I’m really too unlucky!
When Zhu Yun Xuan regained consciousness, the first thing that came to his mind was the last scene in the car. That didn’t look like a traffic accident, did it? It seemed more like a murder! Or maybe death itself had come for him!
The incident happened with the boss, I wonder if the boss will cover my medical expenses… Zhu Yun Xuan recalled the moment when the billboard smashed the car window. Those shards of glass…
He frantically reached to touch his face. If he had been disfigured, how could he ever find a man better than Lu Ming to spend the rest of his life with?
Wait! Zhu Yun Xuan carefully examined his hand. He liked to keep his thumb nails a little longer, but now, every nail was neatly trimmed, and not just that, his hand seemed to have shrunk!
Suddenly jumping out of bed, Zhu Yun Xuan looked around and saw a light blue mosquito net, the bed, carved with birds and flowers, surrounded on all sides with little drawers for storage. Wasn’t this the bed he had begged his grandfather for when he was young?
When he was a child, he thought the bed was beautiful, but as he grew older, he thought it was too old-fashioned, so he had his mother buy a new one. But now…
The carved bed, the light blue mosquito net, and the two large cabinets in the room, one was painted red and looked quite old, while the other was his mother’s dowry, with a large mirror in the middle…
When he was in fourth grade, his father had someone rebuild the house. But now, this house seemed to be the same as the old one.
Getting out of bed, Zhu Yun Xuan walked to the large mirror on the cabinet, where he saw a child inside, a chubby, round little boy, and it was him, from when he was younger.
What is going on? Rebirth? Zhu Yun Xuan couldn’t help but cover his face. Even if this was a dream, it made him happy. Because of this thought, he didn’t even dare pinch himself!
At twenty-two, in his second year of university, he had his first boyfriend. Having been pampered since childhood, he never thought his family would be unhappy with his requests, so he confessed to his parents…
Then everything turned into a nightmare. He was kicked out of the house. For the following years, he sent money home and opened an account for his parents, continuously begging for forgiveness, but he was never forgiven. That wasn’t the worst part, his beloved grandfather had suffered a stroke from the anger, and only lasted a few months…
Every year during [1]Qingming Festival (清明节) is a traditional Chinese festival, often called Tomb-Sweeping Day in English. It usually falls on April 4th or 5th each year and is a day for honoring ancestors. People … Continue reading jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1358771_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1358771_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });Qingming Festival, he would sneak into the cemetery at night to sit by his grandfather’s grave. Every Chinese New Year, he wasn’t allowed to appear in front of his parents during the day, so he would kneel a few more times in the middle of the night outside their door…
He really wanted to see his family, to see his loving parents and grandfather. Even if it was just in a dream, it would be good to see them again!
“Xuan Xuan, are you awake?” The familiar voice rang out. The next second, Zhu Yun Xuan’s door was opened. He froze for a moment, remembering that when he was a child, privacy didn’t exist, and the door was never locked.
“Xuan Xuan, still crying? If you don’t want to go to school, you don’t have to go. You can go next year, anyway, you’re still young.” Jiang Yue Xiu saw that her son’s eyes were red and couldn’t help but grumble about her father-in-law. If Xuan Xuan didn’t like school, why force him? How many children now start school at seven years old, some even at eight, so why should Xuan Xuan, who is only six, be going to elementary school?
“Mom!” Zhu Yun Xuan rushed to hug his mother. His mother, with her short hair, looked very young. Was he dreaming, or had he really been reborn?
Also, school…
Zhu Yun Xuan knew that he had been pampered as a child, and that showed in his attitude towards school.
When he was four, he begged his parents to send him to school, so they enrolled him in a kindergarten class. But after just three days, he refused to go back.
And when he didn’t want to go, he stayed out for a whole semester. The second semester, his grandmother couldn’t take him, so he was forcefully sent to school. Every morning when his mother sent him off, he insisted she come pick him up at ten o’clock in the morning. Then, after lunch, he demanded that she come back at two o’clock in the afternoon to pick him up again…
Of course, at that time, even though he knew ten o’clock in the morning and two o’clock in the afternoon were early, he didn’t know what those times really meant. So even though his mother always told him she would pick him up at ten o’clock in the morning, he thought that meant lunch at home and then being sent straight back to school… And the two o’clock in the afternoon pickup was actually after dinner…
It wasn’t until Zhu Yun Xuan grew up and his parents teased him about it that he realized!
He went to kindergarten for two years like this, but then he found primary school too difficult with all the homework, so he refused to go. His grandfather had to pull some strings and got him to repeat a year in kindergarten before finally entering the town’s elementary school…
He was smart but didn’t like studying. Fortunately, at that time, elementary school wasn’t that hard, and his grades were always at the top. He stumbled his way through middle school, and then his grades dropped. His parents enrolled him in various tutoring classes, forcing him to get into a good high school.
In high school, there was a division between the arts and science tracks, and every subject had exams. Since history and geography were part of the exams in the arts track, while the science track didn’t require them, he immediately chose the science track…
During the college entrance exams, although he failed to hit the undergraduate line in the mock exams, his good mood during the real test helped him guess enough answers, and he was lucky enough to score just enough to get into a second-tier university. Back then, he randomly chose a major just to pass the time for four years. If it weren’t for the fact that he had a boyfriend in college and told his family, later on, he probably wouldn’t have taken the various exams seriously, or done so many part-time jobs to eventually land a great job…
The first two years of college were…
The last two years of college, though like heaven, made him experience all the hardships he had never tasted before!
When he was promoting alcoholic beverages, he was forced to drink to the point of nearly suffering from alcohol poisoning. He spent ten hours straight washing dishes, his hands becoming swollen and bruised. He helped move bricks on a construction site, and his hands developed calluses… Meanwhile, at school, he worked hard, striving for scholarships. Later, thanks to the teacher’s care, he found a tutoring job, which made things a little easier… However, during those times, the most painful part for him was probably when his boyfriend, who had only wanted to secretly date him, dumped him and quickly got together with a girl.
He had hoped to find someone and settle down, so his parents would know that even though he liked men, he could still live a peaceful life. But in the end, even Lu Ming disappointed him.
Thinking of his family and Lu Ming, Zhu Yun Xuan felt his heart ache with every thought. He clung to Jiang Yue Xiu, unwilling to let go. Jiang Yue Xiu simply lifted him up and walked downstairs.
The embrace of his mother felt so real. Zhu Yun Xuan wiped away his tears and suddenly froze when he looked at the brand-new watch on his wrist.
If this was really a dream, would everything feel so real? Could it be that he had really been reborn?
If he had really been reborn, then this would be the moment when he refused to go to elementary school and was sent to the town’s kindergarten to attend the senior class. It was also the summer when he had just bought a watch, finally learning to tell the time. But when he entered the senior class, a little “rich girl” accidentally broke his watch. At that moment, he was so angry that he raised his fist to hit her, but before he could, she started crying. What made it worse was that even though she was the one who broke his watch, he was forced to apologize to her!
Most of what happened during his kindergarten years, Zhu Yun Xuan didn’t remember, but he clearly recalled this incident. First, he was the type to hold grudges, and second, the unfair treatment from the teacher at that time had really hurt him!
Now, since he had been reborn and returned to this moment, did he really have to go back to kindergarten? Zhu Yun Xuan remembered that the kindergarten in the town provided lunch and snacks in the afternoon, but it was very expensive, and the teachers were all snobbish. If he could, he absolutely didn’t want to endure that again!
Of course, even the teachers at his rural elementary school were also quite snobbish… Zhu Yun Xuan’s face stiffened when he saw the certificate posted in the dining room.
He never took his studies seriously, so he never understood why the teacher gave him a certificate at the end of the semester. Later, he found out it was because his mother had sent a basket of eggs to the teacher…
At this time, it seemed to be 1993, right? After all, they were living in the countryside, and many families were average in terms of living conditions. A basket of eggs was enough for the teacher to give him some recognition.
In the morning, they had porridge. Jiang Yue Xiu had woken up early to cook a big pot of porridge, then ladled it into bowls to cool on the stove. By the time Zhu Yun Xuan got up to eat, the porridge had already cooled down completely.
In the summer, eating cool porridge was just perfect. On the table, there were two bowls of pickled vegetables. These pickled vegetables were made by Jiang Yue Xiu, who had dried the vegetables, chopped them, added salt, and packed them tightly into jars. This was something every household in the countryside did at that time because they could eat the pickled vegetables for a long time. Of course, it took a lot of vegetables to make one jar of pickles.
The pickled vegetables, which had been steamed with a little oil, emitted a long-lost fragrance. Zhu Yun Xuan used to love eating this homemade pickled vegetable. Even though later Jiang Yue Xiu no longer made pickles from hundreds of pounds of vegetables, she would still dry some every year and pack them into a jar, tightly stacking them in a round glass jar that used to hold fruit preserves.
As Zhu Yun Xuan ate, his eyes began to sting again. After leaving home, he had never tasted his mother’s pickled vegetables. Later, his cousin, who was only ten days older than him, brought him a jar of pickled vegetables when she came to visit him in the city where he worked. Those pickles were made by his mother and sent through his cousin.
His cousin, the only person in his family who still kept in touch with him after he had fallen out with everyone, was the one who encouraged him during a dark time to find someone and settle down for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, Lu Ming, that bastard…
Zhu Yun Xuan was not someone who liked to be wronged, and he never wanted to change himself for others. But now that he had been reborn, he was willing to make some changes for his family. At the very least, in this life, he would never fall for that scumbag who cheated on him when he was at his most vulnerable during college!
Thinking about the shocked and desperate expressions of his parents, and seeing his mother, who looked twenty years younger, Zhu Yun Xuan’s eyes reddened again.
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