[Yuyu, are you okay? How did something happen as soon as you got to Jing City? Why don't you come back to City A? Mom just can't stop worrying about you being there alone.]
Sitting in the taxi, Song Yu stared at his mother's text, thought for a moment, and replied.
[No, Grandma's taking very good care of me. I was being willful this time. I'm sorry, Mom.]
No reply came for a long time. Mama Song was probably busy.
Song Yu switched the screen to a navigation map.
July in Jing City was sweltering, the cicadas screaming themselves hoarse.
After getting out of the taxi, Song Yu surveyed his surroundings and walked along in the shade.
He could see all the way to the end of the alley. Vegetable leaves lay scattered on the ground; it had probably been a market that morning. The buildings lining the street were old, their blackened walls and flaking lime plaster visible up close. Utility poles were plastered with ads offering "a fortune to father a child," and someone's spit smeared the flyers scattered on the ground. There were few vehicles along the way. Mostly, he heard women cursing at one another.
Oppressive, poor, noisy-the place where Xie Sui had grown up.
Song Yu rounded the alley and reached an ordinary main street.
He guessed Xie Sui was working now, so he walked along the roadside.
When he found Xie Sui, it was outside a small restaurant, but something seemed to have happened.
A crowd had gathered in the street.
At its center lay a toppled bicycle, potatoes and peppers scattered everywhere. Xie Sui was crouching down, silently picking up the vegetables. Beside him, a woman stood holding a child's hand, spewing curses.
"My child and I were just walking down the street when he came riding straight into us. That vicious brat did it on purpose! My child's so little-he was trying to kill him!"
"That bike nearly hit my child! Is he blind? He did it on purpose!"
"What did my family ever do to deserve running into her and her mother?"
"Just what you'd expect from a whore's son. His mother started seducing men the moment she got here, and he's no good either. A filthy, vicious bastard. God knows what that old hag thought she was doing, making a whole street sick."
Filthy words poured from the woman's mouth.
Crouched on the ground, Xie Sui's back was rigid and fragile, his black hair falling over his expression. When the woman mentioned his mother, the boy's fingers instantly clenched into fists. He looked up and roared like a cornered animal, "My mom didn't!"
His ferocity frightened the woman. She stepped back, then immediately raised her voice. "Look! Look! This bastard raised by a □□ is showing his true colors! He's hitting people! He's going to hit someone!"
Xie Sui gritted his teeth, looking as though he was about to stand.
The woman screamed even louder. "The little brat's hitting people! He's hitting people!"
The next second, a tall, burly grown man stepped out of the crowd and kicked Xie Sui in the head.
"Animal!"
At this point, Xie Sui was fifteen and thin. The kick sent him into a nearby pillar, scraping his forehead bloody.
The man planted a foot on Xie Sui's hand. "You hit someone with your bike, and now you want to beat them up?"
The onlookers began pointing and commenting.
"I felt sorry for him before, but now I think people you pity always have something hateful about them."
"If everyone hates you, shouldn't you look for the reason in yourself?"
"He'd even hurt a child that little. Xie Sui really is vicious."
"Can't that old hag send him away? He's like a jinx. Nothing good's happened here with him around."
The woman was still cursing. "He nearly killed my child and now he wants to hit me! He's hopeless! Hopeless! Someone call the police! People like him should be locked up for life instead of coming out to hurt others."
Song Yu heard every word clearly as he approached. He pushed through the crowd and saw the scene.
For Xie Sui, things like this happened countless times every day: slander, insults, beatings.
The original author had repeatedly emphasized his miserable childhood solely to shape his incredibly fragile, sensitive heart and lay the groundwork for the romance. To let Top One, Top Two, and Top Three soothe his wounds with words. What a joke. Just a few words, yet to the deeply scarred Xie Sui, they were precious enough to earn his unwavering devotion. So sick. Every person in that book was.
The grown man apparently still thought himself righteous. Looking smug, he moved to slap Xie Sui. "You've got no dad or mom, so I'll be your dad for once and teach you how to behave."
Song Yu picked up a few marbles from the ground and hurled them into his face.
One nearly went into his eye. The man shouted in fright, stepped back, and lifted his foot off Xie Sui's hand.
"Who hit me?"
Furious, he looked up and saw Song Yu, his anger choking him. "You're his classmate, aren't you, brat? I'll teach you a lesson too today!"
He rolled up his sleeves and strode over menacingly. A grown man was quite intimidating, but Song Yu never looked at him. He was making a call.
"Hello, is this 110? I want to report an incident."
"On Lianyun Street. There's a fight. A grown man's bullying a high school student. He's nearly beaten him to death. Hurry!"
The officer on the other end seemed to be asking for more details.
Song Yu shouted into the phone, "I'm that high school student! Someone's going to die! Are you going to do anything?"
Everyone: "..."
Beep.
Hanging up, Song Yu met the grown man's eyes coldly.
His move of calling the police was so outrageous that it stunned the whole crowd. The grown man froze three paces away, unable to bring down his raised fist.
Song Yu couldn't be bothered with him. He walked straight up to the mother and son and told the child, who had been hiding behind his mother, "Hold out your hand."
Like a hen protecting her chick, the woman shrieked, "What are you doing?"
Song Yu reached past her, pulled the child out, and pried open his hand. He was clutching a slingshot.
The woman's face instantly went pale.
Song Yu smiled. "Oh, not bad, kid. You're a pretty good shot with those marbles." He tilted his head toward the woman. "Ma'am, you got what you asked for. I called the police. Let's see who ends up detained."
Every onlooker fell silent. There was a clearly visible mark from a marble on Xie Sui's face, right beneath his eye. With a little less luck, he might have been blinded.
The woman looked flustered. "What's wrong with my child playing with marbles? He's only five! What does he know?"
Song Yu said, "He might not know anything, but his mother certainly does."
Frightened by Song Yu's expression and tone, the child suddenly burst into loud sobs.
His crying seemed to give the woman her confidence back instantly, and she began cursing like a shrew. "I bet you're in league with that whore's bastard! One hits us with his bike and tries to beat us up, and the other comes over to twist the truth and bully a mother and child. Of course ill-bred people stick together. A nest of snakes and rats, all the same trash!"
"You're another rotten-hearted, vile little bitch!"
Looking at her mean features, Song Yu said mildly, "Save your strength for explaining things to the police."
The woman cursed furiously. "My child's only five! He doesn't understand anything! What's he got to be afraid of? Xie Sui's just the ill-bred son of a □□ whose mother died young. He's vicious!" Now she said nothing about the bicycle hitting her.
Song Yu was so angry he laughed, still perfectly poised. "Ma'am, I'm fifteen. A minor. I don't understand anything either-what have I got to be afraid of?"
He stepped forward, a bone-deep chill showing in his dark eyes. "I'm not even afraid to kill."
This time, the woman fell utterly silent. Swallowing those vicious words, she took her child's hand and backed away. "Lunatic. Lunatic..."
Song Yu gave a dry laugh.
Sitting on the ground, Xie Sui looked up at Song Yu's handsome profile in the height of July summer, lost in thought. He had not yet had time to put on his fifteen-year-old self's frightened, sorrowful expression. Beneath his short black hair, his eyes were deep and cold, like magnificent, icy gems.
Expressionlessly, Xie Sui touched the blood on his forehead and suddenly found it all rather pointless.
Suffering these injuries just to make that family's lives worse than death.
...What a bad bargain.
Before long, a fashionably dressed man and woman emerged from the mall across the street. The man had a bulging belly, and the woman had a mean face. Clicking along in high heels, she was cursing Jing City's wretched weather. The moment she reached the car, her expression changed dramatically. She stared at the spiderweb cracks smashed into the window of the car that had cost tens of millions and screamed.
On this side of the street, Song Yu had scared the woman into no longer daring to curse loudly, leaving her muttering insults behind his back. She wasn't afraid at all. She had her reasons for turning a blind eye while her son shot marbles at Xie Sui as he rode his bike. Her son was only five, so little. What was there to fear?
Song Yu went over to help Xie Sui up. "Are you okay?"
Xie Sui lowered his eyes and stared at his hand for a long time. Then, concealing the contemplation and suspicion in his eyes, he said weakly, "Thank you."
Song Yu truly felt sorry for the protagonist now. He sighed. "You'll have to go to the hospital this time, right?" Xie Sui's injury really did look gruesome. His forehead was bruised all over, blood flowing without stopping.
As Song Yu bent toward him, there was a very faint fragrance.
In truth, this injury was nothing to Xie Sui. As a child, he had wielded a knife and risked his life for street thugs for a little money. Bleeding and getting hurt had become routine. Later, after becoming Young Master Xie of City A, he had encountered those disgusting incidents-kidnappings, assassination attempts. He had fired guns and jumped into the sea. This little injury really was nothing by comparison.
He didn't care inwardly, but put on an expression of enduring pain.
Xie Sui nodded.
His pale, silent appearance made Song Yu's heart ache terribly again.
The sound of a police car came from the end of the street.
Just as all the onlookers turned toward the police.
A woman stormed across from the opposite side of the street and viciously slapped the woman holding the child's hand.
Smack.
The woman looked stunned. She was good at making scenes and cursing, but no one had ever laid hands on her outright before.
The blow left her dazed.
The woman who had crossed the street yanked up the child's hand and looked at the slingshot, furious beyond measure! She raised her hand and slapped the child too.
"So it was you, you little bastard!"
"Waaaah!" The child cried even louder.
The mother's eyes reddened too, and she panicked. "What are you doing, you bitch-ah!"
Smack!
Another slap.
The luxury car's owner was herself a fierce woman. How could she tolerate being called a bitch? She unleashed a torrent of abuse. "Why don't you ask what your moron of a son did? He damaged my car! Tens of millions! Can you afford that, you hick?"
Tens of millions. This time, the woman truly felt plunged into an ice cellar. When her son had been shooting marbles at Xie Sui earlier, Xie Sui had been crossing the road. She hadn't paid any attention to whether they had hit a nearby car.
Regret and anxiety overwhelmed her. She could only force herself to mumble, "Our child's only five... He doesn't know any better..."
The luxury car's owner took an angry step forward, only for her high heel to land on a marble. She fell straight to the ground, face-first.
Her mood was utterly foul, and her already irritable, domineering temper reached its peak.
Several officers got out of the police car. They were still looking for the high school student who was "nearly beaten to death."
Then they heard a woman roar, "The police are here? Perfect! This isn't over! Blame that ill-bred little brat of yours! What a fucking idiot! Doesn't know any better? I don't know any better either!"