The assistant had had a fairly decent life as a child. At the very least, he thought it had been far better than Lin Shi's life as the nominal eldest grandson.
He had grown up in a normal family.
He had never been locked in a pitch-black confinement room for wanting a pet, nor had he been threatened with a whip for coming in second during his school years.
His father had regretted his mediocre aptitude, but he had not blamed him for it.
He would only occasionally joke that this lottery ticket had been a dud.
Those had been fairly pleasant memories.
Unfortunately, the worst part of human nature was that people always changed, and you could never predict those changes.
The assistant did not want to keep recalling how his father had started fooling around outside after getting hooked on Leaf, or how his mother had wasted away in depression.
It was hateful that his talent for hacking had not begun to show until college. More than once, in the dead of night, he had asked himself in confusion whether everything would have been different if his talent had surfaced sooner.
Until he learned of Lin Shi's existence.
In Lin Shi, he saw another possible version of his own tragedy.
His shoulders slumped dejectedly. "Do you want me to go with you?"
As though he had noticed nothing, Lin Shi's smile remained dazzlingly bright—bright enough to make one's skin crawl.
"Of course. I can't let Li Shuo see me like some pitiful stray nobody wants, can I?"
The assistant was already used to his fake smiles. Expressionlessly, he said, "Oh."
Lin Shi shrugged. "Still as cold as ever."
The assistant said, "Oh."
The two found the woman already in the car. She ignored the injuries on Lin Shi's