PPS Chapter 97
by VolareFrom a young age, Chu Zhaoyi had long hair. Children inherently lack distinct gender characteristics, and coupled with his excessively delicate features, people would subconsciously think he was a girl upon seeing him.
Some little boys express affection by pulling little girls’ hair. Li Yurong and Chu Yu were inattentive to him from childhood, causing Chu Zhaoyi’s health to be consistently poor. He essentially lacked the strength to retaliate against these mischievous boys.
Eventually, these boys would realize that Chu Zhaoyi was a boy.
Frustration and anger transformed into violence.
The parents’ indifference allowed the violence to escalate step by step.
Chu Zhaoyi was clever from a young age, using his intelligence to avoid many incidents and even retaliate. Those children were reported to their parents, who then beat them in the office until they wailed like ghosts and wolves.
Sometimes it was for not doing homework, but actually, Chu Zhaoyi had secretly torn up the homework.
Sometimes it was for secretly gossiping about the favored little girls at home, and the next day, the little girls’ parents would find them at school.
But even so.
Without parents to back him up, Chu Zhaoyi, as those boys gradually realized something was wrong, was subjected to progressively worse behavior.
The malice of children is undefinable.
Until Chu Zhaoyi was held down in the school’s pool by a group of children, unable to breathe, a passing teacher saw him and rescued him.
The ten-year-old Chu Zhaoyi entered the emergency room for the first time, for a full two hours.
The doctor who came out of the emergency room had condemnation written all over his face, and even a stranger fiercely criticized the parents of those children.
But Chu Yu and Li Yurong did not pursue responsibility, accepting benefits from those parents and lightly glossing over the matter.
No matter how clever Chu Zhaoyi was, he was just a ten-year-old child.
After experiencing trauma, there were no warm parental embraces, only Li Yurong’s cold face in front of him.
Without psychological comfort, the pain of suffocation transformed into endless nightmares, haunting him.
Chu Zhaoyi became increasingly silent, even resisting anyone’s approach in class, including the teachers.
His body trembled uncontrollably, and his dark, empty eyes eventually led a psychologist to diagnose him with autism.
No treatment.
Left to fend for himself. Chu Yu was even happier to see this situation. Chu Zhaoyi not appearing in public meant that everything he had done would not be discovered.
So there was no treatment, no comfort. Chu Yu used this as an excuse to lock Chu Zhaoyi at home.
His condition deteriorated infinitely. He had not received formal treatment before meeting Gu Yusen.
Bored at home, Chu Zhaoyi took a pen and started to write and draw, inadvertently finding himself an amusement.
Chu Yu didn’t care what he wanted to do. Looking at Chu Zhaoyi’s paintings, his visible talent reminded him of Zhang Anru, whose family had been famous artists for generations.
Sure enough, her child was also.
Perhaps to make Chu Zhaoyi resemble Zhang Anru more, he endlessly supported Chu Zhaoyi in painting.
Even when the family was so poor that they couldn’t afford to eat, Chu Zhaoyi’s art supplies were always the most expensive.
Li Yurong’s hysterical arguments with Chu Yu in the living room filled Chu Zhaoyi’s entire childhood.
Chu Yu didn’t let Chu Zhaoyi completely drop out of school. He would go to school every so often to apply for home schooling, citing psychological illness as the reason.
He attended every midterm and final exam at school.
And just like that, he finished elementary school and junior high school.
On the eve of the high school entrance exam, he overheard some truth inadvertently revealed during an argument between Li Yurong and Chu Yu.
“You coward! You had the ability to steal Zhang Anru’s child, so why didn’t you have the ability to tell him? Watching her and Xie Tingyun love each other, you’re pissed, aren’t you! You can’t even compare to a single finger of Xie Tingyun now!”
“Li Yurong?! You agreed to the baby swap in the first place! Aren’t you a beneficiary?! Your own child is being pampered and raised in the Xie family, and now you’re blaming me here!”
“Haha, you’re not fantasizing that Chu Zhaoyi is your child with Zhang Anru, are you? Hahahaha, Chu Yu, you’re disgusting!”
Li Yurong’s words hit Chu Yu’s sore spot. A crisp slapping sound rang out. Chu Yu’s anger didn’t have time to dissipate before he saw Chu Zhaoyi standing to the side, who had come over sometime without them noticing.
Li Yurong didn’t even have time to cry out in pain, her heart filled with a sense of panic and bewilderment.
Both of them were stunned, and the distorted expressions from their argument hadn’t been put away, making them look particularly comical.
But Chu Zhaoyi didn’t react much. His empty eyes landed on them for a moment before he slowly returned to his bedroom.
Li Yurong suddenly breathed a sigh of relief.
“Good thing he’s an idiot.”
*
Chu Zhaoyi wasn’t an idiot, but Chu Yu and Li Yurong were unguarded against him. Chu Zhaoyi easily learned about Zhang Anru. He found an excuse to go out and squatted at the Xie family’s door for a whole morning.
Finally, he saw the woman in the photo in Chu Yu’s study.
He easily obtained a strand of the woman’s hair.
He sold one of his paintings. The buyer was a man named Mo Jincheng. Actually, he didn’t even think his painting could be sold, after all, he didn’t have any fame.
But he really needed money. Chu Yu and Li Yurong wouldn’t give him money. He didn’t have money to do a paternity test, so he tried to sell a painting, not expecting to meet this Mo Jincheng as soon as he set it out.
Without saying a word, he wanted to buy all the paintings he had brought.
Chu Zhaoyi didn’t need so much money. He only wanted five hundred yuan plus a listening device and a cell phone.
Mo Jincheng was silent for a moment, seemingly curious as to why this young man needed these things. Chu Zhaoyi didn’t think it was strange to ask a stranger for these things. Mo Jincheng didn’t seem to think so either. He was only silent for a moment, and an hour later, those two things were delivered to Chu Zhaoyi’s hands.
Chu Zhaoyi thought he had completed the transaction, patted his butt, and was about to leave, completely unaware of how much effort it took to get these things. If Mo Jincheng didn’t have some connections, he wouldn’t have been able to get them so quickly.
If it were anyone else, they would have been kindhearted just by not dragging Chu Zhaoyi into the police station.
Mo Jincheng was also strange. His only request was to get Chu Zhaoyi’s contact information, but after that, the two of them never contacted each other again.
The paternity test results came out relatively slowly.
The next time he found an opportunity to go out was on the day of the junior high school graduation return to school. He didn’t have much feeling for the role of mother, so when he found out that Li Yurong and Chu Yu weren’t his biological parents, he didn’t have much emotional fluctuation.
Instead, he quickly weighed the pros and cons in his mind.
When he saw the scene of Zhang Anru and Xie Haoran being a loving mother and son, he gave up on that plan.
He decided to think of another way to escape the Chu family.
And a year later, Chu Yu inadvertently saved the life of the Gu family’s patriarch. The Gu family came to the door to thank him.
Chu Zhaoyi hid in the bedroom and saw a familiar face.
It was the same as how he imagined that person would look when he grew up.
That person had a small red mole behind his right earlobe.
Chu Zhaoyi remembered.
He remembered clearly.