Free Web NovelChapter 163: Chapter 129: The Wind of Childhood Blows Back to This Moment
The afternoon arrived quickly.
After lunch, Shen Yuan brought a stool out to his front door to bask leisurely in the sun.
Soon, two others joined him.
His Eldest Female Cousin was also sitting in a chair, comfortably stretching out her long legs.
Zhao Yueyang, meanwhile, was scrolling through trashy videos on his phone.
Hearing the cringey laughter from the phone, Shen Yuan smacked him, and Zhao Yueyang obediently switched to playing a game.
Zhao Yueyang never had a rebellious phase.
The fists of his older brother, a slap from his Eldest Female Cousin, and Shen Yuan’s Great Wilderness Heaven-Imprisoning Finger were all potent tools for crushing any hint of a rebellious streak.
Of course, Shen Yuan never had a rebellious phase either.
For one, Ms. Zhang Yuyan was more rebellious than he was. For another, Old Shen’s habit of frequently giving him red envelopes ensured Shen Yuan was unusually docile.
Who’s going to argue with money?
And for a third reason, of the three methods mentioned above, Shen Yuan had experienced two of them.
As for which two, don’t ask.
As the three of them were basking in the sun, the sharp-eyed Eldest Female Cousin suddenly spotted a figure appearing at one end of the alley.
"Hey, Yuan, your childhood sweetheart is here to see you."
"Hm?"
Shen Yuan, who had been tilting his face up to feel the sun’s warmth, immediately sat up straight.
Through a slightly bluish haze, Li Zhi was strolling slowly toward him.
"Have you eaten?" Shen Yuan asked reflexively.
Li Zhi rolled her eyes, seemingly speechless at his question. "Why else would I be here?" she retorted irritably.
Though the beautiful girl said that, the corners of her lips curved up into a subtle arc.
Shen Yuan chuckled and flashed his signature grin. "Of course, you came because you missed me," he teased.
The moment he said this, the gazes of his Eldest Female Cousin and younger male cousin, who had been sitting to the side, were instantly drawn to him, landing squarely on Shen Yuan.
’Damn, this motherfucker’s got moves!’
However, before they could get over their shock at Shen Yuan’s boldness, Li Zhi’s voice rang out.
"I only think of you when my dog runs away," Li Zhi said, her tone flat, but the sarcastic barb was unmistakable.
Hearing this, the younger cousin’s expression changed slightly, clearly unable to withstand such "attack power."
He involuntarily flinched, shrinking like a startled quail. He quickly lowered his head, not daring to look at Li Zhi again.
But even as he was channeling his inner quail, the younger cousin couldn’t resist sneaking a glance at Shen Yuan, seemingly wanting to see how he would handle Li Zhi’s retort.
Shen Yuan and Li Zhi had been sparring like this for a long time; he was obviously used to this level of "attack."
He just leaned back leisurely in his small bamboo chair, his smile not fading in the slightest. In fact, it grew even brighter as he grinned and replied:
"Well, you’re not a very responsible owner then, are you? Only thinking to look for your dog after it’s gone missing? Shouldn’t you be feeding it more treats normally?"
Li Zhi scoffed lightly. "If it’s lost, it’s lost. Who told it to fall in love with the dazzling world outside? Being with me would only restrict its freedom."
"Maybe it’s an M, you know? It wants you to find it and then give it a good beating."
Li Zhi’s mouth twitched.
When it came to kinks, she had clearly underestimated Shen Yuan.
Li Zhi was instantly disgusted. "That’s too dirty. I don’t want it anymore."
Shen Yuan gave her a look of mock warning. "Hey! Abandonment is immoral!"
Li Zhi just laughed dryly at that, replying nonchalantly, "As long as I have no morals, no one can use morality to hold me hostage!"
Shen Yuan slowly stood up from the bamboo chair, stretched languidly, and then said unhurriedly, "Oh, that won’t do. I, for one, still have some morals."
With that, he turned and walked away from the house.
Seeing this, Yang Yishui asked curiously, "Where are you going?"
"To find the dog."
Shen Yuan stopped, looked back at his Eldest Female Cousin, and invited her with a smile, "Want to come along?"
His Eldest Female Cousin shook her head decisively, refusing.
Seeing this, Shen Yuan turned his gaze to Li Zhi. "Go find the dog?"
Li Zhi hesitated for a moment before finally nodding. "Even though I don’t have morals, I still have a bit of a conscience," she said.
Just then, Zhao Yueyang, who had been engrossed in his game, suddenly looked up and asked in surprise, "Huh? There’s really a dog?"
Before the words were even out of his mouth, his Eldest Female Cousin quickly reached out, pushed his head down, and snapped, "You idiot, just play your game!"
Only after Shen Yuan and Li Zhi had disappeared from the doorway did the Eldest Female Cousin let go of Zhao Yueyang.
"Sis, what was that for? I wanted to go find the dog too."
The Eldest Female Cousin shot her younger cousin a look. "Shen Yuan is the dog. Are you going to go find him?"
The younger cousin immediately understood what she meant. He shrank back and muttered under his breath.
"It’s just romance. Why make it so complicated."
Hearing this, the Eldest Female Cousin slapped her own forehead and laughed heartily. "Yes, yes, yes! That’s exactly it."
Zhao Yueyang clutched his forehead. "Sis, I get you’re laughing, but why’d you hit me?"
"What’s wrong with hitting you? Just you wait. One day, I’ll use all the tricks I use on Shen Yuan on you!"
"Nooooo, Sis!"
Naturally, Shen Yuan didn’t hear his younger cousin’s tragic cry.
The midday sun spilled over the mottled cracks in the concrete walls. Shen Yuan’s fingertips brushed against the yellowed putty on the wall’s surface, sending fine dust showering down into the crevices between the moss.
"Isn’t that dirty?!"
Li Zhi immediately scolded him when she saw this.
Shen Yuan pulled his hand back with a sheepish grin. "Just playing around." freēwēbηovel.c૦m
"If you have so much free time, you can do a test paper when we get back!"
Shen Yuan’s face fell; he wasn’t happy anymore.
At that moment, they happened to stop in front of a house with a tightly shut door.
Staring at the closed gate, Shen Yuan suddenly said, "I got into an argument with the people who live here."
Hearing this, Li Zhi turned her head. The draft whistling through the alley lifted her hair, revealing the pale nape of her neck. "I remember. I think you even got into a fight. You went after someone with a brick, didn’t you?"
"You sure remember the brick part clearly."
Shen Yuan crushed a small weed growing in a crack in the stone with the tip of his shoe, his voice low.
"But the cause..."
He suddenly turned, his gaze burning as he stared into the girl’s amber pupils. "Do you remember?"
Li Zhi met his gaze and tilted her head. "Not really."
The beautiful girl’s brow furrowed slightly. Her pearly teeth gently bit the inside of her lower lip, pressing a faint, pale crescent mark onto it as she seemed to search for any trace of the memory.
"I think... someone got knocked over?"
Shen Yuan kept his eyes on Li Zhi and nodded. "You could say that."
"You have such a dog’s temper, flying off the handle at the smallest thing."
Her slender fingers poked the air in Shen Yuan’s direction, a look of disdain on her face.
"You were the one who got knocked over."
Li Zhi froze. She instinctively looked at Shen Yuan, and the moment their eyes met, the memories came flooding back, overwhelming her. freeweɓnovel.cѳm
One midsummer dusk, back when Li Zhi and Shen Yuan were still in elementary school.
It was the weekend, and the two had just come back from sailing toy boats in the creek. Li Zhi’s boat had floated far away that day, while Shen Yuan’s, for some reason, just kept spinning in place.
Li Zhi was ecstatic that day. She skipped all the way back, holding her little boat and chattering nonstop.
But a set of hurried footsteps shattered the girl’s joy.
A high school student in a blue and white school uniform came sprinting out from the other end of the alley.
He crashed right into Li Zhi, knocking her flat on the concrete. Her knees bled a deep red, her hands were scraped all over, and her little boat was crushed.
The high school student was running fast. Shen Yuan couldn’t get him to stop, so he chased after him all the way to his house, where they started to argue.
It wasn’t until the argument had caused a commotion throughout the village that Shen Yuan and Li Zhi’s families found out what had happened.
There were only three people there when it happened, and no security cameras.
The high school student insisted he hadn’t run into Li Zhi and even turned it around on Shen Yuan, claiming he was the one who had tripped her.
No one could say anything to refute it.
And that led to what Li Zhi remembered.
Little Shen Yuan had grabbed a brick and gone to lie in wait for the guy.
’He was a born brawler. Time to smash!’
Li Zhi’s pupils contracted slightly, as if the ripples of memory had stirred the amber glow in her eyes.
She hastily tore her gaze away from the boy’s burning eyes. The ends of her hair brushed against her neck as she turned her head, and her fingertips unconsciously toyed with the strands at her temples that had been messed up by the alley wind, tucking them behind her ear.
The sunlight slanting in from the alley’s entrance made her eyelashes tremble, casting fragmented shadows on her eyelids that perfectly concealed the fleeting emotion in her eyes.
"I... How could I not remember?"
Li Zhi lowered her gaze to the bent weed in the crack of the stone, her voice trailing off with a slight catch, as if even her vocal cords had been scorched by the midday sun.
The beautiful girl’s fingers, hidden behind her back, were clenched so tightly they had turned white, but she quickly relaxed them the moment she realized it.
Just then, a shit-eating grin appeared in her field of vision.
"You were probably knocked stupid."
Her relaxed hand clenched again.
’My fists are clenched.’
’That idiot Shen Yuan can just go die!’
Li Zhi swung a fist at him. "You’re the one who was knocked stupid! Who has the higher IQ now, huh!"
Shen Yuan didn’t dodge, letting Li Zhi’s fist thump against his back.
"I’m sorry."
Shen Yuan’s sudden apology made the air in the alley freeze.
The usual playful look was gone from the young man’s face; even his breathing became extremely soft.
"Wh-what are you doing?"
Li Zhi was frozen in place, the end of her sentence carrying a tremor she herself hadn’t noticed.
Shen Yuan’s Adam’s apple bobbed. "Back when we were arguing—"
During the argument, Shen Yuan had forgotten one thing.
The pitiful image of the little girl being comforted in her parents’ arms overlapped with the image of the beautiful girl before him now.
The young man’s voice suddenly caught in his throat. After a heavy swallow, he finished, "I left you here all alone."
The wind swept past the old wall, the wind of their childhood blowing back into the present.
Li Zhi saw the look in the young man’s eyes and belatedly recalled that midsummer dusk.
The pain she had felt mixed with the fragmented memory of Shen Yuan chasing after the other boy. The last thing frozen in her memory was the track of a tear running down her face as she had called out Shen Yuan’s name.
"Then you should be the one to say sorry."
The moment Li Zhi turned away, a halo of light from the edge of the eaves happened to spill across the corner of her tightly pressed lips, casting the shadow of a slight upturn on the mottled alley wall.
The alley wind swept past the stray hairs she had tucked behind her ear, carrying a soft hum she held between her lips and scattering it among the timeworn walls.
