The System Forces Me to Be a Scumbag Male Lead [Quick Transmigration] - Chapter 10

Sang Xiaoshi gradually cried himself out. Leaning against Shen Siyang’s shoulder, he blinked his damp eyes, his face flushing crimson with delayed embarrassment.

Shen Siyang smelled faintly of fresh soap. The clean scent drifted from his warm skin, giving Sang Xiaoshi that familiar feeling of being entirely enveloped in warmth. He instinctively nuzzled against Shen Siyang’s soft neck before burying his face right back into it.

Shen Siyang waited a bit. Once Sang Xiaoshi remained still for a long while, he spoke softly, “Xiaoshi, wait for me in the room for a minute. I’m going to wake up my parents so we can take you to the hospital.”

With that, he slowly released his embrace. But just as he turned to walk out, his arm was grabbed again.

Shen Siyang stopped and turned back to look at Sang Xiaoshi, having a hunch. “You don’t want to go to the hospital?”

Sang Xiaoshi bit his swollen, tear-stained lower lip. His voice still carried a residual sob. “D-Daddy, M-Mommy turned into s-stars at the hospital.”

Shen Siyang froze. He walked back to Sang Xiaoshi, raising a hand to ruffle the boy’s hair. “Have you ever heard a legend, Xiaoshi?”

Sang Xiaoshi blinked in confusion. “W-What legend?”

“Legend has it that wherever a person turns into a star, their soul can return to visit their loved ones whenever they come back to that exact spot.”

Sang Xiaoshi listened intently to Shen Siyang’s words, his eyes widening as he went entirely still. After a prolonged silence, he suddenly asked, “Even if it’s not, not the same h-hospital can they, they still come back?”

“Mhm. Since they’re both hospitals, there must be a way for them to transmit things between each other, right?” Shen Siyang rubbed his chin, speaking with mock gravity.

Sang Xiaoshi looked at him, nodding as if he halfway understood.

Seeing this, Shen Siyang pressed on. “Besides, taking you to the hospital isn’t just to treat the wounds on your back. More importantly, we need to get a medical evaluation of your injuries.”

“M-Medical evaluation?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you say earlier that when you called the police before, Luo Qifeng lied and told them you fell from a tree? With a formal medical evaluation, he won’t be able to lie his way out of it anymore.”

By the time all the hospital procedures were wrapped up, it was already well past midnight.

On the drive back, Sang Xiaoshi lay on his side with his head resting on Shen Siyang’s lap, fast asleep from pure exhaustion. Shen Shiwu drove at the slowest pace of his entire life.

Catching a red light, he glanced at the backseat through the rearview mirror and couldn’t help but lower his voice. “Luo Qifeng is an absolute monster. Yangyang, let Xiaoshi stay at our place for the next few days. I just called a lawyer friend of mine, and he said this is definitely a case we can fight. We can absolutely lock Luo Qifeng away.”

Shen Siyang looked down at the boy sleeping soundly on his lap. He gently brushed away the sweat-dampened hair from Sang Xiaoshi’s forehead before looking up at Shen Shiwu. “How many years can he get?”

Shen Shiwu fell briefly silent.

The light turned green. He pulled his gaze back and let out a light cough before responding, “I sent a photo of Xiaoshi’s wounds to my friend. He’ll definitely face charges, but as for how long, we probably shouldn’t set our expectations too high. Even though his injuries look terrifying, they likely only qualify as minor bodily harm under the legal definition.”

Shen Siyang’s fingers curled slightly against Sang Xiaoshi’s hair as he fell into a quiet silence.

Sitting in the passenger seat, Yuan Linfei suddenly turned around to look straight at her son. “Shen Siyang, stop plotting. This whole thing is dangerous, and it’s no longer something a kid like you should be handling.”

Noticing Sang Xiaoshi shudder in his sleep, Shen Siyang quickly patted his arm reassuringly to soothe him.

“Luo Qifeng doesn’t just inflict physical violence on Xiaoshi; he uses psychological control on him too.” He paused for a beat before adding, “He constantly makes Xiaoshi squat in the corner and eat out of a bowl with the dog.”

The car fell completely silent for a moment.

Shen Shiwu couldn’t restrain himself and slammed his hand against the horn. The blare shattered the quiet, and realizing too late that Sang Xiaoshi was sleeping, he quickly checked the rearview mirror. Seeing that the boy hadn’t woken up, he let out a sigh of relief and cursed under his breath, “How can anyone be such a piece of trash? I seriously want to just throw a sack over his head, drag him somewhere deserted, and beat him to a pulp.”

Yuan Linfei’s brow furrowed tightly as well. She didn’t say anything, keeping her eyes fixed quietly on Shen Siyang.

Shen Siyang didn’t evade his mother’s gaze. He knew his current demeanor and vocabulary didn’t sound like an seven-year-old at all, and he knew his mother could see right through it. Yet he maintained his posture and continued:

“Xiaoshi described the entire process of how Luo Qifeng forces him to eat in the corner. Luo Qifeng’s words are highly calculated and deliberate; this clearly isn’t his first time doing this. So it’s safe to assume that he’s been subjecting Xiaoshi’s aunt to the exact same physical and psychological abuse for years.”

Shen Siyang looked up, meeting Yuan Linfei’s eyes.

“The law can punish physical harm, but what about psychological abuse? External wounds are visible to everyone—we can see whether they’re healing, how much they’ve improved, and what medication is needed to speed up the process.

But emotional wounds don’t work that way. They can fester, tear a person apart, or even explode inside them, all while remaining completely silent.

Luo Qifeng going to prison is what he deserves, but that doesn’t erase the torment Xiaoshi and his aunt have suffered. We can’t let him off that easily. Whatever suffering Luo Qifeng inflicted on others, he needs to experience that exact same agony himself.”

Listening to Shen Siyang while driving, Shen Shiwu was so startled he nearly veered straight into a ditch. Fortunately, the roads were completely empty in the middle of the night, preventing an accident. He pulled the car over to the curb, killed the engine, and turned around to focus on the conversation. “Son, my seven-year-old son, the way you talk puts your own father to shame.”

Shen Siyang glanced at Shen Shiwu and offered a smile. Seeing his son smile, Shen Shiwu grinned back.

Yuan Linfei’s voice cut through the silence a moment later. “I understand the logic, but I stand by what I said at the beginning—this is dangerous.”

“Mom.” Shen Siyang looked at her with a serious expression, raising three fingers beside his head. “I promise you, I will plan this thoroughly enough to ensure my own safety. If anything happens to me this time, I will never meddle in anyone’s business ever again or any dog, chicken, duck, goose, bird, fine, any animal’s business either.”

Yuan Linfei let out a light snort. “Well, if you lose your life, you won’t be able to meddle anyway.”

“Mom.” Before Shen Siyang could finish, Shen Shiwu intervened.

“Honey, knock on wood! How can you jinx our son like that?”

Yuan Linfei shot a look at her usually mindless husband. After a long pause, she turned her gaze back to Shen Siyang. “You are not allowed to break the law.”

Shen Siyang flashed a wide smile. “You can rest entirely assured on that front, Mom. Your son is a law-abiding, upstanding, model cit—model child.”

Yuan Linfei stared at him for a long while. “The night you brought Xiaoshi home, I told you I felt like you had suddenly grown up. Yangyang, you truly seem like an adult now.”

Shen Siyang’s smile softened. “Does that matter? A seven-year-old Shen Siyang is your child, and an eighteen or twenty-eight-year-old Shen Siyang is still your child, isn’t he? To me, you will always be the mother who scolded me and pretended to swat me when I broke my leg saving a little bird from a tree, but ultimately rubbed my head, told me I did the right thing, and made me braised pig trotters for a whole week.”

Looking at Shen Siyang, Yuan Linfei’s eyes welled with tears in the darkness.

Before she could react further, a loud sniffle echoed from the driver’s seat.

“Yangyang, you really have a way with words. You’ve got your old man completely choked up. Waaah, my boy is all grown up.”

Interrupted by her husband, Yuan Linfei’s unshed tears retreated completely. She shot an exasperated look at the driver’s seat before turning back to Shen Siyang, leaning over the gap between the seats.

Ruffling his hair, she spoke in a tone that brooked no argument: “I really can’t do anything with you. But your father and I must be involved in this from start to finish.”

Shen Siyang thought it over for a second and nodded. “Deal.”

Having recovered from his emotional outburst, Shen Shiwu restarted the car. The vehicle glided along the quiet town roads.

Lying on Shen Siyang’s lap with his eyes closed, Sang Xiaoshi silently let a single tear slip from the corner of his eye. It soaked into Shen Siyang’s pants, quickly vanishing from sight.

The car pulled into the Shen family courtyard.

Shen Siyang was just considering whether to ask his dad to carry Sang Xiaoshi upstairs when the boy resting on his lap stirred and slowly blinked awake.

Shen Shiwu killed the ignition and checked the time, noting it was nearly five in the morning. Unbuckling his seatbelt, he said to Shen Siyang, “You and Xiaoshi head upstairs and get some sleep. Once it’s light out, I’ll head over to his aunt’s place to let her know that the two of you are playing well together, so he’ll be staying over with us for a few days.”

The family got out of the car. Just as they closed the doors and prepared to head inside, Sang Xiaoshi suddenly stepped in front of them and bowed deeply from the waist.

“T-Thank you,” the child said, trying his best to articulate each word clearly and firmly. “T-Thank you B-Brother Siyang. T-Thank you U-Uncle and A-Auntie.”

The streetlights in the small town were sparse, and with the surrounding houses dark, standing in the courtyard only allowed for a faint outline of each other. Sang Xiaoshi was naturally small and thin, and dressed completely in black, his silhouette seemed to blend so seamlessly into the night that he looked as though he might dissolve into the air at any moment.

Shen Siyang reacted first, stepping forward to pull Sang Xiaoshi up. “A thank you is enough, why are you bowing? What if your wounds open up?”

Sang Xiaoshi blinked, tilting his head up to look at Shen Siyang. Before he could utter a word, another sniffle echoed through the yard.

“Seven years old, he’s only a seven-year-old kid,” Shen Shiwu said, wiping his eyes. “When I was seven, I chased our family pig into a ditch and my dad chased me around the house with a stick, and I still felt entirely wronged while crying my eyes out. Kid, you’re only seven. You can afford to be a little less sensible.”

Yuan Linfei took a step forward as well, reaching out to rub Sang Xiaoshi’s head. “I’ll accept your thanks, sweetie. But you have to promise me that from now on, you’ll eat well, sleep well, and not worry about anything else. Even if the sky falls, we adults are here to hold it up.”

Shen Shiwu flexed his bicep cooperatively beside her. “See these shoulders? Your uncle can hold it up for another ten or twenty years, no problem.”

A light round of laughter rippled through the courtyard.

Cradled between Shen Siyang and Yuan Linfei, Sang Xiaoshi looked at the warmth before him, and a slow smile finally graced his face.

The mid-June night carried a trace of a chill. Mindful of Sang Xiaoshi’s wounds, Shen Siyang ultimately didn’t use the high-powered electric fan that was supposedly tied to the boy’s destiny. Instead, he found a palm-leaf fan in the living room and lay in bed beside Sang Xiaoshi, gently stirring the air.

As the first faint glimmers of dawn crept across the horizon, Sang Xiaoshi remained propped up on the bed, staring at him with wide, damp eyes, seemingly devoid of any drowsiness.

With his mind turned into a chaotic blur by the night’s events, Shen Siyang wasn’t particularly sleepy either.

The two stared at each other in silence for a long while before Shen Siyang spoke up speculatively, “Can’t sleep?”

Sang Xiaoshi blinked gently. “I think, a, a little bit.”

Shen Siyang thought it over. “How about your brother tells you a bedtime story to help you drift off? What kind of bedtime stories do you usually listen to?”

Sang Xiaoshi’s dark, shiny eyes rolled slowly. He whispered, “The, the L-Little B-Boy Outside the, the G-Glass Candy J-Jar.”

Shen Siyang searched his memory but was certain he had never encountered a story by that title. “What’s it about?” he asked. “Let’s hear it.”

Sang Xiaoshi tilted his head, showing a cheek slightly reddened from being pressed against the bamboo sleeping mat, and spoke in a soft voice: “There was a, a candy town. The children in the town, before they grew up, all, all lived inside glass candy jars. A homeless w-wandering little boy came to the candy town. He asked with great e-expectation, ‘Can I live inside a glass, glass candy jar too?’ The townspeople, and the children inside the jars all said, all said no. They said the little boy, d-didn’t belong to the town. The little boy had wandered, wandered through too many places and was too, too dirty. If he lived inside the candy jar, the candy would, would be contaminated.”

Shen Siyang frowned as he listened. Seeing Sang Xiaoshi trail off, he prompted, “And the ending?”

Sang Xiaoshi pressed his slightly dry lips together. “Later, the little boy washed, washed his entire body clean, and went back, went back to ask again. It was still no. He could only stand, stand outside the glass candy jar watching, until he grew up and, and could never go in again.”

“Where did you hear that story?” Shen Siyang asked.

Sang Xiaoshi looked at him. “Read it in, in a book.”

Shen Siyang tapped the palm-leaf fan lightly against the bed. “You definitely bought a pirated book. Piracy misleads people; the ending I read was completely different.”

Sang Xiaoshi froze. “Wh-what?”

Seeing him look so dazed, Shen Siyang couldn’t help but laugh. “The ending I read goes like this: later, a righteous knight came to the town. He discovered that the candy inside the glass jars the town kids lived in would rot your teeth out if you ate it. So, he conjured up a brand-new glass candy jar filled entirely with teeth-friendly sweets just for the wandering little boy to live in alone. Along the way, he taught the little boy a taunt skill—’I really envy you guys living in a public dormitory. Unlike me, I can only live in a spacious, detached villa’—”

Sang Xiaoshi listened, utterly struck with wonder. “It can, it can turn out like that?”

Shen Siyang grinned. “Of course it can. That’s the official ending; every kid who reads it says it’s great.”

A slow smile curved Sang Xiaoshi’s eyes. He reached a hand out from under the blanket and gave a thumbs-up. “I, I think it’s great too.”

Shen Siyang couldn’t stop smiling, using the palm-leaf fan to gently pat Sang Xiaoshi’s head. “Then is it time to sleep, little kid?”

Sang Xiaoshi gazed at Shen Siyang quietly. After a long moment, he nodded and slowly closed his eyes.

A bit more light filtered through the window. Watching the boy close his eyes, Shen Siyang finally began to feel the weight of exhaustion creeping in.

Just as he was preparing to sleep himself, Sang Xiaoshi’s hand, which had been resting outside the blanket, suddenly shifted slightly toward him, hooking its pinky finger around the pinky of the hand Shen Siyang had resting on the bed.

Sang Xiaoshi’s soft, muffled voice drifted over: “Brother Siyang, don’t do, do dangerous t-things.”

Caught completely off guard, Shen Siyang froze for a good while. Once he processed the words, a slow smile spread across his face. “Have you ever heard a certain saying?”

Sang Xiaoshi opened his eyes, looking at him with confusion. “W-What?”

“As long as I move fast enough, danger can’t catch up to me,” Shen Siyang said, narrowing his eyes with mock mystique. “Knights fly to get around, let alone a limited-edition knight.”

Sang Xiaoshi was thoroughly bluffed, looking entirely awestruck. “S-so amazing.”

“Of course it’s amazing.” Shen Siyang raised a hand to ruffle Sang Xiaoshi’s hair. “Go to sleep. Staying up late causes hair loss, and over the next ten years, baldness is going to be humanity’s number one anxiety. To reject baldness, we have to start from a young age.”

Sang Xiaoshi nodded in vague comprehension, obediently closing his eyes again.

Only, his hand holding Shen Siyang’s pinky finger never let go.