Chapter 102. You Are Really Cruel.

Lin Feng looked at Chen Du like an alien, as if he had discovered a new world, “What did you say? Who do you love?”

Chen Du stared into the air in silence for a few seconds, then his head lowered again. He resumed brushing up on his questions.

“……” It was probably because his studies had made him mentally disturbed, Lin Feng thought with dismay. With such a major incident at home, anyone else who was more fragile would probably have gone crazy.

Chen Du didn’t have much time to be vulnerable. Chen Jiashu didn’t give him any room to breathe, leaving him with a ticket for that very night. He spent half an hour searching every corner of his suite but found nothing. He panicked and called the hotel’s customer service, which presented him with a surveillance screen showing a girl leaving the hotel at 4 a.m. wearing a plain dress, no backpack, and empty hands.

She left cleanly, taking nothing with her except her documents. The clothes, shoes, and bags she had bought earlier were all thrown away, and a dozen unopened bags were piled up in the corner. Chen Du ran around the room helplessly, repeatedly opening doors in the room, shouting Chen Jiashu’s name in the air, hot and sweaty. He dropped a vase, and the sound of broken porcelain made him suddenly wake up. Some of the previous traces that had been unintentionally ignored suddenly became subtle.

Chen Jiashu didn’t want him to buy her clothes; she really didn’t. During the process of trying them on and buying them, she had been resistant and vaguely helpless. “You’re buying so many and putting them there to grow dust, ah?” It was a joy to take her out to eat and play. Wanting to try everything, she looked so happy. Chen Du was so relieved that he easily ignored all the terrible details.

Everything happened suddenly, but there were signs behind it. Chen Jiashu had bought her ticket a week before she left, and she should have been thinking of leaving even earlier. Otherwise, how could Wen Yun have called that day?

He had cut off his phone’s GPS and lost all contact with the outside world, so how did Wen Yun know which hotel they were at? It was only when Chen Du got on the plane back to China in a daze that he slowly realised that Chen Jiashu had never intended to stay with him from the very beginning.

Chen Du remembered what Wen Yun had said, “Chen Jiashu, you really are cruel.” It turned out that these words were meant for him.

Sometimes, like now, Chen Du would hate her, hate her for ever being sober and self-possessed, hate her for always refusing to truly trust him, and kill him in the sweetest way.

In the end, he hated himself. He wasn’t as powerful as he thought. He had made so many plans, but the fact was that Chen Jiashu couldn’t bear to give him a chance.

Wen Yun would sometimes visit him, and to keep the other roommates and classmates from getting suspicious, he would go out with her and walk around the campus together. Most of the time, the atmosphere was quite cordial. Both of them tacitly avoided sensitive topics, looking like a normal, harmonious mother and son.

But after all, a rift of that magnitude had been torn, and when an argument arose, it was irreconcilable.

When she heard that he had already submitted his application for the junior class at the University of Science and Technology, Wen Yun suddenly changed her face. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me? You didn’t even discuss it with me. You made this decision on your own. Is this how self-indulgent and depraved you want to be?”

He didn’t know how CSU became a self-indulgent school. Anyway, in Wen Yun’s opinion, everything else was a pheasant school except Qingbei. She had instilled in Chen Du since he was young that he would choose between these two schools 1 Tsingua and Peking in the future. She didn’t want him to go abroad because she couldn’t let her only son go. It would be better for him to go abroad for a year or two in his sophomore or junior year, and eventually, he would have to come back after graduation. She has always had such strange controls over the people around her.

And in the end, she didn’t catch any of them. Chen Du said, “The professional prospects are better there.”

“That’s a nice thing to say.” Wen Yun sneered, “Just can’t wait that long?”

She almost bluntly pierced the illusion of warmth just now, and the atmosphere suddenly cooled down.

“……” Chen Du pursed his lips slightly. His muscles tensed for a moment, looking at her with a defensive gaze.

“Don’t charge your mother with such a look. If I wanted to do anything, you’d still be standing here talking to me?” Wen Yun spoke with a sneer, glaring at him with hatred, “Crazy like this for a woman. You’re really my good son.”

After saying that, she felt sad. More than ten years ago, her family had told her the same thing, saying she was crazy and doing stupid things for a man who was nothing. Back then, she had acted as she pleased, breaking up a marriage as easily as a pair of chopsticks with love at her fingertips. Wen Yun had not expected her son to repeat her mistakes, even though it seemed to her that this relationship was even more disgraceful than hers.

Is this retribution? Wen Yun’s face was no better than Chen Du’s, and even looked paler, with a vague sadness in her eyes. “I’m a widow; I can’t even control my own son. What do you think I can do?”

Chen Jinan’s ashes were cold. How could she do anything to a dead man’s orphan?

Just such a rotten person. He was slagging off his whole life and still trying to be a good person before he died, leaving all the unpleasantness to her.

Chen Du lowered his head slightly and said, “I’m sorry.”

He stood under a sycamore tree, light falling in piles from the broken shadows of the leaves, as if he were standing in the very distant future.

Wen Yun finally burst into tears. She hadn’t waited for Chen Jinan to say sorry; instead, the innocent Chen Du had apologised to her twice, yet again, for that person.

What could be done? She turned around with her bag and took a tissue to wipe away her tears with her head down. “Retribution, it’s all retribution ……” Her voice was so small that it was almost inaudible, scattering into the air along with her fading back.

Chen Du raised a hand to wipe his dry eyes and turned his head to look at the distant sunset.

It was too far away, telling him not to see it really. The sky might be brighter there if he went north.