Are You Going to Kill Me, Friend?

So, had he stopped before the finish line to symbolize that his father's ghost would always be by his side?

Sitting in a taxi on the way home, Lin Chuan finished reading the story and took a deep breath.

The little boy who had loved playing Wild Racing had finally grown up to his father's age.

He'd begun to face the mundane necessities of life.

He had to find a job, pay off his mortgage, prepare a bride price, and deal with the triple pressures of finances, family, and love.

He had slowly begun to realize that the troubles of life couldn't be solved with a single Little Overlord game console.

One day, by chance, he opened the game console that had been gathering dust.

In Wild Racing, he found the "ghost" his father had left behind.

In the game, he experienced the joy of fighting alongside his father.

Lin Chuan could imagine it.

After the protagonist grew up, he found his father's saved game on the console.

Every day after work, he turned on the console, picked up the controller, and raced against his father in the game.

Little by little, he rediscovered the joy of his childhood.

Then, one day, the protagonist beat the record his father had set.

But he deliberately stopped just before the finish line.

That way, his father's ghost would remain in Wild Racing forever.

Whenever the boy faced pressures and troubles in life, he could talk to his father in the game.

Perhaps, one day, the boy would have a child of his own.

Then he could play Wild Racing with his child.

He could tell the child that the racer who'd set a record in the game was their grandfather.

What do you think? Wasn't Grandpa amazing?

On the surface, it seemed like a very heartwarming story.

But wasn't this going a bit too far?

His father had died. That was an ironclad fact.

Though playing the same game as his father and fighting alongside the ghost he'd left behind could briefly give him an experience similar to spending time with his father,

in the end, it was just a mass of cold data.

Wasn't the Happy Family writing contest supposed to be about collecting touching stories from people's everyday lives?

This was a little over the limit, wasn't it?

Damn!

Lin Chuan took a deep breath and hurriedly opened the next story.

After all, Lin Chuan was an adult. With the experiences of two lifetimes behind him, his heart wasn't exactly as hard as stone, but he wasn't easily moved, either.

At the same time, Lin Chuan knew full well:

When a man talked about what was hurting him, the greatest respect a stranger could show was to leave him alone.

The second story was all right. Its protagonist was a thoughtless kid.

[The thing I feel guiltiest about is what happened that day. I got caught sneaking my phone in, so I had to stay home and reflect for a few days. Mom didn't scold me. On the morning I was going back to school, she came to wake me gently, holding a jianbing in her hand.]

[I was already annoyed, and I had a short temper when I first woke up, so I got up angry. After I washed up, she handed me the jianbing. It had chili in it, and I was mad, so I threw it on the concrete and said, "I don't eat spicy food."]

[I walked a few steps, then looked back. Mom had picked up the jianbing and was eating it herself.]

The protagonist of this story fit Lin Chuan's stereotypical image of a rebellious teenager to a T.

Rebellious, melodramatic, oversensitive, and self-centered.

A thoughtless, rebellious teenager had a wonderful mother.

Now that he'd grown up, the protagonist realized how awful and unreasonable his behavior had been.

It was only natural that he felt guilty.

In truth, his mother might not have cared about her child's outrageous behavior.

As Teacher Xu Xiu had said at the celebration dinner, a mother was her child's most devoted audience.

The mother in the story was probably more worried about her child going hungry than about herself.

During a late-night dorm conversation, Ren Hang had mentioned doing something similar.

Once, Ren Hang had complained that his mother's cooking was so awful that he dumped the food in the trash.

Ren Hang was just unlucky, though.

His dad caught him and beat him up.

Then, when he confessed his secret during a late-night dorm conversation, his roommates beat him up, too.

Later, Lin Chuan had the chance to try Ren Hang's mother's cooking.

How should he put it? It really wasn't very good.

Still, Lin Chuan couldn't stand wasting food.

Lin Chuan decided that when he gave the author an award for this story, he'd be sure to give him a few words of criticism.

He'd treat him to a couple of Yimeng gangtou flatbreads.

And then he'd make the author apologize to his mother.

Lin Chuan opened the comments section and found that the readers had reacted exactly as he had:

"I'm ordering you to apologize to your mom right now!"

Beneath that comment was the author's reply:

"She's already passed away."

!!!

Silently, Lin Chuan opened the next story.

This time, after reading the opening, Lin Chuan breathed a sigh of relief.

The protagonist was a rebellious teenager again, and he was even more thoughtless than the previous one.

The protagonist was fifteen. His father had died young, and his mother had raised him alone. At the time, he was going through his rebellious phase.

He wanted the same nice shoes as everyone else, and he wanted a cake for his birthday.

His mother thought he was being thoughtless and wasting money, and the two of them had a huge fight.

The protagonist thought his mother was useless and hurtful, yet he also pitied her.

She'd spent her whole life working hard, so why couldn't she make any money?

Why couldn't he live like the other kids?

In a fit of anger, he went back to school and stopped answering his mother's calls.

Two months later, just a few days before his birthday, he received a voice message from her at school.

At this point, Lin Chuan took a deep breath and braced himself.

This might end in tragedy, just like the last story.

But the same trick wouldn't work twice on a Saint Seiya!

Lin Chuan was immune by now!

Lin Chuan's heart was as hard as stone!

He opened the voice message from his mother:

"Baby, Mom's had cancer for years. I'm not going to make it. Your birthday's in three days, so I bought you a pair of sneakers and a bank card. There's 260,000 yuan in it. Make it last. You can order your own cake. Mom won't be around for that. You always ask why you can't be like the other kids. It's because they all have a family. From now on, you'll have to rely on yourself, baby."

The most-liked comment in the section read:

"When both parents die young, the child's likely to inherit that, too. Their life ahead will be rough."

Lin Chuan refused to believe it and kept scrolling.

He saw a story written by a little girl. It was called Lotus Residential Area.

The last line read:

"The textbook says there's a place called Sun Moon Lake. It's the tears a daughter left behind while missing her mother."

He kept scrolling.

[He was struggling really hard, but the moment his mom came over, he stopped.]

He kept scrolling.

[My mom was intellectually disabled. The night before she left, she knocked on my door and said, "Get me some tea leaves." I refused to open the door no matter what. Because she was intellectually disabled, she always put a whole cupful of tea leaves in. It was unbearably bitter.]

[Later, I thought that if there was anything more bitter, it must be a mother wanting tea while her son wouldn't even open the door for her.]

The taxi was on its way to Lotus Residential Area.

In the rearview mirror, the taxi driver saw the young man in the back seat lower his phone.

He closed his eyes, and two silent tears slid from the corners of them.