Cheng Du frowned slightly, shook his head at Cheng's mother, and gestured for her to stop talking.
"Alright, now that we have a general understanding of the issue, we just need to confirm one fact." The head of the teaching department coughed, then looked seriously at Cheng Du and asked, "Do you like men?"
After a moment of silence, Chen Mu avoided Chen Mu's gaze and said coldly, "I don't like it."
"Did you hear me?" Cheng Du's mother glanced triumphantly at Chen's mother, whose face was ashen. "Keep an eye on your son. If I find out he's involved with my son again, I won't be polite to your whole family. My family can handle that."
Cheng Du's lips were almost pressed into a straight line as he fled the suffocating room, escaping Chen Mu's desperate gaze behind him.
Everything seems to be back on track.
Chen Mu felt like he had a dream, and now that he had woken up, nothing had changed.
No, there have been some changes.
His classmates bullied him even more recklessly. They would throw Chen Mu's schoolbag into the urinal and make him retrieve it himself. They would force him to kneel and eat moldy bread. Anyone who was unhappy with him could punch and kick him. Because his family would not protect him and even participate in the violence, the school turned a blind eye. Teachers would occasionally scold him, but afterwards the beating would be even worse.
As for Chengdu, he never came to school again after that day, but somehow everyone knew about him and Chen Mu, so they bullied Chen Mu even more.
"What is that gay guy writing?"
"We don't know, let's snatch it and see."
Chen Mu sat at the table by the window, writing something with unprecedented concentration, each stroke deliberate and meticulous.
A boy rushed up to him to snatch the notebook, but to his surprise, the boy reacted violently, letting out a piercing scream and frantically tearing the notebook to shreds and swallowing it.
The others were also startled. One girl stared in disbelief and said, "Is he crazy?"
Her companion touched her goosebumps. "How terrifying."
Perhaps they were all taken aback by Chen Mu's actions, because surprisingly no one bothered him afterward.
During a break in PE class Chen Mu overheard some female classmates talking about Cheng Du coming to school to handle transfer procedures. Several girls looked very reluctant to leave, and Chen Mu felt a burning hatred for the culprit behind it all when he mentioned it again.
Chen Mu remained silent, his head bowed, seemingly lost in thought.
He skipped PE class, went downstairs to feed the stray cat he often fed, then went to the music room to listen to his favorite piano performance. Finally, he carefully collected all his savings, one yuan at a time, bought what was the most luxurious lunch he could imagine, and then took his notebook to the rooftop.
Chen Mu opened the lunchbox lid and began to eat slowly, taking small bites at a time, pausing to look at the sky. A gust of wind blew, opening the notebook beside him, which was covered with dense, delicate handwriting.
It had been quite some time since he finished eating. Chen Mu slowly stood up and walked towards the edge of the rooftop.
Looking down from the rooftop, even people seemed to become tiny. Soon, people below spotted Chen Mu on the rooftop and gathered around to watch.
He definitely wouldn't dare to jump.
"Haha, who are you trying to scare? Do you think the school will help him if you threaten him like that?"
"Jump, jump quickly, don't waste time!"
At this moment, Cheng Du walked out of the teaching building. He saw the noisy crowd, then looked up at the building. After a few seconds, his expression suddenly changed drastically. He was about to rush forward, but was held back by his father and bodyguard.
"Chen Mu! You're not allowed to jump! Get down right now!"
He screamed desperately upwards until his voice became hoarse. The crowd, witnessing his outburst, fell silent.
Chen Mu kept looking at the horizon. The wind made his clothes flutter and his school uniform billow. He felt like a white dove about to take flight, and he had never felt so relaxed.
He slowly opened his arms, closed his eyes, and then suddenly fell forward.
Upon seeing this, Cheng Du's pupils constricted sharply, and he roared as he desperately tried to break free of his restraints to catch him. Most of the people in the crowd were also surprised that he actually dared to jump, and they all gasped in astonishment.
With a loud "bang," everything fell silent.
The crowd was in complete chaos. Then the camera slowly panned up along the trajectory of Chen Mu's jump, landing on the rooftop where he had left a notebook with only a few words written on it.
"I'm not a monster; the person I like just happens to be the same gender as me."
"Cut!"
After the call to stop, Xu Chun sat up from the pool of blood. Xie Jianyuan came over and handed him a tissue, telling him to wipe off the sticky stuff on his body.
Xu Chun glanced at him, then took the document and half-jokingly said, "I still haven't recovered from this scene. I keep feeling like you are Cheng Du. Seeing you makes me inexplicably feel suffocated."
Xie Jianyuan smiled and said, "I'm being wronged in that respect."
After Xu Chun stood up, she rubbed her shoulders and looked at Xie Jianyuan, asking, "What do you think of the character Cheng Du?"
Xie Jianyuan frowned slightly, and said carefully, "He's a very contradictory person."
In the end, Cheng Du finally came forward and admitted that he was the one who pursued Chen Mu first. However, none of that mattered anymore, because Chen Mu could no longer see. Even if he spent the rest of his life repenting and suffering, it wouldn't change anything.
"Why do you say he's contradictory?" Xu Chun asked.
Xie Jianyuan replied, "He likes Chen Mu, but he doesn't dare to admit it. He wants to prove that he doesn't like Chen Mu by hurting him."
As far as Cheng Du is concerned, his life was planned from the moment he was born, and he has always followed that plan. Every step has been carefully designed, and he has never made a mistake.