Jiang Yu’s life had always been very simple. Before he became an adult, it was school, watching cartoons, and cleaning. After becoming an adult, it was cleaning, watching cartoons, and more cleaning. He didn’t play musical instruments, didn’t read, didn’t travel, didn’t exercise, and didn’t even enjoy watching popular short videos. During holidays, he often had too much free time at home, giving him plenty of moments to just sit there and do nothing. Fortunately, he was very skilled at daydreaming—thinking about where he had left something or what to have for dinner could take up half an afternoon.
However, ever since a certain housekeeping service, his life suddenly became complicated.
He had to come up with all sorts of ways to sneak out of the house furtively and avoid his brothers’ questioning, which was troublesome enough. Not to mention making various phone calls—the poor soundproofing of the old house that if the neighbors overheard even a single word, everything would be exposed.
The longer this went on, the harder it became.
One morning before the summer vacation, after Bian Cheng announced that he would be working from home that day, Jiang Yu felt his brain swell like rehydrated black fungus, throbbing with pain.
He sipped his porridge gloomily, pondering what excuse to use for coming back late, when he saw Wen Di storm out of the bedroom in a fury.
Jiang Yu straightened his back. This was a sign of an impending argument, a good opportunity to sneak away.
Goodness, how could he be so unconcerned about family harmony?
“You,” Wen Di, who was a head shorter than Bian Cheng, always seemed to stand two meters tall whenever he leaned by the table with that accusatory expression. “Did you read my thesis again?”
Bian Cheng, as always, gave an honest answer: “Yes.”
“What gives you the right to read my thesis?”
“It wasn’t intentional,” Bian Cheng said. “You went to the bathroom, and the thesis was just left open there on the screen. I happened to walk by…”
“And then you moved the mouse and scrolled six or seven pages?”
Bian Cheng innocently replied: “I was just curious about what you’ve been researching lately. You never let me see it…”
“That’s because the last time you read it, you left me twenty comments!”
“I promised I wouldn’t write any more comments,” Bian Cheng said. “And I won’t make any remarks either.”
Wen Di glared at him. “You didn’t write them on Word, but you wrote them in your mind!”
“Am I not even allowed to think about it?”
“I can hear what you want to say just by looking into your eyes!”
Bian Cheng was shocked that his partner wanted to manage his thoughts. “Then why don’t you read my thesis too?” he said.
“Would I even understand it?” Wen Di grabbed a mathematics journal from the side and pointed to an article title: The Bridgeland Stability Conditions on Algebraic Surfaces and Their Connection to Conjugate Geometry. “Do you even hear what you’re saying?”
“I can explain it to you…”
“No need!” Wen Di said, “Why would I want to read the papers of the best algebraic geometers under fifty in the world?”
Jiang Yu was already dizzy, and even Bian Cheng paused for a moment. “What?”
“The Annals of Mathematics rated you like this,” Wen Di explained. “The greatest living algebraic geometer under fifty. I’ve only ever seen longer modifiers in Shakespearean plays.”
Bian Cheng pointed out, “That’s quite a high compliment.”
Jiang Yu put down his chopsticks and inserted a comment as naturally as he could. “I’m not eating at home today.”
The two adults, who were on the verge of arguing, immediately turned their attention to him.
“Why have you been eating out so often lately?” Wen Di asked.
Jiang Yu’s heart tightened. Normally, the two adults wouldn’t ask such questions, especially since they were in the middle of an argument. “En… a classmate…”
“Which classmate?” Bian Cheng asked.
“Just…” At this point, he only needed to casually name someone, but his mind went blank under the pressure, and the names slipped through his fingers like running water. “En…”
He struggled for a while before giving up. Lying wasn’t his forte, and with two exceptionally intelligent adults at home, a few follow-up questions would expose him.
“It’s that one from Xingcheng Secondary School,” he said.
Although it had been more than ten years, Wen Di immediately identified the person and raised an objection. “That guy won’t do!”
“What’s wrong with him?” Jiang Yu instinctively defended.
“Too scheming,” Wen Di said earnestly. “How could you ever outplay him? The first time he met me, he pinned the blame for something on me. Be careful, or he’ll pin something on you too.”
Jiang Yu protested immediately. “He’s a really good person!”
Wen Di looked at him the way one would look at any lovestruck teenager teetering on the edge of disaster and sighed.
“Fine,” Wen Di said. “There’s no point in advising you. This mistake is one you’ll have to make yourself.”
With that, the adults truly didn’t stop him and let him leave. Before he left, Wen Di’s gaze was both affectionate and heavy, as if Jiang Yu were a moth hurtling at full speed toward a glowing bulb.
Today, Xu Qi unexpectedly said he would cook for himself. According to his own account, during his tough childhood days in a basement, he had learned to make eleven different types of rice dishes with a rice cooker, each one delicious.
On the way to the appointment, Jiang Yu was both looking forward to a nutritionally balanced lunch and pondering how to convince his brothers that beneath Xu Qi’s beautiful exterior lay a pure and untainted heart.
When he reached the building entrance and hadn’t even pressed the elevator button, a man suddenly appeared in front of him and called out, “Are you Jiang Yu?”
He looked up to see a man about his age.
“So it is you,” the man sneered. “You’re here to see that Xu guy, aren’t you?”
Oh my god, Jiang Yu thought. Why did it feel like the entire world knew what he was up to today?
“I never thought that even a fool has his uses,” the man continued, “I can’t believe I’ve been duped by someone like you.”
Jiang Yu was still in shock from the previous question, unable to react.
“Don’t deny it,” the man said, staring at him. “I’ve seen the report materials. There’s stuff in there that I only ever talked about at home.” He pulled out his phone and opened an app. “You’ve cleaned my house before. Be honest—did you leave something behind in my house?”
Jiang Yu seemed to have just come to his senses. He looked up and carefully examined the man from head to toe before sincerely asking, “Who are you?”
The man stared at him for a moment, trying to find some clue in his expression. “Are you playing dumb, or are you really that clueless?”
“Sorry,” Jiang Yu said. “I really don’t remember.”
“Are you kidding me?” the man asked in disbelief. “Your textbook was the one I threw down the stairs, and the arrow that hit your head was thrown by me. I said I was helping to disinfect your textbook, and you were still laughing.”
“Oh,” Jiang Yu said. “I think I remember someone like that.”
“Impossible,” the man looked at him suspiciously, “I still remember, and you actually forgot?”
“My memory’s not great,” Jiang Yu replied. “If I remembered everything like that, my brain would’ve run out of space long ago.”
The man was still unsure. If what Jiang Yu said was true, then the idea of ‘revenge’ didn’t hold water. But if Jiang Yu hadn’t done anything, how did Xu Qi manage to dig up all the information in the report materials?
“When you came to clean, you really didn’t know it was my house?”
Jiang Yu felt a headache coming on. “You only just figured out I was the cleaner too.”
Who even pays attention to a cleaner’s name? Besides, the man might not have even been home when he went there.
“I’ve seen you with Xu Qi walking together so many times,” the man insisted, still unconvinced. “He’s done all these things behind the scenes and harmed me so badly. You must know something.”
Jiang Yu seemed to be lost in thought. The man stared intently at him, thinking that this guy was not very bright, so it would be much easier to deal with him. When Jiang Yu finally spoke, the man expected something substantial, but all Jiang Yu said was, “It wasn’t Xu Qi.”
The man snorted coldly: “You’re quite protective of him ah”
Jiang Yu shook his head: “It wasn’t Xu Qi who did it.”
The man grabbed Jiang Yu’s arm, wanting to continue questioning him, when someone quickly walked over from the path in the green belt and blocked him.
The corner of the man’s mouth twitched. “I thought you’d hide in your house for the rest of your life.”
“Leave unrelated people out of this,” Xu Qi said, turning back to Jiang Yu. “This has nothing to do with you. You go first.”
Jiang Yu still wanted to stay and hear what was going on, but Xu Qi softly said, “Wait for me at home,” and Jiang Yu obediently left.
The man watched as Jiang Yu walked toward the elevator, looking back every few steps, before turning his attention back to Xu Qi.
“You haven’t changed much,” Xu Qi said. “Still the same, always bullying the weak and fearing the strong.”
The man grabbed his collar: “How dark is your mind ah? You’re still clinging to something from over ten years ago?”
This guy even moved into the same neighborhood as him. When the police came to his door, this man just stood on the balcony and watched him get into the police car with an expressionless face.
Xu Qi tugged at the corner of his mouth, grabbed the man’s wrist, and pulled his hand away from the collar. “I don’t really understand. There is something wrong with your building materials. Instead of reflecting on yourselves, why do you keep pushing the blame onto others?”
“Just wait,” the man pointed his finger at his face. “I don’t believe your methods are that clean. You can’t get through me, but that idiot…”
With his left hand, Xu Qi suddenly grabbed the man’s wrist, while his right hand swung a punch straight to his abdomen. The sound of flesh hitting flesh echoed, and the man doubled over, clutching his stomach.
Xu Qi crouched down, eyes half-closed, fixed on the man’s crumpled face: “Try calling him an idiot again.”
“You…”
Xu Qi shook his head and slowly said: “Your direction of force is completely wrong. Do you really think this has something to do with Jiang Yu? Did you find a listening device in your house?”
He glanced at the man’s expression. “It doesn’t seem like it.”
“Then how do you know?”
“You’re not on the phone with a ghost; if you don’t say anything, won’t the other person say it?” Xu Qi stood up and pressed the elevator button. “But one thing you said is right; I do have a dark mind.”
He left his old classmate behind and quickly walked into the house. Jiang Yu was in the kitchen, checking the ingredients with his hands in his pockets, his eyes filled with curiosity. When he heard the door open, he turned around and asked loudly, “Is it pork rib rice? Is it? Is it?”
Xu Qi smiled and walked into the kitchen, rolling up his sleeves.
As steam rose from the rice cooker, the two sat at the dining table. Jiang Yu stared at the white mist with anticipation, as if the earlier incident downstairs had never happened.
Xu Qi looked at him and asked, “Don’t you have anything you want to ask me?”
Jiang Yu turned his eyes and asked: “Ask what?”
“What I’ve been doing lately? Why are people saying I’ve harmed them?”
“Oh,” Jiang Yu said, “I know.”
Xu Qi was taken aback. This was the first time he had such a reaction: “You know what I’ve been doing?”
He had indeed mentioned to Jiang Yu a few things about investigating the past, but he had never told Jiang Yu any specifics.
“En,” Jiang Yu said, “You’re breaking that room.”
In his distant memories, his mother often argued with his father because of him, and it always ended in shouting and crying. His mother told him very frankly that she had a deep resentment towards his father, to the point where just thinking about it caused her pain.
Jiang Yu asked her, ‘how can you stop the pain?’
His mother thought for a moment and said there were three ways: forget, forgive, or break. Everyone’s personality was different, and the path they chose was different.
“You have the gift of forgetting,” his mother said. “Sometimes I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
Jiang Yu thought, someone as smart as Xu Qi was destined not to forget.
What he could do was break that activity room.
Jiang Yu was telling the truth. It wasn’t Xu Qi who did those things, it was fourteen-year-old Qu Ruiheng.
If he didn’t break it, that fourteen-year-old boy would remain trapped inside, waiting for the flood to come, drowning him up to his neck, ears, and eyes, until suffocation.
“Don’t you mind?” Xu Qi asked. “Won’t you be afraid of me, staying away from me, thinking I’m a bad person?”
Jiang Yu shook his head. “I’ll stay with you until you come out of that room.”
Just like back then, he would open the door, grab the drowning person’s hand, pull him up, and then hold him tightly.
T/N: sorry for being MIA again. but anyway, two chapters left so there’ll be update tomorrow and the day after tomorrow too. update will be on pm GMT +8 like today!
Thanks for the update!