Child Abuse

I met someone named Chen Ye.

Everyone says he is loyal, kind, and a rare good person in this world.

But I think he is vulgar, hypocritical, and the most despicable and shameless scoundrel in the world.

Yet I kind of like him.

My parents divorced, and neither of them wanted me.

My grandmother raised me all by herself. When I got accepted into a top university, my parents suddenly started fighting over me again.

They didn’t know that when my grandmother passed away, all she had was fifty yuan, pieced together from a handful of small change.

She told me to buy more meat to eat.

She died alone in the old house, with no one to care for her in her final years.

I often wonder in what way my Stepmother would kill me.

Would she poison me with food, causing me to die of food poisoning?

Or would she wait until I let my guard down, then push me down the stairs and make it look like an accidental fall?

It wasn’t until a physical examination in middle school that I realized she had already started making her move.

To repay her, I devised a murder of my own.

The difference is, I’m a bit more greedy.

My target is… everyone in this family.

My Mother was a courtesan, earning money with her own flesh and blood to support my father’s studies and imperial examinations.

Five years later, my father succeeded and was granted marriage to a princess by the Emperor.

Yet, in the Golden Throne Hall, he refused the marriage at the risk of his own life, and with great fanfare, married my Mother with ten miles of red bridal procession.

The princess was displeased.

Three days later, Mother was found abused and disheveled, dying at the entrance of an alley.

Half a year later, the princess finally married my father as she wished.

She did not know that this was the beginning of her misfortune.

On Xu Anran’s wedding day, my lover jumped from the eighteenth floor.

When I opened the door to his studio, it was filled with portraits of Xu Anran.

The brushstrokes were rough and intense, yet carried the fervor of his boundless love.

A friend said, “Shen Qingqie loved Anran for ten years. She was his only light.”

When I opened my eyes again, I saw Shen Qingqie being cornered by the school bully in the classroom. I silently closed the door.

Later, he knocked on my window in the rain, his voice hoarse and full of despair.

“Ranran, don’t you want me anymore…?”

Zhou Ci and I were also a pair of resentful lovers, exchanging harsh words and blows, finally threatening, “Whoever doesn’t get divorced is a dog.”

On the way to the divorce, we cursed each other with the most venomous words we could muster.

But when the oil tanker crashed towards us, he jerked the steering wheel, using his side to take the impact.

He let me live 0.01 seconds longer.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the summer at the end of my second year of high school.

Zhou Ciye was holding a bouquet of flowers, asking if I would accept it.

The next second, his listless face lifted, full of gloom.

The moment our eyes met, I knew he had come back too.

Two hours before the execution, I walked into the Prison Cell to provide Psychological Counseling to the Death Row Inmate before his final moments.

The Death Row Inmate said, “Soon I will face Execution by Firing Squad, and everything will be settled. What a dull ending. But I still want to struggle a bit more-how can I change such a boring conclusion?”

“How about I tell you a story, Dr. Lu?”

His ambiguous smile sent a chill down my spine. In the last two hours, does he still hope to overturn his case?