POV: Zhang Xiaohou
After leaving Mo Fan’s house, I went straight home.
When I walked through the front door, my grandma looked up from her knitting.
“How was your day?”
“It was good.
I played with Mo Fan’s new sister, and she really liked my toys,” I replied politely, heading straight to my room for a cold shower.
After the shower, I dropped onto my mattress like a puppet with its strings cut.
The sheer psychological exhaustion was real, and I wanted to sleep very badly.
But, forcing myself awake with the willpower of my Level 3 [Spiritual Strength], I called up the System’s status window.
A bunch of new notifications were waiting for me:
[Acting Level up: Lv.2 —> Lv.3]
[Acting Level up: Lv.3 —> Lv.4]
I stared at the screen in disbelief.
My [Acting] skill, which I had acquired when I was barely a month old just to appease my parents, had barely moved for years.
Now, after one high stress afternoon in the presence of Salan, it had leveled up twice in a single day.
At least this meant I could instinctively control my facial features better to maintain my harmless facade.
Scrolling down, I noticed a bunch of Level 1 skills still sitting in the window, registered from various random things I had tried over the years.
I had originally planned to level up my programming skills this year so I could break into the gaming industry in the future, but my dad wasn’t having it when I asked him to buy me a laptop.
So, I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind.
Since it was 2006, this world’s technological timeline still closely paralleled my previous one.
The internet was a booming frontier, and there were endless opportunities to make a fortune if you knew what was coming.
Dreaming of the luxurious life I could buy after earning some real money, I finally gave in to the exhaustion and slowly drifted off to sleep.
Over the next few days, life continued without any major hurdles.
I completely dodged every invitation to visit Mo Fan’s house, making up various excuses.
I knew it would only be about six months before Salan left Bo City, so I decided to keep an incredibly low profile.
I even stopped my urban exploration routine across the other districts of the city; I didn’t want to look suspicious or draw Ye Chang’s terrifying gaze.
Over the past year, I had fully mapped out the Southern and Eastern districts.
Only the Western District, which led to the outer safe zone, and the Northern District, where the Mu family mansion was located, remained.
I decided to postpone my scouting expeditions for six months.
It just wasn’t worth the risk.
Three months passed.
During those three months, I kept up my grueling physical rhythm: martial arts practice and endurance running, which I knew I needed to master if I wanted to outrun danger.
Slowly, as my meditation level increased, I began replacing my regular sleep with deep meditative states.
I opened my System’s status window to check my progress:
> [Physical Fitness Theory: Lv.26]
> [Meditation: Lv.19]
> [Martial Arts: Lv.4]
> [Acting: Lv.13]
> [Spiritual Strength: Lv.3]
My [Acting] had increased tremendously over these past three months.
Compared to kindergarten, where my audience was limited, primary school had hundreds of people watching me.
Thanks to my consistently high test scores and the passive effects of my [The Good Boy] title, the teachers were always incredibly favorable toward me.
Parents actively approached me, pushing their kids to be friends with the “smart, well behaved Zhang boy.” I just smiled and politely accepted the attention without saying much, inadvertently becoming the most popular kid in school.
Mo Fan was also popular, but for completely opposite reasons he was quickly building a reputation as a reckless, spoiled troublemaker, and he always stuck by my side.
On Sundays, I would ask Mo Fan to bring Xinxia to the neighborhood park so we could play together.
I lucked out on that front; Ye Chang never seemed to care about what Xinxia did or who she played with outside the house.
The next three months continued in this exact same, repetitive routine.
Then, I finally got the news.
The news was so incredibly good that I locked my bedroom door, blasted some loud music, and danced like a maniac for five straight minutes until my grandma yelled at me to turn it down.
Earlier that day, Mo Fan had walked up to me and casually announced, “Xinxia’s mom has been missing for four days without any news.
My dad filed a missing person report at the police station.”
I had tried to act surprised and console him, but Mo Fan honestly didn’t even care about his stepmother’s disappearance.
With the threat gone, I quickly returned to my previous rhythm of urban exploration with Mo Fan.
Three days later, we were halfway through scouting the Western District when Mo Fan casually mentioned that Xinxia hadn’t stopped crying and was refusing to eat anything.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
Up until that exact moment, I hadn’t even thought about Xinxia’s feelings regarding her missing mother.
I had been so utterly consumed by my own selfish relief that Salan had left Bo City for good that the thought of consoling her hadn’t even crossed my adult mind.
Guilt hit me like a physical blow.
I immediately abandoned our exploration of the city, dragged Mo Fan away, and headed straight for his house.
On the way, I stopped and bought some of the sweets I knew Xinxia liked.
It took twenty minutes to reach his home.
When I walked inside, I saw Xinxia sitting in her wheelchair, staring blankly at the front door as if waiting for her mother to walk back through it.
Beside her was a woman I recognized as Mo Fan’s aunt, Mo Qing.
She had likely stepped in to watch the kids since Uncle Mo was at work.
I honestly didn’t know what to think of Mo Jiaxing.
He was a hardworking, genuinely kind man who had been ruthlessly targeted by Ye Chang specifically for that honesty.
She knew that even if she vanished, he would never abandon a disabled child on the streets.
Salan could read people perfectly; she had judged Mo Jiaxing right.
Shaking off my thoughts, I walked over to Xinxia.
The moment she saw me approaching, her eyes welled up.
She reached out, hugged me tightly, and cried until she ran out of breath.
Eventually, she peeked over without breaking the hug.
Her dark eyes were swollen, her face blotchy and pale.
“Xiaohou gege…” she whispered, her voice cracking painfully.
“Why did she go?”
I looked at her, weighing my words carefully.
I couldn’t tell her the truth.
I couldn’t tell her that her mother was a megalomaniacal terrorist who viewed human lives as fertilizer.
“I don’t know, Xinxia,” I said softly.
“Was it…
was it me?” she choked out, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks.
Her small hands gripped my shirt until her knuckles turned white.
“Is it because my legs don’t work?
Because I’m a burden?
If I was a normal girl, would she have stayed?”
My expression hardened instantly.
I gently but firmly placed my hands on her shoulders, pushing her back just enough to force her to look directly at me.
“Listen to me, Ye Xinxia,” I said, my voice dropping its usual childish inflection, taking on a tone of absolute, unbreakable certainty.
“Do not ever think that.
Not even for a second.”
She sniffled, startled by the intense seriousness in my eyes.
“When adults run away, it is never because of the kids.
It is because the adults are broken,” I told her, holding her gaze.
“Your mother left because there is something wrong with her, not you.
You are smart, you are kind, and you are perfect exactly the way you are.
Her leaving is her failure.
Not yours.”
Xinxia stared at me, her lower lip trembling.
The heavy, suffocating guilt that had been crushing her chest for the past four days seemed to waver under the weight of my words.
“But…
she’s gone,” Xinxia whispered, the devastating reality of her abandonment fully settling in.
“I don’t have a mom anymore.”
“I know,” I said gently, softening my grip and pulling her back into a careful hug.
She immediately buried her face in my shoulder, her small hands clutching the back of my shirt as if she were drowning and I was the only piece of driftwood in the ocean.
“You might not have her,” I murmured into her dark hair, “but you still have a family.
Uncle Mo isn’t going anywhere.
Mo Fan isn’t going anywhere.
And I am definitely not going anywhere.”
“Promise?” she mumbled against my shirt, her voice muffled and desperate.
“I promise,” I said, my voice steady.
“No matter what happens, no matter how bad things get, I will always be here to protect you.
I’m your gege, right?
That’s my job.”
She didn’t say anything else.
She just held on tighter, her ragged breathing slowly beginning to even out as the exhaustion of crying finally caught up with her.
Seeing that Xinxia had finally calmed down, Mo Qing stepped forward, gently lifted her out of the wheelchair, and carried her to her bed without a word.
After tucking her in, Mo Qing walked back out to the living room and sighed.
“Thank you, Xiaohou, for your help calming her down.”
“No problem, Auntie,” I replied politely.
“She is my friend.
I only did what any friend would do.”
Mo Qing turned toward Mo Fan and glared.
“See?
You should learn a thing or two from Xiaohou.” With that, she grabbed her purse and walked out of the house.
Mo Fan looked completely baffled.
“What did I do this time?” he asked me, utterly clueless.
I just shook my head.
After placing the sweets and drinks I had bought on the nightstand beside Xinxia’s bed and giving Mo Fan a stern warning not to eat them, I began the journey back to my house.
After all that emotional upheaval, I had absolutely no desire left for city exploration today.
I just went home, locked my bedroom door, and meditated.
To be continued…