Can I still be saved? [Transmigration] - Chapter 4
When Song Wenqian started making dinner again, Su Yunjing, having finished his homework, slipped into the kitchen to help snap green beans.
“Finished your homework?” Song Wenqian asked with a smile.
“Yep, all done.”
“Then go watch cartoons. You don’t need to help here.”
Su Yunjing didn’t move. “Mom, can we make a bit more dinner from now on? Sometimes I get hungry at night.”
“If you’re hungry, just tell me. I’ll cook something for you. Or how about I take you to the supermarket tomorrow to get some snacks?”
“The teacher said kids shouldn’t eat too many snacks. It’s bad for teeth. I heard getting a tooth pulled really hurts. Mom, just making more dinner is fine.”
At eight years old, Su Yunjing awkwardly used a child’s way of speaking to communicate with Song Wenqian.
“My baby is so sweet.” Song Wenqian kissed his forehead. “Go watch your cartoons now, and remember to sit farther from the TV so you don’t ruin your eyes.”
Su Yunjing, having just been praised: …
After helping Song Wenqian with the beans, Su Yunjing finally went to the living room and turned on the TV, finding an episode of The Smurfs to watch.
From the TV came the theme song— There are smurfs living beyond the sea and the mountain…
That night, Song Wenqian made homemade zhajiang noodles. Besides the meat sauce, she added plenty of finely chopped green beans for extra texture.
After dinner, Song Wenqian sat in the living room watching the evening news while knitting a sweater.
Su Yunjing let her know he was heading out, then secretly took some food with him to look for Fu Hanzhou.
He spent two yuan at the store buying loose rice crackers and malt candy to give to the other kids at the orphanage.
Once everything was handed out, Su Yunjing walked over to Fu Hanzhou and gave him today’s meal.
The small child was extremely thin, but sat ramrod straight, as if there were a blade embedded in his spine, holding his frail body upright.
A cool evening breeze blew past, rustling the leaves.
Dappled shadows from the trees fell across Fu Hanzhou’s pretty face. Beneath his delicate brows, his jet-black eyes were full of guarded vigilance.
“Why are you always hanging around me? What do you want?”
Su Yunjing found it hard to believe that a seven-year-old could wear that kind of expression.
Fu Hanzhou didn’t trust him and even disliked him.
Su Yunjing calmly met his gaze. “I don’t mean any harm. I just want to be your friend.”
Fu Hanzhou’s voice still had a child’s softness, but his expression was ice-cold. “I don’t need friends.”
Su Yunjing realized that this little yandere was cold when he was young.
“You don’t want to be friends now, but maybe someday you will.”
He opened the lunchbox. “My mom made zhajiang noodles today. Eat up while it’s still warm. The noodles have gotten a bit clumpy.”
Fu Hanzhou snatched the box and flipped the it, sending the noodles and sauce spilling all over the ground.
“I don’t need friends!” he snapped, and turned to leave.
Su Yunjing felt his temples throb as he watched the [ mdtooltip content= “小酷娇>Xiǎo kù jiāo. I can’t think any better translation for this=_= or pinyin would better?”] little cool cub [/mdtooltip]walk away.
In his eyes, Fu Hanzhou was just a slightly unusual kid.
He wasn’t lively like the others, not innocent or carefree, not the kind of child that won people over easily.
But he was still a child and had a really rough life.
So he didn’t trust people and rejected other people’s kindness. Su Yunjing could understand that.
But still, wasting perfectly good food. Especially since he’d added a generous amount of meat sauce.
Su Yunjing couldn’t bear to waste food. He scooped up the noodles and meat sauce and placed them in a corner behind the dorms, hoping it would attract stray cats at night.
Just as he finished cleaning up, the chubby kid who had asked for candy before saw the food on his hands and gasped, “Why are you playing with poop?!”
Su Yunjing: …
He silently went to the yard to wash his hands under the outdoor faucet, then went home.
Sigh.
The step forward he had managed yesterday was, unfortunately, completely undone today.
This little cold cub wasn’t easy to crack.
In the pitch-black night, a delicate, beautiful boy suddenly sat upright, his pale lips trembling sickly.
Fu Hanzhou had been startled awake by a nightmare.
He had dreamed of that woman again, dreamed of her screaming at him.
“You’re just a cursed child! You’ve ruined my life, do you know that?!”
Her hysterical shouts were usually followed by beatings. Fu Hanzhou was slammed against the wall. He felt dizzy and his stomach churned.
“No one in this world cares about a little beast like you! No one cares!”
The woman clutched his hair, her face growing increasingly deranged.
“They all want you dead, do you know that? They want us both dead! They think we’re crazy!”
By the time Fu Hanzhou turned seven, he almost stopped crying. He would just hold his head, trying to protect himself.
But she—
She was the one who started the yelling. She was the one who hit him first. And in the end, she was also the one who held him and cried.
She often lost control and became completely unhinged. Because of this, neighbors reported her for child abuse, and they had to move constantly.
Until one day, the police showed up at the door, ready to take him away by force. Only then did the woman calm down.
She locked the police outside, changed into a clean white dress, applied light makeup, and knelt in front of him with a gentle smile.
“From now on, take good care of yourself. Eat on time, sleep on time, okay?”
She gently touched the wounds on his face and kissed him over and over.
“Can you not hate me? I just couldn’t control myself. I…” Her emotions flared again, and she began hitting her own head, her face twisted in pain.
“Here…” She pointed to her head, her voice trembling, “It hurts so much. There’s so much noise in here.”
She gripped his neck, her hands and lips shaking uncontrollably. “Come with me. Let’s leave this place together.”
Fu Hanzhou’s face turned red from lack of oxygen.
The intense sensation of suffocation triggered his survival instincts, and he kicked out violently.
The pain made her snap out of it. Startled, she quickly let go.
Afraid she’d lose control again, she finally opened the door and handed him over to the police.
As Fu Hanzhou was being led downstairs, the woman jumped from the building.
When he looked back, he saw her lying in a pool of bl00d.
The police officer holding his hand quickly covered his eyes, but Fu Hanzhou never forgot her expression.
Agony and despair.
Someone had been telling him since he was young, no one would ever treat someone like him well.
That’s why Fu Hanzhou disliked that boy who had been showing up these past couple of days.
And he hated even more the unexplainable kindness he kept trying to offer.
Fu Hanzhou’s childish face was completely hidden in the darkness. His thin lips were pressed together, his expression numb and indifferent.
He pulled up his blanket and was about to lie down when a cat’s meow came from outside the window.
The black cat leapt nimbly onto the sill.
It crouched low, tensed its front paws, and suddenly sprang inside, snatching up the little thing hidden in the dark.
Clutching its prize in its mouth, the black cat silently disappeared into the night.
Fu Hanzhou watched the direction it vanished in for a long time before finally lying back down.
Since Fu Hanzhou had flipped the food box, Su Yunjing hadn’t gone to the orphanage for two days straight.
Not because he was mad at Fu Hanzhou. He just didn’t know how to make the little guy let down his guard.
On top of that, Su Yunjing had started coughing, and Song Wenqian, worried it might get worse, hadn’t let him leave the house.
Su Yunjing hadn’t even gone to school, just stayed home and rested.
Taking advantage of the time, Su Yunjing reviewed the story’s plotlines.
He wanted to see how the female lead had managed to win over Fu Hanzhou. Maybe he could learn a trick or two?
As it turned out.
He couldn’t.
The female lead was a beautiful, kind-hearted person. Su Yunjing liked to think of himself as pretty kind too.
But men and women were different. Some of the things a girl did came across as warm and sweet but when a man did the same things, it just felt weird.
Honestly, it was a bit sexist.
A grown man just wasn’t cut out to warm a broken beauty.