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Published at 24th of March 2023 05:30:56 AM


Chapter 29

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“I’m not curious about the reason, you don’t have to tell me.” It must be another story that was not very happy. Ou Shaowen moved closer to Ou Renjin, reached out with his palm and gently rubbed the top of Ou Renjin’s head as Ou Renjin often did to him, with a serious expression, in a sincere attempt to comfort him.

Ou Renjin took his hand and pulled it down, “What should you do next time you encounter this kind of thing?”

“Call you.”

“If my phone isn’t picked up, you’ll call Guan Qijun. If his phone isn’t picked up, you’ll call Qi Yue. You’ll call one by one everyone in the address book until you get through to someone. Remember?”

“Got it.”

Ou Renjin opened his mouth to say something else, but Ou Shaowen reached out and covered it with his hand, “I really remember, you don’t have to repeat it.”

Ou Renjin pinched his face and said in a low voice: “I can’t even complain, really useless.”

“You taught me once,” Ou Shaowen didn’t like to hear that he was useless, “I will do it next time.”

Ou Renjin stood up and was about to go upstairs, “I’m going to work in the study. Don’t come in and disturb me for the time being.”

“Okay.” Ou Shaowen looked at his back silently until he disappeared around the corner of the stairs. Then he lowered his head again and went back to reading the book that was thrown aside.

……

Dong Qiao was not like Ou Shaowen, who could sit in the car and remember the route after one time. That night, he first walked aimlessly through the mountains but didn’t find his way back. The more he walked, the more frightened and anxious he became, falling countless times in between, and the last time managing to sprain his ankle. At that moment, he didn’t scream, but slowly squatted in front of a tree trunk, enduring the severe pain from his ankle, trembling with cold.

After that time, it seemed that he couldn’t even cry. He was holding his knees, boundless fear surrounding him like a shroud, and he was a cold corpse.

Was he going to die here? Whether it was because he was frightened by Ou Renjin’s last few threats or because he overestimated the power of such showbiz bigwigs, he genuinely felt at this point that he might actually die tonight.

He was so scared that he became numb. He was just thinking, if only time could go back to last night, then he would definitely answer honestly when others asked about Ou Shaowen, “He went to clean up the garbage we just threw away.”

In the early morning of the next day, Dong Qiao was still nowhere to be seen at the foot of the mountain. Guan Qijun reported the situation to Ou Renjin, and then followed his instructions and led his men to retrieve the guy from the mountains and send him back to his dormitory. 

Dong Qiao had a fever for three days and then never again showed up at that dance class that Ou Shaowen attended.

Ou Shaowen’s dance classes had been cut in half, and time was allocated to musical instrument and vocal lessons. Ou Renjin was already looking for songs for Ou Shaowen, and at the same time looking through the draft project plans for the talent shows that the major TV stations were preparing to produce soon. He picked one that he felt had a more reasonable competition system and suited Ou Shaowen’s personality.

He was going to throw the boy into this talent show, so that he would be able to generate his own buzz and use it like a snowball to attract more buzz, and then use his popularity to make his debut as an idol and release a song and a single. It was better than them spending resources to hype him up.

The talent show that Ou Renjin selected for him was called “Under the Lights”. The project was officially launching a month later, so during this time, Ou Shaowen’s courses were also quite full. Except for another set of model photos, almost all of the time was spent in the practice room.

Therefore, many nights, when Ou Shaowen came back from the practice room, Ou Renjin had already fallen asleep. Although he once promised that he would make up for every day they missed this month, Ou Shaowen was someone who was more interested in enjoying the present. No matter how good the promise of the future was, for him, it was just a future that had not yet come.

Towards the end of the year, both Ou Renjin’s business matters and Ou Shaowen’s many training courses came to an end. Even Aunt Zhou and Uncle Li were given a half-month leave by Ou Renjin and went home to reunite with their families.

The large villa was empty and no longer full of people. Fortunately, Ou Shaowen had been very used to this kind of scene. When Ou Renjin was there, he could spend the afternoon just staring at Ou Renjin in a daze. When Ou Renjin was not there, he would occasionally review the courses taught by the teacher, watch TV silently for a while and then go to cook himself a fairly sumptuous dinner, and the day would pass.

For some reason, he felt that Ou Renjin did not seem to be in a very good mood during this time. The low pressure was palpable when he was at home. His occasional smiles seemed perfunctory, and most importantly, he hadn’t taken the initiative to kiss or hug Ou Shaowen for a long time. 

Ou Shaowen couldn’t help but flip through the calendar and start counting backwards, until realising that it seemed to be almost three months since he had moved to this villa.

And the shortest lasting ex that Ou Renjin had ever had lasted only eighty days.

Was it time for him to go back?

The twenty-ninth before the New Year.

Ou Renjin got into the car heading to the cemetery. He leaned sideways and looked out the window silently. It was this kind of cold weather again, as if no matter how high the heating was turned on, he couldn’t get warm.

The car stopped at the gate of the cemetery. Ou Renjin got out of the car and bought two bouquets of flowers. He held the dewy flowers in his arms; in the early morning of the early spring, the flowers hid half of his handsome face, and the tips of his hair were wet with a layer of mist, gently falling on his forehead. It was originally a very admirable picture of a beautiful man, but it was destroyed by his too gloomy and cold expression.

“I’ll wait for you outside, come out quickly.” Guan Qijun had long been accustomed to Ou Renjin’s overly persistent silence and overly bad mood on this day. After all, both of President Ou’s parents had died on this very day, and it also happened after they both were out of danger and everyone was filled with hope and expectation. Then fate had taken a sudden turn and delivered a terrible blow that was hard to bear.

Ou Renjin nodded and walked in alone without saying a word.

Guan Qijun looked at his back with some worry, then glanced at the time on his watch, ready to do as usual: if President Ou didn’t come out in half an hour, he would go in and find him.

The first year he accompanied President Ou here, Ou Renjin had just entered senior school and was still a handsome, thin teenager. At that time, he also held two bouquets of flowers and insisted on going in by himself. But after entering the cemetery, he didn’t come out for a long time. By the time Guan Qijun went in to look for him, he saw Ou Renjin unconscious in front of the grave, pale, cold and silent. That time was extremely dangerous, followed by a high fever from a cold, and Ou Renjin’s heart almost stopped just like that.

In the later years, whenever this time came, Ou Renjin would always get sick afterwards. Then he gradually grew up, slowly controlling his temper better, and in the past few years, he had spent this day safely. Guan Qijun returned to the car, took out the medicine he had prepared just in case and held it tightly in his hand.

Ou Renjin walked between the rows of tombs somewhat heavily. When he was about to reach the tomb of his parents, he stopped abruptly. Looking ahead, he couldn’t hide the growing hatred in his eyes; the blue veins on the back of his hand holding the flowers were swelling.

Ou Yiyun and Qin Yueran were squatting in front of his parents’ tomb, throwing paper money into the fire with handfuls.

Qin Yueran yawned and stretched out her hands to warm them up over the fire, rubbing her stiff fingers very carefully. “Husband, tell me, the old man suddenly insisted that we come here and pay respects to them this year, do you know why? This place is so far away, and it takes a few hours to drive here. Don’t we always only come on Qingming (Tomb Sweeping Day, between 5th-19th of April) and just light two sticks of incense at home on the anniversary of their death?”

“Let’s light the lanterns and go back quickly.” Ou Yiyun threw all the remaining paper money in, and the fire suddenly choked and was about to be extinguished.

Ou Renjin felt that his eardrums were ringing. He took two sharp breaths, suppressed his somewhat rapid breathing and walked over with a normal expression on his face.

“You can’t even burn the paper money sincerely, so why come here to pay respects?” Ou Renjin passed by the two of them and walked to the tombstone, squatted down and picked up the paper that was only half-burnt. The faint sparks rekindled, touching the air, and swiftly reached his fingers.

His skin was licked by the tongue of fire, and with a hiss, he flung his hand, throwing away the paper, making the paper money float in the direction of the two people.

Ou Yiyun took a few steps back, and Qin Yueran suddenly let out a short scream. Although they dodged quickly, there were still a few black marks burned on their clothes. Qin Yueran smiled angrily: “Ou Renjin, for so many years, as your aunt, I have tolerated you because your parents died when you were a child. You are an adult now. Don’t think that you are a wayward child who can be forgiven for doing wrong things over and over again. Let me tell you, your grandfather is really determined this time not to recognise you anymore. Just continue to play your childish pranks like this.”

“Sorry, it’s so much fun to see my aunt angry that I can’t help it.” While speaking, he glanced at Ou Yiyun, who was standing aside without saying a word, and showed a weird smile, “Why isn’t Eldest Uncle saying anything? Don’t you always like to help Eldest Aunt? Why, standing in front of my parents’ tomb, are you feeling guilty?”

“Nonsense.” Ou Yiyun glanced at him, not really wanting to get entangled with him. If this psycho got stuck to them, they’d be in trouble for ages! “Yueran, let’s go back.”

Before Ou Yiyun and Qin Yueran had time to take a few steps, they heard the sound of something being kicked down behind them violently. Ou Yiyun turned his head and saw that the two lanterns and a bouquet of flowers they had brought and put in front of the tomb were all kicked aside by Ou Renjin. He cleared the ground in front of the tomb before putting his flowers on it.

With a sneer, Ou Yiyun turned and continued on his way.

He knew that when Ou Renjin’s parents died, there had been some clueless speculations and rumours circulating in the company. The kid, being young and naive, soon believed those words, but those rumours were just speculations, with no evidence or clues. For so many years, Ou Renjin could only vent his anger in front of them from time to time.

When Ou Renjin returned to the car after paying respects to his parents, his lips were blue. His throat felt as if it were squeezed tightly. There were black spots floating in front of his eyes. His heart felt as if it was crashing into his ribcage. He pressed his hand hard against his chest, as if that could suppress the wrong rhythm of his heartbeat.




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