Chapter 1

Chapter 1

On the street next to Sui City High School, every Friday afternoon is the busiest time for foot traffic.

Especially at the corner internet cafe called "Blue Spider," which always attracts the troublemaking students from nearby high schools to gather here, either to play games or to sneak around with their dates.

But today, the atmosphere felt different.

Everyone in the cafe was subtly paying attention to a corner.

A group of seven or eight delinquents, sitting or standing, occupied that spot, and the person they had cornered seemed to have been lying against the wall for quite some time.

"Bro Rui, what if something really happened?" asked a skinny boy, nudging the wall with his foot.

The boy called Bro Rui, playing a phone game, glanced over irritably, "What could happen from just one hit? I didn't put a brick in my backpack. This kid might be sick himself; he's so scrawny."

Another chimed in, "Should we call it off today? He's still Yang family's biological son."

"So what if he's the biological son? Does the Yang family lack sons?" The other boy laughed as if hearing a joke, putting away his phone, "This guy thinks he can compare everything with Yang Shule just because he's the Yang family's biological son. He even dresses like him. His Mandarin is terrible, yet he doesn't realize it. He's arrogant and aloof, and I heard he was top of his class in his old high school. A country bumpkin raised in the countryside is indeed different—quite inspiring. You should learn from him!"

"What should we learn? Learn how to be an outcast? Learn to mimic others, or learn to treat ignorance as personality?"

"Hahahaha..."

The boys burst into laughter again.

When Chen Mo regained consciousness, his head throbbed painfully.

The cacophony of voices around him sounded muffled, as if through a fog.

He only vaguely caught some words: Yang Shule, mix-up, school.

He thought he must be dead and likely heading to hell, otherwise why would he be reliving memories from high school?

Many years ago, Li Yunru, Yang Shule's biological mother, worked in the city and gave birth unexpectedly. Due to her poor health and a gambling husband who frequently abused her, she decided to give the child to someone else to raise.

However, instead of giving him away, she chose to swap.

She secretly brought Chen Mo back to a poor village called Yuhuai Village, three hundred kilometers east of Sui City. Because Chen Mo bore no resemblance to her husband Chen Jianli from birth, Chen Jianli suspected she had cheated on him.

The beatings intensified, and the insults and curses never ceased.

Chen Mo's childhood memories were mostly of dark and gloomy sheds.

Feeding livestock endlessly, a perpetually empty stomach, the searing pain of Chen Jianli's cigarette burns on his feet, the weight of punches and kicks all over his body, and the occasional warmth when Li Yunru shielded him, though it was minimal.

Later, he began to fight back.

From being completely passive to occasionally making the other side suffer, until the year he could truly fight back against Chen Jianli, Chen Mo hadn't even finished his first year of high school. Chen Jianli cursed him as a lunatic while also fearing him, while Li Yunru frequently took long bus rides to the city, staying for three to five days before returning. Whenever Chen Mo asked, she always dodged the questions.

The truth came not too late.

It had been just over two months since Chen Mo turned seventeen.

That day, there was a torrential downpour.

Li Yunru knelt on the muddy road, tugging at Chen Mo's sleeve and pleading with him: "It's me, everything is because of me, it has nothing to do with that child. Chen Mo, please, for your mother's sake, don't resent him."

Chen Mo was enveloped in a profound confusion. He heard himself ask, "What about me? What am I?"

The Yang family sued Li Yunru.

Chen Mo's new life, as described by others in the village, was like ascending to the heavens in one step.

This ascent to the heavens referred to the fact that the Yang family was a well-known wealthy merchant family in Sui City. It wasn't entirely wrong; Chen Mo started wearing various brands of clothes and shoes he didn't recognize, being chauffeured around, and having his daily life meticulously managed by servants.

However, no one taught him how to reconcile with such a significant class difference.

No one told him that the pain of adapting to a prestigious school could be even more excruciating than physical pain. The servants deliberately replicated Yang Shule's standards for his food, clothing, and living arrangements under the pretense of treating them equally, but in reality, it was mockery and humiliation. Even more so, the blood relatives he once longed for repeatedly showed their favoritism.

His desolate world became overrun with weeds.

Occasionally, he would ask, why?

Why was it that despite being the one left outside for seventeen years, everyone cared more about the other person? So he truly exerted all his efforts to compete and fight.

Throughout this process, every real incident, every echoing voice, felt like fire burning oil.

— "Chen Mo, can you get along with Shule properly?"

— "In the future, Shule will inevitably face gossip at school. When talking to outsiders, make sure you say it was a mix-up, not a switch."

— "Yang Shule has always excelled academically and won numerous awards in competitions. He didn't even accuse you of cheating and covered for you! What about you?"

— "Years have passed, and you still can't accept him, Chen Mo?"

— "Start at the grassroots level in the company for three years."

— "With your aggressive and unscrupulous behavior, do you really think the Yang family will let you hold power?"

— "In my mind, I've always had only one brother, and it can never be you."

— "How could the Yang family have a son like you? Get out!"

— "Chen Mo, Chen Mo..."

Those countless days and nights of relentless studying, striving to appear effortless, turned into a complete farce.

Years later, Yang Shule firmly established himself in the Yang family, holding half the equity of the newly appointed president without condition, treated as if he were the biological second son of the Yang family.

Chen Mo is different.

After failing the college entrance exam, he worked in a company for many years, climbing from the bottom to the top, fighting fiercely with his elder brother. In the end, he suffered a crushing defeat. He fell out with his parents, lost all support, and was eventually killed by the Yang family's enemies in an abandoned building on the outskirts of town.

The last thing he saw was a gray concrete ceiling above him, mirroring the bleakness of his life.

Do you regret it?

No.

The only regret was realizing at death that he had lived his entire life with all his might.

Parents' approval, others' opinions, societal norms.

All for these.

The person he truly wronged was probably himself.

*

"Hey, he's awake!"

As someone kicked his shoulder, his senses gradually returned. Chen Mo heard someone say, "Get up, stop pretending to be dead! Who do you think you're scaring?"

There were various rustling sounds around him.

Someone in the distance asked, "What happened?"

Another replied disdainfully, "Bullying, I guess. This Chen Mo is going to get messed up by Li Rui and his gang."

"Isn't his family rich? They should treat him like a treasure after finding him."

"So what if they're rich? The richer the family, the more complicated it gets, and the more you have to learn to please others."

"I heard Li Rui called him several times, but he ignored them. He's weird, completely different from the one who was mistakenly taken away. No wonder they picked on him."

"Come on, when did the one starting trouble ever have a reason?"

Chen Mo began to cough.

The coughing started slowly but grew more intense, as if trying to expel his lungs.

He propped himself up against the wall, looking around to see his surroundings and the school uniform he was wearing, along with the hand resting on the ground, its veins clearly visible.

Everything felt too real.

Real enough that it took him several minutes to accept that he wasn't dreaming.

"Don't tell me you have some contagious disease?" The leader, a boy with a buzz cut and a fierce look, frowned at him as if he were a virus.

Chen Mo recognized him immediately: Li Rui.

He remembered so quickly not because he was familiar, but because most of the bullying he faced after transferring to Suicheng No.1 Middle School was led by this Li Rui.

The school bully of Suicheng No.1 Middle School, the only son of the Huiguan Real Estate Li family.

Back then, having sand poured into his water bottle and finding dead cockroaches in his clothes were minor incidents. Chen Mo had been locked in the equipment room overnight and beaten up by ten people, ending up in the hospital. His family believed he caused trouble at school.

Chen Mo held grudges.

Later, he retaliated without hesitation.

In the year Huiguan Real Estate went bankrupt, the arrogant boy in front of him came groveling to him under the guise of an old classmate.

By then, Chen Mo had risen to the position of vice president of the Yang Group.

He fought fiercely with his elder brother, Yang Zhi, over company shares.

Wearing the most expensive suits, he negotiated billion-dollar deals in fluent English, moving between negotiation tables and social events. But deep down, he knew he was rotten.

Power and money were the only things he clung to.

Everyone knew that the son the Yang family found back was a mad dog.

Now, suddenly back at seventeen.

The group he once found hard to handle now seemed like mere fleas and ants.

"I'm asking you!" Li Rui stepped forward, ready to kick him again.

Halfway through the motion, Chen Mo blocked it.

The man who had just been coughing violently pushed himself up slowly.

Chen Mo's hair covered his eyebrows, and his face, flushed from coughing, slowly regained a pale hue. He brushed off the dust on his school uniform, looked up, and said calmly, "No. I had problems with my immune system due to low-quality milk powder as a child. My respiratory system and stomach are weak. Is that clear enough?"

The usually noisy internet cafe was strangely quiet.

Only the young man's slightly hoarse voice echoed, each word clear enough for everyone to hear.

Under such circumstances, Li Rui's face darkened visibly.

He stepped forward, grabbed Chen Mo by the collar, and pushed him against a nearby computer desk, gritting his teeth, "Still acting tough at a time like this? Do you know why we're picking on you today?"

"I do." Chen Mo looked directly into his eyes, "You like Yang Shule, don't you?"

Chen Mo spoke softly, as if seeing the crumbling facade in the other's eyes. He pulled back his collar and continued, "You like him but can't bring yourself to pursue him, so you target me to gain his attention and favor. Li Rui... classmate, it's quite pitiful that even someone like you falls for unrequited love."

"You're asking for it!"

Everyone watched as the two faced off, unsure what was said before the sudden confrontation.

Li Rui, tall and burly, was about to land a punch on Chen Mo. But that slender-looking person swiftly grabbed a mechanical keyboard from the table beside him and slammed it down on Li Rui's head with a loud thud.

The sound was deafening, the action swift.

Before Li Rui's gang could even close in, Chen Mo had already wrapped his arm around Li Rui's neck, ignoring the black-red blood trickling down from his hairline. He whispered near Li Rui's ear, "You know how the word 'homosexual' would make you a laughingstock at school, right? Want me to tell your buddies here that your father is actually a fraud who married for convenience and has kept multiple male mistresses outside? You hate homosexuals, but you're just a coward who can't admit he likes men, aren't you?"

Li Rui's face turned red from being strangled.

The school bully instantly resembled a turkey with its throat squeezed, his voice trembling slightly as he asked, "How did you know?"

"Your family, the Yangs, is well-known. Is this gossip about your family really news?"

"What do you want?"

With such a quick reversal of positions, Chen Mo didn't bother to prolong the confrontation. He released Li Rui and looked around calmly, saying, "Take your... lackeys and get lost."

Due to having the upper hand through foresight, he felt no sense of achievement.

Chen Mo bent down to pick up his backpack, ignoring the still-stunned Li Rui and his group, and walked toward the front desk.

He didn't leave but instead knocked on the desk with one hand, "Rent a computer for three hours."

"Sure, sure."

The young woman at the front desk glanced at him.

Her only thought was: rumors are indeed unreliable.

Though the boy was slim and slight, he wasn't short. The blue-and-white school uniform jacket, now somewhat dirty from the scuffle, hung over his shoulders without any of the usual dullness. His features were handsome, and his casual demeanor exuded a carefree confidence that overshadowed all signs of disarray, except for a hint of paleness that made one feel concerned.

While she 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 in total?"

"It's... forty-eight yuan and fifty cents."

The person before her searched his pockets thoroughly, finally pulling out a black wallet from his pants pocket. Seeing the thick stack of red bills inside, he raised an eyebrow meaninglessly, then took out one bill and handed it over, "Keep the change."

The girl blushed at his natural gesture, hesitating, "That's not quite right."

Chen Mo looked up and asked, "What food do you have here?"

"Oh, we have instant noodles," the front desk replied immediately, "Sichuan pepper, spicy, or sour cabbage and mushroom?"

"Nothing else?"

"Uh... no."

At that moment, Li Rui and his gang emerged from inside.

As they passed the front desk, Li Rui deliberately bumped into Chen Mo's shoulder, pointing at him and gritting his teeth, "Chen Mo. I'll remember you. Just wait."

The glass door opened and closed again, and the group quickly vanished. The front desk girl looked at him worriedly, "Shouldn't you tell a teacher? Those guys are used to being arrogant; they might cause more trouble."

Chen Mo picked up the cigarettes and lighter, smiling, "It's fine."

The girl couldn't say anything else and asked, "Do you still want the noodles?"

"No need." He turned and walked toward the back of the internet cafe, leaving behind the words, "I'm trying to live healthily, so no junk food."

The girl watched as he tore open the cigarette box packaging while walking, casually stuffing the wrapper into his pocket and skillfully tapping out a cigarette. She couldn't help but doubt:

Is he really trying to live healthily?