Page 45

Ye Mingzhao did not wait for Ruan Cuimei's answer. His gaze fell on Jiang Shangyun again as he asked curiously, "Do you think your mother should be punished by law?"

Jiang Shangyun's expression froze.

Ye Mingzhao quietly observed the mother and son's reactions.

When he had been very, very small, Ye Mingzhao had repeatedly wondered why his closest family had abandoned him. In the end, he blamed it all on his own weakness and helplessness.

If only he had known how to crawl. Then he would not have been confined in that tiny blanket, forced to watch helplessly as he was abandoned. He would have tried his hardest to follow that patch of blue, crawling bit by bit out of that dark, freezing garbage dump. He would not have had to wait for stray dogs to keep him warm, nor for an old scavenger to find him.

If only he had been more useful. Then his biological parents would not have thrown him into a garbage heap after he lost his value.

But when Ye Mingzhao grew a little older—old enough to read, perhaps—he immediately understood that being abandoned by his closest family was not his fault. Because the law expressly stated that abandoning a child was a crime.

In the original novel where Chu Hengyi was the protagonist, he, as a villain abandoned by his biological parents, had been condemned by everyone in the book for taking revenge on them. This plotline had even become the fuse that led to everyone turning against him and his expulsion from the Ye family.

For a time, Ye Mingzhao had found such an absurd turn of events impossible to understand.

No one held the people who had truly committed the crime of abandonment accountable. They sympathized with the perpetrators, cheered and spread the word over the victim's miserable fate, and allowed those perpetrators to step on his bones as they climbed to the pinnacle of their lives.

As if he had been born rotten, as if abandoning him had simply been the most correct choice they could have made.

And as if they deserved to be rewarded for it.

But was that really the truth?

Ye Mingzhao quietly looked at Jiang Shangyun. This boy, cherished in his parents' palms, nourished by love, and raised happily. He seemed to possess proper values, a healthy mind, overflowing compassion, and the ability to distinguish right from wrong.

How would he view his mother's act of abandoning her own flesh and blood?

Would he cover up his mother's wrongdoing, or face her past head-on?

Was he someone like his mother, or someone completely different from her?

As an extension of her own life, what answer did Ruan Cuimei hope Jiang Shangyun would give?

Did she hope the son she had personally raised would be as hypocritical and vile as she was?

Or did she hope he would remain as kind and righteous as she had taught him to be, yet be unable to accept the hypocritical and vile person she was once the truth came out?

If she were completely rejected by the son she had painstakingly raised—

Ye Mingzhao's gaze slowly shifted to Ruan Cuimei's face.

Would she feel heartbroken?

Chapter 33

The silence dragged on for a long time. In the end, Jiang Shangyun still could not make a choice.

His mother knelt on the floor, looking up at him in utter shock and agony. Those eyes that had once given Jiang Shangyun endless encouragement and boundless courage, eyes filled with maternal love, caused him pain at this moment. He awkwardly avoided his mother's gaze.

In his panic, lost and overwhelmed with shame, he suddenly met Ye Mingzhao's eyes.

Only then did Jiang Shangyun abruptly realize that Ye Mingzhao actually had eyes remarkably similar to his mother's.

They were beautifully shaped peach blossom eyes, brimming with smiles and affection. When those eyes, full of laughter, looked at you, you felt deeply valued. It was as if your very existence had captured all his attention. To make that fleeting attention last a little longer, you would rack your brains for topics, unconsciously laying bare your heart.

But if you looked closely into those eyes, you would discover that the smile in them never reached their depths. His eyes were sharply black and white, his jet-black pupils dark and profound, making the whites of his eyes seem all the colder, like snow. Clear and icy, without a trace of emotion.

Jiang Shangyun stood there in a daze. How had he never noticed the coldness and distance that radiated from this person's very bones?

Perhaps he had been deceived by the illusion of Ye Mingzhao's deliberately cheerful smile and gentle words?

Or perhaps it was the instinctive pull of blood ties?

Jiang Shangyun could not figure it out. His mind was a complete mess.

Their past conversations seemed to grow wings and fly out of his mind, circling his ears over and over again. He did not understand why all of this had happened.

He only knew that from this moment onward, everything he had once held fast to and trusted had collapsed in an instant.

"You knew all along, didn't you?" Jiang Shangyun stared fixedly at Ye Mingzhao's face, gazing into the eyes that had once felt so familiar to him. He asked with difficulty, "You knew I was your... younger brother from the very first moment you saw me?"

Jiang Shangyun bitterly savored the word. They should have been the closest people in the world. Yet now, they stood on opposite sides.

Before Ye Mingzhao could respond, Jiang Shangyun quickly corrected himself. "No, it must have been even earlier than that!"

Had it been the moment he saw the family portrait Jiang Shangyun had posted on social media? Or even earlier, at the moment Jiang Shangyun had submitted his application to the fashion design competition?

Jiang Shangyun had once heard producer Yu Mingze mention that Ye Mingzhao had hyperthymesia. So he must remember every part of the process of being abandoned back then... Jiang Shangyun's breath caught. He found it hard to imagine such a cruel truth.

In the twenty years of his life, the cruelest things Jiang Shangyun had encountered were cats and dogs abandoned by their owners. He had once told Ye Mingzhao that an owner was a cat or dog's entire world. Then for an infant still in swaddling clothes, were the biological parents who had brought him into this world not his entire world as well?

Abandoned cats and dogs were pitiful and innocent. Then what about a child abandoned by his own biological parents?

Jiang Shangyun could not imagine it.

He had once thought even the casual abandonment of cats and dogs by others was cruel. But his mother—a mother who had taught him what growing up was and what love was, a kind mother who had accompanied him in feeding stray cats and dogs, who had even agreed to let him bring a stray dog home—had personally abandoned her own child more than twenty years ago.

Jiang Shangyun stared blankly at Ye Mingzhao. After a long silence, he suddenly asked, "Do you hate her?"

Did you want revenge?

In every moment when I treated you as a close friend and confided in you, how did you see me?

Was there ever even one moment when you sincerely considered me your friend? Or had you only ever seen me as a pawn to take revenge on your biological mother?

Ye Mingzhao smiled but did not answer Jiang Shangyun's questions.

Yet Ye Mingzhao's smile clearly made Jiang Shangyun misunderstand something. His face suddenly flushed red, and his bright eyes, always full of friendliness and warmth, turned wet. He forcibly held back the tears about to spill from his eyes, abruptly turned around, and ran out of the lounge.

The cherrywood door slammed into the wall with a tremendous echo.

Ye Mingzhao watched Jiang Shangyun's retreating figure run farther and farther away, then smiled at Ruan Cuimei. "Your son is really adorable."

Ruan Cuimei suddenly broke down. She slumped to the floor on her knees and screamed hoarsely at Ye Mingzhao, "What exactly do you want? If you have resentment, take it out on me. Don't take revenge on my child! Xiaoyun is innocent! He knows nothing! He's still just a child!"

"How can you be so vicious? How can you do this? How dare you? What gives you the right?"

Ruan Cuimei screamed in collapse, hurling hysterical insults and making incoherent accusations.

She could not bear the thought that the son she had raised with her own hands would look at her with such contempt.

"You wanted to take revenge on me all along, didn't you? What else have you done? What did you tell our Xiaoyun? How could you take revenge on me in such a vicious way?"

Yet rather than making Ye Mingzhao feel guilty or reflect on himself, her accusations made him laugh. "From the moment you stepped onto this set... no, even earlier, from the night you chose to abandon your own flesh and blood, you should have known this day would come."