Chapter 83

"Before I can remember, I think I was raised by my grandparents. After that, I started living at my aunt's house. My dad would occasionally stay at her house and come to see me... He didn't really take care of me. I lived at my aunt's house for two or three years. When I was six, I finally met my mom. She took me home, and then I started living with my parents. My mom... she was very good to me, but she probably didn't talk much."

Zhou Yilian ignored her and often left early and returned late, sometimes for more than ten hours at a time. The neighbor's child even said that it was as if she had no mother at all.

But she didn't care; she and the other woman were like strangers.

As for Jian Zihua, after hearing He Ying say a few words, he initially felt sorry for him and thought it was a pity.

Later, He Ying said more, but it was always the same few sentences.

Your mom is very rich, but she doesn't give you any money.

Your mother is always out all day long, going to the city for who knows what, and she doesn't care about the family at all.

A woman who doesn't stay home to take care of her husband and children, who knows what she's up to outside all day.

Look at the state of your home! Your dad worked so hard to start his business, and your mom doesn't appreciate it at all. They argue every day, and the neighbors are laughing at you.

Luckily, you're going to get married when you grow up, so I don't need to prepare anything for you, otherwise your dad would be worried to death.

Jian Sheng pursed her lips and continued, "When she was seven, after she came back, I would see her pulling her cart out to sell breakfast before dawn every morning. At noon, after school, she would throw her lunchbox on the table at the school gate and push her cart full of knitting yarn out again. In the afternoon, after school, I would pass by the small market and see her cutting hair for someone... When I woke up at night, half asleep, I would see her hurriedly coming back from outside carrying art supplies..."

Then came Jian Zihua's foul language, and then Zhou Yilian was locked out of the room.

However, she only sat by the door and dozed off for one night, then continued the next day.

This continued for a whole month without a single break.

The only day they were at peace was the day Zhou Yilian gave Jian Zihua money.

“She’s very busy, so I don’t get to talk to her much. The whole family depends on her to support them, so she can’t handle everything in detail.”

But it seems like none of it concerns her. In the past, I don't know why she was indifferent when she saw how busy she was.

Only when she swung the stick at her would she utter a cruel word, a word she would always regret: she said she deserved it.

This was her only emotion, yet it has become a thorn in her side.

“Oh, and my dad…” Jian Sheng paused, “I don’t like him.”

She stated definitively, "He treats my mother badly. He claims his business failed, but actually he lost money gambling, so my mother has been supporting him through all his jobs..."

“He’s a useless person and he looks down on my mom’s job.”

He said Zhou Yilian was undignified, that her nightly painting lessons were for rich people... Of course, Zhou Yilian didn't say anything and let him say whatever he wanted, and later the rumors spread everywhere.

Everyone was speaking up for Jian Zihua.

Whenever anyone is unhappy, they always take it out on Zhou Yilian.

So Zhou Yilian would vent her frustrations on her, and when she was beaten until she was covered in bruises, she would just coldly hand her tissues and tidy up the room that Zhou Yilian had messed up.

Jian Sheng thought Jian Zihua was a scoundrel, but she just watched coldly. Her emotions seemed to disappear completely with each passing moment of anticipation.

For a year, Zhou Yilian took her anger out on her. After she entered the second grade of elementary school, she changed her methods from hitting her with sticks to complete indifference.

The cold, indifferent Jian Sheng even wanted to hand her a stick and let her hit him.

But when Zhou Yilian returned, she simply collapsed wearily into her room, cold and numb like a robot.

The happiest person in the whole family was Jian Zihua.

“My dad loves to drink. He drinks and smokes almost every day. Every time he comes home drunk, it’s already past 1 a.m. Oh, there’s one thing I like about him. I really like it when he drinks. That way, he comes home drunk around 1 a.m. If he’s happy, he’ll just fall asleep. But I don’t like it when he’s not happy because he takes it out on my mom.”

"He always felt that all his misfortunes were because he married my mother."

"But he seems to have forgotten that when he was having a good time, he said several times that my mother was someone he begged for over 478 kilometers by long-distance bus over three years."

"He knelt in front of the marriage temple whenever he had free time and prayed for it for three whole years."

They would rather be beaten until they lost two front teeth than not beg for it.

Tsk.

It seems that Zhenxin disappeared after she came out.

In the later stages of Zhou Yilian's pregnancy, Jian Zihua took her dowry and the betrothal gifts that Ye Hua had scraped together and gambled them all away. He even lost the money he had for the premature birth. When he found out it was a girl, he lost all the money he had lost. He came back and knelt in front of Zhou Yilian, claiming that he had been scammed while trying to start a business.

Zhou Yilian cried so much that she made phone calls that very night to beg her parents, with whom she had severed ties.

They gave him 100,000 yuan so he could continue his business.

After the child was born, the bet was lost.

How was it discovered? He Ying let it slip.

Zhou Yilian didn't say anything, but took care of Jian Sheng until his full moon, leaving him with Ye Hua, and left Jeju alone. During this time, Jian Zihua disappeared for two months.

When she returned, she found that Zhou Yilian had gone back and had a fight with Ye Hua, breaking off their relationship. She was then left with He Ying's family. Later, Jian Zihua conspired with He Ying to deceive Zhou Yilian, pretending for several years, until they tricked her into coming back.

Afterwards, Zhou Yilian seemed to have accepted it, and Jian Zihua's true colors were completely exposed under her sincerity.

But he didn't care. He would just use the excuse that "I sacrificed so much to marry you, I did so many things for you."

Jian Sheng thought Jian Zihua was really lucky to have a virtuous wife who worked three or four jobs every day to support his gambling addiction.

When he couldn't get a single meal, he started cursing Zhou Yilian and her, calling them a money-losing proposition.

He pointed his clean, calloused finger at the two people lying on the ground, their clothes tattered. The gold ring on his middle finger gleamed brightly when he shouted, as if drawing a dividing line between them and him.

One new and one old.

Their clothes were tattered and torn, mended for years upon years.

Only Jian Zihua's entire body was new.

"Later, my mother died."

"He stayed home in a daze for more than a month, didn't attend my mother's funeral, didn't gamble, drink, or smoke. A month later, he even started to go to work."

Everything seemed to be getting better, and the neighbors started spreading rumors that Zhou Yilian was a jinx to her husbands.

Jian Sheng argued back a few times, but was then brainwashed by several adults.

She stopped arguing with those people because she knew Jian Zihua couldn't keep up the act for long.

Three months.

He hadn't even grasped the basics of the technique he was talking about before he couldn't keep up the act anymore, and he became irritable and rude, revealing his true colors.

He started gambling again, even using the money Zhou Yilian left behind.

Three out of the four characters are related to eating, drinking, and gambling.

He cared a lot about his image. No matter how bad things were for him, he always made sure to take care of his hairstyle and face every day. So he started looking for his next target.

However, that woman is much smarter. She didn't get any benefits from Jian Zihua, and she started taking her anger out on Jian Sheng from the beginning.

In the first semester of his third year of junior high school, a year after Zhou Yilian's death, and a month after his failed attempt to woo a rich young lady.

Jian Sheng not only had to clean up his mess, but also apologize to the people he had offended every day, and then get beaten up by him when he got home at night.

“He doesn’t like me much either, and he basically ignores me, but he will give me advice on my life... He will tell me how to clean the house and how to cook the dishes he likes, so that I won’t be criticized for not knowing how to cook when I get married.”

“Every day after school, I have to rack my brains to figure out how to avoid his nagging.”

"Haha, sometimes he gets so talkative he even cracks jokes..."

Coming to her senses, Jian Sheng blinked her reddened eyes a few times and said half-jokingly, "Doesn't it sound like a novel plot?"

“It doesn’t seem like it.” Chen Zhoujing remained silent for a long time before saying, “Reality is much crueler.”

"You've avoided how they treated you, haven't you?" he asked, frowning, his expression complicated.

"You only told me how he pursued your mother, how he treated your mother, and what he did after your mother died." Her words were filled with regret for her mother, but she seemed to be intentionally implying that she didn't care about either of them.

She clearly hated her father more.

He knew that even the most indifferent person couldn't be completely devoid of emotions.

"You must have been secretly suffering for a long time, right?" He asked, his voice strained, the dull pain in his chest making him restless.

Jian Sheng was also surprised by his words. Subconsciously, she felt that no one would care about her, and she felt that she had always been alone.

But in him, in Lin You, in Xu Xiaxia, Qi Jing, Ye Hua, and in Jian Qingyao, she seemed to see that kind of genuine sincerity that didn't require any effort.

She smiled, trying to comfort him: "Actually, I really don't care anymore, because later my grandma brought me to Jiangzhou, and that's when I met you all."

"I am so happy to have met you all. Each of you is making up for the emotions I never felt in the past."

“Especially you, Chen Zhoujing.” She took a bite of the melted piece and continued, “I used to find these things awkward, but after meeting you, I found that it’s much better to say some things out loud than to keep them inside. And I no longer dwell on or feel sad about the past.”

"It was you, it was Grandma, it was Lin You and the others who told me to move forward."

“Actually, everyone should be like this, right, Chen Zhoujing?” She looked up at him.

His increasingly gaunt face was filled with worry, and his bright black pupils had unknowingly become bloodshot.

Looking into his pained eyes, her heart skipped a beat.

Jian said in a simple voice, "It's all in the past now, I don't care anymore. You were the one who said we should step back and look at things from a different perspective, or we'll get trapped."

Chen Zhoujing was speechless for a moment, because she remembered all the nonsense he had said, but he couldn't find a way to refute it.

What she said was actually a warning to him. He seemed to understand, yet he also seemed not to, because he was also somewhat trapped in his own emotional state.

This time, he only managed to return after begging Zhou Yilian for a long time.

He's already looking for a way to get rid of her forever.

He raised his hand and pinched her hair, which was almost neck-length, a few times.

Under the old red lantern, the two shadows intertwined. Seeing that he didn't speak, Jian Sheng lowered her eyes and stepped on his shadow.

"Why are you stepping on me?" Chen Zhou was amused by her.

Jian Sheng shook his head and continued to step on the ground, and the other boy cooperated by dodging.

Once she had had her fill of playing, Chen Zhoujing stopped, and Jian Sheng bumped into his back unexpectedly.

"Is it fun?" he asked in a low voice.

She suddenly looked up, and with that familiar tone and gesture, she silently curved her lips into a smile. She glanced at the ice cream dripping from his hand and said with a smile, "It's not fun, or it'll fall on the ground."

Chen Zhou suddenly realized what was happening, took a few bites, and mumbled, "I'll listen to you."

The two walked along the old street for a long time and talked a lot, until Jian Qingyao made his tenth phone call.

Jian Sheng took out his phone, and it was already 10 p.m. Jian Sheng's brow twitched. He answered the phone and first explained, "I forgot the time. I'll be back now."

Jian Qingyao swallowed the curse he was about to utter and said calmly, "At the entrance of the old street, bring my unreliable brother-in-law along."

"What brother-in-law?" Jian Sheng had barely finished speaking when Jian Qingyao hung up the phone.

Beside him, Chen Zhoujing couldn't help but smile and, following Jian Qingyao's words, half-jokingly said, "Let's go see my mysterious brother."

“”

Jian Qingyao seemed to always know where they were without them noticing. During the few days Jian Sheng was at home, he would always appear every time she went downstairs and inexplicably tell her to come home early.

With a few days left before the results were released, Jian Qingyao took Yang Shao back home. Before leaving, he said that Qibei was too far away, and his father had rented a house for him there. He would come back less often in the future, and told him to call him when he had time.

Jian Sheng thinks there's no need for it.