65 Chapter 65

Let's go to the aquarium!

The aquarium is located near the city center. It has been built for many years and is considered a landmark building, as well as a childhood memory for many children in the city. I remember that when I was a child, my parents took me to the aquarium more often than to the park downstairs. We renewed our annual passes year after year until I went to junior high school and then I didn't like going as much.

The aquarium opened at 10 a.m., so the two of them went to a pet supply store and bought a whole bunch of dog cages, dog food, and dog toys. By the time they arrived at the aquarium, it was already opening time. The mist had dissipated, the sun was rising, and the area outside the aquarium was bathed in a bright morning light. The area is always bustling on weekends, with tourists with children coming and going. The plaza is full of stalls piled high with souvenirs, and layers of balloons depicting marine animals float gently in the air.

The two got out of the car. Shi Ziqian stood in the square, shielded his eyes with one hand, and glanced at the balloons floating in the sunlight in the distance.

Zhan Xinyue looked at him and asked, "Do you want a balloon?"

"Do you want a balloon—"

Unexpectedly, the two spoke at the same time.

Just then, a child in a walker wobbled past them on his short legs, a large jellyfish-shaped balloon tied to his waist flashing by.

Zhan Xinyue smiled and said, "Okay, I'll take one."

The two found a balloon stall nearby. Zhan Xinyue looked up at it for a long time and said, "I want a dolphin."

The stall owner quickly hooked a dolphin balloon down and handed it to her. Zhan Xinyue pulled on the string, and the chubby dolphin balloon sank down before slowly flying back up.

She hadn't bought these children's toys for many years. She smiled and said, "I loved these balloons when I was little, but I was too small to hold them properly. They would often fly away without my noticing, and I would stand there and cry for a long time until my parents bought me a new one."

She turned to look at Shi Ziqian and joked, "If the balloon flies away today, I'll cry too."

Shi Ziqian stood in front of her, looking down at her. Upon hearing her words, he reached out to take the balloon string from her hand. She thought Shi Ziqian was afraid she would really let go of the balloon and was going to take it from her to hold it himself. Unexpectedly, he reached out his other hand and grasped her wrist through her sleeve.

Zhan Xinyue was slightly taken aback when Shi Ziqian had already lifted her wrist and carefully tied the rope around it with his eyes down.

“That way it won’t fly away,” Shi Ziqian said.

She was still in a daze when she turned her wrist and laughed, "Won't this make me seem childish? I'm a high school student, after all."

"No, I won't." Shi Ziqian turned around, took an identical dolphin balloon from the stall owner, paid for it, and wrapped the balloon string around his wrist. "I'll go with you."

He had difficulty tying the rope with one hand, so Zhan Xinyue watched his movements for a while before extending her hand: "Let me do it."

Zhan Xinyue tied the knot for him, and when they reached the ticket window, the ticket seller pushed out two dark blue tickets for the two stops. Just as Zhan Xinyue was about to take out her wallet, Shi Ziqian had already taken out two bills and pushed them in. Zhan Xinyue glanced at his black wallet and saw that he already had two identical tickets tucked inside, but the time printed in the upper right corner was much older.

She glanced at it twice, then looked away: "Why are you always the one paying? I brought my wallet."

Shi Ziqian said, "I'll pay first this time, and you can pay next time."

Zhan Xinyue nodded, thinking that they would have lunch together at noon.

Upon entering the aquarium, the lights dimmed, giving the feeling of stepping into another wondrous world. The two arrived at the "underwater tunnel," a space seemingly embraced by azure waters. Light filtered through the seawater and then through the transparent glass, creating a shimmering blue ambiance.

Most of the people walking past me were parents with children, and there were also affectionate couples walking side by side, creating a strange sense of ambiguity.

Zhan Xinyue felt a little uncomfortable, but Shi Ziqian was watching the manta rays swim by through the glass. The ripples in the water reflected on his face, casting a hazy blue halo. He tightened the string on the dolphin balloon in his hand, and the chubby dolphin floated above his head.

"So the underwater tunnel really is like a tunnel underwater," he said thoughtfully.

Zhan Xinyue laughed at his words: "So you really haven't come even once."

Shi Ziqian nodded: "No one brought me here when I was a child, and I haven't found any reason to come here deliberately when I grew up."

Zhan Xinyue said, "So what did you play when you were little?" She recalled the speculations that people in her class would occasionally make about him, "Kids from families like yours, shouldn't they have played with more interesting things on a daily basis?"

Shi Ziqian shook his head.

Zhan Xinyue asked curiously, "Or will you be strictly disciplined and have to take all sorts of private lessons from a young age?"

Shi Ziqian said, "No, I was just raised in a free-range manner." He turned around and said, "I lived with my maternal grandmother in my hometown until I was seven or eight years old, and then I was brought back to go to school."

Zhan Xinyue gave an "Oh," vaguely recalling that Shi Ziqian had mentioned something like this before. She was curious but too embarrassed to ask about other people's family backgrounds. Shi Ziqian, however, seemed to sense her hesitation and suddenly said, "Would you like to hear about me?"

His words came so suddenly that Zhan Xinyue didn't have time to think before instinctively asking, "Is it okay?"

“Okay,” Shi Ziqian said. “Actually, it’s nothing much, just like what everyone says. My parents divorced when I was two or three years old. My mother got custody of me, but she didn’t really take care of me and left me with my maternal grandmother. After my maternal grandfather passed away, my maternal grandmother stubbornly lived alone in the old house in the countryside and refused to move out, so I lived there with her. Later, until the second or third grade of elementary school, I went to elementary school in town.”

He spoke calmly, as if he were talking about someone else's story: "When I was seven or eight years old, my mother went abroad. That same year, my father won his lawsuit and regained custody of me, bringing me back to study. However, by then he had been remarried for a long time and already had two children. After living like this for a while, he divorced again and remarried. This time, his wife was my mother's younger sister, and they had twins, a boy and a girl, so now I have four half-siblings."

Zhan Xinyue stared at him, her mouth slightly open, but she didn't say anything.

Shi Ziqian stared at the expression on her face and lowered his voice: "Are you surprised? Our family is indeed quite complicated, isn't it?"

Zhan Xinyue shook her head and said, "No, it's just that I feel you've had a tough time these past few years."

She was indeed a little surprised. She had heard some things about Shi Ziqian's family, but she didn't expect that Shi Yuesheng's extremely young third wife, whom Xin Wenhua had mentioned, was actually the younger sister of his first wife. So, wasn't she Shi Ziqian's aunt?

Shi Ziqian may have grown up in luxury, but he actually has a past like this.

I remember when Xin Wenhua and Xie Wanzhi were discussing Shi Ziqian's excellence in everything, Xin Wenhua scoffed, saying it was all just because his family was rich; with a mountain of resources, what couldn't he achieve? There were also rumors in the grade that Shi Ziqian's exceptional English was because he grew up abroad. Because of these flimsy rumors, everyone naturally assumed his top ranking in the grade was easy. But looking at it this way, Shi Ziqian must have put in considerable effort to get to where he is today.

After hearing her reply, Shi Ziqian fell silent. In fact, there were still many things he hadn't told her. For example, the long childhood he spent in the countryside with his elderly grandmother was one of the few peaceful times in his life, although his grandmother was deeply affected by his grandfather's death and spent most of her time sitting silently in the yard, lost in thought. He would squat alone by the yard, watching grasshoppers play, and over time, it seemed that even his language skills had deteriorated.

When he was in second or third grade, by the time Shi Yuesheng took him home, there was no longer a place for him in the family. Shi Yuesheng, his stepmother, and his two younger siblings were the real family, while he was like an intruder who had broken into someone else's home.

He still remembers the day he returned home. Shi Qile stood on the top of the stairs, leading a large dog, looking down at him and loudly asking his stepmother, "Mom, it's so late! Why isn't this older brother home yet? Why is he still staying in our house?" That same year, he transferred from the town's primary school to the best primary school in the city. While everyone else could already read English dialogues fluently from their textbooks, he was only just beginning to encounter the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Whether at home or at school, he always felt so out of place.

He had once secretly slipped back to his grandmother's house; that small courtyard far from the city was the only home he could remember. But soon his grandmother called Shi Yuesheng herself and asked him to take him back. His grandmother said, "Xiao Qian, you need to go back to your studies. Don't waste your time here with this old woman." He had no choice but to leave again and return to that place that didn't belong to him.

That same year, Zhu Qing came to visit. She was Zhu Sheng's younger sister, his aunt. At that time, Zhu Qing was studying at a university in the city. After Zhu Sheng went abroad, she said she couldn't bear to leave her sister's only child and often came to visit him.

Zhu Qing looks a lot like Zhu Sheng, but their personalities are completely different. Zhu Sheng is proud, willful, and straightforward, while Zhu Qing is gentle and reserved. Back then, he was always alone at home. After Zhu Qing came, he had someone to keep him company. She remembered his preferences, taught him English and piano, and told him again and again: "Although your mother isn't here, your aunt will be with you."

It took him a long time to accept this new relative, and it was the first time in his life he had tried to trust anyone other than his grandmother. Unfortunately, his stepmother disliked Zhu Qing intensely, repeatedly telling Shi Yuesheng that she had ulterior motives and forbidding her from coming to their home again. He, usually quiet and reserved at home, spoke up for the first time, saying that Zhu Qing was his aunt and also his friend, and that he had invited her.

His stepmother was actually a very well-mannered person. She didn't particularly like him, but she hadn't done anything too outrageous to him either. She frowned and glanced at him, but in the end, she didn't say anything more, which could be considered a compromise.

Not long after, Zhu Qing, with her resemblance to Zhu Sheng, got involved with Shi Yuesheng, her own brother-in-law. Only then did he finally realize that all her talk about caring for her sister's child was a lie; Zhu Qing's target from the beginning was never him, but Shi Yuesheng.

He still remembered that day. Zhu Qing, who had always been gentle and soft-spoken in front of him, seemed like a different person. She stood in front of her stepmother and loudly announced, "I'm pregnant with Shi Yue's child!" Her stepmother slapped her in disbelief. Although she was so angry that she could barely stand, she still politely refrained from saying anything too offensive. Zhu Qing, however, looked up at her with an arrogant expression and continued to provoke her, word by word, "I went to the hospital for a checkup. It's twins, a boy and a girl."

The stepmother filed for divorce that very day. Shi Qile and Shi Qiyue were both very young at the time, not much older than Zhu Sheng and Shi Yuesheng when they divorced. They stood by and cried their hearts out.

When his stepmother left, she took Shi Qile with her but left Shi Qiyue behind. Shi Yuesheng paid a heavy price for his infidelity. His stepmother's family background was not simple, and since he was the one at fault, the property division lawsuit alone took one or two years after the divorce. Shi Yuesheng was busy dealing with it and for a long time he was unable to take care of his two children at home.

He was always quiet, aloof, and a loner, which was fine, but in my memory, Shi Qiyue was originally a very lively and cheerful little girl who would often whine and act spoiled towards her stepmother at home, making her stepmother laugh uncontrollably. But she completely changed after that.

Originally, he was the only unhappy person in this family, but now, he has ruined everything.

For many years afterward, he didn't know how to face Shi Qiyue.