Poison

After refusing her father’s demand that she enter into a marriage alliance, she left home. Her father declared that she was never to set foot in the house again, and that she would never see her mother again.

Her relationship with her father had never been close; with her mother, it was like most mothers and daughters. Not intimate enough for her to tell her everything, but still bound by deep affection.

Her mother and father had also been brought together through a marriage alliance. Lacking the tenderness of a loving couple, they were more like two strangers forced to share the same roof.

In her memory, her mother was a rather fragile, delicate woman. She liked to play the piano, read, and tend flowers and plants. But whenever her father was home, she would often fall silent and hide in her room, refusing to come out.

Among her childhood memories, the few that held warmth had all been given to her by her mother.

Her mother was very gentle with children; even when urging her to listen properly to her father, she did it in a tone that sounded almost like a plea. She had keenly sensed that not only did she fear her father’s brutality, but her mother did too.

At the time, she had always wondered why, though both were called love, her mother’s love made her feel warm while her father’s love made her feel so much pain.

Only later did she understand. Her father loved her as a useful tool, something excellent to be shaped and used. As for her mother... she had once believed that in this world, they were the two people who loved each other most. But now she could no longer be sure what she had ever meant to her.

Not long after leaving home, she received the news that her mother had died by suicide.

Her mother left a note saying she did not want to become a burden standing in her daughter’s way to freedom, so she had decided to leave.

It was laughable.

Because on the night before she fled, she had asked her mother whether she would be willing to leave with her; her mother had only silently shaken her head.

She couldn’t understand it.

When she first heard the news, she collapsed. She was utterly broken; she went to the funeral, only to be stopped by her father before she could even enter the funeral grounds.

She locked herself in her room, drew the curtains tight so that not a single ray of sunlight could get in, and in that darkness she felt a suffocating, drowning sense of being unable to breathe. She lay on the bed without moving, unable to think, her consciousness itself muddled.

Countless times, she thought about death; about ending this life so heavy with pain that she could no longer bear it.

That state lasted for a very long time. Back then, Wen Yi stayed by her side and did not resent her for no longer being able to continue her career; she took care of her and kept her company for a long while.

Little by little, she emerged from that dazed, muddled state and began to question her mother over and over in her heart: why would she do such a thing?

Being thrown out of the house was one thing; the worst possible outcome would only have been that the two of them could never see each other again for the rest of their lives. But her mother chose suicide. That wouldn’t change the current situation at all; the only person who would suffer was her.

Why use death to hurt the daughter she had spoken of protecting? For a long time, Nan Changgeng struggled with that question and could make no sense of it, no matter how she thought about it.

Later, she gradually understood a little.

Perhaps her mother had long been unable to endure that kind of life, but couldn’t bring herself to end it so lightly, like a leaf falling silently to the ground, so she could only keep living in reluctant misery.

That was why, back then, she would always mutter to herself that giving birth to two outstanding children had been worthwhile; whether it was her or her brother, they had both been raised well... it had been worthwhile.

Her mother rarely spoke. Especially after she and her brother grew up and their studies became busier and busier, she grew even more silent, sometimes standing quietly to the side and watching them with a smile, like a faded photograph lost to time.

Only this sentence did she repeat over and over.

At the time, she didn’t understand and took it only as pride in her children’s excellence. Now, looking back... she had been hypnotizing herself again and again.

Was it really worthwhile? Her brother had indeed been outstanding, but once he grew a little older he no longer liked being close to her; he seemed to admire their father, who held money and power, more. At a young age, their father had already taken him to his side to learn how to handle the group’s affairs, and he rarely came home.

As for her, she was busy dealing with one assignment after another thrown at her by her father; she was immersed for long periods in cello practice and various classes, and likewise had very little time to keep her mother company.

And when her mother discovered that her daughter had fallen into the very same situation she herself had once been trapped in, she actually made the complete opposite choice. That years-long self-anesthesia was instantly rendered useless; it was as if her life had been rejected in a single vote by her daughter and then collapsed. She could no longer endure it.

So she left behind a suicide note and told the outside world that she had killed herself because she loved her daughter, willing to exchange her life for her freedom. In this way, she gave herself a noble name, so that her death would no longer be thin as paper.

That death was indeed weighty; it nearly crushed the life of the daughter she had “loved so deeply.”

Sometimes later on, she also wondered: did her mother only do this because she wanted to be selfish for once? When she wrote those few short lines, had resentment or hatred toward her daughter flashed through her mind?

She had given birth to her, carried the same blood, walked toward the same crossroads of life she herself had once faced, yet had broken the ropes binding her and run toward a life of freedom without the slightest hesitation.

While her mother watched her turn toward an entirely different fate, her own life seemed to have frozen in place, imprisoned forever beside a man and spending most of her life as an object with little presence.

How could she not hate it?

She hated so many things, but in the end, the only one who bore the brunt of her revenge was the daughter who loved her most.

If she had not later managed to figure it out, if she had not forced herself to walk out of that darkness, she would probably have followed in her mother’s footsteps long ago.

She also guessed that perhaps her mother needed such a tragic ending, needed to forcibly pour the most magnificent maternal love onto her, so that in this mortal world there would at least always be one daughter who would forever remember and cherish her name.

The name of a woman who lived like a puppet, controlled by others for her entire life, and who, until death, could scarcely claim freedom.

Nan Changgeng would never be able to know her mother’s true thoughts. Perhaps it was the former, perhaps the latter, perhaps both.

But she could truly never forget that name for the rest of her life, the name that grew like a thorn in her heart—

Nan Shulan.

She had deceived her into learning what love was, then pulled back the curtain to reveal the white bones hidden beneath the warmth, completely destroying her ability to believe in love.

She could no longer bear the word when others said it to her.

If someone said they loved her, she would feel fear; she would question whether the love was real; she would suspect that the other person wanted something from her through that love; she would become wary of them using love as a pretext to demand things from her that she could not give.

It had become a reflex that surpassed reason.

In the first few years, it had been worst. She would hallucinate. If anyone showed her affection, even if it was only a compliment on her looks, she would suddenly smell a rotten stench.

Like a strange form of paranoia; seeing a bright, polished apple on the outside and instinctively imagining the rotten side beneath it, then catching the smell and starting to retch.

This made her unwilling to see anyone; she couldn’t even stand hearing fans online say they loved her.

So even after her mental state had improved somewhat, she never once went online to post a blog entry saying she was all right, trying to sever the glossy, glittering symbol of her former celebrity self from reality once and for all.

The only living thing she could still touch was the stray cat she had taken in.

An animal’s feelings were pure, akin to the most direct kind of attachment between one life and another. If she fed it and often stroked it, she could receive an intimacy untouched by anything else.

Beyond that, even Wen Yi had been pushed away by her. Though they had stayed in contact, they had gone a long time without seeing each other.

It was because she felt guilty about that that she had not looked too closely at the guarantee contract, never expecting to be betrayed again.

This time, she only felt sad for a while, and surprisingly did not feel much surprise. It was as though, in her awareness, the falseness of love had already become the norm.

She had no intention of telling anyone these things. Even if she resented it, she still did not want to become someone who would tarnish her mother’s posthumous reputation.

She only laid out the conclusion, and very calmly let a single tear fall; then she wiped it away with her fingers, her voice carrying only the faintest trace of a blocked nose.

“After that, I became very resistant to hearing anyone say they loved me. I know Yu Mao’s feelings for me run very deep, but the deeper it is, the more terrifying it feels.”

Stopping there was enough for the others to fill in the many missing pieces with their imaginations.

The three people in the room were stunned into silence for a long time. They stared blankly at Nan Changgeng’s expressionless face, wanting to cry but unable to.

After a long while, Lin Baiyu finally murmured,

“Why is it that the contestants on this show all have family backgrounds that are more explosive than the last...”

“Nan-jie, wipe your tears.” Chen Xia handed over a tissue.

“Thanks.” Nan Changgeng took it, sniffled, wiped away the tears that kept falling, then finally pressed it over her eyes.

She actually didn’t feel that much pain. After so many years, her brain’s reaction to this matter had already become almost numb; crying seemed more like a bodily instinct being triggered.

At that moment, the fans in the livestream had already broken down crying.

[Listening to this makes me want to die... you old bastard, Nan, I’m going to kill you!!]

[How can there be such a cruel father in this world? The person I love so much was tormented to the point that she can’t even bear to hear the word love...]

[They destroyed the cello playing ability she was most proud of, then destroyed her ability to be loved... why, why would they do this to her!!]

[I’ve listened to all of her songs; I didn’t think they were scary. They just feel like the state I’m in when my depression flares up, extremely, extremely despairing, like I can’t breathe]

[I don’t ask for anything else anymore. Whether she’s active or not, whether she releases songs or not, whether she can still play the cello or not, I just want to say now: sis, thank you for still being alive]

[!! Everyone hurry and go check Yu Mao’s livestream; something is very wrong with her]

By now, viewers from all the livestream rooms were surging over here, and Yu Mao no longer had the strength to care about the camera.

Compared with those who had arrived later, the viewers who had been staying in Yu Mao’s livestream the whole time had seen everything from start to finish and understood the sequence of events far more clearly.

From the moment Nan Changgeng began talking about what had happened in the past, Yu Mao’s expression had grown more and more ugly. Her fingers dug into her arm until the flesh was nearly scratched open, clearly showing how hard she was trying to endure.

By the time she heard Nan Changgeng cry, her reaction became even more obvious; her eyes suddenly widened, her pupils contracted, her breathing gradually turned rapid, and her body bent slightly as if it could no longer bear the strain.

It was as if she had suddenly suffered some enormous injury, and her body was collapsing from the inside out.

Yu Mao pressed herself against the wall, instinctively raising a hand to cover her nose. Her entire body was tense to the limit, like a string pulled taut until it was about to snap.

She couldn’t breathe; her stomach cramped painfully.

Darkness pulsed at the edges of her vision; beads of cold sweat broke out on her forehead, and her already colorless face went even paler.

A tide of overwhelming emotion roiled up through her body and lodged in her throat; the intense sourness edged toward pain. She was almost unable to suppress the moan rising in her throat. But she did not want the people in the dorm to notice.

Using the wall for support, Yu Mao staggered away in the direction she had come from.

The last shred of reason left in her warned her not to go back to the dorm, or she would pass the doorway and be noticed by them.

Only after putting some distance between herself and there did she start running. Her slender figure swayed like a leaf blown by the wind, drifting and helpless, ready to fall at any moment.

She did not make it far before, at the stairwell corner, Yu Mao could no longer hold on. Her knees gave way, and she dropped heavily to the floor.

Blood suddenly spilled from between her fingers, dripping onto the ground and pooling into a small puddle. Her eyelashes trembled, and tears fell at once, mixing into it.

A suppressed sob spilled from her throat.

The viewers in the livestream were shocked and horrified. They were shaken so badly by the scene that the comments had already turned into afterimages.

That cry did not really sound like crying; it sounded more like a howl of suffering at its absolute limit, full of restraint. Now and then, a line would slip out, only to be swallowed back down again.

At this moment, Yu Mao’s emotions were spilling out to the extreme; she looked almost human again, yet also so frenzied and terrifying.

Yu Mao let go of the hand covering her nose and clawed at her right arm. Her short nails raked red marks across her skin, breaking it in places and drawing thin threads of blood. Mixed with the blood on her fingers, it looked especially chilling.

She needed pain to keep herself clearheaded and rational, but even after putting in all her strength, all she could feel was a faint, hazy numbness, as if separated from it by a layer of fog.

That memory was poison.

Her body was in turmoil; the force of her emotions left her unable to get back up for quite a while.

The audience was frantic beyond belief, desperately tagging the production team while praying that one of the contestants would happen to pass by and find her.

None of them understood what was wrong with Yu Mao. They felt as if some illness had been triggered by an overwhelming emotional swing, but what kind of illness would make someone bleed from the nose?

The production team was very tense as well; the director was already contacting the medical staff to bring someone over.

But Yu Mao did not stay in place for long. Holding her abdomen, she forced herself up and staggered toward the public restroom.

As the intense emotion surged through her, nausea rose in her stomach. The moment she entered the bathroom, she could no longer suppress the retching.

She couldn’t vomit anything out, but the stabbing pain in her stomach eased a little, and some of the suffering seemed to be driven out with it, allowing the nerves that had been twitching wildly in her to gradually calm down.

She panted hard; her mind felt like a reef washed over by seawater, leaving only wreckage and remnants, shattered and broken, fatigue spreading through her entire body.

Barely managing to steady herself, she went to the sink to wash her face and rinse the blood off her hands and cheeks.

When she looked up again, her expression in the mirror had returned to calm. Only a faint sadness remained in her eyes, veiled by a layer of mist, as though she were already used to this sort of thing happening.

Leaning on her weak, unsteady body, she intended to hurry back to the dorm to clean herself up and avoid causing trouble if she ran into anyone.

At this moment, staff and the medical team had also arrived outside the restroom.

Two female medical staff members were just about to go in and check on the situation when they happened to collide head-on with Yu Mao as she came out.