When Li Jinyu scrolled to this Moments post, he had already returned to the hospital room. The words “baby” were particularly eye-catching and made him uncomfortable. Yang Tianwei, not knowing any better, even left a comment below, “I want to be big sister’s baby.”
Ye Meng quickly replied: “Get in line.”
His temples throbbed faintly, and the nerves at the back of his head seemed about to jump out. Each pulse connected to his spinal nerves, causing pain that left him unable to catch his breath. He didn’t dare breathe too deeply and could only gently, very gently, try to calm himself down.
He knew this emotion too well. Li Lingbai had been right about one thing: since childhood, he had an extremely strong possessiveness over his belongings. He wanted to hold everything in his hands, not allowing anyone else to touch them. When he was little, his father asked if he wanted a little brother. Li Siyang happily clapped his hands and said yes, but he remained silent with a cold face. His father asked if he was unwilling. He said yes.
Li Lingbai immediately smashed a bowl, her face ashen. But he couldn’t bring himself to tell his mother to have another son. Because he knew that with another brother, he would completely become the invisible person in this family.
From then on, Li Lingbai despised him even more.
Li Lingbai said she had sensed it early on—from the first time he grabbed his brother’s toys, she knew he wasn’t an ordinary child.
Li Jinyu felt wronged at the time. It was his brother who took his toys first.
He was naturally more intelligent than ordinary children, with exceptional memory, and particularly sensitive to numbers. He could immediately memorize anything after hearing it once. He used to be the family’s human phone book—any phone number that passed through his ears would remain in his mind forever. And in his brain, it seemed like there was a huge storage repository for memories. At least, that’s what he thought as a child. Anyway, he never forgot things.
Because of this, the gap between him and ordinary children became more apparent.
Li Lingbai wasn’t happy about this. She even thought he was like those abnormal prodigies from movies, possibly with a fully sinful adult living inside him. In short, she never saw it as a blessing.
He had once been a spirited youth with dreams of slaying dragons. Now only ruins remained. In his bleak world, everything was desolate. His ideals and passion had been extinguished through repeated cycles. No one can stand alone in the vast sea.
So, he only planned to stay in his sinful underground lair, shed his rebellious nature, and wait for the last small flame in his heart to die out.
The hospital room was dim, curtains tightly drawn. Time moved slowly—he could hear each minute, each second passing.
The old lady was already asleep. Li Jinyu kept watch by the bedside. He leaned against the wall, his hands heavy as if filled with lead, holding his phone, dangling powerlessly between his spread legs. Eyes closed, head tilted back in a lazy posture, he could feel his throbbing heartbeat, coming in waves.
Due to chronic insomnia in recent years, he suffered from sinus arrhythmia—sometimes fast, sometimes slow. People with this condition tend to be emotionally unstable and irritable. Like now, he constantly wanted to smash something to relieve his tension.
He rolled his Adam’s apple, gradually suppressing the violent impulses churning inside him. He lowered his head, raised his phone, deleted Ye Meng’s WeChat, and changed his profile picture back to the original pitch-black one.
Li Jinyu got up and went to the bathroom. He splashed a handful of water on his face. His wet hair roots clung messily to his face, looking sexy yet youthfully fresh, like a clean, untouched young poplar tree.
He was truly a textbook handsome man with cool pale skin. The blue veins on his wrists stood out prominently, much more noticeable than on ordinary people. But no matter how slovenly or well-dressed he was, he looked essentially the same—just a particularly good-looking but lazy young poplar tree.
Water trickled down his clear, cold Adam’s apple, slowly disappearing into his collar, dampening his chest. Finally, Li Jinyu simply pulled off his sweater, standing bare-chested, half-leaning against the sink counter as he lit a cigarette.
He inhaled and exhaled clouds of smoke to relieve his emotions. Yet his heart still felt like an inflating balloon, constantly expanding and stretching his chest cavity. The emotions he had barely managed to suppress in the stairwell earlier now crawled over his heart like dense ivy, squeezing it tight so that every movement brought pain. Then someone took a blade, cutting away those unhealthy parts piece by piece, mercilessly.
It was as if he had been born deformed, destined to be corrected by everyone.
He looked at himself in the mirror with a sneer.
Li Jinyu, what are you struggling for? Your pride and self-respect have already been trampled. What do you have left? Did you believe Ye Meng when she said she would build an empire for you?
What are you hoping for?
Are you hoping Li Lingbai will kneel and beg forgiveness for years of family violence against you?
Or do you hope to return to the WMC (World Memory Championship) arena?
Forget it, you’re past that age, and your memory isn’t what it used to be. Haven’t you noticed? Your memory palace is gone. Besides, excessive mental development leads to premature decline. You won’t be able to rely on your looks to get by in the future.
Back then, he had silently given up the competition, handing that year’s championship to Korea. It wasn’t until three years later that Gou Kai reclaimed it.
In the end, his teacher-student relationship was ruined, and his teammates despised him.
Others thought he couldn’t bear the pressure of public criticism and had dropped out to commit suicide.
He actually didn’t care, but his teacher’s words—”Jinyu, you are both my greatest pride and the student I find hardest to mention to others”—still prevent him from holding his head high.
Li Jinyu finished his cigarette and put on his clothes while walking out of the hospital room bathroom. The old lady was sleeping soundly with no sign of waking. He went over to tuck her blanket when suddenly he heard a “ding ding” sound. The old lady’s phone in the drawer suddenly rang twice in succession.
Li Jinyu stood by the bed, opened the drawer, and made sure the sound hadn’t woken the old lady before glancing at the phone.
The old lady still used a yellow-screen Nokia without internet capabilities, only able to receive text messages and calls. On the screen was a familiar yet strange number. The old lady hadn’t saved it as a contact, but he recognized it immediately as Li Lingbai’s number.
[Mom, can you ask Li Jinyu to come to Beijing?]
[He’s blocked me, and I have an urgent matter that requires his help.]
…
After that, Li Jinyu disappeared for many days. He didn’t go to the hospital, having hired a caregiver to look after the old lady. He also stopped singing at the bar, as if he had vanished into thin air.
On New Year’s Eve, when Ye Meng was attending a classmate reunion in the afternoon, she received a call from an unknown number from Beijing. Since returning from Beijing, she had been constantly receiving what seemed like telemarketing calls trying to sell housing or funds. She dismissed it as nothing important and hung up.
During the gathering, drinks flowed freely, and old classmates enthusiastically toasted each other, putting on airs and teasing one another. Laughter and joy filled the air. Yet Ye Meng became increasingly uneasy. She had a gut feeling that this call was somehow related to Li Jinyu. She sat among her especially excited old classmates with a mind full of doubts, absent-mindedly dealing with their banter while deeply pondering the phone call.
“Does Ye Meng have a boyfriend? Why didn’t you bring him?” someone teased, having seen her Moments posts from a few days ago.
“It means she hasn’t had enough fun yet, right, sis? You’re already in your thirties, time to settle down.” The speaker was a male classmate with a round face and a short, stout build, resembling a walking meatball. Taking advantage of being the youngest in the class, he called everyone “sis” regardless of appropriateness, and his mouth lacked a filter.
Ye Meng had always been allergic to this meatball. When she rejected him back then, her words were a bit harsh. She hadn’t expected him to hold a grudge for so long and to take a jab at her age. She was only twenty-nine this year. Unfazed, she took a sip of her drink, smiled, and leaned back in her chair, doubling down on her poisonous tongue: “Ma Bu, if my boyfriend were someone like you, I’d probably never get enough playtime.”
Ma Bu’s face turned the color of pig liver as if someone had dipped him in soy sauce. Method Yan covered her mouth and laughed, probably thinking along the same lines. She was about to add a jab about how a toad shouldn’t dream of eating swan meat. Unexpectedly, someone suddenly brought up Jiang Luzhi, although she wasn’t present today.
“I heard Jiang Luzhi married a man from Beijing?”
The conversation box was opened, and everyone began to discuss enthusiastically.
“Wasn’t she dating a guy from our town before? What was his name? I can’t remember.”
“Li Jinyu,” someone reminded.
“Right, he sings at that bar. Handsome. My girlfriends and I went specially to see him. I even added his WeChat. Feels like a player.”