Killing Marriage [ABO] - Chapter 24

Chapter 24; Psychology

All his life, Zhang Qingyuan had never seemed to encounter any major setbacks or blows.

He had a strong family that provided him with both emotional and financial support. Thanks to his parents’ excellent genes and guidance, he was top-notch in both looks and intelligence, and his emotional intelligence was high. Life had been smooth sailing; he got whatever he wanted.

He could accomplish anything he set his mind to and obtain whatever he desired.

This was the first time he felt that events had spiraled beyond his expectations and control.

Zhang Qingyuan couldn’t stop thinking: if he hadn’t chosen to expose this, would those innocent people have not died?

Wasn’t the original intention of “killing” the forced-matching marriage system to gain freedom and save these poor souls?

Hadn’t they invested their energy and money into this at great risk precisely so that the genders enslaved by society could stand up and remove the foot from their necks?

But what about now?

Was he… a murderer?

An irrational panic gripped Zhang Qingyuan’s mind. The heart in his chest felt like a prisoner in a gas chamber, struggling violently in extreme fear, trying to break free from the cage of his ribs.

The surging bl00d rushed to his head, throbbing. Every surge of bl00d into his brain’s bl00d vessels was a fully armed boxer, repeatedly pounding his skull.

Zhang Qingyuan couldn’t help but grab his phone back. He truly couldn’t control himself, compulsively refreshing and checking news and comments related to the incident.

Finally, the official account, which had been feigning silence, released a public announcement.

[…The Marriage Monitoring Center has decided to establish a task force to conduct a comprehensive internal investigation into the “marital life video leak” incident, to severely punish all relevant illegal and criminal acts in accordance with the law, to hold all responsible personnel accountable, and to promptly disclose the results to the public…]

“Internal investigation.”

All that uproar across the internet ultimately led only to an internal investigation by the Marriage Monitoring Center, with no external oversight whatsoever.

What could be uncovered when you’re investigating yourself? In the end, it would just be a matter of finding a few “temporary workers” to act as scapegoats, putting on a show of righteous justice for the public.

Even though he knew their goal was to expose the ugliness of the Marriage Monitoring Center, and their plan was to have the official response incite public outrage… Zhang Qingyuan still felt sad and disappointed.

Why?!

With so many people opposing it, and with submitting private videos being so dangerous and unreasonable, why couldn’t the marriage monitoring be stopped?

Why was this small fry attached to the forced-matching marriage system so difficult to deal with?

His phone alarm went off.

Six-thirty.

This was Zhang Qingyuan’s usual wake-up time. Normally, he would get up, wash up, and make breakfast. But now, he hadn’t even had a chance to go to sleep.

Today, Ren Zhong had to go to the rehabilitation center, and he also had to prepare his “loving wife’s lunchbox” in advance.

Zhang Qingyuan got up and walked out of the study. After just a few steps, he felt dizzy and the room started spinning.

It felt as if he had been in a spinning teacup at an amusement park for a day and a night. He couldn’t walk in a straight line and stumbled, falling to the floor.

His head was so dizzy, and his balance was completely off. The floor seemed to be standing up, and the ceiling was falling over.

He was too disoriented to get up, so he decided to just lie in the hallway for a few seconds before getting back to work.

However, when he opened his eyes again, he was already in the bedroom bed. The soundproof, light-blocking curtains were tightly drawn, and the room was dark except for a small nightlight in one corner.

He had actually fallen asleep.

Irregular sleep made the back of Zhang Qingyuan’s head feel as heavy as a 50-pound dumbbell. He struggled a bit, then fell back heavily into the soft pillow.

“You’re awake?”

Zhang Qingyuan turned his head with difficulty and was surprised to see Ren Zhong sitting in a chair, reading a book.

The warm bedside lamp fell on his profile and the pages, casting a faint, gentle aura around him. The wheelchair that was often by his side was gone, replaced by two medical crutches leaning against the wall.

“Sorry, I think… I overslept,” Zhang Qingyuan gave up struggling and lay flat. “Did you eat?”

Ren Zhong said “yes” and then added, “Dinner is downstairs. I made some porridge, but I figured you might not be used to it, so I ordered a takeout egg salad sandwich and coffee.”

He put his phone back in his pocket, got up with the help of his crutches, and tucked the foam padding at the top of the crutches under his armpits.

When he reached the door, Ren Zhong suddenly stopped and, without turning his head, asked, “Do you have a psychologist you’re familiar with?”

“Huh?” Zhang Qingyuan was still a bit fuzzy and didn’t immediately grasp what the other person was saying.

Ren Zhong moved toward his bed with the crutches and repeated, “I asked if you have a regular psychologist you work well with.”

“I do… Why?” Zhang Qingyuan didn’t understand why Ren Zhong was asking this.

Who would have thought that the Alpha who was usually so “shrewd” could be so naive after missing two nights of sleep?

Ren Zhong let out a half-laughing puff of air. “What else? See if you need some psychological help. If you do, arrange it as soon as possible.”

Flashbacks, auditory hallucinations, insomnia…

It was only after being reminded by the other person that Zhang Qingyuan realized he really did need some guidance and therapy, perhaps even medication.

“When you’ve rested enough, go downstairs and eat. I’m leaving.” Ren Zhong skillfully pushed the door open with his crutch and left, not forgetting to close the door for Zhang Qingyuan.

Zhang Qingyuan, still groggy on the bed, stared up at the ceiling, his sluggish mind not working well.

He was stunned for a long while before he came back to his senses.

Wait, Ren Zhong was concerned about his mental health?

He had thought Ren Zhong was the least likely person to do something like this.

In most people’s minds, soldiers should be stoic and unfeeling to the point of being cold. Soldiers wouldn’t care about mental health and would even dismiss mental illness, crudely chalking all psychological issues up to being overly sensitive or weak-willed.

But in reality, Ren Zhong didn’t seem as ignorant about psychology as he had thought. It was his own view that was narrow.

Zhang Qingyuan wiggled a bit, got up, and pulled open the soundproof curtains.

He instantly squinted, raising his hand to block the brilliant orange-red light that almost blinded him.

Good heavens, it was already a magnificent sunset.

Suddenly, he realized a very important question—how did he get back to bed?

He couldn’t have crawled back himself, could he?

Then, the only possibility was that he had been carried back to bed in Ren Zhong’s arms and then moved into the wheelchair.

Zhang Qingyuan slowly squatted on the ground, his body curled into a ball, his face either flushed by the sunset or by sheer embarrassment.

The internet has no memory.

After two weeks of uproar, the video leak topic’s popularity finally declined.

When people have lived in an environment with poor information security for a long time, they stop caring about it. After all, everyone’s video would be leaked, and not everyone had the means to browse the dark web.

Life had to go on.

Soon, the hottest topic became a certain A-list Omega actress getting remarried.

After divorcing the movie star, her new partner was a Beta member of a famous idol boy group.

The fans’ hearts were indeed broken, but their “sister-in-law” was in a league that their idol couldn’t hope to match, so they didn’t feel comfortable cursing her out.

Anyway, with the forced-matching marriage system in place, any idol would eventually have a scandal once they reached a certain age. The fans turned to attack the comments making jokes, reporting all remarks like “can’t wait to see the video of the actress and the young idol.”

Seeing that the online noise had subsided, the official accounts of the forced-matching marriage system and the Marriage Monitoring Center quietly issued a final processing notice late at night.

[…Further investigation and evidence collection will continue for the criminal facts involved in the case and crimes such as leaking state secrets. Suspects Huang Mouyi and Wang Mou have been legally approved for arrest on suspicion of leaking state secrets…]

As expected, the “temporary worker” scapegoats had appeared.

At the same time, the Marriage Monitoring Center also made a minor rectification.

The monitoring AI was upgraded again to detect violent behavior and issue warnings. Although all couples still had to film videos, from now on, only the scoring data would be uploaded, not the video itself, and all filmed videos would be automatically deleted after scoring.

However, this change itself required a hardware upgrade. This meant that if you didn’t want to upload your video, you would have to spend money to buy the new device officially sold by the Marriage Monitoring Center.

At midnight, the official shopping channel opened its first round of pre-sales, listing 20,000 devices.

Instead of a genuine rectification, they were trying to fleece the public once again.

The public had gradually forgotten about the incident, but this official move infuriated them, once again pushing the related topic into the spotlight.

Zhang Qingyuan was unaware of all this.

During this period, he had strictly followed his doctor’s orders and stayed offline. Aside from his “housewife” duties, he accompanied Ren Zhong to his physical therapy, and Ren Zhong accompanied him to see his psychologist.

To be honest, after the removal of his foot cartilage, it was uncertain whether he would be able to walk properly or regain his previous jumping ability. Some people worked hard in rehabilitation after surgery and returned to the field to win championships, while others were confined to a wheelchair for life.

Ren Zhong was clearly the former.

“Rehabilitation” is a short word, but when it truly falls upon a person, it is very, very heavy, soaking with countless hardships and pains.

The first time Zhang Qingyuan watched Ren Zhong’s rehabilitation from outside the glass window, he couldn’t bear to watch the whole thing. Halfway through, he couldn’t help but run out and secretly shed a few tears.

The next day, Ren Zhong found that his “loving wife’s lunch” had four extra chicken legs and two thick-cut steaks, as if Zhang Qingyuan was afraid he wouldn’t get enough to eat.

Having something to distract Zhang Qingyuan wasn’t a bad thing.

His symptoms were not too severe, and he received timely psychological intervention and counseling, so his condition improved significantly.

During their last session, the psychologist gave him homework, asking him to try to talk about the relevant topic with someone he trusted.

Originally, Zhang Qingyuan might have chosen to talk about it with Lawyer Mai, but the moment he saw Ren Zhong outside the clinic, he suddenly changed his mind.

He wanted to ask for Ren Zhong’s opinion.

The fact that the other person had suggested he see a psychologist made him trust this seemingly rough-hearted man more.

So, during a lunch break at physical therapy, Zhang Qingyuan brought up the topic.

Ren Zhong’s chopsticks paused, and a slippery hand-rolled beef ball bounced back into the lunchbox.

“Are you sure you want to talk to me?” He poked the beef ball with his chopsticks. “I’m blunt. I can’t soothe you like a doctor can.”

Zhang Qingyuan insisted on talking to him. “I don’t need you to soothe me. Just be factual. It’s okay if you say something harsh.”

“Harsh is okay?” He scoffed. “I’ve never heard of such a request.”

Although Ren Zhong’s words sounded like he wasn’t going to be gentle, what he actually said was not particularly harsh.

“Were you the one committing marital r*pe? No. Were you the one committing domestic violence against other family members? No. Were you the one selling the private videos on the dark web? No. So what are you feeling guilty about? What did you do wrong?”

He continued, “Besides, this matter needed to be made known to everyone. It couldn’t be covered up. If you and I didn’t expose it, someone else would have eventually. Whoever exposed it would be a hero. People would be so grateful they wouldn’t know what to do.”

“But… if we hadn’t exposed it, would that girl have not jumped? If they hadn’t known, would they not be in so much pain?”

The girl’s death was still a hurdle that Zhang Qingyuan couldn’t get past.

Ren Zhong “tsk”-ed and said, “The angle you’re looking at this from is really obtuse.”

He put down his chopsticks and stopped eating, focusing on making his point clear to Zhang Qingyuan.

“Zhang Qingyuan, ‘not knowing’ wouldn’t change the fact that their private videos were being sold. Knowing is better than being kept in the dark and being unknowingly consumed as an object of lust.”

He unscrewed his thermos and took a sip, an action reminiscent of how he acted in meetings in the military.

“The video was just a fuse. The root cause was the suffering she endured in her videos and her life, the oppression she faced from those archaic, disgraceful ideas, the lack of support and comfort from her family and friends, and the slut-shaming that killed her. What does that have to do with you?”

Ren Zhong shook his head. “Zhang Qingyuan, don’t try to take responsibility for everything and put it all on yourself. Doing what you need to do is enough.”

With that, he closed his lunchbox, wiped his utensils clean, and put the food scraps back in the box.

“Go take care of your own stuff,” Ren Zhong shooed him away. “Stop playing the ‘good wife’ and ‘househusband’ at home. Go do your work. And don’t waste your time at the rehabilitation center. There’s nothing to see in a grown man learning how to walk.”

And just like that, Zhang Qingyuan was packaged and thrown out of the rehabilitation center along with the lunchbox.

He drove home, his mood inexplicably light and relieved.