“Son, this isn’t our home, is it?” Shu Shu asked, her tone doubting her existence.
Shu Lingchen replied, “No, it’s just a place I’m renting.”
“Huh? But we have our own house, why are we renting?”
Shu Lingchen fell silent for a moment. He raised his hand to rub his nose. Shu Shu, as his biological mother recognized his old habit immediately. It’s a sign of a guilty conscience. However, he only said, “Let’s just go up first.”
The apartment Shu Lingchen was renting is a small two-bedroom unit, less sixty square meters. As they stepped inside, she saw that the place felt a bit sparse, but it was kept quite tidy. Shu Shu nodded instinctively. Well, at least my son grew up resembling my love for cleanliness.
“You’ll stay in this bedroom.” Shu Lingchen pushed open the door to the spare room.
Shu Shu expected to see an empty room. But instead, when the lights turned on, she saw a neatly made bed, with sheets and a quilt, a desk, a dressing table, and a wardrobe. Putting aside the small size, the layout and decor were the exact replica of her old room back at Imperial View Gardens. Moreover, the room was so spotless it was clear it was cleaned regularly, ready for someone to move in at any moment.
“This is…”
“I set it up,” Shu Lingchen said, catching Shu Shu’s bewildered gaze. He lowered his head embarassedly, his voice sounding so lonely even if he attempted to sound casual. “Well, it’s nothing. I just felt that doing it like this would feel like you were still here, like you never left. Like I wasn’t alone.”
For Shu Shu, parting from her son was just a blink of an eye. But for Shu Lingchen, it had been a thirteen-year void without his mother.
“Son…” Shu Shu looked at him, taking a step forward, overcome with emotion.
Shu Lingchen looked back at her and whispered, “Mom…”
He opened his arms instinctively, ready to receive a long-awaited, warm, tearful embrace from his mother.
Instead, a sharp smack landed right on his forehead—BAM!
“Are you stupid?! I have a giant master bedroom, so why on earth would you build me this snail’s nest?!”
If Shu Lingchen had been floating in a surreal dream world just a moment ago, the “Real Mom” sensation had now officially kicked in. He didn’t even need a DNA test because of that specific smacking technique. This really was his mother, one hundred percent authentic!
Shu Shu withdrew her hand and took a “tour” of the apartment—which really just meant turning her head since the place was so small she didn’t even have to walk to see it all. It didn’t even reach her minimum passing grade!
“Can you talk now? What exactly happened to our house? Why are we living here?” Shu Shu crossed her arms and glared at him.
Shu Lingchen shifted his gaze to the side, avoiding eye contact, and rubbed his nose again. Before Shu Shu could press him, the overhead light began to flicker. On the third blink, it died completely, plunging the living room into darkness.
Shu Shu thought: Oh, this damn dump of a house! Zero points! Zero!
“I’ll fix the bulb!” Shu Lingchen said, seemingly finding an excuse to catch his breath. He flipped the main breaker, grabbed a toolbox, moved a chair under the light fixture, and handed his phone to Shu Shu with the flashlight turned on. “Mom, help me out.”
Reluctantly, Shu Shu took the phone and held it up to provide light. Suddenly, the screen lit up with a notification. It was a “special follow” alert from a campus forum. Instinctively, Shu Shu caught keywords like “Shu Lingchen,” “Confession,” and “School Beauty Chu.”
She immediately perked up and tried to tap in. A password prompt popped up. Shu Shu thought for three seconds about what kind of password her son would use, then tapped: 1-2-3-4-5-6.
It opened.
She landed directly on the trending post. The title read:
[SHOCKING! School Tyrant Shu Lingchen’s confession to School Beauty Chu was rejected for the N-th time!]
The post was three hours old, and the anonymous comments were already hundreds of layers deep:
“OP, do you even know how to write a headline? It should be: ‘Toad-man Shu Lingchen shamelessly pursues School Beauty Chu; threatens her in a rage after being rejected!'”
“I was there today! It’s exactly like the first comment said! If it weren’t for Class Monitor Shi Jin from Class 1, who knows what would have happened.”
“Honestly, Shu Lingchen and his gang of thugs are the rat droppings of No. 3 High. They should be locked up in juvie to be reformed!”
In the hundreds of comments, 89% were trashing Shu Lingchen, 1% were trashing his lackeys, and the remaining 10% were worried about Chu Lian’s safety.
Suddenly, a notification popped up at the top: “Your special follow has posted!” Shu Shu accidentally clicked it while scrolling and saw a reply from a user named “I am Chu Little Lian”:
“Hello everyone, I’m Chu Lian. I’m fine, nothing happened. Regarding today’s events, I believe Student Shu Lingchen was just acting on impulse and didn’t mean to hurt me. So, please stop worrying too much.”
Below the message was a “peace of mind” selfie. Someone replied instantly: “I’m literally crying, School Beauty Chu is so beautiful and kind-hearted!”
Shu Shu only thought one thing: What a “bun” (pushover). Even though the harasser was her own son, if it were her, she’d have hung herself (metaphorically) at his doorstep in the middle of the night to scare the life out of him so he’d never dare like her again!
Then, Shu Shu tapped the selfie to enlarge it. In the photo, Chu Lian looked innocent and harmless, her body slightly angled. Whether intentional or not, the top right corner of the photo revealed a wall of Moutai liquor.
Shu Shu’s first reaction was: Hmm, good taste!
She herself had a hobby of collecting Moutai. Every year, she would save a dozen bottles, whether they were aged or Zodiac editions. By the time she died, her collection wall was worth about five or six million yuan. She didn’t expect this Chu Lian’s family to share the same hobby.
“Heavens, what am I seeing? So much Moutai! Help, she’s so rich!”
“It makes Shu Lingchen look even more like a toad dreaming of a swan. A rich heiress like Chu Lian being stalked by a poor loser is just eight lifetimes of bad luck!”
“Ugh, can’t the Eldest Miss Chu hire a bodyguard? Let’s see if Toad-man still dares to harass her then.”
“I’m telling you, only someone like Class Monitor Shi Jin can match a background like hers.”
Shu Shu zoomed in further to admire the Moutai. As she looked at the bottles one by one, her eyes widened more and more. Not only were the hobbies identical, but even the specific collection categories were the same.
In fact, the more she looked, the more familiar it became.
Wait… this… isn’t this MY Moutai wall?!!!
Shu Shu hurriedly clicked into Chu Lian’s profile and scrolled through her past posts. There weren’t many, and they were mostly selfies, but without exception, her body was always angled to leave a gap in the background.
Shu Shu swiped through them one by one and saw:
Her massage tub!
Her marshmallow-soft king-sized princess bed!
Her custom solid wood dressing table!
Her limited-edition figurine cabinet!
Her game console and her entire set of Deluxe Edition game cards!
Hers, hers, hers… This is all hers!
This is my damn 300-square-meter house in Imperial View Gardens!!!
Shu Lingchen was busy fixing the bulb when he suddenly felt a chill down his spine. He turned his head around and nearly fell off his chair in fright.
Shu Shu’s face was illuminated by the phone screen, making her look deathly pale. Then she spoke in a ghostly, hollow voice:
“Shu Lingchen. From this moment on, you have no right to remain silent. Everything you say will be used as your final words before you are sent back to the cycle of reincarnation.”
She shoved the selfie of Chu Lian and the Moutai wall in front of his face.
“Explain. Her. Why. Is. She. In. My. House.“