The fingerprint unlock failed a few times, so he impatiently entered his passcode.
The screen lit up, first displaying a preview of an unread text message sent at 11:47 PM last night from a contact labeled “Mother.”
His movements paused as a familiar, stifling sensation began to spread through his chest.
His thumb hovered over the screen for a moment before he tapped on it.
The message was simple, even mundane: “When your younger sister comes back for summer break, are you coming back to visit?” Just that one line.
No greeting, no pleasantries—it was direct to the point of being cold.
He Denghong stared at those words, the screen’s light reflecting off his expressionless face.
At first, there was silence; only the sound of his faint breathing filled the room.
Then, an incredibly strange, uncontrollable chuckle escaped his throat.
It started low and airy, then grew louder and more erratic until it turned into a violent sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough, making his thin chest ache.
Physiological tears pricked the corners of his eyes from laughing so hard, but it wasn’t out of joy.
‘Absurd.’
‘It was too absurd.’
He could even imagine his mother’s expression and tone as she sent that message — ‘She was probably calculating her daughter’s schedule and suddenly remembered she had a waste of a son, so she asked on a whim.’ Perhaps it even carried a sense of charity, as if she were saying — ‘I’m giving you a chance to come back and show your face.’
After laughing for a good while, he stopped, gasping for air. His cheek muscles twitched slightly from the abrupt laughter.
A searing, pent-up resentment that had been building for years suddenly rushed to his head, and his temples throbbed.
His fingers trembled with agitation, yet he stabbed at the cold screen with unusual force, his typing speed so fast it almost sent sparks flying.
First, he replied directly, “Come back to visit? Look at what? Look at how much you despise me?”
Thinking that wasn’t enough, he quickly added more, his words barely organized as he let his emotions pour out:
“Since I was a child, you’ve only cared about my grades! Besides calling me a waste, telling me I have no future, and saying I’m an embarrassment, what have you ever given me? Huh?”
“Whenever I liked something, even if it wasn’t a game, it was all trash in your eyes! Worthless! Other than mocking and looking down on me, what else are you capable of?”
The hand he was typing with shook even more, his fingernails hitting the screen with a faint *click-clack*.
Flashbacks of being belittled and denied flickered by — every cold shoulder after an expectation, every bit of mockery after an attempt.
He felt his eyes burning, but it certainly wasn’t out of sadness.
“What about when I needed you to help me? All those times! For you, it was as simple as saying a few words, but did you ever help me? No! You just stood by and watched!”
“Watching me make a fool of myself! Watching me hit a wall! You probably wished I’d fall even harder just to prove you were right about me, didn’t you?!”
He was practically roaring, though the sound was suppressed deep in his throat, turning into heavy panting.
Gunshots rang out outside again, closer than before, but he didn’t notice.
Finally, he typed out his most venomous thought, every word feeling as if it were dipped in ice:
“Now you’re asking me if I’m coming back? Is it because you miss me? Bullshit! It’s because my sister is coming back, and you want to see if you can squeeze a little more money out of this son of yours, isn’t it?”
“You only care about whether I can earn some money to send back to you! If I didn’t have money, you’d wish I died outside and never came back! The further I get, the better it suits you, right?!”
“You don’t want me to go back at all! You just want to know if I’m still useful!”
After finishing the last sentence, he didn’t even look at it before slamming the send button.
The moment the “Sent” notification appeared, he felt as if all his strength had been drained. He threw the phone onto the worn-out mattress beside him.
The phone bounced once, and the screen went dark.
He panted heavily, his chest heaving. The intense emotion was still racing through his body, unable to find an outlet.
Memories of the past uncontrollably flooded his mind.
He remembered how he would break down and cry as a child, while his mother ignored him completely — and when he was 17, she still tried to shift the blame, saying she didn’t know he was crying because he was in pain and blaming him for not speaking up at the time.
When He Denghong heard his mother say such things, his mouth hung open slightly. His eyes wandered blankly as he looked around, wanting to say something but ultimately holding his tongue.
He didn’t know what use his words would be in such a situation.
He remembered a short-tempered classmate in Grade Ten who would scream and curse at him for an entire self-study period just because they didn’t like him.
That classmate would insult him while accepting comfort from others, who told the bully, “Don’t lower yourself to his level.”
He remembered asking that classmate why they were talking behind his back so loudly in front of him. The classmate simply gave a dominant reply:
“What I say about you to others is none of your damn business!”
He Denghong replied in kind, “Then why do you care about me? It’s none of your damn business!”
The two of them repeated the same phrase back and forth until the classmate couldn’t stand it anymore, finally stopping the gossip to just curse him out.
Soon, that classmate triggered He Denghong’s old traumas, whether they were from Junior High School or the unbearable memories of his home… everything uncontrollably crushed him.
It was like a dam suddenly bursting.
He Denghong began to grow despondent and numb. His body felt exhausted, yet he couldn’t relax; he felt sleepy, yet he couldn’t sleep well.
Every day he woke up, he felt a pain in his brain as if it were being pierced by a red-hot iron rod. At the same time, fragments of unbearable memories flooded his mind, leaving him trapped in the past, unable to save himself.
The worst symptom occurred during the Second Semester of Grade Ten. He had a continuous high fever of 40 degrees for more than 10 days that wouldn’t break. He had to get a fever-reducing injection just to bring it down. He felt like he was soaking in boiling water during those days.
When he finally dragged himself back to school, he was greeted by several of his textbooks being ruined by some unknown classmate, with many pages defaced with scribbles.
On top of that, some books were missing.
At that moment, he felt like he was about to faint. Not even a ripple of anger rose in his heart; he only felt a deep exhaustion and numbness from head to toe.
But He Denghong still used the last of his strength to steady himself, because the Academic Proficiency Test was about to begin in 1 or 2 days.
At the time, he didn’t realize that this was only the beginning —
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