“Mr. Lin, how come we haven’t seen you for several days?” the head nurse asked.
“I came down with a minor illness,” Lin Yansheng replied, his expression composed.
It wasn’t a cold, nor was it a viral infection. The doctor had said that his fever was caused by emotional shock, a psychosomatic response.
After his mother had been admitted to the hospital, Lin Yansheng had come to visit her every day.
For a patient, loneliness is its own kind of suffering; companionship, conversation, the simple act of easing boredom, these too are forms of treatment.
Besides, the doctor had privately told him the truth: “We intervened too late. Your mother’s illness has reached an advanced stage. What we can do now is only to ease her pain in the final stretch.”
Lin Yansheng nodded calmly.
Of course it was a sorrowful thing but having experienced loss more than once, one gradually grows accustomed to it. Everyone must eventually return to rest.
“Why?” he had asked. “Don’t you have company matters to attend to?”
Qin Shun had insisted on accompanying him. “You’ll run away,” Qin Shun said.
Lin Yansheng laughed. “You already have two people watching me. It’s stricter than prison. Why trouble yourself to come in person?”
The private hospital was quiet and serene.
Mother Lin occupied a room by herself. Having not seen Lin Yansheng for three days, she was delighted; the moment she saw him, she smiled.
“So you’ve finally come,” she said, her black hair pinned up with a silver hairpin, her face plain and clean, her eyes bright and clear. She looked more than ten years younger than her actual age. “I heard you were ill. You must take care of yourself.”
Mother and son shared the same baby faced features, as if reflected in a mirror.
They spoke in their hometown dialect.
Strangely enough, Lin Yansheng had only learned it in childhood and had not used it for many years yet he could still understand and speak it.
She was an optimistic person. She never complained, nor did she speak of her illness.
The two of them got along more like friends.
They talked about many things.
She told him about her childhood, her parents and sisters, her two marriages, her experiences in a foreign land. Lin Yansheng committed everything to memory, saying he would one day write it into a book. In turn, he told her about his own life and work, summing it up as “utterly dull in every way.”
She glanced at Qin Shun waiting outside the door and asked, “And him?”
Lin Yansheng thought for a long while, finding it difficult to answer. “…He’s… more or less… a friend of mine.”
She didn’t press further. “Oh, an old young friendship, then.”
She asked again, “Have I made things difficult for you? If so, we can go back. Chinese people still rely on traditional medicine, our customs go back generations.”
Lin Yansheng couldn’t help but laugh.
In the end, he couldn’t hold back.
He began to speak ill of Qin Shun.
“There was once someone who mocked me for being poor. So he spent ten years cultivating rose plants for them, then burned them all down in a single night.”
“Another time, he suddenly cut ties with a classmate he used to get along with very well. I asked him why. He said that when that person last came to our house, he didn’t say ‘hello’ or ‘thank you’ to me.”
“I told him to focus on his studies and not to work part time. He agreed verbally but every time he was lying.”
“You have no idea how terrible he is. Back in his third year of middle school, he dared to pretend to be a university student and sit in for a fifth year student’s final exam, thankfully, he wasn’t caught. Buying low and selling high among his classmates was practically routine for him. No matter how much I tried to stop him, he was always obsessed with making money.”
“When my latest serialized work received a poor response, he fabricated over thirty fake identities to write letters as readers, giving me false hope…”
He let out a long breath.
How had he ever thought Qin Shun was a good child?
He was clearly incorrigible.
When Lin Yansheng looked up, he saw his mother listening with great interest.
“Did he pass the exam?” she asked.
Lin Yansheng almost cried in frustration. “He scored very high.”
“He’s the kind of person who would cheat, scheme and do anything, just to make sure you live well,” she mused.
“Cheating and scheming will bring retribution sooner or later!” Lin Yansheng said anxiously.
The most frightening part was that Qin Shun had defied all moral boundaries, overturning the natural order, committing acts so deviant and unhinged, if it were ever exposed, it would bring lasting disgrace.
“And besides,” he said with a bitter smile, “even without me, I think he would still rise to prominence. He is more than capable. To him, fame and wealth are like a sweet poison, fragrant and irresistible. He drinks it eagerly, for his own sake alone. Since he was young, he was determined to stand above others.”
Lin Yansheng said this while they were discussing dishes from their hometown.
Qin Shun, displeased that they were speaking in dialect, asked what they were talking about.
Qin Shun frowned.
Within just a couple of days, as if by magic, he had managed to bring in a Huaiyang cuisine chef, who began preparing all three meals each day.
Such a life, truthfully, felt deeply improper to Lin Yansheng yet he found himself with no better solution and so, for the time being, he could only drift along, taking things as they came.
After all, he had never been someone who enjoyed going out. Staying quietly at home did not make him feel stifled. Occasionally, he would feel as though he had fallen into some kind of moral decline but when he thought it through, that didn’t seem quite right. Decline? Could one really call it decline to live a life free of worry, surrounded by fine clothes, abundant food, grand houses and luxury cars?
One day,
At dusk.
He returned from the hospital.
A servant informed him to have dinner first, saying that the master was currently in the study, receiving a guest.
A guest?
Lin Yansheng immediately tensed.
It had been several months.
He had already grown familiar with the household staff, the maids, the bodyguards, the gardener, so he asked, “Is it someone from business?”
“I’m not sure. It’s the first time I’ve seen him,” the maid replied, shaking her head, her expression tinged with unease. “But from what I can tell, he doesn’t seem like a good person. There’s a roughness about him, his arms are covered in tattoos. He doesn’t look like someone respectable.”
The evening shadows gradually deepened.
Lin Yansheng walked down the corridor lined with windows on both sides. Patches of slanted light fell across the floor, each one stained red by the blooming flame trees outside, as though the ground itself had been brushed with fire.
The door to the study was not fully closed.
“Have you slept with your uncle yet?”
It was Luo Yaoshan’s voice.
“?!”
Lin Yansheng’s heart clenched sharply, as if pierced by something invisible. In that instant, he wished he could simply die on the spot.
“Not yet.”
He heard Qin Shun answer.
✦ ✧ ✦
Fleurveil
[Translator]
☕ A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TRANSLATOR
Behind every translated chapter is someone who probably needs caffeine.
☕ BUY THEM A COFFEE →
✧ (づ｡•ㅅ•｡)づ ☕ ✧
✦ thank you for reading ✦
← PreviousNext →
ChaptersChapter 1 · UncleChapter 2 · Ran AwayChapter 3 · TimidChapter 4 · DeceasedChapter 5 · Grow upChapter 6 · CharmChapter 7 · EndureChapter 8 · Biological FatherChapter 9 · ContestChapter 10 · MisunderstoodChapter 11 · BreakChapter 12 · ReunionChapter 13 · MeetChapter 14 · To clearChapter 15 · InstructionsChapter 16 · RegretChapter 17 · SecretChapter 18 · Subtle SophistryChapter 19 · GuestChapter 20 · KissingChapter 21 · Extra 1Chapter 22 · Extra 2Chapter 23 · Extra 3Chapter 24 · Extra 4Chapter 25 · Extra 5Chapter 26 · Extra 6Chapter 27 · Extra 7Chapter 28 · Extra 8