the truth
Chen Zihan closed the weighty investigative report. It was already late outside the window. The cold glass reflected his furrowed brow and flickering eyes. The weight of the truth was beyond his imagination—it wasn't just about bullying and manipulation on campus, but also about the heavy chains entangled in the grudges of their parents, the lives lost, and the enormous debt.
He alternated between Cheng Xiaorui's pale face and Lu Ziyi's unfathomable eyes. Anger, heartache, and a complex feeling of finally having something to hold against him surged within him. He could no longer tolerate Lu Ziyi's continued portrayal as a "savior" by Cheng Xiaorui's side. He couldn't bear the thought of Cheng Xiaorui suffering the pain of losing his mother while being kept in the dark and entangled with the son of his enemy, the indirect cause of his family's tragedy.
"I have to tell him... No, I can't tell Xiaorui directly." Chen Zihan paced the room, muttering to himself. Cheng Xiaorui couldn't bear such a truth in his current condition. His mother's life was hanging by a thread, and he himself was suffering from anxiety. If he knew more about this... he couldn't imagine the consequences.
Then, there is only one option left - to go directly to Lu Ziyi.
He wanted to tear off the hypocritical mask in person, make him admit it in person, and make him stay away from Cheng Xiaorui's life. He wanted to completely rescue Cheng Xiaorui from this tragedy that was led by the Lu family and lasted for two generations.
Once the thought took hold, it spread like wildfire. He almost immediately grabbed his car keys and the photocopied investigative materials and rushed out the door. The cold night wind blew against his burning face, but it couldn't extinguish the fire in his heart that demanded justice for Cheng Xiaorui.
As the car sped toward the villa, Chen Zihan's knuckles turned white from gripping the steering wheel. He imagined Lu Yi's embarrassment when his identity was exposed. He thought he held the truth, about to win a crucial battle for Cheng Xiaorui.
Little did he know that he was carrying a bomb whose complex structure he didn't fully understand, rushing towards another secret warehouse that was also full of fuses. What he thought was the end was actually just the beginning of a bigger storm.
Chen Zihan, filled with anger and a thick stack of investigative materials, rushed straight into Lu Ziyi's study. At that time, Lu Ziyi was sitting at his desk processing documents. Hearing the noise, he only raised his eyes slightly.
"Lu Ziyi!" Chen Zihan slammed the file bag in his hand onto the polished table with a dull thud. "How long are you going to keep pretending?"
Lu Ziyi put down the pen in his hand, frowned slightly, and his face was full of genuine confusion: "What are you crazy about?"
"Am I crazy?" Chen Zihan laughed in anger. He walked around the desk, grabbed Lu Ziyi's collar, and slapped him hard in the face before the other party could react.
The crisp sound of slapping was particularly harsh in the quiet study.
Lu Ziyi tilted his head, and fingerprints quickly appeared on his fair face. He slowly turned back, his eyes no longer blank, but darkened with a cold look. "You'd better give me an explanation."
"Explain? Fine, I'll explain!" Chen Zihan let go of him and pointed at the scattered pile of documents, his voice trembling with anger. "Lu Xubai! Lu Yu! The gambling debts, the jumping off the building, the destruction of the family! You dare to say you don't remember? You dare to say you approached Cheng Xiaorui not because your Lu family owed them something, and not because you, a bastard, wanted to use this method of controlling him to atone for your father's sins?!"
He roared out the "truths" he had uncovered, one by one, each word laced with a resolute determination to seek justice for Cheng Xiaorui. He stared intently at Lu Ziyi, trying to detect the panic or shame on his face at having his disguise exposed.
However, Lu Zi just listened quietly, and the initial coldness gradually turned into an extremely complex emotion, which contained surprise, understanding, and even... a hint of absurd smile.
When Chen Zihan finished speaking and stared at him breathlessly, Lu Ziyi slowly spoke in an unusually calm voice:
"Are you done?" He raised his hand and gently touched his burning cheek with his fingertips. "Chen Zihan, you thought you had found the truth, and you came to me with these so-called stories to accuse me."
He took a step forward, staring at Chen Zihan with sharp eyes. "But you know nothing at all. What you saw was only what you thought was the 'reason.' What makes you think that everything I did was due to these old stories you found out?"
"Isn't that so?!" Chen Zihan refused to give in. "Why else would you treat Xiaorui like that? You bullied him time and time again, and then used money to keep him by your side! Isn't it because you recognized him as Lu Xubai's son, or because of your Lu family's ridiculous guilt?!"
Lu Ziyi's eyes darkened. His childhood trauma and uncontrollable violent tendencies were the most taboo corners of his heart, and he would never reveal them to Chen Zihan. And recognizing Cheng Xiaorui as the boy in his memory was his only remaining secret, one he didn't want to share.
In the end, he only managed a slightly sarcastic tone, his tone filled with condescending pity: "I told you, you know nothing. Your investigation was diligent, but the direction was wrong. What happened between Cheng Xiaorui and me started much earlier and is more complicated than you can imagine. Not everything can be defined by simple 'debt' and 'revenge'."
He looked at Chen Zihan's expression, which became even more angry due to confusion, and added lightly: "Besides, do you think you are saving him? Maybe you are just dragging him into a deeper vortex in another way."
These words were like a bucket of cold water, pouring on Chen Zihan's simmering anger. He had anticipated Lu Ziyi's various reactions—denial, rage, even admission—but he hadn't expected this outright denial, as if he were the foolish outsider.
Chen Zihan opened his mouth, only to find himself speechless. He stared into Lu Ziyi's bottomless eyes and, for the first time, felt powerless. The trump card he'd meticulously researched and thought he had in hand seemed, in the other person's eyes, a ridiculous misunderstanding.
A deep sense of powerlessness and absurdity gripped Chen Zihan. He felt as if he had thrown a punch with all his might, only to find it landed flat on empty air. The opponent didn't even acknowledge that he was the target.
He picked up the documents scattered on the floor, took one last look at Lu Ziyi, who was still irritatingly calm, then turned and left the study.
The door closed, and silence returned to the study. Lu Ziyi slowly sat back in his chair, the calmness on his face gradually fading, replaced by a deep sense of fatigue. He raised his hand to cover his forehead, hiding the emotions surging in his eyes, emotions that even he himself could hardly fully understand.
Chen Zihan uncovered the truth, but it was only the truth about his father's generation. The truth about Lu Ziyi and Cheng Xiaorui, however, remained buried deep in time, entwined with a more intimate, morbid, and perhaps... even earlier connection. This showdown, far from clearing up the misunderstanding, only intensified the undercurrent beneath the surface.
Those images from that rainy season when he was eight years old, which he thought he had long forgotten, burst forth violently, accompanied by the smell of damp earth and a sharp sense of loneliness...
The patter of rain had soaked the park benches dark brown, the wood grain soaked with water and feeling heavy. Eight-year-old Lu Zi huddled on them, his tiny body curled up as tight as possible. His school uniform trouser legs were splattered with mud, sticking wetly to his skin, cold and sticky.
Like an abandoned and vigilant wild cat, he had been waiting downstairs of Lin Wanqing's house for three whole hours, until he saw with his own eyes the strange new tenant dismantle the swing wrapped with wisteria in her yard and throw it into the garbage truck like trash - the swing that he had clumsily and joyfully nailed for her on her birthday last year... It turned out that she no longer lived here, without even saying goodbye.
"Hey, what's wrong with you? Are you here alone?" A clear voice with a hint of curiosity came from above.
Lu Ziyi jerked his head up, his vision blurred by the rain. In the drizzle, a boy about his age held a transparent umbrella. Raindrops rolled down the umbrella, creating a hazy halo around him. But the most glaring thing was the golden badge pinned to the collar of the boy's neat school uniform. In the gray, rainy day, it shone like a silent mockery, stinging Lu Ziyi's eyes.
"Go away!" Lu Ziyi, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, grabbed the soaking wet, heavy schoolbag beside him and slammed it down. The metal chain on the bag slashed across the boy's calf with a snap, leaving a glaring red mark on his fair skin.
Lu Xuhan gasped in pain, his brow furrowed, but he didn't run away in tears or angrily yell back as expected. Instead, he squatted down and tilted the umbrella forward, deftly enveloping both the soaked man on the bench and himself in this makeshift, isolated little world. He looked Lu Ziyi in the face, his eyes filled with hostility, "Why are you so fierce?" His tone wasn't filled with fear, but rather confusion.
"What's it to you! Stay away from me!" Lu Ziyi yelled at him, and subconsciously moved a few centimeters to the other end of the bench, trying to get out of the range of the umbrella, as if it was a kind of alms.
Lu Xuhan didn't care at all. He moved closer, a few tiny raindrops still on the tip of his nose, and his eyes swept over his disheveled body: "You were kicked out, right? I can tell at a glance." He said in a firm tone, then tilted his head, "Have you eaten? Your stomach is growling. Why don't you come to my house for dinner?"
As if to confirm his words, Lu Ziyi's empty stomach let out a loud, uncontrollable "gurgle." A huge sense of shame instantly overwhelmed him. He grabbed his soaked sleeve and wiped his face vigorously, trying to hide his embarrassment, but he could smell the nauseating lingering smell of cigarette smoke on the sleeve—the smell from when his father had strangled him and slammed him against the wall a few hours ago.
The smell made him even more irritable. "Who wants to go to your house? Get out!" His voice was hoarse, with a kind of bluffing ferocity. Lu Xuhan looked at his red eyes and slightly trembling lips, and suddenly smiled, that smile seemed a little bright in the rain:
"What if you starve to death here?" He said in a deliberately exaggerated tone, "The park will stink tomorrow. It will be so ugly."
"Who's starving to death here?" This sentence completely ignited Lu Ziyi's anger. Like an enraged little animal, he suddenly jumped off the bench and rushed over. The two children immediately started fighting in the sand pit, which was still wet after the rain.
Lu Xuhan's umbrella was knocked away, two ribs broken with a sharp, ringing sound. Lu Ziyi's nails, as he struggled, left four distinct bloody marks just below his collarbone. They tumbled and tore at each other in a chaotic tangle until, exhausted, they collapsed beside the wet slide, gasping for air.
At this moment, a crack appeared in the thick dark clouds above their heads, and golden sunlight poured down like sticky honey, warmly enveloping the two mud monkey-like children.
"You can't die here," Lu Xuhan suddenly sat up, a few grains of sand still stuck in his hair. He pointed at the slide and swings that were gilded by the sun, "This place is so beautiful, you can't let it be polluted!"
As he spoke, he stretched out his hand and suddenly grabbed Lu Ziyi's wrist with an astonishing strength, with a stubbornness that would not be refused, "Let's go! Let's go to my house for a meal before leaving!"
"I won't go! Let me go--" Lu Zi also struggled, but hunger and fatigue made him unable to use any strength.
"Then let's fight again!" Lu Xuhan's eyes were a clear amber in the sunlight. He stiffened his neck like a pugnacious little rooster. "If I win, you have to come with me! If you refuse..." He deliberately stretched out his tone and used provocation, "That proves you're a coward without courage!"
The subsequent melee continued for about seven minutes, the two men rolling around in the sand, covered in mud and sand. When Lu Xuhan finally managed to straddle Lu Ziyi's waist with brute force, pinning his wrists firmly to the sand, he suddenly felt the man beneath him stop struggling and instead tremble slightly and uncontrollably—not from anger, but from the weak tremors of hypoglycemia.
Lu Xuhan was panting, with a streak of blood still hanging from the corner of his mouth where he had been scratched by his fist. However, he shouted as if declaring victory: "You lose! Do you accept it?"
The elevator lobby of the old residential building was plastered with a "Under Maintenance" sign. By the time Lu Ziyi reached the sixth floor, his vision was blurry and his steps were unsteady. He subconsciously reached out and grabbed the backpack strap of the boy in front of him to steady himself. Lu Xuhan's back was very thin; through the thin school uniform, he could even vaguely feel the shape of his shoulder blades. But the uniform had a pleasant, clean, sun-kissed scent of cotton that made him dazed for a moment.
"My house is only this big." Lu Xuhan pushed open the half-closed security door with his shoulder and kicked away a toy train that was in the way at the entrance. He pretended to be indifferent and said, "If you think it's too small, don't eat it."
He finished speaking and ran into the kitchen with his bare feet clacking. When he turned around, Lu Zi also clearly saw the bruise on his calf where he had hit him with the schoolbag chain. It had begun to turn dark purple, looking particularly hideous against his fair skin.
The roar of an old range hood echoed in the small kitchen. Lu Ziyi stood awkwardly in the living room, which was covered with award certificates. He scanned Lu Xuhan's certificates one by one: First Prize in a Math Competition, Special Prize in an Essay Contest... Each one was inscribed with his name in neat handwriting, meticulously sealed and preserved in pristine condition by its owner. His own hard-earned certificates, however, had long since been tossed away by his father, or reduced to ashes.
"Eat!" Lu Xuhan emerged bearing a large plate of golden fried rice and placed it heavily on the table in front of him. The rice grains were perfectly coated in the egg liquid, dotted with emerald green onions, creating a fragrant aroma. Lu Ziyi devoured the first bite with almost ravenous gusto, nearly biting his tongue in his hunger. This simple fried rice was surprisingly a hundred times better than his nanny's.
"You can go back now." When Lu Xuhan was cleaning up the dishes, he deliberately turned on the faucet, and the sound mixed with the sound of water sounded a bit awkward.
"I..." Lu Ziyi clenched the corner of his clothes, lowered his head, and stared at the few grains of rice embedded in the cracks of the wooden texture of the dining table. His voice was as low as a mosquito's hum, "I have nowhere to go... I was kicked out." Admitting this made him feel extremely embarrassed.
Lu Xuhan came out of the kitchen, shaking her wet hands, looked at him for a few seconds, suddenly turned around and ran into the room, then came out quickly and slapped a soft thing in front of him somewhat roughly - it was pajamas printed with cartoon little dinosaurs, which looked like they had been washed many times and were very soft.
"I...I allow you to stay here tonight." He turned his face away, but the tips of his ears turned red uncontrollably. To hide his embarrassment, he added fiercely, "The bath water can only be set to 40 degrees! If you dare to raise it one degree, go sleep in the corridor!"
In the middle of the night, Lu Ziyi was awakened by the rumble of thunder outside his window, his heart pounding. He was about to sit up when he realized there was a source of heat beside him—Lu Xuhan had clung to him like a koala, his arms around his neck and his legs unceremoniously draped around his waist.
He tried to push her away gently, but she muttered in dissatisfaction in her sleep, "Little dinosaur, don't run away...", and instead hugged him tighter, her warm breath spraying on his neck.
A ray of clear moonlight slipped in through the gap in the curtains, shining softly on Lu Xuhan's sleeping face. His long eyelashes cast two rows of well-behaved shadows on his cheeks, like two small fans, quiet and harmless.
Lu Zi also pulled away from the memories, his fingertips unconsciously stroking his collarbone, where the subtle touch of scratches from the past seemed to still remain. The city nightscape outside the window and the rain-soaked park in his memory overlapped before his eyes.
The boy who held an umbrella for him in the rain and pulled him back from the edge of despair; Lu Xuhan who made him fried rice and lent him his dinosaur pajamas...
"It's just that he's not called Lu Xuhan anymore."
Lu Ziyi whispered to himself, his voice remarkably clear in the empty study. His words were laced with so many complex emotions—a longing for the past, a mockery of fate, and a deep-seated obsession that even he couldn't articulate.
The warmth of that rainy night became the only light he truly possessed in the cold years that followed. Now, he wanted to hold on to this light, but he didn't know how to treat it properly. It eventually turned into an almost pathological entanglement that even he couldn't fully understand.
This bond, which began during the rainy season when he was eight years old, was established much earlier than any family feud and was more deeply imprinted in his life.
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