The Popular/Charismatic Beta Always Thinks They Are Universally Disliked - Chapter 20

Chapter 20: But You Are No Longer Important

In his first year after heading to America, Gu Yansheng’s legal residency status was revoked. Those who meticulously prepared this “gift” did not stop there. For the nineteen-year-old Gu Yansheng, the tactics he had to face included deportation, account freezes, and various unexplained “accidents.”

Losing his legal status meant he became an illegal immigrant in that country. Frozen accounts meant he was penniless, with no available cash. The succession of accidents nearly prevented him from standing before Wen Zhiyi five years later.

He couldn’t find any decent, safe job.

Unlicensed labor at construction sites, dishwashing in Chinese restaurant kitchens, running errands and serving as muscle for underground money lenders… This period of memory was associated with endless dirt, blood, sweat, humiliation, and confusion. Fortunately, this muddled life of struggling for survival didn’t last long. Gu Yansheng quickly contacted the connections Gu Jinglin had left in America. With nothing to his name, he successfully persuaded them to help him rebuild.

With the help of this professional political broker, Gu Yansheng began a long and arduous climb.

In his first year in America, he was destitute, living day to day, crammed into a cheap shared rental with a dozen other people with complex backgrounds, working three or four jobs daily. If an employer didn’t pay him daily, he might not even be able to afford his communal bunk.

He was so paranoid that he suspected a falling flowerpot was targeting him. He began to fear any sound resembling gunfire and wouldn’t even appear on busy streets during the day.

That year, he sent 138 anonymous emails to Wen Zhiyi.

In his second year in America, he successfully enrolled in an overseas top law school, resuming the education he couldn’t complete domestically. Concurrently, Gu Yansheng moved between countless complex forces with the local Chinese community organization. Most of the time, he was the silent learner. Only when “the Gu family” was mentioned would he smile and speak amidst the myriad of strange glances, each harboring their own motives.

That year, he sent 365 anonymous emails to Wen Zhiyi.

In his third year in America, he learned to utilize what the Gu family had left him. He found that the information that had previously only existed in his mind was incredibly valuable. The Gu family members back home, who had finally caught a breath after the cleansing and suppression, also started contacting him. Everything seemed to be improving.

Until the broker who had chosen to help Gu Yansheng suddenly betrayed him, selling his movements to a pack of mercenaries who had been hunting him for three years.

That was the first time Gu Yansheng was shot in his life.

The moment the bullet plunged into his body, it felt like a searing iron saw tugging back and forth in his tender organs. The surrounding tissues, devastatingly damaged by the immense impact, were almost too gruesome to look at. Broken bones, torn muscles, ruptured blood vessels… In just an instant, Gu Yansheng involuntarily curled up in pain.

He was hit twice, once in the ribs, once in the thigh. The shooter’s primary goal was to prevent his escape, not to kill him. He narrowly survived, and under the cover of others, he used a horrifying will that he himself could barely imagine to crawl back to the shared rental he had lived in during his first year in America.

He dared not go to the hospital, so he could only have the two bullets removed in an underground clinic.

Locate, incise, retrieve the bullet, stop the bleeding, suture.

It really hurt.

He thought this while trembling, opening the heavily encrypted anonymous email account. He had continuously sent countless messages to this account and used it to contact his family back home.

The emails from home dutifully informed him of a certain person’s latest status, and he clicked on the message related to Wen Zhiyi, clinging to it like a dying person desperately biting onto the only spider silk thread.

T-h-e-y s-a-i-d W-e-n Z-h-i-y-i g-o-t m-a-r-r-i-e-d.

The bone curette continuously scraped away the fragments embedded in the bone. Such cold instruments had already become warm, soaked in Gu Yansheng’s flesh and blood. In a daze, he wondered why the anesthetic hadn’t taken effect yet.

The anesthetic s-e-e-m-s t-o h-a-v-e a-l-r-e-a-d-y t-a-k-e-n e-f-f-e-c-t.

He was in so much pain that he couldn’t hold his phone. The agony, surpassing all his previous pain combined, made him sweat profusely. He began to sweat heavily, as if dehydrating. All the tears he hadn’t shed in the past seemed to pour out as sweat. He struggled to lift his hand to wipe away the sweat dripping into his eyes, suddenly unable to distinguish whether the liquid was sweat or tears.

Even with his eyes stimulated to blood-red by the sweat, Gu Yansheng stared unblinkingly at the message on the screen. The doctor performing the simple surgery wondered if he was facing a corpse without any sensation.

Gu Yansheng was certainly not a corpse; otherwise, he wouldn’t be standing before Wen Zhiyi now, smiling and offering to help him with his divorce.

…

“Five years ago?” Wen Zhiyi repeated his question, replying indifferently, “Maybe that was a factor before, but it isn’t anymore.”

As if to reassure Gu Yansheng, he added sincerely: “I don’t care anymore, truly.”

No longer cares?

“You won’t forgive me,” Gu Yansheng said calmly.

“Do you need my forgiveness?” Wen Zhiyi asked, puzzled.

“I need more than just your forgiveness.”

Wen Zhiyi “Ah-ed,” looking somewhat incredulous: “I guess I was quite important.”

“…You have always been important.”

“But you are no longer important,” Wen Zhiyi, tired of standing, simply sat directly on the sofa in Gu Yansheng’s office. He found a comfortable position. Even looking up at Gu Yansheng, his aura didn’t seem weak. “Just like the anonymous emails you kept sending me, your relationship with me is, at most, exchanging greetings during holidays.”

He slowly gave a smile of unknown meaning, continuing flatly: “I’m not an idiot. I could guess it was you. Very few people knew my high school email account, and how could a stranger keep sending me messages?”

“There’s no need to continue dwelling on what happened five years ago. I kept up with the news and can roughly guess what happened back then. Anyway, congratulations on successfully returning. As for everything else, I don’t think there’s anything more to say.”

As the one who first brought up five years ago, Gu Yansheng now didn’t know what to say.

He thought for a moment, calmly considering what persuasion tactics he should use to elicit the words he wanted to hear from Wen Zhiyi.

He couldn’t think of anything.

He could perhaps try to gain sympathy by recounting his experiences over the past five years, or say he left to protect Wen Zhiyi, or say he never let go of Wen Zhiyi, or bring up their childhood friendship of more than ten years.

But in the end, Gu Yansheng didn’t mention any of these things.

He slowly walked up to Wen Zhiyi, looking gently and peacefully into his eyes, and said something completely outside his plan.

He asked:

“Can you truly not forgive me?”

Wen Zhiyi firmly shook his head.

Gu Yansheng smiled, then suddenly asked quietly, “Was five years really a long time?”

Wen Zhiyi had a problem since childhood: he easily suffered from insomnia when he was sad. Gu Yansheng had tried many methods, taken Wen Zhiyi to see many doctors, and even consulted many famous psychology professors in the country. The final solution was only one: Don’t let Wen Zhiyi be sad.

Don’t let Zhizhi be sad, or he won’t be able to sleep at night.

The nineteen-year-old Gu Yansheng had constantly warned himself.

But he ultimately made Wen Zhiyi sad. And only now did he have the courage to wonder how many nights Wen Zhiyi had suffered from insomnia during those long five years.

He should have been the person who understood Wen Zhiyi best, the person who had accompanied Wen Zhiyi the longest, but now he had become the person who had been separated from Wen Zhiyi for the longest.

So, why, why wouldn’t he even meet him one last time?

Why?

Wen Zhiyi, who was long past being curious, finally received the answer five years later that he couldn’t figure out back then.

He heard Gu Yansheng’s voice speak calmly.

“The Gu Yansheng of five years ago couldn’t foresee what would happen in the future. He only knew he couldn’t accept running away like a stray dog in front of the person he loved. He felt he should always be the winner, always the victor, always Wen Zhiyi’s hero, always invincible and impossible to defeat.”

A slight crack gradually appeared in this incredibly calm voice.

“He was so arrogant, so naive, but he was only nineteen years old back then.”

He was too young and too proud then. He wanted dignity, grandeur, splendidness, and to always win everything. The one thing he didn’t want was to appear vulnerable, panicky, fearful, and helpless in front of Wen Zhiyi.

Since childhood, he had been good at exposing his wounds to Wen Zhiyi to make him feel sympathetic. But fundamentally, the wounds he could comfortably expose to Wen Zhiyi neither made him look pathetic nor caused him real pain; he was adept and skillful at it—it was merely a tool to gain Wen Zhiyi’s sympathy.

But five years ago was different.

Even at the moment he was forced to leave, Gu Yansheng swore he would return victorious, that he would stand before Wen Zhiyi again.

But he had to admit that he was helpless and at a loss during that major upheaval, like a small boat in a torrent that couldn’t reach the shore no matter what, unable to maintain composure amidst the raging currents surging toward him.

How could such a Gu Yansheng appear before Wen Zhiyi?

He was only nineteen then, so he naturally fantasized about the future with a nineteen-year-old’s mindset. But how could Wen Zhiyi stay seventeen forever?

The pain that had once made Gu Yansheng sweat profusely resurfaced now. He had to clench his hands tightly to suppress certain emotions so heavy that he could barely speak.

“Can you really not forgive me?”

Wen Zhiyi thought quietly for a moment and gave his answer: “I was only seventeen back then, too.”

The person you should be begging for forgiveness from should be the Wen Zhiyi from back then, not the twenty-three-year-old Wen Zhiyi now.

And even the Wen Zhiyi back then was only seventeen. Why should he calmly, rationally, gently, and peacefully forgive others?

Gu Yansheng understood.

He looked at Wen Zhiyi in front of him and suddenly realized that his original goal had already been achieved—the nineteen-year-old Gu Yansheng who left without saying goodbye precisely wanted Wen Zhiyi to live a calm and peaceful life.

Wen Zhiyi did it.

He became so calm and peaceful that he completely let go of Gu Yansheng, started a new life, and refused to return to the former instability.

Isn’t this what you wanted?

A sudden, indescribable immense sadness made Gu Yansheng’s eyes burn.