25
“Let’s hurry back! Evening self-study has already started!”
It was Wu Jiao who woke Mo Li and broke the strange tension.
Four people. Two umbrellas.
Wu Jiao took the initiative to share an umbrella with Gao Tianchi and walked ahead.
Si Xiuyuan held an umbrella, with Mo Li beside him wearing his school jacket. She looked small and delicate standing next to him. The two of them appeared very well-matched.
Wu Jiao glanced at them, then immediately turned her head back and quickened her pace, pulling Gao Tianchi along.
The pair in front walked so fast that they left the other two behind. Si Xiuyuan’s lips curled into an enigmatic smile.
“We should walk faster too,” he said to Mo Li.
The next day, Mo Li didn’t come to school. The homeroom teacher told Wu Jiao that she had taken a day off.
“That child is sick. Tomorrow is Saturday. If you have time, could you help deliver the homework to her?”
Wu Jiao agreed.
Saturday morning, Wu Jiao got up early. To her surprise, Wu Zihui was at home.
She was sitting on the sofa, surrounded by various receipts and forms, with heavy dark circles under her eyes. Wu Jiao was startled.
“Mom, you didn’t sleep, did you?”
Wu Zihui nodded and then shook her head. “I dozed off a little. Why are you up so early, Jiao Jiao?”
Wu Jiao explained that she was going to deliver homework to Mo Li.
Wu Zihui nodded. “I’ll drive you. I need to go to that area to buy some pastries anyway. We can bring some for your classmate too.”
Wu Jiao couldn’t convince her mother to stay home and rest.
Wu Zihui drove to the building where Mo Li lived.
It was an old, run-down area—not even really a neighborhood. The alleys were narrow. If Wu Zihui weren’t such a skilled driver, she might not have been able to get through.
Following the address the homeroom teacher had given her, Wu Jiao went up to the third floor.
There were no apartment numbers on the hallway. Wu Jiao walked down a corridor cluttered with various items. An elderly woman was sitting in the hallway picking vegetables. Wu Jiao approached her to ask.
“Hello, Grandma. Do you know where Mo Li lives?”
Others looked at her warily. The old woman looked up, gave Wu Jiao a once-over, and slowly pointed in a direction.
“Over there.”
“Thank you, Grandma.”
Wu Jiao stopped in front of a blue-green door.
She knocked on Mo Li’s door. After a few seconds, the sound of hurried footsteps in slippers came from inside.
“Who is it?”
“Wu Jiao.”
Mo Li opened the door, surprised and delighted. “Wu Jiao! What are you doing here?”
Wu Jiao handed her the things she was carrying. “I came to bring you the homework—one is food, the other is schoolwork.”
Mo Li laughed at her joke.
“Thank you, Wu Jiao. You’re so kind.” Mo Li’s face showed a hint of apology. “Actually, I was fine after taking my medicine yesterday. But the store needed someone urgently and was offering good pay, so I took the day off.”
Wu Jiao was taken aback.
She knew Mo Li needed to earn money to support her family and often worked on weekends, but she hadn’t realized how hard it was for her.
Mo Li looked into Wu Jiao’s eyes and smiled.
“Don’t worry about me. If I have trouble, I’ll come to you for help. I know you consider me a friend.”
She had guessed everything Wu Jiao wanted to say.
“I’d really like to invite you in, but I have to go to work soon. Next time you’re free, come over and hang out, okay?” Mo Li said apologetically.
Wu Jiao nodded. “Okay. Next time I’ll come visit.”
As they were talking, a loud crash suddenly came from the door behind Wu Jiao, making both of them jump.
Wu Jiao’s heart sank.
Could the plot have advanced early?
Just as something heavy slammed against the iron door behind Wu Jiao, a woman’s terrified, anguished cry came from inside.
“Ahhhh! Help! Murder! It hurts, it hurts so much!”
“My son—don’t touch my son! You’re a murderer!”
A man’s voice roared in response: “Go to hell! It’d be right to kill you too!”
“Don’t get in my way! I’ll beat both of you!”
There were about seven or eight households along the corridor. The people Wu Jiao had seen sitting outside earlier had all picked up their stools and hurried back inside, shutting their doors.
Wu Jiao frowned. Mo Li grabbed her arm and said seriously, “Gao Tianchi’s father is hitting people again. Sometimes it gets really bad, and he does it in the hallway. You should go back.”
No sooner had she spoken than a middle-aged woman with disheveled hair opened the door behind Wu Jiao and ran out, hiding behind her.
She clutched Wu Jiao’s arm tightly, cowering like a pitiful chick hiding behind its mother in a game of eagle catching chicks.
“Don’t hit me, don’t hit me… help me!”
Mo Li cracked her door open and waved at Wu Jiao through the gap, whispering urgently, “Come inside! Don’t get involved!”
In this building, neighbors who had tried to help mediate in the past had all ended up injured.
They had done all they could. This family was beyond saving.
“Who are you? Get out of the way!”
Wu Jiao stood in front of the middle-aged woman. A scruffy, unshaven middle-aged man rushed out, holding a half-broken liquor bottle.
Even though she was frightened by the man, Wu Jiao didn’t back down. She asked calmly, “What are you doing?”
“What I do is none of your damn business!”
The man’s eyes were bloodshot, his expression fierce.
“She’s my woman. If you want to meddle in other people’s business, I don’t mind taking you down too!”
The man raised the bottle, its sharp, jagged edge pointing directly at Wu Jiao.
The woman screamed in terror and cried out desperately, “Don’t kill me! Tianchi, Tianchi is still inside—he’s bleeding!”
Xiao E: “Host, run! The system hasn’t triggered a mission. This isn’t something you can solve!”
Wu Jiao’s palms were sweating profusely as her mind raced. She saw bloodstains on the bottle.
Neither the man nor the woman had any wounds on them. That meant the one injured was… Gao Tianchi.
So the plot had advanced early after all.
In the original story, Gao Tianchi was supposed to be accidentally injured by his father on some Sunday.
After that, he would drop out of school and disappear from Mo Li’s life, not reuniting with her until she was in college.
Wu Jiao asked Xiao E exactly which day it would happen, but no matter how she pressed or pleaded, Xiao E just stammered and couldn’t give her a clear answer.
With no other choice, Wu Jiao had to rely on herself.
Based on the timeline of the plot, it would happen sometime around these few weeks. That was why she had invited Gao Tianchi out for a meal—to try to prevent the plot from unfolding.
But she hadn’t expected the plot to advance early.
If she ran away now, Gao Tianchi’s mother would also get hurt.
This was a boy who even cared deeply about stray cats.
He worked so hard to earn money precisely so he could treat his mother’s illness and give her a better life as soon as possible.
If his mother got hurt, how devastated would he be…
Xiao E stopped throwing a tantrum and warned her loudly, but Wu Jiao didn’t listen.
She shielded the woman behind her. “This hallway is shared space for everyone. You shouldn’t be fighting here. Intentional harm is against the law. If you insist on doing this, I won’t hesitate to call the police.”
“The police? Ha.” The man looked as if he had just heard the funniest joke in the world. “Go ahead, call them. See if she lets you.”
The word “police” seemed to touch a raw nerve in the woman. She pushed Wu Jiao aside, threw herself at the man’s feet, and hugged his legs, begging.
“Don’t call the police, please don’t call the police! Don’t take Tianchi away—he’s my child!”
The man looked at Wu Jiao smugly.
“My woman listens to me. Now get the hell out of here!”
He kicked the woman. She obediently crawled back toward the house on all fours like a dog.
“Auntie—”
Seeing this, Wu Jiao felt as if an invisible giant hand had squeezed her heart. She couldn’t breathe.
She reached out to help the woman, but the woman trembled and pushed her away, speaking incoherently: “Run away! Don’t worry about Mama anymore! Run, run!”
Perhaps she thought Wu Jiao was Gao Tianchi.
The man stood there smugly, arms crossed, and triumphantly began to close the iron door. Just then, a hand stopped it.
Wu Zihui, who had been waiting in the car downstairs for a long time, appeared.
“Hitting women? And you think you’re just going to walk away?”
She snatched the bottle from the man’s hand, threw it into a bag, and handed it to Wu Jiao. “This is evidence. Hold it for Mom.”
Wu Zihui wasn’t a strong or capable woman—quite the opposite, she often acted cute and clingy with Wu Jiao. But at this moment, she was an incredibly fierce mother.
Also an incredibly brave woman.
With that, she raised her phone and shoved it in the man’s face. Caught off guard, he froze.
“I have video evidence, and I’m a witness too. You committed intentional harm and beat your own wife and child. If you have any excuses, don’t tell me—save your strength for the police.”
The man, enraged and humiliated, lunged for Wu Zihui’s phone but the sound of police sirens came from outside the building.
Wu Jiao and Mo Li sat in the police station.
“You were so quick-thinking. If you hadn’t been, with how violent things got this time, who knows what could have happened.”
Mo Li breathed a sigh of relief.
Every time their neighbor’s domestic violence erupted, just hearing it made her heart pound.
But she was just a high school student. If even the grown men in the neighborhood couldn’t stop it, there was nothing she could do either.
All she could do was silently bandage Gao Tianchi’s wounds afterward and comfort him that life would get better.
If Wu Jiao hadn’t mouthed instructions to her, signaling her to run downstairs and get her mother’s help, this time might have cost someone their life.
Gao Tianchi had been stabbed in the waist by a shard of the glass bottle, and there were also knife wounds on his hands. By the time Wu Jiao went inside, he was already in so much pain that he was barely conscious, collapsed on the floor.
Fortunately, the police arrived quickly and rushed him to the hospital before bringing the women in for their statements.
Mo Li still had her part-time job, so she gave her statement first and left.
Wu Jiao and Wu Zihui finished their statements around nightfall.
Gao Xiong was temporarily detained. How the case would proceed depended on Gao Tianchi and Wang Meijuan both being present. The police station issued a personal safety protection order for them first.
“It makes me so angry! How can a man like that exist? And I didn’t become a district women’s federation representative for nothing!”
Wu Zihui was warmhearted and acted decisively, but never overstepped. On the contrary, she was meticulous. When the district had elected women’s federation representatives, she’d signed up on a whim and actually won.
Since then, Wu Zihui had mediated many family disputes. Many women saw her as a trusted older sister and came to her for help. Wu Zihui never hesitated to lend a hand.
Wu Jiao felt fortunate to have a mother like her.
The two of them stepped out of the police station, and at that moment, Wang Meijuan was also escorted out by an officer.
Wang Meijuan’s mental state was clearly unstable. She gave nonsensical answers, mumbled incoherently, and repeated the same words over and over. Under these circumstances, the police could only take her to the hospital.
When she saw Wu Jiao, she immediately ran over and grabbed her hand. “Tianchi! Where is Tianchi?! I saw you take Tianchi away! Give him back to me—he’s my child!”
“Your child is at the hospital. Don’t be afraid, sister. He’s fine. Let’s go see him together.”
Wu Zihui stepped in front of Wu Jiao to shield her and comforted Wang Meijuan.
As it happened, mother and daughter were already planning to visit Gao Tianchi at the hospital. The police took all of them together.
Gao Tianchi lay quietly on the hospital bed, an IV in his hand, fast asleep. The usual “stay away from me” aura was completely gone. He looked like a child in a deep, peaceful sleep, completely vulnerable.
Wu Jiao had never seen him so fragile. Her heart felt hollow and ached.
She still hadn’t been able to stop his misfortune. He had to go through all of this.
Xiao E felt bad seeing Wu Jiao so sad: “Host, don’t be upset. It’s not your fault. This is the plot—it’s the fate he can’t escape. You’ve already done so well.”
**