Chapter 4

Chengshi first heard Huang Ruoyu tell her about her background on a sweltering summer night.

At that time, Cheng Shi shared a small three-bedroom apartment in Shucun with two other classmates. Therefore, he had to beg Huang Ruoyu every time before she would condescend to stay and "cheat" with him. However, it was after one of these "cheats" that Cheng Shi heard about Huang Ruoyu's background for the first time. He simply couldn't believe that the once-famous Huang Lizhen was the mother of the girl in his arms, and that the notorious playboy Pan Zhenwu was actually her father!

At that moment, Chengshi felt that Huang Ruoyu might have some paranoia, or what acting students often call "getting into character"—who knows what skit she's rehearsing for now. Not long after, she showed him the evidence—the next time they "had an affair" in their shared apartment, Huang Ruoyu brought a cookie tin containing photos of herself at different ages, most of which featured Huang Lizhen. One framed, slightly yellowed photo seemed to be Huang Ruoyu's prized possession; it showed Huang Lizhen and Pan Zhenwu. They were embracing intimately, their faces beaming with sweet smiles, like the leads in an idol drama. The box also contained a Huang Lizhen ring, a brooch, and a thin gold chain. The chain didn't look particularly valuable, but Huang Ruoyu proudly told Chengshi, "My dad gave this to me."

"Why aren't there any photos of your maternal grandma? Didn't you grow up with her? You were very close to her, weren't you?"

Chengshi looked through Huang Ruoyu's photos and couldn't help but admit that she did look very much like Huang Lizhen, and that Pan Zhenwu's features could also be seen in Huang Ruoyu. However, there was no trace of her maternal grandmother in any of Huang Ruoyu's photos, which Chengshi found quite strange.

Upon hearing Cheng Shi's words, Huang Ruoyu pursed her lips and said, "My maternal grandmother? You mean my maternal grandmother? She hates my mother and she hates me, and I've always hated her too."

"How could you 'always hate her'?" Cheng Shi frowned, looking puzzled, and analyzed with the attitude of discussing an academic issue. "Maybe you hated her when you were little, for example, if she was too strict with you or something. But now that you're grown up, when you think back, you should still love her, right? You grew up relying on your maternal grandmother. You should have felt love, security, and other things from her, right? By the way, aren't you going back to see her this summer?"

"No, I finally got into Beijing and I'm never going back. Ha, I've never felt love from her? I've only felt hatred from her, hatred you can't even imagine. Actually, the only happy thing for me when I was little was when my mom came back to Shanghai to see me. My mom and my dad are the people I truly love. As for my grandma, she hates me so much, how could I love her? In her heart, my mom and I are both her enemies—she hates that my mom didn't leave her a single penny, and she hates that my mom left me with her."

As he spoke, Huang Ruoyu made a face at Cheng Shi.

“My mother didn’t leave a single penny when she died. She used it all to pay off her boyfriend’s gambling debts, and it still wasn’t enough.”

Cheng Shi was deeply engrossed in the psychological theories he understood, and he didn't want to discuss Huang Ruoyu's mother's boyfriend with her, otherwise it would go on and on. So he continued to ask, "But your parents rarely visited you. Under those circumstances, you shouldn't have had a particularly strong feeling of regarding them as your parents, because you didn't understand them at all, and you only met your father once. How could you love them?"

"I just love them." Huang Ruoyu muttered as she put the photos and trinkets that she had shown Chengshi on the bed back into the cookie box one by one.

Looking at Huang Ruoyu in front of him, Cheng Shi suddenly felt a pang of sadness, but he couldn't tell whether it was because he was saddened by her unfortunate childhood or jealous of her dramatic background and experiences.

After a long silence, Huang Ruoyu finally packed her things, then lay down next to Chengshi, her eyes shining like a little girl's as she said, "I just love them. I love their clothes, I love the way they talk, I love my dad's house, and I love listening to my mom tell me about her life. She's had many boyfriends, and she loved each one of them wholeheartedly, so much, just like she loved my dad. But they..."

Besides holding her in his arms, Cheng Shi didn't know what else he could do. He pitied her for having so little and silently made a promise in his heart: he would love her well and make it up to her in the future.

However, this promise, which was never spoken, was soon erased by Narumi, because his childhood was not wealthy, so he did not understand what love was as he claimed.

“I think the doctors at the mental hospital will find a lot of fun in me,” Cheng Shi once told Huang Ruoyu. “The things between me and my dad are enough to write a textbook on mental illness, not to mention the things between me and my mom and my brother. Let me put it this way, three out of the four members of my family suffer from paranoia.”

"Push harder! Where did all that strength go when you were nursing? You were so strong when you were nursing!" This was Cheng Shi's deepest memory of his father, Cheng Xinhua. Cheng Xinhua would make Cheng Shi pry open his tightly clenched fists, but Cheng Shi was small and weak at the time, and even with all his strength, he couldn't pry open the old worker's fists, which were as hard as steel. And whenever this happened, Cheng Xinhua would mercilessly mock his youngest son, always ending with, "How did the Cheng family produce such a coward! Look at your brother, that's the real Cheng family son!"

Another memory Cheng Shi had of Cheng Xinhua was his set of woodworking tools. For a time, probably when Cheng Shi was five or six years old, he suddenly developed a great interest in his father's woodworking tools. However, every time he got even slightly close to them, Cheng Xinhua would yell at him: "Get away from me! You'll break them again!" "You little brat! Get out of my way!" "If you dare touch that, I'll beat you to death!"

Even now, after Chengshi's parents have passed away, whenever Chengshi sees or smells yellow sawdust and its odor, he feels a deep sense of humiliation and then unconsciously wants to bite his fingers.

Chengshi was born in Shenyang to parents who were factory workers with secure jobs in a state-owned factory. Whether it was a case of "when people are well-fed and clothed, they think of sex," or perhaps the couple wanted a sweet little girl in their old age, Chengshi was "unexpectedly" born when his brother, Chengguo, was 12. Chengshi's parents were already exhausted middle-aged. Having finally raised a boy, they didn't experience the joy of young parents welcoming a child; instead, they were burdened with a mountain of problems. It's understandable that Chengshi's parents were unhappy, because along with his birth came not only huge fines for having more children than allowed, but also disciplinary action from his workplace, and the massive wave of layoffs sweeping across Northeast China.

Frankly speaking, the wave of layoffs had no direct connection to Chengshi's birth. His parents were laid off when he was five or six years old, but Cheng Xinhua seemed to blame all the misfortune on Chengshi. When Chengshi was six, Chengshi was 18 and had just graduated from technical school. Logically, Chengshi should have been able to take over Cheng Xinhua's job in a factory, becoming the eldest son of the Cheng family, earning a wage, and then getting married and settling down in a few years. However, with the wave of layoffs and factory closures, Chengshi became unemployed immediately after graduation. Three of the four members of the Cheng family, who were able-bodied, were left helplessly starving and idle, while Chengshi, unable to work, kept demanding food, drink, and money for his schooling. It was infuriating!

If life isn't going well, just drink and beat your kids.

From then on, Cheng Shi lived a life of being beaten every three days and beaten every five days. Moreover, when Cheng Xinhua beat Cheng Shi, Cheng's mother Wang Xiuhua and brother Cheng Guo were not allowed to stop him, otherwise Cheng Shi would be beaten even more severely.

Perhaps fate didn't want Cheng Guo to be beaten to death by his own father. Almost two years after Cheng Xinhua was laid off, he was taken to Dalian by a former coworker to try his luck at the docks. He didn't make it to the docks, but he did come across Haosikai products. Cheng Xinhua, who had been trying to make money as a carpenter in Dalian but couldn't get any business, made a desperate decision: he sold his treasured set of woodworking tools and then went home to invest all his savings in Haosikai products, as if he were gambling with his life.

Unexpectedly, there is always a way out. Not only did the business open this time, but Cheng Xinhua also became the sales champion in Northeast China when Cheng Shi was 9 years old. Then, when Cheng Shi was 10 years old, he once again became the sales champion in Northeast China!

With his business thriving, Cheng Jiehua returned to Shenyang and opened a Haoskai direct-sale store. That year, Cheng Xinhua was also invited to Beijing, the capital, to attend a three-day, two-night Haoskai dealer commendation conference, and the company promised that he could bring one family member with him.