Exposure of the Past

“It’s fine now. Let’s go back.”

Nan Changgeng’s expression returned to normal. She took out a fresh handkerchief and wiped the water from Yu Mao’s face.

Yu Mao was still staring at her eyes. Noticing the glimmer of moisture reflecting in the light, her small face actually took on a grave, burdened sort of worry.

With that sorrowful expression, her brows and eyes drooping, she said with utter seriousness, “Changgeng, your eyes are beautiful.”

Like a pool scattered with broken stars, rippling with silver light. There was a galaxy in her eyes.

Then her voice went soft again. In a murmur, she added, “But I’m someone who’s drowned. It hurts to look at water.”

Nan Changgeng’s hand paused. She somehow followed the leap of Yu Mao’s thoughts, and her expression turned both amused and helpless, with a touch of softness as she patted her head.

“I’m not sad anymore. Don’t worry.”

Yu Mao nodded, a little stiffly.

She brought the girl back to the back kitchen and found that only Chen Xia had successfully managed to figure out her dessert; it was sitting in the oven baking. The three of them, with nothing better to do, each dragged over a chair and sat around chatting idly.

Not far away, the trash can held Yirui An’s unidentified mush. She had already given up, asking Chen Xia to pinch off a small lump from her dough and shape it into a little one, which was also baking in the oven.

Throughout the whole event, only Nan Changgeng and Chen Xia had really put in any effort; the other two, plus Yu Mao, could be lumped together as a trio of complete slacker energy.

When the three chatting idly saw them return with calm expressions, they knew things were fine and relaxed, offering a couple of concerned words before continuing the conversation they had left off.

But the moment Nan Changgeng came back and saw the remaining pastry dough and chicken, her headache returned.

They had finally found a way for Yu Mao to eat normally, yet her stomach couldn’t handle it. They would have to try again later, maybe with some easy-to-digest porridge or something, and see whether she could gradually adapt.

Still, her cooking skills weren’t all that great either… After they left the show, she’d probably have to find a nutritionist to learn proper meal balancing.

“Why is our event so deserted this time? There are only five of us; I heard the ones before were really lively, and there were even judges.”

Yirui An sat with her chair turned backward, arms hooked over the backrest as if riding a horse, looking utterly bored.

Chen Xia was sitting in front of the oven, staring at the two big and one small cakes inside like a family of three, and tossed out a reply without looking up: “Maybe the production team did it on purpose.”

Lin Baiyu said, “It was probably decided by audience voting. I remember they said before that the evening activities might sometimes be launched as random blog voting events, and the top-ranked ones would be put together to participate.”

“Huh? Are we that popular?”

Yirui An wasn’t surprised they could get voted into the top ranks; the main thing was her…

It wasn’t that she had no confidence in herself. She just knew her limits.

Chen Xia’s eyes flashed as she fell into thought.

Two couples, plus one lively person to keep the atmosphere up; that did make sense.

Nan Changgeng rolled up the remaining flatbread and put it onto a plate, setting it on the side counter. “What I’m more curious about is, with such a boring activity, do people actually enjoy watching it?”

The viewers in the livestream room were the ones most qualified to answer that.

[Who’s watching this for the activity itself? We’re all here for our faves. People would watch them sleep, let alone this.]

[This one really does make me want to watch…]

[Sis, pity you can’t hear this, but ever since you started cooking for Yu, and she actually ate it, the view count’s been climbing the whole time.]

[It hurts to watch. The little cat was already so uncomfortable and still refused to spit out the flatbread she made; thank goodness the teacher is so kind and even taught her that she can’t do that. Otherwise I’d really be dying of frustration.]

[Damn it, love can cure mental illness? I’m seriously curious where her obsession with Teacher Nan even came from. Hurry up and ask her, show!]

No one in the barrage could have guessed that before the production team even got around to interviewing her, Yu Mao’s past would already be exposed online one piece at a time.

Right after this evening activity ended in a rushed, awkward mess, it exploded late that night.

It even pushed down the hot search about Zhao Xuan being arrested by the public security authorities for criminal activity.

Completely unaware of the uproar outside, the contestants all returned to the dorms to wash up and sleep. Nan Changgeng still suffered from insomnia as usual, but this time she didn’t stubbornly endure it; she took her medicine early and fell asleep not long after lying down.

Yu Mao’s mind was in turmoil. She tossed and turned in bed, and in the end simply got up and sat there in a daze.

Nothing especially happy had happened, so she couldn’t shake off the restlessness and pain that filled her body whenever she made Changgeng sad.

The doctor had always advised her not to implant Nan Changgeng’s feelings too deeply into her own body; too much emotional flooding would make her, like a plant, overwatered to death.

But they knew nothing.

Without Changgeng, she would return to that emptiness, worn down over endless time until her awareness vanished. It was no different from death; in fact, it was even more terrifying.

Only by pouring herself completely into sensing Changgeng could she feel so many things, good or bad alike…

For her, sinking into darkness without any sense of time was normal. Even when her body, exhausted, automatically lay down and slept, the sadness still wouldn’t go away.

Yu Mao didn’t know what time she fell asleep, or how many hours she slept. In any case, when she woke up, there was already no one on the bed across from her.

The sorrow in her heart deepened again.

She got up listlessly to wash up, mixed herself some milk powder, and had just finished drinking it when there was a knock on the dormitory door, followed by a voice:

“Yu Mao, are you awake? The director has something important to find you for!”

She opened the door with a blank face. Outside was a staff member she wasn’t very familiar with.

Seeing her, the other person let out a breath of relief. “Good, you’re awake. Hurry up and tidy yourself a little, then go to the first-floor pre-interview room. It’s really important, and it concerns you. Come on, I’ll wait for you.”

“No need to wait.”

Yu Mao stepped out and casually closed the door. “Let’s go.”

The little P-Fly, standing by in standby mode, detected its temporary owner leaving and dutifully took off to follow.

She still didn’t know what was waiting for her. Led by the staff member, she walked to one of the small pre-interview rooms on the left side of the first floor.

The room wasn’t big, about six or seven square meters, with a table, two chairs, and some unidentified pieces of equipment that weren’t switched on.

The one waiting for her wasn’t the director, but one of the assistant directors she had seen when she signed up for the competition: a long-haired woman with black-framed glasses, whose temperament was somewhat like those old academics lost in scholarship.

“What do you need me for?” Yu Mao asked.

“Sit down first.”

The assistant director pushed up her glasses. Her eyes held some inexplicable trace of pity as she pointed to the chair opposite her.

Her expression was too easy to read. Yu Mao was forced to realize that something about the atmosphere was off.

With some suspicion, she sat down. Behind her was a wall hung with the show’s logo. The little P-Fly flew to hover directly in front of her.

The assistant director still said nothing. She only placed the tablet in her hand onto the table and pushed it toward Yu Mao.

“Take a look at this.”

Yu Mao picked up the tablet in confusion. What came into view was a hot search interface full of screenshots posted by various marketing accounts. Before she looked more closely, she glanced at the trending topic.

#Teacher’s account exposes Yu Mao’s past#

“?”

“!!”

Her eyes flew wide open at once; her breathing turned suddenly rapid, the emotional fluctuation unusually obvious.

She quickly scrolled down to the AI-generated summary of the whole story and skimmed through it. In an instant, she understood.

It had started because Lin Yan had left a comment on Nan Changgeng’s blog, telling her how to handle food so that Yu Mao would accept it. The comment had been pushed up to the front by a crowd of netizens who thought the method was workable.

No one expected that a sharp-eyed netizen would judge from her tone that she seemed to know Yu Mao, then go to her homepage and discover that although she had posted thousands of Weibo entries, all of them were set to private, and her only follower was the lone official blog account.

With the mindset of trying their luck, the netizen clicked follow and saw the content visible only to followers. To their astonishment, they found many diary-like teaching records related to Yu Mao, spanning more than ten years. They were instantly thrilled, spent the whole night frantically digging up screenshots, and then dumped everything online, causing an immediate uproar.

The situation fermented all night. The screenshots were reposted by major marketing accounts, and by today it had only gotten worse. Even though Lin Yan had set everything to private as soon as she noticed it in the morning, it was already far too late.

Yu Mao’s breathing was panicked. She clicked into the screenshots and quickly read some of them; her fists tightened and tightened, nails digging into her flesh without her noticing.

Then, seeing something, she suddenly shot to her feet, face pale, and looked straight at the assistant director. “I need leave. I’m going back for a while.”

“Hm? Another leave request?” The assistant director frowned at her, feeling that something was off. “It’s already blown up like this. Going back won’t help you do anything.”

She was a little surprised that Yu Mao would react this strongly. Before this, Yu Mao had always taken a pretty indifferent attitude toward her past being exposed; she shouldn’t be this bothered by it.

Yu Mao said nothing. She only moved as if to leave, then suddenly stopped, staring straight at the other woman as she enunciated each word: “You didn’t show these things to the other contestants in the show, did you?”

The assistant director froze. “This…”

She vaguely realized that in Yu Mao’s mouth, “the other contestants” actually referred specifically to Nan Changgeng.

But the problem was… they really had shown it to her, and even earlier than they showed it to Yu Mao. But they hadn’t done it for no reason; it was because Nan Changgeng had gotten up early this morning, and there were a lot of records in the screenshots related to her!

...

In the pre-interview room across the hallway, Nan Changgeng had already been sitting there for half an hour.

Same room layout, same little P-Fly filming her front-on, same tablet; the only difference was that the one sitting opposite her was the director herself.

They also rarely spoke. The director had stayed up all night reading through records spanning more than ten years, as if she could already see the show’s popularity waving at her. She was so excited she hadn’t slept; dark circles hung under her eyes as she slumped in the chair and dozed.

Only Nan Changgeng sat quietly, paging through the screenshots one by one. A small hill seemed to be rising between her brows; her eyes were filled with complex emotions.

The screenshots had been neatly arranged by the marketing accounts from earliest to latest, stretching from thirteen years ago to recent years. Yu Mao’s teacher had been far too conscientious and far too verbose, recording a great many scattered thoughts.

[First day of school: in the new class, I met a special child called Yu Mao. She really looks like a cat—so small and thin, practically the size of a kindergarten child, with short hair hanging down in a messy tangle like dry straw. But her face is so delicate she doesn’t look real, and she seems completely out of place sitting in the classroom. I noticed her at first glance and was very worried she might be suffering abuse. How can people in this day and age still raise a child like that?]

[I went to ask her former teachers, and it turned out the child was an orphan. It seems she’d suffered some mental trauma and developed some problems; she couldn’t eat normal food and could only drink milk… So pitiful!]

[I deliberately talked with her more in class and was shocked; the child’s IQ far exceeds that of her peers. I couldn’t find a single problem in the entire math textbook that could stump her.

But socially she really has many issues. From what I observed, not a single child was willing to take the initiative to talk to her, and she never spoke to the other kids either. She kept holding a book during breaks, and when I leaned in to look, it was actually a third-year middle school textbook! This is a genius! Could she be autistic?]

[These past few days after class I’ve been trying to talk to Yu Mao more, but most of the time she ignores me, as if she can’t see or hear me. I have to repeat myself several times before she’ll respond to me with a few words. Most importantly, she still shows no emotional reaction at all, like a wooden puppet. Could she be some kind of bionic robot made by a company and put in school to toy with us?]

[I tried to get closer to her and tentatively helped comb her hair, only to unexpectedly discover that one of her ears was wearing an earpiece. I got curious and touched it, and she immediately dodged away, then glared at me.

Wow, the kid is small but has a bad temper. Still, it’s rare for her to react that strongly. Could there be some secret in that earpiece?]

[In five years of teaching, this is the first time I’ve encountered a student as special as Yu Mao. Whether or not she listens in class depends entirely on her mood; in math class she started doing high school physics problems… But I don’t even have the heart to care about that anymore. My only goal now is to get Yu Mao to eat some normal food. Drinking milk alone can’t do it!]

[I went to ask other teachers who had taught her for advice, but they all just told me to get used to it. They had tried too, but even normal communication with her was difficult. Anyway, her grades are perfect in every subject, so she won’t drag down the average. There’s no need to worry too much…]

[Get used to it and that’s enough? But I really can’t bear it. Isn’t this the same as watching her slowly commit suicide?]

[Too scary. I can’t take it. I can’t just watch her get thinner and thinner day by day. She won’t grow up!! Such a good child, so smart; her future should have been wonderfully bright!]

[On purpose, over the weekend, I made a special trip to the welfare institution where Yu Mao lived, wanting to ask the dean about her past.]

[Oh my God… I can’t describe how I feel right now. How could something from the news happen to my student so coincidentally…]

[After calming down for a long time, I finally managed to record these things in a relatively composed state.

The dean told me that after she was born, her father and mother often quarreled and fought. Just last year, because the cat they kept at home died of old age, the two of them had another fierce argument. Her father hacked her mother with a kitchen knife, then took the knife and walked toward the girl, but her mother forced herself up, used a fruit knife to slit his throat, and killed him on the spot. Not long after, her mother also died from excessive blood loss. The entire process was completely recorded by the surveillance camera in the living room.

At the time, Yu Mao was standing at the bedroom door and witnessed the tragedy with her own eyes. She was terrified stupid; she couldn’t move or speak, just stood there the whole time, and even when the public security officers arrived she still had no reaction, like her soul had been ripped away. Later, Yu Mao was taken for psychological counseling, but unfortunately it had no effect. She really was like the elders say, so frightened she lost her soul, leaving only an empty shell; she wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t drink water, wouldn’t eat, and for a very long time could only sit there blankly, relying on nutrient infusions to maintain her vital signs.

The turning point… was rather miraculous, in fact. One day, an orchestra came to the welfare institution for a charity performance, and Yu Mao was carried over by a caregiver to listen. She actually gradually regained consciousness in the music, and after the performance ended, she even walked up and took the initiative to ask one of the cellists what their name was, scaring everyone present.

After the orchestra left, Yu Mao kept begging the aunts at the welfare institution to play videos of that cellist performing. If they didn’t, she would become very agitated, and other pieces wouldn’t work either; it had to be that cellist playing.

The child’s condition finally showed a turning point, so everyone indulged her. They specially bought her a small music player and a pair of headphones for her to carry around. So that’s the secret of that one earphone; could it really be so important that it can’t leave her for even a moment? What on earth is so magical about that cellist’s music? I can’t hear any difference at all.]