Going Home

Yu Mao left the program building.

She got her phone back from the staff and left with it in hand, carrying nothing else.

She wasn’t from the local area, but her home was in the neighboring city, not far at all—just a little over two hours by car. She booked a driverless taxi through an app and waited by the roadside.

The weather had been warming up day by day. Today, the sky was bright and clear, and standing in the sun brought a faint flush to her face.

She didn’t notice that, not far away, behind a large tree, a pair of eyes full of malice was watching her.

Her heightened sensitivity to outside gazes had vanished after her death and rebirth; now it only worked on Nan Changgeng alone.

Zhao Xuan gripped the tree trunk with both hands, filthy stubble on his face and red, bloodshot eyes, his heart overflowing with resentment.

Ever since the accident two days ago, he had been buried under a storm of curses. After being driven out by the production team, not only had his pay been slashed, he’d also had to pay money out of his own pocket.

He was terrified that no show would ever hire him again after this mess, and the online abuse had pushed his mental state to the brink of collapse. Even within the circle, people mocked him mercilessly; a bunch of men had filthy mouths, and some had even reached out to him on Feixin just to kick him while he was down.

Even his good brother had called to “check on him,” but no matter how he heard it, it sounded like thinly disguised gloating.

This was the first time he had ever been trampled so thoroughly, and it had all been because of this bullshit.

It had only been an accident! He thought he was the real victim, but no one understood him. Everywhere he looked, there was blame; he couldn’t even find someone to drink with.

With anger and pain surging through him, he had no idea what kind of mindset had driven him to come loiter and wait near the building again.

He hadn’t expected to run into the “culprit” who had ruined him.

But he still had a shred of reason left. He wasn’t completely cornered yet, and he didn’t dare do anything serious in a place full of cameras.

A few minutes later, he watched Yu Mao get into a car and leave.

Two hours later.

In the neighboring city, the car dropped her off at the residential complex. Yu Mao got out and went upstairs to her apartment.

She lived on the top floor. The apartment had been bought outright with her own money; it wasn’t very large, just enough for her alone. The decor was practical, and she had put almost no thought into aesthetics.

This time she had come back with a clear purpose. The moment she stepped inside, she changed her shoes and went straight into the study.

There were several rows of bookshelves in the room, as well as two computers that differed somewhat from those on the market; she had modified them herself.

She sat down, powered them on, and started searching for the information that would let her fulfill her promise: Zhao Xuan’s past, and every trace he had left on the internet.

If he really was clean and hadn’t committed any crimes... then she could make some up.

Destroying a person was too easy for her. Moral restraints didn’t work, either. It was just that she didn’t want to become too bad, too dirty; otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to get close to Nan Changgeng.

Fortunately, Zhao Xuan did not disappoint her. Half an hour later, she found evidence of dirty, criminal behavior in chat logs that had long since been deleted.

He had raped an underage boy and used money to make it disappear.

So he liked men. No wonder he was so foul; double the masculinity, double the stench.

Over the past nearly twenty years, the region’s laws had suddenly improved at an accelerated pace, as if under pressure from some threat; protection for vulnerable groups had become much stronger, including minors. This one matter alone was enough to get Zhao Xuan locked up for more than ten years.

Yu Mao was satisfied and selected anonymous reporting on the police bureau’s official website.

With one thing settled, she relaxed quite a bit. She rolled her shoulders and neck, then browsed some more information about Nan Changgeng online. After confirming that the overall public sentiment wasn’t negative, she stopped paying attention.

She hadn’t even done that much, yet time still seemed to pass especially quickly; in the blink of an eye, it was already one o’clock in the afternoon.

She had planned to tidy up a little and head back earlier, but then she heard a sudden knock at the door.

Yu Mao went to open it.

The person outside was not unexpected.

“So you really were home. I said I saw you take leave from the show, so I guessed you might have come back.”

The other woman wore a camel-colored wool coat. Fine lines of age had already settled into her gentle, elegant face; a pair of silver-rimmed glasses sat on the bridge of her nose, and in her hand she carried a satchel of lesson plans and a thermos. She looked as if she had just come back from school.

Her teacher: a middle-aged woman in her forties, still unmarried and childless, who had devoted her entire life to education.

She had taught Yu Mao for four years in elementary school. Later, unable to rest easy about this special child, she kept Yu Mao at her own home after Yu Mao entered middle school, treating her with a mother’s tenderness and almost like her own child.

It wasn’t until Yu Mao became an adult that she bought this apartment, right across from her teacher’s place.

“Have you not eaten lunch yet? Wait a moment.”

The teacher didn’t have time to say much more. She turned around and opened the door to her own home, going inside. A little while later, she came back out with the satchel and thermos gone, and a bowl in their place...

A mixture of all sorts of random ingredients.

She naturally stepped past Yu Mao and walked into the apartment, heading straight for the kitchen.

Yu Mao shut the door and followed after her as she familiarly took a canister of milk powder from the cupboard, poured in water to make milk, then dumped the contents of that bowl into a blender and ground them into fine crumbs before mixing them into the prepared milk powder.

“Here. Drink.”

The teacher spoke briefly and set the cup on the counter in front of her.

Yu Mao’s expression didn’t change. She picked up the large cup of thick paste mixed with milk and all sorts of things—carrots, tomatoes, leafy greens, bits of cooked meat, bread crumbs, protein powder, nutritional supplements, and so on and so on—and drank it mouth by mouth.

She had made the dark concoction herself; seeing Yu Mao drink it, she looked at her own handiwork and frowned deeply instead, her face twisting as a wave of nausea rose up.

“Ah...” She couldn’t help sighing.

“If there ever comes a day when you can tell this tastes bad, I’ll be so happy I’ll have to go to a temple and burn incense.”

Making food like this for her to eat had been a necessity.

When Lin Yan first met Yu Mao as her homeroom teacher, it was in third grade. At that time, she was even thinner than she was now; the nine-year-old child looked like she was only five or six, with severe malnutrition and stunted development.

She had thought the child was suffering from some serious illness or being abused by her parents. Only after looking into it carefully did she learn that the problem stemmed from a family change that had caused a mental issue, leaving her unable to accept any food other than milk.

Back then, in order to get Yu Mao to eat other things, she tried all sorts of methods; both carrot and stick were used, but none of it worked. In the end, she even took her to see a doctor. Following the doctor’s advice, she broke bread into pieces and soaked it in milk, only to discover that Yu Mao actually didn’t mind other foods being mixed into the milk powder at all, so long as it still looked like a cup of “milk” on the surface.

This was a kind of mental constraint, not a dislike of the taste of other foods. In fact, she seemed not even to be able to tell whether food tasted good or bad.

That was how Lin Yan found a way to feed her. Otherwise, relying on milk powder alone, she felt Yu Mao simply couldn’t have lived to this age; she would have long since been worn down by all kinds of illnesses because of her low immunity.

Unfortunately, although Yu Mao could accept other foods being mixed into milk, she would never do it on her own. So there had to be someone around to look after her and help; otherwise, she would still have to survive on that little bit of milk powder.

But Yu Mao was a living person, and in some respects she was extremely stubborn. Aside from helping her “make milk” when she lived here, there was little else Lin Yan could control when Yu Mao was away.

After all, her identity was only that of a teacher who had taught her for a few years, not her mother.

And so, despite all these years of bodily depletion, the child had still grown into that thin, pitiful figure.

“You’ve been out filming for so many days. Just drinking that little bit of milk, your body must’ve gotten even weaker.”

Lin Yan took the empty cup after Yu Mao finished and rinsed it under the tap. Amid the sound of running water, she said with worry, “Technology has advanced so quickly; why hasn’t anyone invented the kind of nutrient solution they have in novels? If we had that, things wouldn’t have come to this.”

Yu Mao looked at her blankly, as if she didn’t understand.

Lin Yan was long used to that.

In daily life, Yu Mao’s illness and strangeness were even more pronounced. The Yu Mao who had a little spark in her on the livestream program was the rare one.

The last time she had personally seen those eyes grow a little bright was many years ago, when she took young Yu Mao to the mall and happened to see a giant advertising screen playing Nan Changgeng’s commercial.

Only then did she discover that Yu Mao’s eyes were not forever empty.

“You saw the person you like on the show, didn’t you? Were you happy?”

Lin Yan washed the cup clean, put it back where it belonged, and smiled as she flicked the water from her hands.

Yu Mao nodded seriously. “Happy. I want to go back earlier.”

Lin Yan wasn’t surprised. She had long been used to Yu Mao’s extraordinary attachment to Nan Changgeng. What she was more curious about was why Yu Mao had come back halfway through.

“What did you come back on leave to do this time?”

“Use the computer, look up some things.”

These were her own secrets; she would tell no one.

Lin Yan didn’t press her. Same old story; she was used to it.

Don’t think that because this child has mental issues, people can know more about her. On the contrary, she was far more independent than many people; don’t expect to see her relying on anyone.

...Except for Nan Changgeng.

Lin Yan’s gaze slid over the conspicuous bandage on her forehead, and she finally asked, “How’s your injury? It’s nothing serious, right?”

“I’m fine.”

The answer was utterly unconvincing. She knew Yu Mao didn’t lie, but she didn’t trust a mentally ill person’s subjective definition of “fine.”

“Haaah.” She shook her head helplessly. “You have to be careful, no matter what. Don’t let it get wet, and change the dressing on time. When you’re injured, you should eat more nutritious food; you also need to make up for the blood loss. Can you even drink any more? Want some more?”

Lin Yan was quite angry inside. Filming a show and ending up with this kind of innocent disaster; as expected, unstable men were a plague on society.

She had even cursed Zhao Xuan a few more times online.

“No.”

Yu Mao touched her stomach and checked herself for a moment. “I’m very full. I can’t drink any more.”

“Alright then. I’ll make dinner for you, and you can take it with you.”

She took a thermos from the cupboard and carried the milk powder canister back to her own home.

To pack in as much nutrition as possible within limited space, the ingredients at home were always few in quantity but varied in type; all sorts of vegetables, meat, eggs, a mixed medley, plus supplements to replenish vitamins. One could only say it was fortunate Yu Mao couldn’t tell good from bad tasting.

And compared to the beginning, Yu Mao had later become willing to eat fruit. Even now, she still didn’t really understand why Yu Mao had suddenly broken the restrictions she had set for herself. At the time, she had thought she’d found a breakthrough, and she and the doctor had tried several times to probe further, but to no avail. At the very least, it had added one more source of nutrition.

Lin Yan felt that she knew Yu Mao no less than those psychiatrists did, and yet sometimes she still felt she knew very little about her. The other girl was like a very deep pit, refusing to let anyone shine a light into it, so that no one could see what was actually inside.