PPS Chapter 100
by VolareThe Xie family left, and Gu Yusen also had to go out, so he saw them off together. Chu Zhaoyi, however, hugged his water cup and burrowed into the painting studio, seemingly unaffected by the farce.
When Gu Yusen returned in the evening, Chu Zhaoyi triumphantly presented his afternoon’s work.
Two paintings.
They were sequels to the painting Chu Zhaoyi had created at the competition.
In the competition painting, a butterfly landed on a rose, its wings entangled in a spiderweb, unable to break free. The painting conveyed endless pain and struggle.
Today’s first painting showed a little boy holding the rose. The butterfly still rested on the rose petals, but the spiderweb entangling it had been carefully untangled, its wings fluttering gently.
The second painting depicted the rose placed on a windowsill in a bedroom, thriving under the sunlight, bathed in warmth. The butterfly’s wounds had healed, and it flew around the flowerpot in mid-air. Even through the painting, one could feel the little butterfly’s joy.
“Pretty, Brother Sanmu?” Chu Zhaoyi was very confident in his paintings. It was a question, but he looked like he was waiting for praise.
“Very pretty, little butterfly.”
Chu Zhaoyi could always get unwavering praise from Gu Yusen.
And a strange nickname.
Gu Yusen praised him first, then carefully examined the paintings. He froze when he saw the one with the little boy.
The little boy in the painting was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt that he often wore as a child. There was a red rose pattern on the sleeve. He remembered it clearly because he always felt that the shirt didn’t match his masculine temperament, but he couldn’t resist his mother and had to wear it.
He rubbed his eyes in disbelief and stared at the painting again, confirming that he wasn’t mistaken. The little boy was indeed him as a child. But the problem was, he and Chu Zhaoyi had never crossed paths in their previous lives. How could Chu Zhaoyi paint him as a child?
“This little boy…”
“Brother Sanmu is so silly. Don’t you remember what you looked like before?” Chu Zhaoyi shook the painting in his hand with a smile.
Brother Sanmu has a terrible memory.
He had known it for a long time.
Otherwise, why wouldn’t he remember to look for him on the slide in the park?
He waited so long.
But thankfully, he came to find Brother Sanmu himself!
Gu Yusen had always known that Chu Zhaoyi might have met him a long time ago. Otherwise, with his wariness and defensiveness towards strangers, how could he have obediently followed him home the first time they met?
“A-Yi, can you tell me when we met?” Gu Yusen had asked Chu Zhaoyi this question before.
The answer he got was simply, “Guess.”
Gu Yusen had investigated for a long time, but he still hadn’t found out.
“Brother Sanmu can’t cheat. You have to think for yourself.” Chu Zhaoyi took the painting away, unhappy, and expressed his dissatisfaction with Gu Yusen’s obvious cheating behavior.
He had to remember it himself.
Gu Yusen couldn’t get the answer from the examiner, so he decided to take a different approach and called his mother directly.
He in the painting was obviously in his early teens and still in elementary school. Children grow up quickly, and he definitely wouldn’t be able to wear that half-sleeved shirt for long.
Gu Yusen told his mother about the shirt. He didn’t think his mother would remember such a small thing, but unexpectedly, his mother had a big reaction.
“Isn’t that the shirt you wore when you were twelve? That year, you were running around like crazy every day. One day, you came back with a terrible fever, wearing that shirt.”
“During that time, I thought you had a little girlfriend, picking roses and running out every day.”
“That fever was so bad that you stayed in the hospital for more than a week. When you woke up, you became like you are now, thinking everyone is ugly.”
“Oh, right, and you had a strange obsession with roses. Wasn’t that garden at home what you insisted on planting? You went to the gardener late at night and asked him for rose seeds. You didn’t care about it later; the family’s gardener took care of it.”
Gu Yusen had no memory of this at all. He only remembered that he was very healthy as a child, but he had a severe illness and was rushed to the emergency room several times. When he woke up, some memories gradually faded.
“Didn’t Dad plant that garden for you?” He didn’t remember the garden at all. In his memory, his mother liked roses, and his father planted them to make her happy.
“No, I think red roses are a bit tacky. You planted that garden yourself when you were a child, but the flowers have a short blooming period. Over the years, they’ve been replaced many times.”
“It’s just that the first batch was planted by you without sleeping a wink all night.”
Twelve-year-old Gu Yusen planted a rose garden for A-Yi.