Thorn-Burned Dream

Smoke hung thick in the internet café.

The smell of cheap cigarettes stung their eyes.

Nearby, several boys shouted curses over their games, their keyboards clattering, making this little corner feel all the more oppressive.

Yuan Su's expression was cold and severe. When he spoke about money, debt, and survival, his tone was as flat as if he were saying, "Nice weather today."

There were no complaints, no resentment.

Only the numbness and resignation of someone who had long since accepted reality.

"Right now, all I can do is keep my head down and watch the road beneath my feet."

"Make sure I don't fall to my death or drag the people behind me down with me."

Pu Yu felt as if something had seized her heart in a brutal grip, leaving her unable to breathe.

She watched the boy's thin profile in the dim light. Every argument she had prepared caught in her throat, turning into a silent ache.

The registration form in her hand suddenly weighed a ton.

All her appeals about dreams, about his future, about how his talent shouldn't go to waste.

At this moment, they seemed utterly hollow, even cruel in their obliviousness to his hardships.

Pu Yu lowered her eyes and gently set the registration form, now warm from her grip, on the computer tower beside him.

"The teacher asked me to give you this."

Her voice was soft. "Whether you read it or fill it out is up to you."

Yuan Su didn't look at the paper. He kept his eyes on the code flickering across the screen.

"And..."

Pu Yu paused and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry."

Yuan Su turned his head. Those deep, dark eyes settled on her again, holding a trace of confusion and resistance:

"What are you apologizing for?"

"I shouldn't have judged your life by my own ideas," Pu Yu said frankly.

The boy suddenly gave a low laugh.

There was no warmth in it, only desolate self-mockery.

He turned back and continued working, his voice cold and hard. "I chose this path. My dad ran up the debt. And I'm the one living this life."

"Keep all that overflowing sympathy to yourself."

"I don't need it."

Xu Suiran parted her lips, about to say something, but Pu Yu gently tugged her sleeve and shook her head.

"Get back to work. We'll leave you to it."

Pu Yu took one last look at that stubborn, lonely figure.

Then she took the still-dazed Xu Suiran by the hand and led her out of the internet café.

The cool night breeze blew away the cigarette smell clinging to their clothes.

Xu Suiran took several deep breaths of fresh air, as if she had only just recovered.

She glanced back at the flashing neon sign, her voice subdued. "Yu, why does this feel so sad...?"

"You never saw Yuan Su back then," Xu Suiran said, kicking a pebble along the roadside, her tone downcast. "He was so full of confidence. At the opening ceremony in our first year, he even gave a speech as the freshman representative. Standing there in the sunlight, he practically glowed."

"Compared with that, he's so pitiful now..."

"He's so talented, but all he can do is fix broken computers in that awful, smoke-filled place."

Pu Yu stopped.

She looked at the dark night sky in the distance, her voice quiet but firm:

"He isn't pitiful."

Xu Suiran froze. "Huh? How is that not pitiful?"

"He works so hard to hold his family together, paying off debts with his own skills and looking after his sick mother, precisely because he doesn't want anyone to pity him."

Pu Yu turned and looked earnestly at Xu Suiran. "Suiran, we can feel sorry about what he's lost. We can regret how things turned out. But we can't look at him with pity."

"That would deny all the effort he's putting into living."

Xu Suiran stared at Pu Yu. After a long moment, she hugged her and nuzzled against her affectionately.

"Now I know why your essays are so good!"

"It's just like our Chinese teacher says-what was it? You need a tender heart and empathy to write well!"

Pu Yu only smiled.

It was a faint smile, vanishing from her lips almost at once.

Xu Suiran's words had unwittingly touched a hidden chord deep inside her.

It wasn't that she was especially good at empathizing.

It was that her experiences and Yuan Su's were, at their core, no different.

She understood that feeling all too well: the more wretched your circumstances, the straighter you had to hold your back, the harder you had to press every humiliation into the shadows, refusing to let even the slightest pitying gaze pry into them. Because pity was a mirror that reflected not kindness, but the shame you were desperately trying to hide.

That was why she hadn't tried to persuade him.

That was why she didn't pity him.

Inside the internet café.

Yuan Su quickly fixed the last remaining software issue.

He closed the computer case, stood up, and went to collect his payment.

The blond attendant was still cracking sunflower seeds. Seeing him about to leave, he hurried to pry. "Done already, Su? Not staying to play a bit?"

Yuan Su ignored him, took the money, and stuffed it into his pocket without counting it.

"Those two cute girls just now..."

"Classmates," Yuan Su answered curtly, picking up his toolbox. "Don't bother them."

"Sure, sure. Whatever you say, Su. I'll behave."

As he stepped out of the internet café, the cool night breeze brushed his face.

Yuan Su looked in the direction Pu Yu and Xu Suiran had gone.

Their figures had already disappeared from the end of the street.

At this hour, some stretches of road in town had no working streetlights, and there really were some shady people hanging around the internet café.

He frowned, then turned and followed them anyway.

Only after he saw Pu Yu and Xu Suiran each safely enter her home.

Did Yuan Su stop, standing for a while in the shadows at the mouth of an alley.

Then he turned and headed toward the north side of town.

The town clinic was there.

Its facilities were basic, but for him, it was the only place where he could afford to keep his mother hospitalized.

At night, only the light in the duty room remained on.

The corridor was thick with the smell of disinfectant.

Yuan Su went up to the second floor and stopped outside the ward at the far end.

He didn't go straight in. First, he peered through the glass window in the door, then knocked tentatively.

"Who is it?" came a gentle but somewhat unfocused female voice from inside.

"Mom, it's me," Yuan Su said softly.

"Su?"

His tense shoulders relaxed a little.

He pushed the door open and went inside.

On the hospital bed, a thin, middle-aged woman sat propped against the headboard, staring blankly at an old photograph in her hand.

When she saw Yuan Su enter, her eyes brightened, and a loving smile spread across her face:

"Su? What brings you here so late?"

I'm lucky today.

She recognizes me.

"I just finished working, so I came to see you." Yuan Su walked over, closed the window with practiced ease, and pulled an apple from his pocket. "How are you feeling today?"

"Pretty well. I just keep getting sleepy." Lu Zhen looked at him tenderly. "Don't work too hard. You're still growing."

Yuan Su sat beside the bed and peeled the apple for her.

"I'm not tired."

As he lowered his head to peel it, the folded registration form in his pocket accidentally slipped halfway out because of the way he was sitting.

"What's this?"

Yuan Su's hands paused. He was just about to pick it up and throw it away.

But his mother had already drawn it out of his hand.

It was the form bearing the school's letterhead and the words "Physics Competition."

She unfolded the paper and studied it under the yellowish light, a proud gleam gradually appearing in her eyes.

"Physics Competition... the National High School Physics Competition?"

She looked up at Yuan Su in delighted surprise. "You're entering the competition, Su? I knew it. Our Su is the best! You're sure to win a big prize!"

Yuan Su's hands went still.

He lowered his eyes, avoiding his mother's expectant gaze. "...I'm not going."

The air instantly froze.

"Not going?"

Her smile stiffened. Her gentle eyes suddenly filled with panic, even a faint tremor.

"Why not? You love physics so much. Your dad used to buy you so many books... why aren't you going?"

Her voice began to shake, and she grew agitated. "Is it because of money? Did they come looking for you again? Don't give them any money, Su. We're not giving them any! I've paid it all back!!!"

"Mom, no. No one came looking for me..." Yuan Su hurriedly set down the apple and took her hand to soothe her.

Lu Zhen trembled uncontrollably, tears spilling from her eyes. "Then why aren't you going? Is it because I'm sick and holding you back? Our Su always used to come first..."

Her emotions were on the verge of collapsing again.

Yuan Su closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, only an exhausted calm remained.

He leaned forward and gripped his mother's trembling hand firmly again, saying each word with deliberate clarity:

"I'll go."

"I'll enter."

Lu Zhen's sobbing stopped abruptly.

She raised her head and looked at her son through tear-blurred eyes. "Really?"

"Really." Yuan Su took the registration form from her and waved it in front of her. "The form's right here. I'll hand it in tomorrow."

She stared at him for a few seconds, then finally smiled through her tears.

"That's good. That's good..."

Like a child who had been given candy, she held the registration form and smiled happily.

Outside the window, the moonlight was cold and clear.

It fell soundlessly across Yuan Su's silent profile.

He knew he would never fill out that registration form.

That shining dream of physics, once his, had seeped into soil reeking of motor oil and rot two years ago.

It would never bloom again.