Every Friday afternoon, the street next to Sui City No. 1 High School was always packed with people.
In particular, the black internet café on the street corner, named Blue Spider, was a popular gathering place for delinquent students from several nearby middle and high schools. Some came to play games, while others secretly arranged dates with their partners.
Today, however, the atmosphere was somewhat different.
Everyone in the internet café was deliberately or unintentionally paying attention to a corner.
Seven or eight delinquent boys were sitting or standing around, occupying that entire area. The person trapped in the innermost part of the group seemed to have been leaning against the wall for quite some time.
“Brother Rui, surely nothing serious happened, right?” asked a skinny boy who looked like a monkey, resting one foot against the wall.
The boy called Brother Rui was playing a mobile game. He glanced at him and snapped impatiently, “What could possibly happen from one little hit? It’s not like I had a brick in my backpack. That kid is so skinny he might have some health problem of his own.”
Someone else said, “Why don’t we just call it a day? He’s still the Yang family’s biological son, after all.”
“So what if he’s their biological son? Is the Yang family short of sons?” The other boy seemed to find the question ridiculous. He put away his phone and continued, “That guy keeps acting like he’s something special just because he’s the Yang family’s biological son. He insists on competing with Yang Shule in everything, even wearing the same clothes as him. His Mandarin sounds like a piece of ragged cloth, but he doesn’t even realize it. He’s arrogant and antisocial. I heard he was even the top student at his previous high school. A country bumpkin raised in the countryside really is different, huh? Quite the inspirational story. You guys should learn from him whenever you have the chance! Got it?”
Someone chimed in, “Learn what? How to be antisocial? How to imitate someone else? Or how to mistake ignorance for individuality?”
“Hahahahahaha…”
The group of boys burst into another round of unrestrained laughter.
When Chen Mo regained consciousness, his head throbbed painfully.
The various noises around him sounded as though they were separated from him by a layer of fog, making them difficult to hear clearly.
He only managed to catch a few words here and there, such as Yang Shule, switched at birth, and school.
He thought he must have died for good, and was probably going to hell. Otherwise, why would he be reliving memories from his high school days?
Many years ago, Yang Shule’s biological mother, Li Yunru, had gone into labor unexpectedly while working in the city. Because she was in poor health, and her husband was a habitual gambler who frequently abused her, she had entertained the idea of giving her child to someone else to raise.
However, in the end, she didn’t choose to give the child away.
She chose to switch him instead.
She secretly took Chen Mo back to Yuhuai Village, a poor mountain village three hundred kilometers east of Sui City. Since Chen Mo had not inherited even the slightest resemblance to her husband, Chen Jianli, from birth, Chen Jianli suspected that she had been unfaithful.
The beatings became increasingly vicious, accompanied by endless, ear-piercing insults and curses.
Most of Chen Mo’s childhood memories consisted of a dark, lightless woodshed.
There were livestock that never seemed to finish eating, and a stomach that was never full. He remembered the excruciating pain of Chen Jianli pressing cigarette butts against the top of his feet, the weight of fists and kicks landing on every part of his body, and the tiny, pitiful warmth he occasionally felt when Li Yunru shielded him against her chest.
Later, he began to fight back.
He went from being completely helpless and taking beatings passively, to occasionally making the other person suffer in return. By the year he finally became capable of fighting Chen Jianli on equal terms, Chen Mo hadn’t even finished his first year of high school.
Chen Jianli called him a lunatic while gradually becoming afraid of him. Meanwhile, Li Yunru began frequently taking long-distance buses to the city. She would stay for three to five days before returning. Whenever Chen Mo asked her about it, she would always avoid the question and act evasively.
The truth didn’t come too late.
It was less than two months after Chen Mo had turned seventeen.
That day, a torrential rain was pouring down.
Li Yunru knelt on the muddy dirt road, clutching Chen Mo’s sleeve as she begged him.
“It’s all because of me. Everything happened because of me. That child has absolutely nothing to do with any of this. Chen Mo, please, just consider it your mother’s plea. Don’t blame him.”
Chen Mo was enveloped by an overwhelming sense of confusion.
He heard himself ask, “Then what about me? What am I supposed to be?”
The Yang family filed a lawsuit against Li Yunru.
As for Chen Mo’s future, in the words of the other villagers, he was about to ascend to the heavens in a single leap.
The phrase “make a meteoric rise” here refers to the Yang family being a well-known wealthy family in Sui City. In that sense, it wasn’t entirely inaccurate. Chen Mo began wearing all kinds of designer clothes and shoes whose brands he didn’t even recognize. Wherever he went, a car would pick him up and drop him off, and the servants meticulously took care of every aspect of his daily life.
However, no one had ever taught him how to reconcile himself with such a vast difference in social class.
No one had told him that what hurt far more deeply than physical pain was the difficulty of adapting to life at an elite high school. It was the deliberate way the household servants copied Yang Shule’s standards of food, clothing, accommodation, and transportation for him, claiming they were treating both boys equally when, in reality, they were mocking and deliberately making things difficult for him. And, most painful of all, it was the repeated favoritism shown by the very blood relatives whose affection he had once looked forward to receiving.
Weeds grew wildly in his desolate world.
Sometimes, he would ask, “Why?”
Why was he the one who had been abandoned for seventeen years, yet everyone cared about someone else? So he had truly fought with all his might to compete, seize, and snatch what he believed should have been his.
Throughout that process, every word spoken and every voice that had once echoed so clearly in his ears had been like oil poured onto a blazing fire.
—Chen Mo, can’t you just get along with Shule?
—Shule will inevitably face gossip at school from now on. Make sure you don’t say the wrong thing when talking to outsiders. You were switched at birth, not deliberately exchanged.
—Yang Shule has always been an outstanding student, with countless trophies from various competitions. Even when it came to the cheating incident, he didn’t accuse you. He even helped smooth things over for you! What about you?
—It’s been years! Years! Chen Mo, are you still so unwilling to tolerate him?
—When you join the company, you’ll start at the grassroots level and work there for three years.
—You’re so competitive and willing to resort to any means necessary. Do you really think the Yang family will let you take control?
—In my understanding, I, Yang Zhi, have had only one younger brother from beginning to end. That person could never be you.
—How could the Yang family have a son like you? Get out!
—Chen Mo, Chen Mo…
Those years of studying day and night, of exhausting himself just to make everything look effortless, had become nothing but a complete joke.
Years later, Yang Shule had firmly established himself in the Yang family. He was the Yang family’s second young master, the one who had been given half the shares of the Yang Group unconditionally by its newly appointed president. He wasn’t related to them by blood, but he was closer than a biological son.
Chen Mo was different.
He had failed the college entrance examination. After working in the company for many years, he had climbed from the lowest position to senior management, fighting his biological elder brother, Yang Zhi, in a battle to the death. In the end, he still suffered a crushing defeat. He turned against his parents, was abandoned by everyone, and eventually became the victim of revenge by one of the Yang Group’s business rivals. He died a tragic death at the foot of an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city.
The last thing he saw was nothing more than a patch of dull gray concrete ceiling overhead, blocking out the sky—just like the entire backdrop of his life.
Did he regret it?
No.
The only thing he regretted was realizing, only when he was about to die, that he had spent his entire life exhausting himself to the very limit.
His parents’ approval, other people’s opinions, and the meaning imposed on him by society.
For all these things…
The only person he had probably truly wronged was himself.
\*
“Hey, he’s awake!”
It was only when someone kicked his shoulder again that his five senses gradually returned completely. Chen Mo heard someone above him shout, “Get up! Stop pretending to be dead! Who are you trying to scare?!”
All around him, there was a jumble of rustling and shuffling noises.
Somewhere in the distance, someone seemed to ask curiously, “What’s going on?”
Someone else replied dismissively, “Just bullying someone. Chen Mo’s probably going to get seriously messed up by Li Rui and his gang.”
“Isn’t his family pretty rich? Didn’t they just find him? Shouldn’t they be treating him like a treasure?”
“So what if they’re rich? The wealthier the family, the more complicated things get. And the more complicated things are, the more you have to learn how to make people like you.”
“I heard Li Rui and the others have called him over several times, but he always ignores them. He’s got a weird personality. Compared to that other guy who was switched at birth, the difference is like night and day. No wonder these people have made him their target.”
“Come on, since when does being the one who picks on someone first make you right?”
Chen Mo began coughing.
The coughs started slowly before becoming increasingly violent, as though he were about to cough his lungs right out of his chest.
He braced one hand against the ground, raised his upper body, and leaned his head against the wall. He took in his surroundings, then looked down at his school uniform and at the back of his hand, which rested on the ground with its bones and tendons clearly visible.
Everything was far too real.
So real that it took him several whole minutes to accept that he wasn’t dreaming.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got some contagious disease or something?” The boy leading the group had a buzz cut with shaved sides and a particularly menacing appearance. He frowned at Chen Mo as though looking at a virus.
Chen Mo recognized him at a glance.
Li Rui.
He remembered him so quickly not because they had been particularly close, but because after transferring to Sui City No. 1 High School, most of the bullying he experienced had been instigated by this very Li Rui.
The school bully of Sui City No. 1 High School, and the only son of the Li family, owners of Huiyuan Real Estate.
Back then, having sand poured into his water bottle or finding dead cockroaches stuffed into his clothes had been minor incidents. Chen Mo had once been locked in the equipment room overnight by this group. On another occasion, after fighting back against ten people, he had been beaten so badly that he ended up in the hospital. His family, meanwhile, had simply assumed he was causing trouble at school.
Chen Mo was quite a vindictive person.
Later, he had indeed taken revenge, regardless of the cost.
The year Huiyuan Real Estate went bankrupt, the arrogant and overbearing boy standing before him had come to him on the pretext of being an old classmate. By then, he had even humbled himself to beg Chen Mo for help.
At that time, Chen Mo had already risen to the position of vice president of the Yang Group.
He was locked in a bitter struggle with his elder brother, Yang Zhi, over the company’s shares.
He wore the most expensive suits, negotiated billion-yuan deals with clients in the most fluent English, and moved between countless negotiation tables and business gatherings. Yet whenever midnight came and he awoke from his dreams, he knew he had long since rotted away inside.
Power and money were the only two things he still clung to tightly.
Back then, everyone knew that the biological son the Yang family had brought home years ago was nothing more than a rabid dog.
Now, having suddenly returned to the age of seventeen, the very people he had once found so difficult to deal with seemed no more significant than fleas and ants.
“Hey! I’m talking to you!” Li Rui stepped forward, preparing to kick him again.
Before his foot could reach him, Chen Mo blocked it.
The person who, just a moment ago, had been coughing as though his lungs were tearing apart braced his palm against the ground and slowly stood up.
Chen Mo’s hair hung over his eyebrows. His face, which had turned red from the violent coughing, gradually regained its color, leaving behind an abnormal pallor. He brushed the dust off the hem of his school uniform, raised his eyes to look at them, and slowly said:
“No. Eating inferior baby formula when I was little damaged my immune system. I’ve had problems with both my respiratory tract and digestive system ever since. Was that clear enough for you?”
The internet café, which should have been noisy and bustling, was now unusually quiet.
Only the slightly hoarse voice of a teenage boy could be heard. Every word was spoken clearly enough for everyone present to hear.
In an environment like this, Li Rui’s expression visibly darkened.
He took two steps forward, grabbed Chen Mo by the collar, and shoved him against the nearest computer desk. Gritting his teeth, he said, “You’re still acting so damn arrogant at a time like this. Do you even know why we’re giving you trouble today?”
“I do.” Chen Mo looked straight into his eyes. “You like Yang Shule, don’t you?”
Chen Mo spoke softly. As he said those words, he could practically see the look in the other boy’s eyes, as though the foundations of a towering building were about to crumble.
Taking advantage of the moment, Chen Mo pulled his collar free and continued, “You like him, but you don’t dare pursue him, so you take it out on me instead, hoping to win a little of his attention and affection. Li Rui… classmate, I didn’t expect someone like you to be into secret crushes too. That’s pretty pathetic.”
“You’re fucking asking for death!”
Everyone watched as the two suddenly started fighting, without even knowing what had been said between them.
Li Rui was tall and heavily built. Just as his fist was about to land on Chen Mo, the boy who looked rather thin and frail suddenly grabbed the mechanical keyboard lying on the desk beside him and swung it down onto Li Rui’s head.
BANG!
The sound was loud, and the movement was swift and decisive.
Before Li Rui’s companions could rush forward, Chen Mo had already wrapped an arm around Li Rui’s neck from behind. Ignoring the dark red blood trickling through his hair, he leaned close to Li Rui’s ear and whispered, “You know those words ‘homosexual’ and ‘gay’ would make it impossible for you to hold your head up at school, right? How about I also tell all your buddies here that your dear father is actually a phoenix man who deceived a woman into marrying him, and that he has three or five male lovers on the side, if not a dozen? You hate homosexuals, but aren’t you just a coward who doesn’t dare admit that you’re attracted to men yourself?”
Li Rui’s face turned red from being choked.
The school bully of No. 1 High School suddenly looked like a turkey caught by the throat. Even his voice carried an almost imperceptible tremor as he asked, “How do you know that?”
“The Yang family has such a huge business empire. Is a little gossip about your family really anything new?”
“Then what do you want?”
With the tables turned so quickly, Chen Mo couldn’t be bothered to drag things out. He released Li Rui, looked around, and said calmly, “Take your bunch of… lackeys and get lost.”
Because he had the advantage of knowing what would happen in advance, being in a position of power brought him no sense of accomplishment whatsoever.
Chen Mo bent down to pick up his schoolbag. Ignoring Li Rui and the others, who were still standing there in a daze, he walked straight toward the counter.
He didn’t leave, however. Instead, he knocked on the countertop with one hand.
“Give me a computer. Three hours.”
“O-Okay.”
The girl at the front desk was young. She secretly sized him up.
There was only one thought in her mind: The rumors really couldn’t be trusted.
The boy was thin and slender, but he wasn’t short. His blue-and-white school uniform jacket hung over his shoulder, having become somewhat dirty and disheveled during the earlier scuffle. Yet he somehow lacked the stiff, awkward appearance usually associated with school uniforms.
His features were attractive, and the casual confidence he unconsciously displayed through his every movement was enough to overshadow all his disheveledness. Only the faint pallor on his face remained, making her feel a little concerned for him.
While the girl was busy at the counter, he casually picked up a pack of ordinary Yuxi cigarettes and a lighter from the nearby shelf.
Placing them on the glass counter, he asked, “How much altogether?”
“Altogether, that’s… forty-eight yuan and fifty cents.”
The person before her searched all his pockets. Eventually, he pulled a black wallet out of his trousers. When he opened it and saw the thick stack of red banknotes inside, he raised an eyebrow for no particular reason. Then he took out one bill and handed it over.
“Keep the change.”
Seeing how effortlessly he did it, the girl inexplicably felt her cheeks grow warm. Holding the money, she hesitated.
“That doesn’t seem right…”
Chen Mo looked up. He had no choice but to ask again, “Then what food do you have here?”
“Oh, oh! We have instant noodles.” The girl immediately replied, “Pickled chili, spicy, or pickled cabbage and mushroom?”
“Nothing else?”
“Uh… no.”
Just then, Li Rui and his group happened to come out from the back.
As they passed the counter, Li Rui deliberately slammed his shoulder into Chen Mo’s. Pointing a finger at him, he gritted his teeth and said, “Chen Mo. I’ve remembered you. Just you wait!”
The glass door opened and closed, and the group quickly disappeared from sight.
The girl at the counter looked at Chen Mo worriedly. “Why don’t you tell one of your teachers at school? Those people are used to throwing their weight around. I’m afraid they’ll come after you again.”
Chen Mo picked up the cigarettes and lighter and smiled. “It’s fine.”
The girl couldn’t say anything more, so she could only ask, “Then do you still want the instant noodles?”
“No need.” He turned and headed toward the back of the internet café, leaving behind one final remark.
“I’m taking care of my health lately. I don’t eat processed food.”
The girl watched his retreating figure as he walked while tearing open the cigarette packaging. She saw him casually stuff the wrapper into his trouser pocket and expertly tap a cigarette out of the pack.
She couldn’t help but wonder.
Was this really what taking care of one’s health was supposed to look like?