Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

When Shi Tuo cried, he would look for something to hold. He had done this since he was little. Normally, it wasn't noticeable, but when he was vulnerable, he seemed like a child who lacked security. When he cried alone, he would hug his knees. As a child, he would hold onto a stuffed toy. It was a simple habit, and finding something to hold when he cried was easy, so he had never asked An Jiuyou to hold him while crying.

Thinking about it carefully, aside from when they were infants and their parents made them take a picture together for their first birthday, they had never really hugged each other.

This was the first time.

So, naturally, it felt awkward.

Very awkward.

After Shi Tuo embraced her, his sad emotions seemed to get stuck—he liked hugging things when he cried, mainly to cover his face, but An Jiuyou was a good ten centimeters shorter than him. Even after he pulled her into his arms, his face was still visible.

The position was also wrong.

His pulling her into his arms had been a spontaneous act, based on instinct. It was just like when he was a child hugging his toys, so he pressed An Jiuyou into his chest. But if he kept that position, he might suffocate her…

So, he froze in that awkward position for a second, then quickly released her.

An Jiuyou, still dazed, was quite surprised. "That’s it? You’re done crying already?"

Shi Tuo: "…"

Shi Tuo: "… I’m hungry, let’s eat first."

The night snack An Jiuyou brought him was the most famous soy sauce fried rice from the Wangcheng night market. The shop made its own cured meat, which was mixed into the fried rice. The rice was coated with a secret sauce, with bits of cured meat and peas. It was one of his favorite dishes.

But the place had long lines, and it was a bit far from his house. The price was also higher than the usual soy sauce fried rice, so Shi Tuo rarely went there. He would only indulge on special occasions, like celebrating good exam results.

He wasn’t someone who craved food. The adults all thought of him as the model of a non-picky eater—he would eat anything and wasn’t greedy. Whatever portion he took, he would finish it without leaving anything behind.

The only person who knew exactly what he liked to eat was An Jiuyou.

The sadness that had been momentarily halted rose again. He had trouble swallowing the food. Although it tasted the same, he could only taste the bitterness.

After the silence, An Jiuyou still felt awkward. She sat across from him, playing with her phone. She had gotten a new phone, a cheaper second-hand one that was 90% like the previous one.

Shi Tuo poked at the fried rice, its savory aroma filling the air. "Give me a napkin."

Without lifting her head, An Jiuyou reached for a napkin and handed it to him.

Shi Tuo didn’t take it.

An Jiuyou looked up.

His nose was still red, his narrow eyes drooping, and the area under his eyes was slightly swollen. His normally sharp lips were pursed, and even the corners of his eyes drooped.

He looked especially pitiful.

An Jiuyou sighed, put down her phone, and asked, "Are you leaving this semester?"

Shi Tuo took the napkin and gave a bitter smile. "Looks like this is the first time you've backed down on your own during an argument"

An Jiuyou looked at him, chin raised, and glared.

They both knew that the outcome had already been decided, and with their current abilities, neither of them could change it.Chapter Fourteen

"Next month," Shi Tuo said. "I’ll handle the paperwork this week. I probably won’t attend school when senior year starts."

"So... soon?" An Jiuyou froze.

"My uncle’s fish ball noodle shop can’t be without a manager for long, and my mom’s condition doesn’t allow me to delay any further," Shi Tuo's voice grew softer. "My mom went to find Shi Dingbang today. I don’t know what they talked about, but when she came back, she took the sleeping pills she had hidden and swallowed sixty pills."

An Jiuyou stood frozen.

"It was your mom who found out. She was free today and wanted to take us out for a meal, so she called my mom, but no one answered, so she came over to the house."

Fortunately, both their mothers had spare keys to each other's homes. After the heavy rain, Wang Shanshan had wanted to thank him for staying with An Jiuyou that night, and coincidentally, today she had some free time and thought about going out for dinner, first contacting Zhang Rou before meeting the two kids at school.

Everything had fallen into place, so Zhang Rou was sent to the hospital in time. After gastric lavage, she was no longer in critical condition.

But...

When he rushed to the emergency room, it was when Zhang Rou had a complete emotional breakdown. He heard her crying and telling his uncle that Shi Tuo had grown up in Wangcheng, and senior year was the most crucial period of one’s life. He had been working hard to study, and as a mother, she couldn’t just take him to a foreign country at this time.

She said she was a burden to Shi Tuo, and without her, he would live a better life.

She said she was useless—when she was young, her family worked hard to help her get into college, but now she had no money, no job, and was suffering from depression. The medicine for depression made her see Shi Tuo’s grandfather in front of her, and she would cut herself while chopping vegetables.

She took all the responsibility onto herself and refused to agree to go to Singapore for treatment. So, she went to find Shi Dingbang to tell him that Shi Tuo was in his senior year, the most critical period. As parents, they had wronged him in the past, and now she was sick at this crucial time. She hoped Shi Dingbang could move back home for a year to help her.

But Shi Dingbang just smiled coldly and said, "Sick? You look fine to me."

And he slammed the door in her face.

So, Zhang Rou, unable to think clearly at that moment, opened the sleeping pills she had hidden.

After being saved, Zhang Rou attempted self-harm again in the emergency room, saying that without her, her son would live a better life.

Wang Shanshan and Zhang Chenglin were in a panic, asking Shi Tuo, who had become a statue at the emergency room door, to go home first and not to provoke his mom.

On the way, Zhang Chenglin called him, saying that, given the situation, Zhang Rou could no longer live independently. Even if they hired a 24-hour caregiver, staying in Wangcheng with nothing to do would only make her sink deeper into self-loathing. They should leave Wangcheng as soon as possible. After arriving in Singapore, Zhang Chenglin would find a shop for Zhang Rou that wasn’t too busy, to help distract her. The psychiatrist also advised that, given their marital situation, it would be healthier for both of them if they temporarily separated.

Zhang Chenglin said that Singapore wasn’t that bad. Given Shi Tuo’s current level of English, he should be able to pass the O-level exams and enter a junior college. Singapore was a good stepping stone for studying abroad, and after completing one year of junior college, taking the A-levels would be similar to the time he was preparing for the Gaokao.

Zhang Chenglin even said that if Shi Tuo couldn’t adapt to Singapore, he could pay extra to study at a private preparatory school, where there were more options, and his financial situation could easily cover it.

Zhang Chenglin said he only had one sister, Zhang Rou. Now, he had no children of his own, and after struggling outside for many years, he had finally built some financial stability and wanted to give his family a better life.

Zhang Chenglin spoke with deep sincerity.

But when Shi Tuo relayed these things to An Jiuyou, he did so with a blank expression.

Emotions are strange. Before An Jiuyou came to find him, he had been sitting alone in the greenery, smoking and feeding mosquitoes, watching the neighbors with their kids in their old broken car running over the gravel road, laughing as they went. It was a familiar scene, yet he didn’t know when the tears started to fall.

When he received Wang Shanshan's call and rushed to the hospital, he wasn’t anxious or scared. His mind was completely blank.

This was the first time in his life he experienced what it was like for the mind to be empty. He knew the meaning of every word Wang Shanshan said in the phone call, and he knew he was on his way to Wangcheng Hospital’s emergency room. But the rest was just emptiness.

He couldn’t even think of what to do next.

This blankness lasted until he entered the emergency room and saw a patient who had been brought in from a car accident. The person was lying on a stretcher, most of their body covered, with only the exposed parts stained in blood.

He knew that person had nothing to do with him, and he also knew his mom had finished her gastric lavage and was out of danger, but he just suddenly felt drained. He squatted in the bustling emergency room for a long time, unable to stand up.

All his emotions became incomplete, because he couldn’t dare to think about what to do next.Until she saw An Jiuyou standing downstairs at his building, wearing her school uniform with her hair tied in a ponytail, holding a food package in her hand. She wandered around downstairs for two laps before pulling out her phone to call him.

The half-formed emotions that had been stuck in his mind suddenly collapsed. Helplessness, exhaustion, fear, and despair—these emotions he tried so hard to avoid—all surged up at once, and he couldn’t control them at all.

It wasn’t until he hugged An Jiuyou that those emotions suddenly froze.

Because of the awkwardness, the height difference, and the fear of suffocating her, his overwhelming negative emotions that had been on the verge of exploding suddenly solidified.

Even after he had explained everything to An Jiuyou from the beginning, he no longer continued the terrifying emotions from before.

He finally could think about how to handle this situation.

First, he looked down at his hand. "I hit Shi Dingbang."

After his emotional breakdown, he took a detour on his way home from the emergency room to Shi Dingbang’s place. The moment he opened the door, he threw a punch.

Son hitting father.

Of course, the father didn’t dare call the police. Holding his bruised head, he threatened Shi Tuo weakly, but Shi Tuo didn’t even listen to a single word and slammed the door as he walked out.

An Jiuyou looked at the injury on Shi Tuo’s knuckle joint. She was familiar with it. The place where Shi Tuo most often bruised himself when fighting was always his knuckles.

Looking at the extent of the bruising on his hand, she guessed that the punch had been quite strong, so she commented, "That... was a pretty good punch."

Shi Tuo didn’t know why, but after hearing the difficult-to-interpret compliment, he stuffed several more mouthfuls of soy sauce fried rice into his empty stomach.

"Will Auntie get used to Singapore?" she asked.

After all, it's a foreign country, and she has a mental illness.

"She won’t really get used to anywhere," Shi Tuo said. "She didn’t react well to the medicine the hospital gave her, but we’ve already consulted the best doctors in Wangcheng. Either we take her to a big city, or we have to go to Singapore."

"And you..." An Jiuyou put down her phone and finally asked, "What about you?"

Shi Tuo remained silent.

An Jiuyou said, "The food’s cold, so don’t stuff it in your mouth anymore."

"I’m hungry," Shi Tuo said, with a tone full of grievance.

An Jiuyou pushed the fried bean sprouts toward him. "Eat some vegetables."

"You know I hate bean sprouts," Shi Tuo said, while putting the bean sprouts into his bowl and mixing them with the soy sauce fried rice to eat.

"You’re not picky," An Jiuyou said. "Once you get to Singapore, you’ll have to eat everything."

Shi Tuo: "..."

He choked up, then stood up and poured two glasses of water for himself and An Jiuyou.

An Jiuyou took a sip of water and, touching her ear, asked, "Before my audition on Thursday, do you have time to go out with me for half a day?"

She said it so casually, like just talking about daily life.

"What for?" Shi Tuo asked, just as casually, as if he didn’t realize this might be the last time they’d go out together before he left for Singapore.

"To get a cartilage piercing," An Jiuyou showed him a photo on her phone. "One of my birthday wishes when I turn eighteen."