Who Told You To Fool My First Love? - Chapter 10

The two-day sports meet came to an end, leaving everyone with a lingering sense of reluctance.

In the end, Class 1 ranked seventh in the grade for total points.

Although the ranking wasn’t particularly high, it was an improvement by leaps and bounds compared to their desolate last-place finish of the previous two years. Everyone was quite satisfied with this result, which left the elite Class 2 next door envious.

After this battle, Lu Zhen completely solidified his status as the god of both literature and martial arts in the hearts of Class 1 students, and his nickname evolved from “Study God Lu” to the super-evolved version: “God Lu.”

Considering the students had just gone through two days of grueling struggle and were physically and mentally exhausted, Third High showed a rare human side and canceled evening self-study for the night.

The teachers also urged everyone to go home, get some good rest, adjust their states of mind, and be ready to dive back into their studies tomorrow.

When the school day ended, the sun had already slipped behind the mountain peak. The sunset gilded the streets in a shade of pink-orange, dragging the shadows of pedestrians longer and longer.

After a busy day, Qiao Muyu had worked up a light sweat, and the first thing he did when he got home was take a hot shower.

The sound of the shower was pattering, and before long, the narrow bathroom was filled with hazy steam.

Hot water flowed slowly down the curves of his body. As he lowered his head to wash away the foam on his legs, he caught a glimpse of the pale red scar on his thigh.

Qiao Muyu reached out and gently rubbed it. He could feel the slight undulating texture of the skin beneath his fingertips, but it was long devoid of any pain.

Perhaps because it had been mentioned earlier this afternoon, Qiao Muyu experienced a rare moment of reflection, recalling things from his time at the orphanage when he was a child.

Mother Director said she had found him in his swaddling clothes at the gate of the orphanage, so as far back as he could remember, he had been part of the orphanage family.

He knew nothing about who his biological parents were or if they were still alive.

Unknowingly, he had already spent seven years in that orphanage.

Living conditions at the orphanage weren’t good. Eight children were squeezed onto one large shared bed. In the summer, mosquitoes were unbearable, and whenever there was a thunderstorm, the power would inevitably cut out.

That night, one midsummer evening, was exactly like that—thundering and rainy.

Qiao Muyu woke up in the middle of the night needing to pee. He sat up and reached for the flashlight on the nightstand, only to find it was dead. He had no choice but to find a short stump of an old candle in the drawer.

As soon as he lit it with a lighter, he heard a faint sobbing sound behind him, seemingly coming from the bed in the very corner.

Qiao Muyu tilted his head to think; if he remembered correctly, the person sleeping there was a new companion who had just arrived at the orphanage that day—a little boy the same age as him.

It was said that his parents had passed away unexpectedly in a car accident a few days prior. His relatives had treated him like a jinx bringing bad luck and didn’t want to take him in, so he was shipped off to the orphanage like this.

After Mother Director brought him into the room, he hadn’t said a word. He had just kept his head down, curled up in the corner, and stared blankly for the whole afternoon. When other kids tried to greet him, he ignored them, showing an obviously gloomy and eccentric temperament.

Seeing that his sobbing showed no signs of stopping, Qiao Muyu couldn’t help but feel concerned, so he carried the candle and walked over on tiptoe.

Through the faint, orange candlelight, he saw a little guy who had covered his head with a pillow, curled up like a kitten, his body trembling slightly with each sob.

Qiao Muyu sat on the edge of the bed, carefully patted his arm, and asked in a low voice: “Hey, what’s wrong with you?”

The little boy tentatively peeked out from the pillow, his dark, moist eyes still filled with tears, looking pitiful.

Seeing this, Qiao Muyu hurriedly asked: “Are you sick? Is something bothering you? Do you need me to tell Mother Director?”

The little boy shook his head, looked at Qiao Muyu, and hesitated for a moment before whispering: “I… I’m afraid of thunder, and I’m afraid of the dark.”

Qiao Muyu paused and couldn’t help but chuckle: “What are you afraid of? You’re not the only one in this room. There are eight of us here.”

“But…” the little boy said bashfully, “I want to go to the toilet.”

“Is that all? I have to go too, so I’ll go with you.”

The little boy’s eyes brightened slightly as he confirmed: “Really?”

Qiao Muyu reached out a hand toward him: “Yeah, really. Come on, follow me.”

The little boy wiped away the tears from the corners of his eyes and sat up while holding his hand. Just as they were about to get off the bed, a bolt of lightning split the sky outside the window.

“BOOM!”

The little boy shivered in fright and dodged to the side, accidentally knocking over the candle in Qiao Muyu’s hand. The flame flickered violently, and the scalding hot wax poured uncontrollably onto Qiao Muyu’s exposed thigh.

“Ah! Hot, hot, hot!”

Qiao Muyu cried out in pain and scrambled up like a startled little rabbit, hopping around in a panic to try and shake the wax off his leg.

Realizing he had caused trouble, the little boy burst into tears with a guilty “waah.”

Qiao Muyu covered his mouth with one hand and whispered to stop him: “Stop crying, stop crying! I haven’t even cried yet! Don’t wake the others up!”

Afraid of causing a bigger scene, Qiao Muyu ignored the pain and hurriedly pulled the little boy out of the room.

The two arrived at the toilet. By the candlelight, Qiao Muyu kept washing the scalded area with cool water until the stinging sensation faded completely, and only then did he turn off the tap.

The little boy leaned closer and saw that the skin on his thigh had been burned off, revealing a raw, red patch of flesh. It looked painful just to look at.

He felt both heartbroken and guilty: “This won’t do, it’ll leave a scar. We should tell Mother Director and have her take you to the hospital to look at it.”

“Hey, don’t go.”

Qiao Muyu pulled him back.

“It’s so late, and it’s pouring rain outside. Mother Director is already tired enough. I can’t cause her any more trouble.”

“But…”

“I really don’t need to; it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

The little boy skeptically reached out to touch his wound lightly, and Qiao Muyu immediately sucked in a sharp breath: “Sss!”

The little boy’s eyes turned red again, and he raised his hand to wipe away his tears, sniffing as he said: “I’m sorry, it’s all my fault, wuu wuu wuu… I caused you to have such an ugly scar…”

Qiao Muyu was most afraid of other kids crying, so he hurriedly comforted him: “I don’t think it’s ugly.”

He thought for a moment, held the candle close to his thigh, and pointed at the red scar, gesturing carefully: “Look closely, doesn’t it look like a little fish?”

Hearing this, the little boy stopped crying and focused his gaze on the spot. Following the outline traced by Qiao Muyu’s fingertip, he saw a different possibility for the pain.

“Really, it looks like a little fish,” he couldn’t help but say joyfully.

Seeing that the little boy finally wasn’t crying anymore, Qiao Muyu felt a sense of relief and began to smile too, and the atmosphere became much lighter.

After finishing in the bathroom, they held the candle and walked back hand-in-hand.

The thunder outside had ceased; there was only the sound of lingering wind and rain.

“What is your name?” Qiao Muyu asked.

“Lu Zhenzhen,” the little boy replied.

“Zhenzhen?”

Qiao Muyu burst into a laugh.

“That’s so cute, it sounds like a girl’s name.”

Lu Zhenzhen wasn’t angry, just helpless, in a tone that suggested he was long accustomed to the comment: “My mom said that when she was pregnant with me, she thought I was a girl, so she gave me this name.”

“Does your dad have any objections?”

“My dad is a ‘wife-slave’. He listens to whatever my mom says.”

“A wife-slave? What’s that?” Qiao Muyu didn’t understand.

“I don’t know either, but everyone says that about my dad. My mom says it’s a compliment.”

Lu Zhenzhen said this only half-understanding.

“If it’s a compliment, then it must be a good thing. Then I want to be a ‘wife-slave’ when I grow up, just like my dad.”

Having inadvertently mentioned his parents again, Lu Zhenzhen’s expression dimmed with delayed realization.

Seeing this, Qiao Muyu blinked and changed the subject: “Hey, I’m so jealous of you, having a name chosen by your own mom and dad. My name now was given to me by Mother Director.”

Lu Zhenzhen: “Then what is your name?”

“I’m called Song Yu, same surname as Mother Director. Everyone calls me ‘Little Yu’er,'” Qiao Muyu said. “Since we know each other’s names, we’re friends from now on.”

Lu Zhenzhen nodded solemnly. Finally, he asked in a low voice: “Can I sleep next to you at night?”

Qiao Muyu: “Of course! You can even hold me while you sleep!”

Lu Zhenzhen looked at his sparkling eyes as he spoke and broke into a long-lost, brilliant smile.

The rain hadn’t stopped outside the window, but his world could finally clear up again.

So many years had passed that Qiao Muyu hadn’t thought about that little boy who liked to cuddle while sleeping for a long time, and even his appearance had become blurred in his memory as time washed over it.

He only vaguely remembered that Lu Zhenzhen stayed in the orphanage for only a few months before being spotted and adopted by a young couple, becoming the one who stayed there for the shortest amount of time. Such good luck had made many of the other kids in the home envious.

As a friend, Qiao Muyu sincerely wished him well, but he inevitably felt a bit lonely for a while.

Fortunately, that winter, the Qiao Yongde couple came to the orphanage and took him away as well.

Although the Qiao couple’s financial situation was ordinary, for Qiao Muyu, who had been starved of love since childhood, he had dreamed of having his own parents who would dote on him. Now that the dream had finally come true, he was so happy that he couldn’t sleep for entire nights during his first few days at the Qiao house.

Qiao Muyu had thought his happy life was just beginning, but unfortunately, it didn’t last. The following autumn, his foster mother passed away from an illness, and his foster father, Qiao Yongde, underwent a drastic change in personality, becoming addicted to alcoholism.

It wasn’t until one time when a drunk Qiao Yongde was beating him and hurling abuse at him that Qiao Muyu realized the Qiao family adopting him was just a front.

The couple had been unable to conceive for many years and were desperate for a child. After trying every path and remedy to no avail, they eventually listened to the advice of a fortune-teller who claimed that as long as they adopted an orphan to bring home and break the jinx, they would be blessed with offspring.

Now, not only did the newborn never arrive, but his foster mother had passed away unexpectedly. Qiao Yongde was consumed by grief and rage, unreasonably blaming everything on Qiao Muyu. He felt that his presence had brought disaster and misfortune to the family, so he began to treat him with extreme harshness.

Young Qiao Muyu was powerless to resist, and he was terrified that if Qiao Yongde became unhappy, he would throw him onto the streets and he would become a helpless orphan once again. So, he became increasingly submissive to his foster father—he wouldn’t fight back when hit, wouldn’t talk back when cursed at, and still had to force a smile on his face, telling him that he deserved the beating and that the scolding was well-deserved.

Back then, Mother Director had said he was the most sensible and obedient child in the orphanage, which was why Qiao Yongde had chosen him.

Then he would be the most obedient foster son in the world, so he would have no reason to abandon him…

The water temperature from the water heater gradually dropped. A subtle chill touched his skin, clearing Qiao Muyu’s chaotic thoughts.

He raised his hand to turn off the tap and looked down at the puddle of water on the tiles, watching it—along with those shameful memories—slowly flow down into the pitch-black drain, never to see the light of day again.