Zhan Weiyang was scared.
He didn’t know how to answer Pei Qing’s question. There were some buzzing noises in his head, which tortured him. So he held the water bottle with both hands and buried his head lower and lower.
Pei Qing stretched out his hand and gently pressed it on the back of Zhan Weiyang’s neck and asked, “Yangyang, what’s wrong?”
Zhan Weiyang remained silent for a long time and said, in a muffled voice, “I can’t answer you.”
Pei Qing asked him again, “Is it that classmate of yours? The one called Xie Ling just now?”
Zhan Weiyang raised his head, and it was difficult to hide the surprise on his face.
Pei Qing took back her hand and said, “Yangyang, is there anything else you haven’t told me?”
Zhan Weiyang seemed flustered and helpless. He dug his fingers into the plastic water bottle, almost deforming it, and finally said, “I don’t have any.”
Pei Qing repeated the question, “You really don’t?”
Zhan Weiyang shook his head, “Really don’t.”
Pei Qing fell silent and looked at him for a long time without saying anything.
Zhan Weiyang was flustered. He secretly glanced at Pei Qing and then turned his head to continue drinking water in small sips.
Pei Qing said to him, “You rest here. I’m going down to get some air.” After saying that, he stretched out his hand to open the car door.
Zhan Weiyang subconsciously stretched out his hand to grab Pei Qing, but his fingertips only touched the hem of Pei Qing’s clothes and finally retracted powerlessly.
After waiting for less than half an hour, Zhan Weiguang and Zhan Xiusong also came back.
Zhan Xiusong looked particularly disheveled for some reason. His clothes were stained in large patches that couldn’t be patted clean, his glasses were crooked on his nose, always tilting slightly to the left, and there was a bit of a scr4p3 on his right cheek near the bridge of his nose.
After the two of them got in the car, they didn’t say anything, especially Zhan Xiusong, who looked very depressed and unhappy.
“Xiusong?” Pei Qing looked at him in the rearview mirror, “Are you okay?”
Zhan Xiusong said, “I’m fine.” His tone was a little aggrieved and stubborn.
Pei Qing then glanced at Zhan Weiguang. Zhan Weiguang didn’t say anything, only giving a quick look. So Pei Qing didn’t ask any more questions.
Later, when they returned, Zhan Weiguang told Pei Qing privately that Zhan Xiusong accidentally fell down, which was nothing. Sometimes, it was inevitable when exercising. Unexpectedly, Xu Fengwen laughed at him for being fat, saying that the whole ground was shaking when he fell down.
Afterwards, the joke lingered on. When Zhan Xiusong jumped up to shoot or grab the ball, Xu Fengwen would exaggerate and say that he shook when Zhan Xiusong landed, which greatly affected Zhan Xiusong’s mood for playing.
Zhan Weiguang felt annoyed. He stopped playing after saying a few words to Xu Fengwen and called Zhan Xiusong to leave.
After dinner, Zhan Xiusong obviously hadn’t gotten out of his depressed mood, and he went back to Zhan Weiyang’s room and closed the door.
Zhan Weiyang went up to the second floor and wanted to go into his room to take a look, but found that the door was locked from the inside. He raised his hand and wanted to knock on the door, but he felt that he didn’t want to talk to Zhan Xiusong, so he hesitated and didn’t knock.
He went to Pei Qing’s room, raised his hand and knocked on the door, then put his ear to the door. He didn’t hear any sound from inside, so he knocked again but still didn’t hear Pei Qing say come in. He had to open the door himself and found that the room was quiet and no one was there.
Zhan Weiyang didn’t know that Pei Qing was in Zhan Weiguang’s room at this time, he just retreated disappointedly and walked towards the large balcony on the second floor.
On the balcony, his flower pot was still alone in a row of large flower pots with lush green plants, and it looked lifeless because of the lack of life growing in it.
Zhan Weiyang walked over, afraid of crushing the flower pot, and dared not go in. So he could only sit cross-legged next to it, stretch out his arms to hold the edge of the flower pot, and gently lean his forehead against it.
It was not that he didn’t want to answer Pei Qing’s question. For a moment, he wanted to tell Pei Qing everything, but he had a terrible intuition that if he said it, his points would definitely be deducted. He didn’t know how much it would be deducted, and it would be bad if his points were all deducted.
Although he knew his journey would end in this flowerpot, he couldn’t bear to leave Pei Qing now. He just thought could it be a little later? As long as he followed the rules obediently and the System didn’t deduct his points too quickly, he could stay by Pei Qing’s side for one more day.
From childhood to adulthood, Zhan Weiyang had never met anyone who was so patient with him except his father and grandmother. Moreover, Pei Qing was different from his dad and grandmother; Pei Qing understood what he was thinking, something his dad and grandmother no longer did.
Zhan Weiyang felt sad and despondent.
Pei Qing was in Zhan Weiguang’s room. He came here for Zhan Weiyang. He walked to the window and found that from this angle of Zhan Weiguang’s room, he could see the balcony on the second floor and saw Zhan Weiyang sitting on the balcony forlornly hugging a flower pot.
“Yangyang—” Pei Qing paused here, “Have you felt that he has not been in good spirits lately?”
Zhan Weiguang was lying on the bed with one leg propped up, playing on his phone. Upon hearing this, he looked up, somewhat surprised, and said, “What?”
Pei Qing leaned forward slightly, crossed his arms and lay on the window, looking at Zhan Weiyang’s figure, “Did he tell you about any deductions or that he would become a fortune tree?”
“Fortune tree?” Zhan Weiguang was confused, “What fortune tree?”
Pei Qing suddenly realised that Zhan Weiyang had probably said those words only to him. Perhaps it was because he trusted only Pei Qing, or maybe he simply didn’t want to talk about it with anyone else. At that moment, Pei Qing hesitated, unsure whether he should continue discussing it with Zhan Weiguang.
He felt that Zhan Weiyang was in a bad state today, but he was not Zhan Weiyang’s guardian after all. He hoped to attract Zhan Pengcheng’s attention, and it would be best to find a doctor to talk to Zhan Weiyang and find out what the problem in his mind was. It was just that he noticed Zhan Pengcheng’s resistance last time, so he chose Zhan Weiguang this time.
Zhan Weiguang had already gotten off the bed and walked to Pei Qing’s side and just happened to see Zhan Weiyang downstairs from the window.
“Do you know why he cherishes his flower pot so much?” Zhan Weiguang suddenly grasped the point at this time.
Pei Qing looked at him and hesitated for a long time before saying, “What I just said, he said he’s going to turn into a fortune tree.”
“Why a fortune tree?” Zhan Weiguang found it difficult to understand.
“The point is not what kind of tree it is,” Pei Qing said, “the point is why he thinks he will become a tree?”
“He— Just often has some strange thoughts,” Zhan Weiguang leaned against the window and looked at Zhan Weiyang’s back with Pei Qing.
Pei Qing asked, “Does it last long?”
Zhan Weiguang replied, “Not necessarily. Sometimes he forgets when he’s distracted. Why does he think he will turn into a tree?”
Pei Qing said, “I don’t know. I thought you would know.”
“He doesn’t tell me anything. How can I know!”
Pei Qing looked at him, “He thinks you treat him badly.”
Zhan Weiguang laughed sarcastically, “What more could I do to be good to him?”
Pei Qing didn’t want to continue discussing this topic with Zhan Weiguang. They were brothers who grew up together and had their own way of getting along. He had no right to interfere. He was just worried about Zhan Weiyang’s current situation. After a while, he asked Zhan Weiguang, “Do you think he can get out of this state on his own?”
Zhan Weiguang said, “I don’t know. He has always seemed normal in front of me; this is just how he is. Back in elementary school, he became attached to a cup. He had to use that cup for drinking water, carried it in his backpack every day to school and brought it back home. One time, my dad accidentally broke it and couldn’t find an exact replacement. He went to great lengths to buy one that looked very similar, but it still didn’t satisfy him. He didn’t drink water all day, and my dad almost cried out of frustration.”
“What happened next?” Pei Qing asked.
Zhan Weiguang continued, “Later, I got impatient and grabbed him and forced him to pour water from my cup into his mouth. He almost choked, then I said, ‘You’re done. You’ve drunk from my cup.’ I didn’t know what he was thinking, but he suddenly stopped making trouble. My dad scolded me for this.”
Pei Qing looked out the window in silence, and after a long while, he said, “Uncle was probably just too anxious.”
Zhan Weiguang said in a nonchalant tone, “It’s okay, you don’t need to try to persuade me. I know my dad better than anyone. I don’t have any particular feelings about it. As long as it has nothing to do with Zhan Weiyang, he’s pretty good to me. But once it involves Zhan Weiyang, he doesn’t have any boundaries himself, so how can he be concerned about his attitude towards others?”
“I’m sorry,” Pei Qing said sincerely, “Can I ask you a question, where is your mother?”
Zhan Weiguang said, “Divorced, gone.”
Pei Qing was a little surprised.
Zhan Weiguang’s tone remained nonchalant and indifferent, “I’ve heard that other people’s mothers can give up everything for their children. Maybe my mom is different from other mothers. She argued with my dad a lot over Zhan Weiyang, and later, she couldn’t handle the stress and didn’t want to stay in this family anymore, so she left.”
Pei Qing never expected it to be like this. He asked, “Was it because of Yangyang’s drowning incident?”
Zhan Weiguang nodded, “When Zhan Weiyang nearly drowned, both my dad and I were there. I got into a scuffle with some other kids, and my dad came over to separate us so he didn’t notice Zhan Weiyang. By the time someone else found him, he had already stopped breathing, and his heart had stopped.”
As he reached this point, Zhan Weiguang’s tone grew sombre. He looked at Pei Qing and said, “This is a lifelong pain for my dad. I don’t know if he hates me, but I know he hates himself. My mom also hates him. They took Zhan Weiyang everywhere to see doctors, visiting all the good hospitals in big cities, but it only ended in this result. My mom couldn’t stand it anymore, started arguing with my dad obsessively, and grew dissatisfied with everything the family did. Eventually, she pushed herself to leave.”
Pei Qing took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly; the sound sounded like a sigh, carrying a sense of powerlessness over the past and the future.
He felt that he could understand Zhan Pengcheng’s mentality, and he feared that this guilt would never fade away in his lifetime.
Pei Qing raised his hand, covered his face and rubbed it gently, feeling somewhat exhausted.
Zhan Weiguang said, “I’m sorry to tell you about these messy things in my family.”
Pei Qing said, “It’s what I want to know.”
Zhan Weiguang crossed his arms in front of his chest, “Actually, you’re really a good person. I rarely see someone so patient with Zhan Weiyang. Even my dad, though he seems very accommodating on the surface, sometimes is obviously just perfunctory to Zhan Weiyang. He says, ‘okay, okay’ but doesn’t really follow through. No wonder Zhan Weiyang likes you.”
Pei Qing didn’t speak.
Zhan Weiguang said, “I’m sorry to bother you. I don’t think you need to worry too much about Zhan Weiyang’s strange thoughts. Maybe after a while, he’ll be fine. Otherwise, you could just smash the flowerpot into pieces, let him be upset and cry for a while, and he might come to terms with it by the next day.”
“Better not,” Pei Qing said. “Let’s keep it for him.”
When Pei Qing came down from upstairs, he saw that Zhan Weiyang was no longer on the balcony. He walked over to lock the balcony door and then went back to the room.
As soon as he opened the door, he saw Zhan Weiyang kneeling on the floor, his body sprawled by the side of the bed, staring blankly with red eyes. Upon seeing him return, Zhan Weiyang immediately raised his head like a startled rabbit, looking at him with reddened eyes.
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