Chapter 57
The day Zhou Mo received Yu Xi's call was a weekend.
Since their disappearance, the two of them haven't had a proper conversation except for that one time at the sanatorium.
Are you busy?
"No, I just finished class and I'm going to the cafeteria for lunch."
"Shall we go eat spicy hot pot at the East Campus?"
"It's too far, I'll just grab a bite at any cafeteria."
"Eat whatever you like, but make sure you're full."
"Um."
Before hanging up, Zhou Mo could tell that Yu Xi wanted to say something but hesitated, but she didn't ask anything. The two of them just exchanged some meaningless words and didn't even say goodbye.
Zhou Mo looked down at her phone screen, which was still showing the call log. Yu Xi's name was at the top. She stared at it until the screen went black before she finally left.
However, she didn't go to the cafeteria; instead, she went outside the school.
The snack shops outside the school like to have an artistic name to provide students with a beautiful and romantic encounter. In the Cat Cafe, there is a whole wall of sticky notes. It is said that every man and woman who meet here and become a couple will leave a sticky note here.
This reminded Zhou Mo of a previous meeting with He Ru.
No matter which city you're in, you'll find corners like these sticky note corners.
The pampered Ragdoll cat jumped onto Zhou Mo's lap, found a comfortable spot, and began to purr.
Zhou Mo quite likes cats; the fur under her palm is soft and silky, a real touch that the toys on her bedside table can't match.
The purring of the ragdoll cat grew louder and louder, so loud that it drowned out Li Zhenliang's footsteps.
After the others caught up behind her and greeted her, Zhou Mo finally came to her senses.
"I'm sorry, I startled you."
"I am Li Zhenliang."
Zhou Mo, holding the ragdoll cat, moved closer to the sofa. "I'm Zhou Mo."
Li Zhenliang didn't scrutinize Zhou Mo much and sat down next to her quite naturally. Zhou Mo looked at Li Zhenliang and realized that he was more like an ordinary person than she had imagined, the kind of person who would be inconspicuous in a crowd.
"You are very beautiful."
"Thanks."
"You don't find it offensive that I'm saying this, do you?"
"Of course not, because I am indeed very beautiful."
Li Zhenliang smiled. He was different from He Ru. Even when He Ru smiled, you could tell that he was scheming. He didn't care to show his scheming on his face, so he didn't mind being called a smiling tiger.
But Li Zhenliang was different; he seemed like a sincere and honest man.
If she hadn't known Li Zhenliang's identity beforehand, she would have found it hard to connect the identity of Zhengyang's boss with such a person.
Li Zhenliang: "Nannan has no ill intentions. If her in-depth understanding bothers you, you can talk to her. She knows how to be sensible."
Zhou Mo shook her head. "I don't care whether others are paying attention to me."
"Then what do you care about?" Most of the drinks served at the cat cafe were concocted. Li Zhenliang took a sip through the straw, and the taste was so bad that he momentarily lost control of his expression. This made Zhou Mo see a bit of a peer in him.
Zhou Mo thought for a moment, "Life."
"?" Although Li Zhenliang was puzzled, he insisted on agreeing with the idea that to continue the conversation, he should first agree with the idea that "indeed, life is very important and should be taken seriously."
"So I want to finish my university studies properly and don't want to be bothered by trivial things anymore."
Li Zhenliang looked at Zhou Mo, whose face showed no smile and a very serious expression.
He began to reassess his evaluation of Zhou Mo.
"Are you telling me this because you think I'll disturb your life?" Li Zhenliang leaned back, and a black cat named Devon took the opportunity to jump onto his lap and rub its head against Li Zhenliang's raised arm. He was generous with his petting, but he didn't tolerate the cat lingering. Devon was pushed away with a light but firm touch. It stared at Li Zhenliang, then flicked its tail and left.
"I disrupted the life I was supposed to live."
"You mean Yu Xi?" Li Zhenliang clapped his hands, brushing off the cat hair that was stuck to them.
Zhou Mo noticed his action and said, "If you don't like cats, why did you arrange to meet at a cat cafe?"
"You and Zhou Sheng both have the surname Zhou, are you related?"
Li Zhenliang's topic changed so quickly that Zhou Mo didn't react for a moment. Her mind raced, and she finally managed to find the name Zhou Sheng in some corner of her memory.
Qi Xiao, that so-called nominal grandfather, was actually the real mastermind behind Ming An's scheme.
"It was just a coincidence."
"That old man really liked collecting children. You didn't know that, did you? Me, Wei Huai, Qi Kai, Xiao Enke, Sun Zhe, He Ru, Fan Nannan, and Yu Xi all lived under his care. Some of us only stayed for a few days, some for a few months, and some for a few years. The longest was Qi Kai."
Collecting children?
Zhou Mo was puzzled as to why Li Zhenliang would use such words.
Why are you telling me all this?
“Society is progressing, and people’s thoughts are evolving, but there are always some who stagnate, and that old man is one of them.” Li Zhenliang didn’t care what Zhou Mo thought at all and continued to speak to himself, “He wanted to find a qualified successor. He felt that Ming’an was his. Timid children don’t get rewards. We were all eliminated. Only Yu Xi was the only one. Yu Xi was brought by Qi Kai. I remember when I saw him, he was all dirty and liked to talk to the old man’s dog. He was a weirdo. But it was this weirdo that won the old man’s heart. The old man would dress Yu Xi in very nice dresses and print out his photo to put next to his own photo frame.”
Li Zhenliang took another sip of the awful drink, his brows furrowed tightly. "But we're not jealous of Yu Xi at all. On the contrary, we're grateful to him. Without Yu Xi, there would be no Li Zhenliang. Zhou Mo, do you understand now?"
"Are you setting me up?"
Suddenly, an unbelievable thought popped into Zhou Mo's head. She looked at Li Zhenliang in disbelief, "Why did I come to Z University?"
"Yeah, why did you come to Z University?"
Zhou Mo frowned, her eyes slowly filling with tears.
"I want to help him get his freedom."
"He wants you to set him free."
Li Zhenliang shook his head with a wry smile. "Yu Xi is a tribute that the old man offered to the higher-ups. The old man firmly believes that only by merging the black and white can things last. The higher-ups just want to secure their retirement and enjoy their old age in secret. Their vision seems very broad, but it is actually very narrow. To put it bluntly, it's just Ming An."
"But out of so many people in Keming'an, only a handful managed to escape."
Zhou Mo had her head down, and Li Zhenliang thought she was crying, so he reached for a tissue and handed it to her.
Before the tissues were even handed to Zhou Mo, laughter could be heard.
Zhou Mo slowly raised her head and looked at Li Zhenliang with a cold smile. "To be honest, I didn't want to say anything to you. I came here today with only one purpose: if we can get along peacefully, then let's get along peacefully. If not, then let's talk about it another way. I don't even know what my life is like. Anyway, I only have this one life, and I'm all alone. I'll do whatever I want. Now that things have come to this, I have nothing to hold back anymore."
"But you just had to tell me a joke that wasn't funny at all."
"A joke?!" Li Zhenliang retorted. "You think what I just said was all a lie? Don't you know who caused Yu Xi's disappearance? Don't you already know about Ning Xiangjian?"
"What's the difference between you and Ning Xiangjian?" Zhou Mo raised her hand. "Sorry, I misspoke. I should say, what's the difference between you and Ning Xiangjian?"
"Does Zhou Zheng like collecting children? Why did Shawn Ke use a child to approach Yu Xi? Isn't it because that's how you approached Yu Xi back then?!"
“You succeeded. Yu Xi once said he had friends.”
"You say you're not jealous of Yu Xi? Yeah, what's there to be jealous of? Nobody around him is genuinely kind to him. What are you getting close to him for? For the promises of a great life or the money he could never earn in a lifetime?"
"Who would envy a bird whose wings are chained?"
“Do you know what I heard most often when I first met Yu Xi? They told me that Yu Xi was a stray dog, a stray dog that nobody wanted.”
"What a coincidence, what a coincidence. If I just calm down and think about it, everyone who appears around Yu Xi is fake. I almost became fake too."
"But because Zhang Xing, a man who was jealous of my father, was unwilling to promise me any benefits, I slipped through the net."
Zhou Mo closed her eyes, unsure how to imagine whether she would have agreed to Zhang Xing's offer if he had offered her an extremely generous deal.
“Even if he is worthless, you still refuse to acknowledge it and continue to imprison him.”
"He knew the information, but he didn't tell us."
"Do we have an obligation?" Zhou Mo picked up the cat on her body and gently placed it on the ground, then stood up. "I really hate your hypocritical attitude."
Li Zhenliang: "It's no use hating them. You're surrounded by people like that too. It's all thanks to Yu Xi."
"Oh, really? I don't think so."
Zhou Mo's conversation with Li Zhenliang ended unhappily. As soon as she left the cat cafe, Zhou Mo received a message from Sun Zhe, which was a photo of Fan Nannan chatting with Qi Xiao.
She glanced at it once and put her phone back in her pocket.
Zhou Mo never believed in probability events; all seemingly predetermined fates were merely man-made interconnections.
But if it's done by a human, it will always leave some clues.
Zhou Mo looked up at the sky, where the fiery clouds in the distance painted the horizon orange-red. She took out her phone, snapped a picture, and sent it to Yu Xi.
—The same sky.
Yu Xi, perhaps engrossed in her phone, immediately replied with a photo, though the composition wasn't as symmetrical as Zhou Mo's, and it looked somewhat rushed.
The sky above Yu Xifa was slightly overcast.
—A different sky.
Zhou Mo laughed out loud, didn't reply to Yu Xi, put her phone in her pocket, and walked towards the school.
She was in a good mood and even hummed a little tune. While waiting at the traffic light, the boy next to her kept looking at Zhou Mo, and Zhou Mo smiled at him generously.
The boy blushed instantly. Just as he took out his phone to ask for WeChat, the light turned green, and Zhou Mo disappeared into the crowd without stopping.
The boy looked dejected.
Zhou Mo gripped her phone tightly in her pocket, feeling it vibrate.
This world is terrible.
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