How Did The Young Lady Go Bankrupt? - Chapter 12

Chapter 12: The Big Mouse

Her sleep quality was usually excellent, consistently scoring above 85 points. Being able to fall asleep was, to her, the greatest blessing; having experienced the agony of insomnia, Lu Zhiyao held sleep in the highest regard.

But tonight, that score was likely going to plummet.

Her sleep was very light. She drifted through a series of fragmented, bizarre dreams, constantly waking from a shallow slumber only to turn over and continue. These dreams were filled with surreal imagery—incomplete and, for the most part, meaningless.

Lu Zhiyao actually wanted to dream about scenes from back then; no matter what had happened, she missed that past. Yet, even when she dreamt of things related to high school or Duan Zishu, they were always fictitious.

She dreamt of Duan Zishu smiling at her, saying, “I like you very much.” Lu Zhiyao realized immediately that it was a dream; in reality, Duan Zishu would likely never reveal such a brilliant expression in her entire life.

“What do you think of my painting?”

“Actually, I don’t really understand art.”

In reality, Duan Zishu had asked this, and Lu Zhiyao had given that exact reply. But back in high school, she had a second half to that sentence: “Actually, I don’t really understand art, but I can see the rich emotions you’ve poured into this. Senior, learning to paint must be incredibly difficult.”

But in the dream, she didn’t say that. After the first half, she asked Duan Zishu: “Do you still like me now?”

“You weren’t like this before,” Duan Zishu said in the dream.

“Then, do you still like me?”

Duan Zishu shook her head.

Lu Zhiyao woke up. It wasn’t a startle, but rather the sound of rustling nearby that brought her to consciousness.

This sound definitely hadn’t started tonight, but because Lu Zhiyao had been sleeping so deeply on the sofa previously, she hadn’t realized anything was amiss until the morning. At first, she thought those changes were just her own faulty memory, but after several days of it, Lu Zhiyao was certain that things were disappearing from the fridge.

However, it didn’t really seem like the work of a mouse.

Lu Zhiyao found the situation bizarre. She had even checked the door locks for signs of tampering. It proved that no one could break in, and she wasn’t such a heavy sleeper that a burglar could enter without her noticing. Since it wasn’t a major issue, she had just let it be.

Today, however, her sleep was shallow enough that she heard the sound even from the bedroom. Once woken, she wasn’t sleepy anymore. She checked her watch—after all that waking and dozing, it wasn’t even one o’clock yet.

Well then, it was time to catch that “big mouse.”

Duan Zishu was tiptoeing into the kitchen. She opened the fridge with practiced ease, pulled out a can of cola, and before even closing the fridge door, she impatiently pulled the tab open with one hand. The sound of bubbles rising in the can was audible.

She took a sip immediately and turned to shut the fridge, only to find Lu Zhiyao standing behind her.

“I was wondering what kind of mouse would steal my cola,” Lu Zhiyao said, crossing her arms.

Duan Zishu looked a bit flustered.

“I couldn’t sleep after switching to the sofa, so I got up to find something to drink,” Duan Zishu whispered, clearly lacking conviction.

“Don’t try to coax me. This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed things going missing.”

Lu Zhiyao wasn’t angry enough to make a scene over a few cans of cola, but she was puzzled—how could cola be so delicious that it was worth sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to steal? Initially, Lu Zhiyao thought Duan Zishu might be quietly reselling the soda, but there were only a few cans in the house, and even after going bankrupt, the young miss wouldn’t care for such petty change.

Watching her drink it now, it seemed even stranger.

Duan Zishu didn’t know how to explain. Under Lu Zhiyao’s gaze, she took another sip of the cola. This wasn’t an act of defiance, but rather a subconscious reaction; Duan Zishu’s eyes darted away.

Lu Zhiyao squinted. In the night, she couldn’t see very clearly. Without bothering to turn on the kitchen lights, she picked up her phone and shone the flashlight directly at Duan Zishu. The light wasn’t particularly bright, but it still made Duan Zishu blink, unable to look directly at it.

She looked as pathetic as a criminal caught in the act. Duan Zishu didn’t understand why Lu Zhiyao wouldn’t just turn on the ceiling light instead of shining a phone in her face. As her temper flared, Duan Zishu grew quite displeased. After all, stealing a sip of cola wasn’t a felony, and Duan Zishu had already prepaid for her living expenses.

“Are you addicted to something?”

Duan Zishu froze instantly.

“Addicted”—of course, this didn’t refer to the cola. Both of them knew exactly what that sentence implied: alcohol addiction.

Duan Zishu’s fingers were trembling. Those who used alcohol not for enjoyment, but as a means of avoidance, often left behind such tell-tale signs. Lu Zhiyao’s mother had been the same way.

When she was a child, she had even searched for ways to help her mother quit drinking. The gentle approach was to use other beverages as substitutes or to divert one’s attention. But for those alcoholics, chugging cola was merely a consolation for not being able to get their hands on booze, a way to deceive the body. No matter what one is trying to quit, it’s rarely easy to succeed without a struggle.

When she was small, she told her mother the methods she had found, hoping she would stop. The only reply she ever got was: “What do you know?”

Her mother would cup Lu Zhiyao’s face in her hands and look her straight in the eye, though her gaze would drift through her, lost in distant memories.

“They say you should drink this glass of wine,” her mother’s beautiful eyes had grown cloudy. “But I don’t think academia should be like this. Scientific research shouldn’t be like this. Shouldn’t it be something more sacred, more rigorous, and something that shouldn’t be polluted by the outside world?”

“Yaoyao, don’t you think knowledge should be the most sacred and inviolable thing of all?”

Her mother said with hatred: “A bunch of stinking fish and rotten shrimp, only capable of stirring up trouble, useless people huddling together for warmth.”

Lu Zhiyao truly didn’t understand. She didn’t know what her mother was talking about. Yet, her mother would ramble on until her grandmother came over and offered soft words of comfort.

“But this—this is truly good stuff,” her mother would say, swirling the murky wine in her glass.

In their neck of the woods, it was rare for a woman to drink every day, which drew a lot of gossiping tongues—people who wouldn’t dare scold the men for their drunken behavior, but who were quick to judge her mother. Her mother never cared. She drank, she didn’t throw tantrums, and when she was drunk, she simply went to sleep.

But Lu Zhiyao still felt a sense of revulsion. Life at home was already extremely difficult, and now they had to spend extra money on alcohol. What’s more, her mother would sleep as soon as she was drunk, never concerning herself with the tasks her teachers assigned, like getting a parent’s signature.

Her grandmother was a hardworking, capable old woman who practically held the whole household together. But Lu Zhiyao didn’t feel she was her grandmother—she was just her mother’s mother. And her mother didn’t seem like a mother, she was just her grandmother’s daughter.

“I’ve already quit,” Duan Zishu said.

“Really,” she added. “When I mentioned buying alcohol earlier, I knew you wouldn’t agree; I was just satisfying a craving. I haven’t touched alcohol for a very long time. I quit before I returned to the country.”

She had expected Lu Zhiyao to be furious, as her reaction upon first noticing the signs had been one of anger. To her surprise, Lu Zhiyao turned off the flashlight and flipped on the bright ceiling light.

“I know,” Lu Zhiyao said, offering a faint smile. “Quitting drinking is very difficult.”