Jonathan decides to escape
After Jonathan got out of the car, the manic-depressive mood subsided, but a sense of emptiness followed, leaving him with nowhere to put it.
Value, value... Yes, I need to make Jiang Songhe remember that I'm a top star, a valuable singer, not just a child who throws tantrums. I also need to show him that I'm busy, not an idle, superficial, love-struck charlatan.
Indeed, after completing "The Night of Dawn," Jonah had the final song for the Star Show left unfinished.
When Song Yun sings his own compositions, Jiang Songhe will be very happy and will definitely feel his own value...
He sniffed, went to the villa and rang the doorbell. Vasin opened the door and his first words, as if he could read minds, were about a topic directly related to Star Show: "Plainly speaking, MGT (Star Show) is scheduled for March 5th."
So fast?!
Thinking about it carefully, it wasn't that fast. Jonathan had already stayed in Jingting for a full ten days under the pretext of taking a vacation to recover from his injury. He had never left Maner for such a long time for personal reasons before, except for work commitments.
"Did he say," Jonathan pursed his lips, "when he wants me to go back?"
"Ten days, a private jet to pick us up. Go back, record together, rehearse, and renew the contract."
This means that in ten days, Tang's private plane will come to Jingting to pick up Jonathan and take him back to Manle. After that, he will have to record the final song with the other three judges and the finalists, rehearse before the competition, and also... renew his contract with Tang.
It's been ten years, or rather, eleven years to be exact.
Jonathan joined TANG at the age of 14 and underwent grueling training arranged by Tang Fan for the first year. Rather than a period of adjustment for mutual selection, it was more of a period of observation for Tang Fan to test Jonathan, an unknown person with no way out.
To determine if he was qualified to become Tang Fan's substitute for fulfilling his dream of becoming a singer.
Eleven years ago, when Jonathan first met Tang Fan on the streets of Country A, he had a vague premonition of this.
At that time, he often went hungry, and his rapid growth during puberty, which should have been a source of pride for his family, became a source of blame and reprimand.
The stepfather dreamed of becoming a famous musician overnight, but he drank heavily every day and spent most of his time holed up in a dilapidated house in the black neighborhood, composing a piece of music that would not be played for ten days or half a month.
He lived a muddled life and wouldn't let his mother go out to work. Otherwise, how could he have the audacity to use the excuse of "one person finding food for two trashy people" to humiliate and beat his mother and himself in every way?
The stepfather would only go out when the family ran out of food and supplies to do volunteer work at nearby shelters. In reality, he would take advantage of the chaos to steal food and clothing supplies for the homeless and then secretly transfer them back home when he finished work.
The clothes in the shelter were also second-hand donations. Apart from the new clothes her stepfather bought for her when she was eight years old in Guangdong, Jonathan never wore a decent piece of clothing again after she went to Country A with her mother when she was nine.
The only saving grace is that at least every now and then you'll get a set of old clothes that fit but don't match, so you don't become a strange child with barely any clothes because you've grown up too fast.
Whether or not one becomes a "strange child" is not that important, because of the language barrier, and the fact that the streets outside the dilapidated house are full of black people with terrifying appearances and behaviors, and sometimes even during the day one can hear gunshots from inside the house.
From the age of nine, Jonathan almost never left that dimly lit house. He had no friends, no school, and it seemed that the only meaning of his life was eating, drinking, sleeping, and forcing a smile and pretending to be well-behaved so that his mother and he would suffer less beatings and scoldings.
My mother always had endless housework to do, and she would always kneel on the mottled floor and wipe it inch by inch.
Jonathan felt sorry for her and wanted to help, but her mother shook her head and refused. She smiled bitterly and muttered that this was retribution and she deserved it. It was good to numb herself like this so that she wouldn't have any more daydreams.
Whenever the stepfather saw the mother and son talking about porcelain, he would get annoyed and call Jonathan over to serve him wine. He would drunkenly order him to appreciate his masterpiece and make him read aloud the English lyrics on the sheet music.
Jonathan couldn't even recognize all the Chinese characters, let alone the illegible English. He could only cautiously try to decipher the familiar letters by relying on the phonetic spelling he had learned in preschool in China.
In my memory, my stepfather would let out a very unrestrained and happy laugh at this time, and then he would demonstrate one syllable at a time, like teasing a parrot and like playing with a puppy, and then call Jonathan to repeat one syllable at a time.
Jonathan did as he was told, bewildered and frightened. Sometimes his stepfather would demonstrate certain words for an unusually long time, and a smile that was enigmatic but chilling to the bone would appear on his face.
When the mother overheard this, she immediately rushed over in a rage, shoving her stepfather and arguing in broken English. The stepfather shrugged and chuckled a few times, but quickly lost his patience and began to retaliate with words and blows.
Young Jonathan was kept in the dark by the unfamiliar foreign language, and the intense atmosphere still frightened him. However, his mother was clearly no match for his stepfather. Seeing her being pinned down and her clothes torn, Jonathan instinctively went to pull her away to stop him, but was kicked away hard.
“Keep going! (Keep reading!)” the stepfather yelled.
“Xixi, no! Don’t look…” the mother choked up.
Jonathan remembered that "Keep" probably meant "continue". Afraid that his mother would be bullied even more by his stepfather, he could only endure the severe pain in his abdomen, crawl back to the broken sofa, and pick up the sheet music from the floor.
He had no choice but to listen to both of them. Jonathan carefully held the edge of the score paper, and despite the dirt and grime on the paper, he dared not wrinkle it even a little. He curled up in the corner and continued to recite the words that his stepfather had repeatedly demonstrated before he started to do it.
“****, ****, ****, ****, ****…”
From then on, the mother never stopped her stepfather from setting such an example again, and she did housework more frequently. Even if she did it once, every corner would soon be filled with garbage again.
As time passed, Jonathan gradually came to understand the meaning of all the details of that day.
My mother's appearance deteriorated rapidly in just a few years, and she became unpredictable and moody.
Jonah, however, grew taller and taller each day, and even his tattered clothes couldn't hide his handsome features. Due to malnutrition, he was tall but frail, and his thin, childlike face had a somewhat feminine appearance.
Despite inheriting her mother's superior genes, Jonathan felt inexplicably disgusted. Knowing she shouldn't, every time she caught a glimpse of her stepfather's undisguised gaze, every time she looked in the mirror, that disgust grew uncontrollably in her heart.
Besides volunteering at the shelter, the stepfather also sent demos to various record companies, but received very few responses. Occasionally, he would get a reply, but it was only from some second-rate companies offering him odd jobs as a ghostwriter.
When Jonah was thirteen, one of his stepfather's singles was bought out, and he received the highest income he had received since returning to Country A.
He was out partying until very late that day and came back reeking of alcohol.
Her mother had gone to bed early in the bedroom, but Jonathan was curled up on the sofa, unable to sleep because of his uncertainty about the rest of his life. He inexplicably started humming a tune that his stepfather had recently finished, a tune that was considered relatively clean because of the buyer's requirements.
For the first time, he realized that his singing voice was actually like this, and that it was actually beautiful.
Before she could even process what she was feeling, her ankle was suddenly gripped, and the rough touch began to move upwards. Jonathan screamed and jumped up from the sofa in fright.
With his calf still in someone else's hands, he tried to escape but couldn't. He fell down with a thud, his knee hitting the ground.
“Come here.” A dangerous voice came from the darkness, and the large hand on his calf slid down to his ankle and forcefully pulled him into the sofa.
Jonah froze, the places that had been touched instantly losing sensation.
He was powerless to resist, and after several attempts to rush to his mother's aid during her beatings, he realized that both he and his mother would only be hurt more badly.
Why is it that even as we grow older, nothing changes?
You're so useless!
The pressure on my ankle suddenly disappeared, and a scraping sound came from the sofa as I slid from one end to the other.
Then came the sound of metal slowly sliding, faint but exceptionally clear in the darkness.
Jonathan's heart was pounding in his throat. From the obscene lyrics, he sensed what his stepfather was about to do to him. What to do… he couldn't move at all. What should he do?!
Suddenly, the hair at the back of her head was grabbed and effortlessly pulled into the warm, alcohol-scented circle. An ugly object appeared in her vision, and Jonathan tightly closed his eyes.
Jonah's thin lips, which were slightly parted in fear, were squeezed open even wider, and he heard a whisper that sounded like a demon's.
"S*ck daddy's anaconda, sweetheart."
So disgusting, so disgusting, so disgusting...
Jonah was caught in a vortex from which he could not escape, and the devil's whispers continued.
"What a talented mouth, hum?"
"Now you know the f*cking music, hum?"
"How dare you little bastard steal daddy's fortune…"
...
Jonathan didn't understand why his stepfather said that. He struggled to open his long eyelashes, which were covered with tears, wanting to break free, to defend himself, and to end this unjust accusation as soon as possible.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a familiar, indifferent shadow flashing past outside the living room.
Shame, shock, and pain all choked me, shattering all the words I was about to utter...
The next day, my mother and stepfather asked for some money, bought ingredients, and cooked a table full of home-style dishes that they hadn't made in a long time. She casually placed each dish onto her stepfather's plate, repeating the same monotonous action like a puppet.
But Jonathan ignored him.
When Jonathan's eyes met her mother's by chance, she saw a faint resentment. That one glance was enough to rip out Jonathan's soul.
The mother hated herself for stealing her chance to be a wife and dream of happiness.
His stepfather hated him for stealing his chance to become a musician and dream of instant success.
They were all punishing their underage selves for the disillusionment they had created. But what about themselves?
I didn't do anything wrong...
From that moment on, thirteen-year-old Jonathan decided to run away.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com