0080 Encountering Stars (3)
I've already finished junior high in D province. Except for a few days during the Spring Festival when I'm taken back to B city, I seem to have completely broken away from that family.
Even her name was changed to "Chen Yixu".
As I grew older, I naturally understood that living here under my original name would cause a lot of trouble. Even after becoming "Chen Yixu," I once received a pair of late Qing Dynasty porcelain vases, carefully wrapped, delivered anonymously in the middle of the night, simply because one of my father's subordinates had come to visit me.
Aside from these infrequent little incidents, my life in D province was quite uneventful, though I still felt somewhat out of place.
Perhaps it's because I live here alone, and when I come home, I have no relatives or friends to talk to. Even the nanny who initially took care of me became exceptionally polite to me as she gradually figured out my mysterious identity.
I couldn't get close to them either, not because of them, but because of myself. I seemed to be subconsciously hypnotizing myself that J City was just a temporary place for me, but at only fifteen years old, I already had a strange obsession with "returning to B City".
For me, it's definitely not just a change of landmark, not just a simple act; it's a symbol of my being accepted again.
Because I can never forget a history class that gave me an unparalleled sense of disconnect.
During that class, a modern battle was mentioned, and a name I knew all too well was brought up. When I saw the history teacher write the two characters "Chen Ping" on the blackboard with that piece of chalk, a long-lost, intense emotion welled up inside me. That overwhelming, wave-like longing felt like two hands tightly gripping my throat, making it difficult for me to speak.
I heard the teacher introduce and analyze my grandfather's legendary life from the perspective of an outsider, and compared it with the old man who held me in his arms and told me his story of joining the army, a dark sense of smugness welled up in my heart.
As the teacher mentioned Chen Ping's original name, I was writing my own name—Chen Yixu—on the homework that was due today.
When I heard the teacher make some laughable guesses in the tone of a bystander, like that my grandfather abandoned the four-character name "诲" because he was a rough man, I wanted to refute them loudly. I knew perfectly well that my grandfather changed his name in the army because the son of a civilian who had once given him a meal died in battle. To remember his predecessors, my grandfather used the name of this fallen man whenever he needed to conceal his identity.
It means that with everyone united, we will never fall.
But I can't say it.
The intense shame of not being able to let everyone know that the descendant of a general who had once made great military achievements was such a good-for-nothing who harmed his mother and brother made me suddenly realize a fact—
If I physically separated from my former home in the winter of 2001, then I truly realized, spiritually, that I no longer belonged to that family, a few years later during this otherwise ordinary history class.
Even with the belief that I wanted to return to City B, I still experienced great hardship and pain because I felt out of place with my surroundings.
When I was in the second year of junior high school, I ended up in the hospital after getting into a fight with some older students. Somehow, word got to my dad. I only had a few broken bones, but that's why he was seen by the hospital director. I don't know if this was a kind of concern unique to my dad—even when he wasn't by my side, he was always secretly watching over me.
But the feeling of being touched didn't last five minutes before I received his call. His stern criticism made my face burn instantly, as did my heart. The feeling of being disliked by my father made me feel incredibly sad and ashamed again. I grew up with my father and knew how foolish and ridiculous my behavior was—I had actually raised my fist against my own fellow student.
I nodded to the father on the other end of the line and said "yes." Just then, I saw the boy I had fought with being held in his mother's arms while she cried. He pushed his mother away with disgust and said, "How old am I? Aren't you ashamed?"
I didn't hear it very clearly because I left the place the moment I saw it. The intense pain in my leg bone didn't stop me; I had an urgent feeling of wanting to escape.
I don't want to admit it, but that's the truth, and I can't stand that scene.
That's when I learned to smoke. It's strange, I was once a child who was repeatedly praised by my elders for being sensible, yet in those years I picked up all sorts of bad habits. Perhaps that's when I destroyed my body.
I could only sleep for no more than five hours each night; for me, the darkness was an unbearable torture. Later, I vaguely realized that I had a serious mental illness, but I didn't pay attention when I was alone in J City. Later, when I met someone who could keep me, I was unwilling to return to B City for long-term treatment. And for some reason, I gradually stopped having insomnia. It wasn't until many years later that I fell into this vicious cycle of being unable to fall asleep for a long time again, but by then, my body was in terrible shape.
Perhaps because of my consistently good grades, I rarely faced any real punishment for my misbehavior at school, which ironically brought me some "popularity." Boys started surrounding me, as I always managed to get them out of the classroom after breaking the rules. My desk began to pile up with colorful love letters, and some even bolder individuals read my name aloud over the loudspeaker during breaks.
People around me teased me, asking, "Aren't you going to date someone?" I avoided their laughter with disgust. The teacher dealt with the matter seriously that time, and the girl who made the announcement was called to the school.
Besides me, her name also became the name that spread throughout the entire school.
I didn't tell anyone that I did it. It's really hard to find someone who sneaked into the broadcasting room in a school with thousands of students. Teachers wouldn't go to such lengths for something so trivial. But I "borrowed" the key to the monitoring room and accurately found the girl who sneaked into the broadcasting room. Then, quite inadvertently, I sent the video to the dean's inbox.
I recorded the audio, so the only punishment the girl received was unauthorized use of school equipment. But since everyone knows the whole story, very few people have ever put that pile of red and green things on my desk again.
I don't consider myself a good person; I've always been ruthless in these kinds of situations.
These little tricks, like smoking in blind spots of the surveillance cameras or skipping classes that weren't taught by the homeroom teacher to play ball, didn't really bother me much. Only once did my behavior become so egregious that it alarmed the entire school and even my father, whom I rarely saw, once a year.
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