The night, like a black gauze hat, covered the entire city. The brilliant neon lights covered the buildings, and the yellow light from the street lamps swept across people’s faces, then was thrown behind the car.
"co fan di sao goi zou yi fong hoi..."
The car's sound system was playing a Cantonese song by Zhang Jingxuan. The soothing melody, unintentionally, pulled out a warm, dreamy feeling, creating a hint of sadness that was hard to explain.
That kind of sadness made Zhou Chaosheng, who had never experienced the pain of love, involuntarily resonate.
“What’s this song?” Zhou Chaosheng asked.
"'Ai' by Zhang Jingxuan" Jiang Yuanye said.
Zhou Chaosheng tilted his head, looking at the driver who was staring ahead, speaking without hesitation, "When you were abroad, I listened to this song every day to ease my emotions, as if listening to this song could stop my crazy longing for you."
This is about Cheng Yuan, right?
Zhou Chaosheng absentmindedly thought, Could that person have had such a big impact on Jiang Yuanye?
“Did you ever look for me?”
“What?”
“When I was abroad, did you ever look for me once?”
Jiang Yuanye seemed to smile slightly, “What’s the use? It wouldn’t change anything.”
Zhou Chaosheng turned his head, looking at the shrubs and tall buildings outside the window, and lightly said, “How would you know if you didn’t try?”
Jiang Yuanye fell silent, and only the gentle melody of the music remained in the car.
Zhou Chaosheng lightly rested his fingers on his chin, the fragmented light flickering and falling into his deep, ink-like eyes, like mist spreading in a forest, making it hard to see the emotion in his eyes. Only the faint gaze on the glass window remained, without anything else.
Just as he thought Jiang Yuanye wouldn’t respond, he suddenly heard his voice, as if it were blown by the wind.
“Forget it.”
Zhou Chaosheng stopped tapping the armrest with his finger.
Jiang Yuanye casually said, “Anyway, I know you’ll come back sooner or later.”
After a pause, he smiled and said, “Look, aren’t we together again now?”
It’s like this again.
The tone that pretends to be relaxed, trying to cover up the restlessness beneath the indifference.
Zhou Chaosheng lowered his eyelids, and his index finger once again tapped intermittently, silent and quiet.
It was the Jiang Yuanye he was familiar with.
It seemed like since high school, the other person had never changed.
Even though a long time had passed, Zhou Chaosheng still clearly remembered that day when the boy leaned against the wall, silently licking his wounds.
Back in high school, Zhao Xiaohui and the classmates often invited Zhou Chaosheng to the internet cafe to play games after school on Fridays, just because the internet cafe turned a blind eye to the actions of adults using the internet, and it wasn’t very strict. Plus, it wasn’t far from the city center, and it only took about ten minutes by taxi from the school.
Zhou Chaosheng had only gone once, and it was Zhao Xiaohui who persuaded him.
The internet cafe was located in the old district in the northeast corner, called "Xiao Dongmen" by the locals. The buildings in Xiao Dongmen were old, and most of the shops along the street were low, shabby, with varying exterior decorations, failing to form a complete and harmonious street view.
According to Zhao Xiahui, it was the poorest and most backward area in the city. Even though the government had issued several policies and regulations since the 1990s, little had improved.
However, around it, many places and buildings had been requisitioned by the government and designated as commercial land. Residents in the area had received a large amount of money due to demolition. Only Xiao Dongmen seemed to have been forgotten by the world, abandoned in a corner, ignored by everyone.
And the internet cafe they went to, in his view, was just as dilapidated as this Xiao Dongmen.
Standing at the door, the heat that came rushing towards him, along with the smell of smoke and sweat, surged into his nostrils like a tide. It was unpleasant and suffocating.
But Zhao Xiaohui didn’t mind at all. He didn’t have any airs of a young master. After transferring here, he quickly got along with his classmates, and even in places that didn’t match his status, he could easily fit in. In just a few words, he had already become brothers with the old man of the internet cafe, and even got the boss to voluntarily give them a 25% discount on their consumption at the cafe.
Although Zhao Xiaohui had no shortage of money, he often found joy in such small matters.
Zhou Chaosheng had a clear self-awareness. He knew he wasn’t as skilled as Zhao Xiaohui in this regard. He had a serious "young master" attitude, and he was picky with cleanliness, suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder. He couldn’t tolerate even the smallest flaw, let alone the mess and filth of a dilapidated internet cafe.
He immediately turned around and left.
He didn’t care about Zhao Xiaohui desperately trying to keep him.
If he didn’t like something, he just didn’t like it. Forcing him was absolutely impossible.
That time, when he turned around, he thought it was the last time.
But he didn’t expect that in the future, there would be countless more turns.
Perhaps it was fate, as if the heavens had a plan. Their karmic bond was so deep that even the heavens would forcibly arrange for two unrelated people to be together.
In Zhou Chaosheng’s impression, it was just an ordinary night — noisy, chaotic, and unbearable.
The traffic lights at the intersection seemed like ornaments. The electric bikes passing by were without any order, and the narrow street was crowded with vehicles and pedestrians, looking suffocating.
Since entering this old district, his frown hadn’t relaxed.
The street was not just congested; the loud honking sounds around him were unending.
At that time, he was thinking that he would never come to such a place again in his lifetime.
Just as he was thinking this, several electric bikes surged past him, like waves crashing on the shore, then slowly pulling back.
The view in front of him gradually became clearer.
So clear that he recognized who the injured person at the corner of the intersection was.
He wouldn’t mistake it.
That was definitely his arch-nemesis, who fought with him to the death.
Jiang Yuanye.
Normally, his skin was as white as white jade, but now his body looked as though it had been beaten with iron tools, bruised and battered, turning into flawed white jade, losing its former luster.
Along with the faded, washed-out school uniform, it had become dirty and messy.
Zhou Chaosheng noticed something was wrong and followed him all the way to the southeast corner of the old urban area.
The southeast corner was also known as the slum of the old district.
There, rats scurried everywhere, cockroaches crawled along the streets, and various sizes of garbage could be seen everywhere.
Zhou Chaosheng was so scared that he almost turned around and left.
But he held himself back.
Pinching his nose, he followed Jiang Yuanye into a dim alley. The entrance to the alley was wide, but there were no streetlights, and as they walked down the slope, he could vaguely see many shops lining the street.
Just as he expected, none of them were legitimate shops.
According to Xiahui’s later explanation,
this was a red-light district.
It was also an illegal area untouched by the law.
A walled kiln.
As soon as Zhou Chaosheng stepped into this area, he felt unfriendly eyes staring at him, as if rats from a gutter were lurking in the dark, observing him without restraint.
The people here were half-naked, covered in tattoos on their arms and backs.
There were muscular men with large, round bellies, overweight, bloated men with fatty waists, and skinny, frail young delinquents.
They all wore tight pants and tight shirts, smoking cigarettes, squinting their eyes as they looked at him.
But his bodyguards was following not far behind him.
Zhou Chaosheng calmed himself down and quickened his pace to closely follow Jiang Yuanye.
He thought, there was no other reason for him to follow, he just wanted to see where Jiang Yuanye was going and, by the way, to find out how those injuries on Jiang Yuanye’s body came about.
He followed Jiang Yuanye as he turned left and right, arriving at a shabby, smoky, unfinished house.
Zhou Chaosheng saw Jiang Yuanye remain expressionless as he spoke in a dialect he couldn’t understand to two burly men standing at the door. Then, amid the men’s swearing, Jiang Yuanye calmly lifted the curtain and walked inside.
He didn’t follow him in but hid behind the wall.
The bodyguard stood behind him, frowning and asking,
“Young Master, why did you come to this place?”
He looked down at his watch, not turning his head and replied, “We were classmates, I can’t just leave him alone. What if something happens to him? Are you going to take responsibility?”
The bodyguard clicked his tongue.
Twenty minutes later, he finally saw Jiang Yuanye escorting a drunk man out.
Jiang Yuanye was barely under eighteen, but he carried the drunk man like it was nothing.
He seemed familiar with this, as though he had done it many times before.
Zhou Chaosheng thought that once Jiang Yuanye had gotten the drunk man out, it would be safe.
But he didn’t expect more than ten adults with sticks to emerge from the walled kiln.
They threatened Jiang Yuanye, saying that if he didn’t bring out the money, he wouldn’t be able to take the man away.
It turned out the drunk man wasn’t Jiang Yuanye’s father.
Zhou Chaosheng looked carefully and realized that the man didn’t look much like Jiang Yuanye. It was probably because of the excessive drug use, causing dark circles under his eyes, sunken eye sockets, and his face was gaunt and sharp like a skeleton.
There wasn’t much that could be said to make him look good.
The group of men cursed loudly and surrounded Jiang Yuanye.
They had the air of "if you don’t pay, we’ll beat both of you to death here."
Zhou Chaosheng saw that Jiang Yuanye was warily eyeing them, but his gaze subtly searched for a way to escape.
Zhou Chaosheng was secretly relieved, glad that he had followed him.
He gave the order, and the well-trained bodyguards emerged from the corner and rushed toward the thugs. Even though the thugs were bare-handed, the bodyguards were far stronger, even though their skills weren’t top-tier. In no time, the situation had completely turned around.
They defeated the odds with fewer people and successfully rescued Jiang Yuanye and his father.
He glanced at Jiang Yuanye’s injuries and instructed the bodyguards to send Jiang Yuanye’s father to the hospital.
Jiang Yuanye immediately furrowed his brows and coldly said, "No need."
He had just saved him, yet Jiang Yuanye didn’t even say thank you and even publicly rejected his offer, making him feel a little embarrassed.
"Why are you being so stubborn?" he said irritably.
Jiang Yuanye pressed his lips tightly together, not responding, and stepped forward to take the unconscious man from the bodyguard's hands, about to leave.
He blocked his way and handed Jiang Yuanye the plastic bag containing the medicine and bandages the bodyguard had bought along the way.
"Take it."
Jiang Yuanye glanced at it, still refusing: "I don’t need it."
After being rejected a few times, his expression turned somewhat displeased.
"Take it and stop arguing," he said.
Jiang Yuanye rolled his eyes at him and said, "I said I don’t need it. Can’t you understand?"
The two of them were at a standoff.
Until the ringtone of Jiang Yuanye's old phone suddenly rang.
He saw Jiang Yuanye answer it. Whatever the person on the other end said, it seemed to have changed Jiang Yuanye’s mind.
After hanging up the phone, Jiang Yuanye accepted the medicine and said, "How much? I’ll pay you back later."
He shook his head and casually handed the medicine bag over, saying indifferently, "No need to pay me back. I’m not short on that little money."
He thought Jiang Yuanye would at least say thank you.
But instead, Jiang Yuanye didn’t even say a word of gratitude.
He was so angry that he turned around and left.
He felt that his good intentions had been taken for granted, and he decided to stop meddling in other people's business.
Although he thought this way, he was still worried that those people might follow Jiang Yuanye after he left and seek revenge on him and his father. So, he quietly stayed behind with the bodyguards, keeping watch and following them all the way to their doorstep.
He saw Jiang Yuanye enter a half-finished building with some people.
He thought about waiting a little longer to see what would happen.
But in the end, he didn’t see the group of thugs he was expecting. Instead, he saw Jiang Yuanye, who had already gone upstairs, coming back down.
He watched as Jiang Yuanye turned into an alley. In the darkness, he noticed that Jiang Yuanye seemed to have let his guard down completely. The man leaned against the wall, his head tilted back, pressed against the wall. His expression was weary, and his features were obscured by the shadows.
He then saw Jiang Yuanye raise his wrist, bring it to his lips, and slowly lick it with his tongue.
It was as if he were a little dog that had been hurt but abandoned, only able to hide in a cardboard box and lick its wounds.
Later, he heard about Jiang Yuanye's family situation, but by then it was already close to the time of the college entrance exams.
At that time, there were less than ten days left before the exam.
He had heard from classmates that Jiang Yuanye's mother had jumped off a building.
Because of this, he specifically looked into Jiang Yuanye's situation.
He then learned that Jiang Yuanye's father had owed over five million in high-interest loans, and his mother had also developed a mental illness.
For him, five million wasn’t a big deal, but for a family with no income and barely scraping by, it was a burden that could collapse everything.
He knew that Jiang Yuanye had good grades, and if he performed well in the college entrance exam, he could get into a top university.
At the time, he had just completed a game, which not only sold its rights to a game company but also topped the sales charts, earning him more than three million. It was the first big money he had made in his life.
He thought, since the money was just sitting in the bank, he might as well use it to pay off Jiang Yuanye's family debt anonymously.
Of course, he paid it off at the original amount owed.
He cleared a total of 2.2 million for Jiang Yuanye.
He also arranged a private room for Jiang Yuanye's mother in the hospital and paid for two full years of her medical expenses and hospital fees.
He didn’t want his arch-nemesis to know about this.
He didn’t want his good intentions to be misunderstood.
When paying off the debt, he specifically warned the debt collectors that if they leaked his identity, they would be responsible for the consequences.
As for the hospital, he arranged for the payments through anonymous donations to cover all of Jiang Yuanye’s mother’s hospital expenses.
Thinking back on this, Zhou Chaosheng suddenly became curious about how Jiang Yuanye’s mother was doing now. Jiang Yuanye was no longer the helpless boy he had been years ago. The cost of continued treatment should not be an issue for him anymore.
Moreover, Jiang Yuanye's gambling-addicted father had passed away years ago.
His mother should no longer suffer inhuman treatment.
Everything seemed to be heading in a better direction.
Thinking this, he asked aloud, "What about your family? Is she still in Jinzhou now?"
Hey?
If anyone is interested to know the song, here it is: