and pretended that he was not bothered by giving her a sneer.

"You're a patient. Why are you so bothered about vanity?" He looked at her unbelievably.

She paused and then suddenly asked with her innocent puppy eyes, "Could you bring me out of the hospital? I can't stand a single moment of being here!"

Noticing how she was behaving so wilfully even while still in the hospital grounds, he bent over and positioned his seductive lips by her ear. "Miss Yang, I suggest that, being a patient, you adhere to the rules of the hospital by listening to the doctor."

She pouted her lips guiltlessly and said, "I'm just so lonely here! I've been stuck in this room for days, and it's like a prison to me!"

"Okay, I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you," Shirley mouthed.

"You owe me one," Jack Yue said, flashing her an icy and endearing look. "You will know, in time, all these favours are to be repaid."

She shuddered. "Repayment? What do you want as repayment?"

He inched closer and faced her, gazing deeply into her now-bulging eyes. He absorbed the charm of her innocence, and was drawn by the gullibility of the pure little lamb before him. "Plenty, starting from here." He pointed to her dainty little cherry-coloured lips, and before she knew it, he had closed down on her lips with his, and she indulged sinfully in the warmth of his kisses. He stopped after some seconds, releasing Shirley who had been fingering her lips confusedly. Even seconds had seemed to be minutes to her, and she was satiated from the sweet taste of his lips on hers.

"You were blushing," he stated coldly. Instantaneously, she lifted her hands to her cheeks to cover it.

She couldn't answer if she had ever been kissed in her life, since she couldn't remember.

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The next day, she was still reminiscing about the kiss, and wondering what was in his mind when he had kissed her, as well as what he was aiming for her to repay him. She also contemplated if it was probable that she had been in some form of relationship with Jack Yue in the past. However, the fact that the abrupt kiss had not triggered her to recall having a former kiss with him, suggested otherwise. But at the same time, the kiss had caused her heart to thump furiously, and she was highly unsure if she had developed feelings for Jack Yue at some point in her past.

When she had scrolled the photographs stored in her smartphone earlier, she had not come across any photographs of Jack Yue either. She deduced that they were probably not a couple, but that didn't mean that did not harbour any feelings for the cold young designer. Furthermore, they were working in the same field, and chances for them to meet had been prominent. She imagined dreamily that perhaps, Shirley had a hidden crush on Jack Yue even before they had met, as Jack Yue had mentioned, at the conference.

She clicked on the browser application on her phone and deftly typed with her fingers on the on-screen keyboard to conduct a search on 'Interior Designer Jack Yue'. There were hundreds of thousands of results, and she clicked on one of the top results, which indicated she had been to the said page about two weeks ago.

She read the gossip report aloud. "Jack Yue, son of Thomas Yue and Michelle Ma, 25 years old. Heir of Your Architectural Designs, General Manager. Reputed to be single and focused on work, have never been seen with any women. Suspected to be a... homosexual?"

She almost choked upon uttering the word homosexual. In her mind, it had to be completely impossible, since he had just... kissed her! But then, he hadn't said that he had wanted her specifically in a romantic way, so he might have just done it for fun? A lot of possibilities had been roaming around in her brain, and since the gossip report had announced he had never seemed to be seen in the company of women, she cast aside her suspicion that Jack Yue had any feelings for her.

But what about her own feelings? It seemed that Shirley was the one who liked Jack Yue, as whenever she thought about that kiss, her heart beat rapidly! She bit hard on her lower lip and attempted to regain her composure. She had her qualms about possessing unrequited feelings, particularly on love, whenever she recalled how she had died for Fang Yiqi. She had ended her life without being loved, painfully and miserably, in her past life, and she was not going to have that happen to her current life! But, Jack Yue seemed a totally different endeavour for her, since they were in an era where feelings could change anytime!

She went to Shirley's notes, and looked through the remaining notes she had not read. Perhaps, there was some unresolved puzzle about Jack Yue stored in the notes.

A fruitful search yielded a discovery in the four hundredth and fifty-sixth note. It simply said, "Jack Yue, a book that I cannot seem to read. He is as unpredictable as the wind, and yet, charming as a fox. If only I could know what he was thinking."

She scrolled further to reveal a subsequent note, the five hundred and fifth, containing a username and password to log in into an online journal. She assumed this was where she, as Shirley, had apparently written her secret feelings in. Without hesitation, she decided firmly that it was crucial for her to discover whether Shirley had been in love with Jack Yue, even if she didn't want to end up heartbroken like in her previous lifetime. Simply put, she just wanted to know who Shirley was, since it was apparent that she was Shirley, and not just a resident in her body. The truth she wanted to know about Shirley encompassed who Shirley had loved, even if it was in the past.

She reminded herself that Jack Yue was not Fang Yiqi. If she, being Ying Xue, did somehow harbour feelings for Jack Yue in the past, it was all in the past, and her current amnesiac state had caused her to obliterate those feelings. On another note, her feelings were clearly not strong enough to end up forgotten. And given the fact that he was supposedly homosexual, compared to how Fang Yiqi had rejected her love hurtfully over and over again, it wasn't that hard to accept that he couldn't be with her because he preferred men! At least, she would be more accepting of this reason!

All of a sudden, her head throbbed with immense pain, and amongst tears of agony, she realized she had done too much thinking for the day!