Chapter 74
After realizing that, Lin Zhiqiao’s attention was once again drawn uncontrollably to Zhou Zili and the others.
Although they were siblings, Zhou Ming, Zhou Yu, and Zhou Zili did not look alike.
At that moment, the three of them were standing together. Zhou Zili was speaking softly, but Zhou Ming and Zhou Yu both wore impatient expressions, as if they were not listening to their brother at all. Their eyes wandered around the room, as though they were looking for someone.
Before long, the twin brother and sister’s eyes lit up. Looking excited, they ran off toward another direction, leaving Zhou Zili standing there alone.
Lin Zhiqiao looked in the direction the siblings had gone and immediately spotted the eye-catching red hair and blue hair.
It was Heng Yang and Heng Xing. When the two saw Zhou Ming and Zhou Yu, they lifted their hands and waved at them. Then their gazes passed over the siblings and landed on Zhou Zili, who was standing behind them,
filled with obvious provocation and mockery.
Lin Zhiqiao frowned.
The chaos in the venue did not last long. The contestants sat down with their family members and friends.
Zhou Ming and Zhou Yu sat beside the Heng family twins, while there was no one beside Zhou Zili.
Fortunately, Ji Ran and Cheng Xia were both sitting next to him, so at least the space around him did not look too empty.
Lin Zhiqiao’s brows furrowed so tightly they could practically kill a mosquito.
But on the other side, Zhou Zili did not feel the disappointment or sadness everyone else imagined.
His younger brother and sister’s attitude was nothing unfamiliar to him. In fact, he had long since grown used to it—or rather, he had already gone numb to it.
Maybe because he felt a little out of place amid the lively atmosphere around him, Zhou Zili quickly finished his dinner and, while no one was paying attention, slipped out to the small balcony outside for some air.
‘God, my heart hurts so much for Baby Li.’
‘The younger brother and sister seem really close to the Heng family twins, so during the last evaluation, were they really working together to target Baby Li? QAQ’
Lin Zhiqiao kept staring in the direction of the two pairs of twins and did not notice that Zhou Zili had quietly left.
[I seriously don’t understand. Baby Li cares so much about his younger siblings, so how can they look like they hate him that much?]
The way those two looked at Zhou Zili felt, to Lin Zhiqiao, almost like disgust and repulsion.
How could anyone look at their own family with that kind of gaze?
Well, except for those horrible members of the Lin family.
Lin Zhiqiao stuffed a bite of cake into his mouth and poked 888 to open another blind box.
[Zhou Zili and his younger siblings are half-siblings… Ah, so they’re half-siblings. No wonder they don’t look alike.]
[After his parents divorced, Zhou Zili was placed in his mother’s custody. But when he was ten, his mother died unexpectedly, so he had no choice but to be sent to his father’s house.]
[By then, his father had already remarried and started a new family, and he also had a pair of twin children. After Zhou Zili moved in, he had a very hard time adjusting for quite a long while.]
[Fortunately, his father’s second wife treated Zhou Zili very well and regarded him as her own child. But the twin younger brother and sister disliked him very much. They felt that Zhou Zili’s arrival stole away their parents’ love and attention, so they treated him terribly.]
[While their parents were still alive, the younger siblings restrained themselves a little. They only gave Zhou Zili attitude when their parents were not home, until a few years later, when both parents died in an accident.]
[The twins thought it was Zhou Zili’s fault. They believed he was a jinx—that it wasn’t enough that he had jinxed his own mother to death, he also had to come to their home and jinx their parents to death too—]
Lin Zhiqiao was speechless and furious: [Are they sick in the head or what? What era is this, and they’re still talking about jinxes and cursing people to death? Who can predict when an accident will happen? Feudal superstition is garbage!!!]
Lin Zhiqiao was so angry he had to calm down for a while before continuing to dig up more gossip.
[After something like that happened, of course there was no shortage of gossip and ugly talk from the people around them. Zhou Zili felt guilty, so he took on the burden of raising his younger siblings.]
[Zhou Zili was only in his teens back then, but after school every day he would go work part-time to earn money and help support the household. Sometimes he would not get home until after midnight.]
[During summer and winter vacation it was even worse. While other kids his age were out making plans to hang out together, Zhou Zili spent all of his time outside of studying on part-time jobs. He had no time at all to rest or catch his breath.]
[But his younger siblings were not grateful in the slightest. They saw all of Zhou Zili’s hardship and exhaustion, yet were not moved at all. Instead, they took all of his sacrifices for granted. Not only did they shamelessly enjoy everything he gave them, they even often spoke viciously to him.]
[Later, the twin sister was diagnosed with a rare illness. In order to earn money and save up for her treatment, Zhou Zili signed a contract with the Heng family and married Heng Yuan.]
[After the younger brother and sister found out about it, even though they knew perfectly well that Zhou Zili was doing it for the younger sister’s medical treatment, they still mocked him in every possible way. They even said that their brother married Heng Yuan for money, calling him a money-hungry…]
Lin Zhiqiao simply could not say the last two words out loud. He could not even force himself to read them silently in his head.
[Fuck, fuck, fuck—how can people this disgusting even exist!!!]
‘When the parents died, the twins were probably still young, so maybe they were misled by other people. But now they’re obviously adults already. Shouldn’t they have minds and moral judgment of their own by now? Where are their brains?’
‘My native language is speechless. How can there be such ungrateful white-eyed wolves?!’
Lin Zhiqiao cursed the twins for quite a while before finally taking a breath and continuing.
[The siblings never took Zhou Zili seriously. Not only that, they even secretly took the keepsake his mother left him and sold it while Zhou Zili was away from home, just because they felt the pocket money he gave them wasn’t enough—]
Lin Zhiqiao had only just calmed himself down, and immediately felt the urge to start cursing again.
‘Holy shit, are they even human? Is this something a human being could do?!’
‘Verified. Birds of a feather really do flock together. Anyone who can get along with Heng Xing and Heng Yang is definitely no good [death smile.jpg]’
‘That was his mother’s keepsake! How heartbroken must Baby Li have been when he couldn’t find it anymore, wuwuwu.’
‘Fuck, I want to charge into the screen and slice that pair of beasts into a thousand pieces [sharpening knife.jpg]’
Ji Ran, Cheng Xia, and the others present all felt the same way as the viewers outside the screen.
“Good thing Zhou Zili isn’t here right now.” Ji Ran looked around, then secretly whispered to Cheng Xia, “He needs to know about this, but if he finds out so much all at once, I’m worried he’ll get sick from the anger.”
Cheng Xia nodded in agreement.
At the side, Mama Ji dabbed at the corners of her eyes, her face full of the heartache a mother would feel for Zhou Zili.
She leaned close to Ji Ran and lowered her voice as well. “Find a time to ask Zhou Zili what his mother’s keepsake looked like. Since it was sold, maybe it’s still circulating in the market, or maybe someone already bought it. Let’s think of a way to see if we can still find it.”
Ji Ran’s eyes lit up, and he immediately replied, “Okay, I’ll ask him for a photo.”
What none of the people present knew was that just outside the venue door, only one wall away, Zhou Zili had just finished getting some air on the small balcony and was about to come back in—only to hear Lin Zhiqiao’s inner thoughts through the door.
Perhaps because Lin Zhiqiao’s emotions were especially intense, his inner voice carried even more strongly than usual, and Zhou Zili heard everything outside with perfect clarity.
He heard what his younger brother and sister truly thought of him. He heard the vicious things they had once said about him. And he also heard that they had stolen and sold the keepsake left behind by his late mother.
The hand resting on the doorknob suddenly clenched tight. Zhou Zili pressed his lips together and instinctively began trying to control his emotions.
The expression on his face shifted from numbness to shock, then to anger, and finally settled into blankness. But the light in his eyes remained dark and unsteady, revealing that his heart was nowhere near as calm as he appeared on the surface.
Yet Zhou Zili did not push the door open immediately.
Only after calming himself a little did he push the door open and return to his seat as if nothing had happened.
The worried gazes of the others landed on him. Zhou Zili’s expression did not change in the slightest. His calmness was almost unbelievable.
It was not until the banquet ended that Zhou Zili finally found a chance to be alone with his younger siblings.
From a distance, Ji Ran saw the three of them walk into an empty classroom. His brows immediately furrowed, and as he followed Zhou Zili, he did not forget to drag Lin Zhiqiao along with him.
Ji Yuan and Cheng Xia very consciously followed behind them. Even Papa Ji and Mama Ji came too.
The classroom door was closed by Zhou Zili, but movement inside could still be faintly heard.
Inside the room, Zhou Ming and Zhou Yu looked annoyed. “Can’t you just say whatever it is directly? Why are you being so mysterious?”
Zhou Zili’s face was expressionless as he got straight to the point. “My mother’s bracelet. Where did you sell it?”
Zhou Ming and Zhou Yu’s expressions stiffened. They clearly had not expected Zhou Zili to find out about it.
The two exchanged a glance, and then Zhou Yu lifted her chin. “What bracelet? How would I know anything about your mother’s bracelet?”
“A jade bracelet, carved with a pattern of twin phoenixes soaring.” Zhou Zili said, “Where is it? Don’t make me ask a third time.”
Because he felt guilty toward his younger siblings, Zhou Zili usually gave in to Zhou Ming and Zhou Yu in most things. The only time he had ever argued with them before was when he heard them talking badly about his mother behind her back.
And this time, finding out that the keepsake his mother had left him—the one he had always thought he had lost himself—had actually been stolen and sold by Zhou Ming and Zhou Yu, directly touched his reverse scale.
Zhou Zili’s voice was very low, and his eyes were as still and heavy as a pool of dead water. Meeting a pair of eyes like that made both Zhou Ming and Zhou Yu feel a little afraid.
Zhou Yu could not help taking a step back. In a guilty panic, she raised her voice and said, “It’s just one lousy bracelet. Do you really have to go this far?”
Zhou Zili looked at her steadily. “I said, don’t make me ask a third time.”
His voice remained calm, even gentle enough to be called mild, but this calmness was completely different from his usual self.
The usual Zhou Zili was always calm and gentle with a trace of people-pleasing in him. But now that trace of ingratiation had vanished without a trace, replaced by a kind of suppressed chill that made one’s spine go cold, like the air just before a storm broke.
Zhou Ming frowned and stepped sideways, shielding his sister behind him. “Some little roadside shop. It happened so many years ago, I don’t remember anymore. We only sold it for two hundred yuan. Cheap as hell—”
A sharp slap cut off the rest of what Zhou Ming was saying.
Zhou Ming clutched his face, completely stunned. Only after a long moment did he look up, still covering his cheek, staring at Zhou Zili’s arm that had not yet lowered, his face full of shock and fury. “You hit me?”
Protected behind Zhou Ming, Zhou Yu lunged forward and grabbed onto her twin brother, then looked up angrily. “You hit my brother over some broken bracelet worth two hundred yuan?”
“And what if I did?” Zhou Zili suddenly smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes. “Not only did I hit him—if you say one more word, I’ll hit you too.”
