Why is This Clingy Snow Leopard Acting So Innocent? - Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Relationships — No Interest in Other People’s Private Affairs

Su Wen stood frozen in place. He was certain there was no such person in his memory.

“You are…?”

The sound of footsteps from behind interrupted his question. Turning around, he saw Yun Shu walking to the door in a few quick strides. His face was dark, making no effort to hide his displeasure.

The woman shrank back slightly, a fawning smile appearing on her face. She began speaking in the language of the Luxi people, a local ethnic minority. Before coming here, Su Wen had only learned basic polite phrases; what she was saying was a complete mystery to him.

Yun Shu’s expression looked grim. Before the woman could finish speaking, he turned to Su Wen. “Go inside first.”

Su Wen didn’t move. He glanced at the woman before looking back at Yun Shu. “And this is…?”

“I am Yun Shu’s—”

“Enough,” Yun Shu cut her off, followed by a sharp sentence in the local tongue.

Su Wen didn’t understand it, but he guessed it wasn’t anything pleasant.

It was freezing outside. The woman was wearing traditional ethnic clothing that didn’t look particularly windproof. Her face and hands were red from the cold, and the skin on her hands was marked with years of deep, calloused cracks. She looked like someone who had lived a very hard life.

Su Wen hesitated for two seconds. Something felt wrong. He looked at the woman shivering in the cold and asked, “Aren’t you coming in?”

Before Yun Shu could speak, the woman—terrified of losing this opening—spoke up first in a mix of Mandarin and her native tongue. “Yes, yes, yes. Let’s go inside to talk. Inside is good, inside is good.”

As she spoke, she reached out to grab Su Wen’s sleeve.

Yun Shu wordlessly pulled Su Wen behind him. The coldness in his eyes didn’t fade as he stared at the woman, but his words were directed at Su Wen: “Go inside first.”

Su Wen was stunned for a moment, not quite reacting. “But…”

The woman said two more sentences he couldn’t understand, which only made Yun Shu’s brow furrow tighter. When she tried to continue, he interrupted her with a harsh tone. The woman shut her mouth and stopped talking.

Su Wen stood there dazed. This situation was definitely not right. He withdrew his gaze. “OK. I’ll go in first.”

The “click” of the door closing echoed behind him. Yun Shu looked at the woman before him—who couldn’t hide the calculating gleam in her eyes—and finally let his impatience show. “What do you want?”

The woman’s eyes darted around, trying to peer past him into the house. “Is that the son of those two rich people from before?”

Yun Shu moved to push her away. “No.”

The moment the words left his lips, the house door behind him opened. Seizing the moment of his distraction, the woman shoved him aside and rushed toward the person coming out, grabbing his hand.

In broken but deliberate Mandarin, she said: “You are Xiao Shu’s good friend, right? We’ve met before. I am…”

Before she could finish, Yun Shu’s face had gone completely black. He stepped forward and pulled her away, his expression barely maintaining its composure.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he apologized to Su Wen while almost pleadingly pushing the woman out the gate.

With a bang, the iron gate was shut. Yun Shu leaned his hand against the gate, head lowered. After a long silence, he turned back. “It’s cold. Aren’t you going in?”

“Hm? Oh.” Su Wen snapped out of his confusion. Seeing that Yun Shu was in a bad mood, he didn’t press for details. Standing two paces away, he tossed the outdoor jacket he was holding toward Yun Shu and turned to leave. “Wear this.”

The jacket, still holding Su Wen’s body heat, momentarily obscured Yun Shu’s vision. The warmth slowly seeped into his body. He hadn’t felt it before, but now he realized he was only wearing a thin inner layer. In sub-zero weather, it was indeed freezing.

Yun Shu pulled the jacket down and put it on. When he looked back, Su Wen had already returned to the house.

He withdrew his gaze, zipped up the jacket, and reopened the gate.

The woman was still standing there. The fake friendliness on her face was gone, replaced by a sharp, calculating look—the kind of look that could estimate exactly how much meat could be carved off a person to eat.

“What?” the woman sneered. “Made it big? Think we’re an embarrassment now?”

Yun Shu stood there with a furrowed brow, just looking at her, silent.

Seeing that he didn’t argue, she continued, but her tone softened slightly. “We did adopt you, after all.”

“If we hadn’t saved you on the mountain and taken you in, would you even be alive?”

“A person should know gratitude. Even a dog, a cow, or a sheep wags its tail at the person who raised it for a few years.”

“We raised you for years, and as soon as you got into university, you ran away!”

“If it weren’t for us, what kind of university would you have gotten into?”

The woman seemed finished. She stared at Yun Shu, waiting for him to take a stand.

After a long time, Yun Shu looked at her coldly. “Are you done?”

“What do you mean ‘are you done’?! What do you mean?!”

Yun Shu’s expression didn’t change as he turned to push the gate shut. “If you’re done, then get lost.”

“What?! You ungrateful wolf! You dog!” The woman sounded incredibly righteous. “Let everyone see what kind of bitter fruit comes from raising you to this age!”

“Did he send you?”

She looked momentarily confused. “Who?”

“Your gambling addict of a husband who’s squatting in prison.”

“Prison? What prison?!” The woman seemed stung and began to rant. “He is your father!”

Yun Shu leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, letting out a soft hum of contempt. He ignored her claim and asked, “Wasn’t he ‘Uncle’ before? How did he become ‘Dad’? What did he send you here for? Money?”

“You ran all the way from Xiping just to ask for money?”

At this, the woman’s momentum faltered. The arrogant air from before vanished, and she shrank back. “Your father is coming out soon. Your brother needs money for school, too.”

It was a very low-quality lie. Their family’s situation had already been classified as a low-income household by the government. They received at least two thousand yuan a month, lived in government-allocated housing for free, and the government even covered the child’s school fees and monthly meals.

“I don’t have any money.”

The woman’s eyes widened, but remembering her purpose, she suppressed her temper. “You bought this whole house.” She stood on her tiptoes, trying to peek inside, but saw nothing. “I heard from your uncle that you even renovated it.”

“Must have cost a lot of money, right?”

Yun Shu looked at her and said nothing.

“This house used to be ours, after all,” she said, looking back at him. “Asking you for twenty thousand yuan… that’s not too much, is it?”

Hearing this, the tension in Yun Shu actually seemed to ease. “I don’t have any money.”

“How can you have no money?!” she shrieked. “How can you have no money?! You went to university for so many years, how can you have no money?!”

“I gave you the last of it before I came here.”

“Five thousand yuan?!”

“You’re a university student and you only have five thousand?! Don’t you get scholarships?!”

Yun Shu didn’t want to say more. “I graduated. I don’t have a job.”

“What?!” She was stunned, then she suddenly thought of the person inside. Her eyes darted around. “Fine, fine. You’re just a kid, it’s normal to have no money.”

“But you know our family’s situation.”

“When you were penniless, we gave you a bite to eat.”

“Didn’t you learn that thing in school?”

“What was it? ‘A drop of kindness’… ‘repaid with a fountain’?”

Yun Shu rubbed the space between his eyebrows. “So, what do you actually want?”

“Aren’t you friends with that rich person again?” She looked him up and down and reached out to touch the jacket he was wearing.

Yun Shu stepped back. She withdrew her hand and continued: “This jacket doesn’t look cheap, does it?”

“If he’s willing to buy you all these things, then you…”

She stopped halfway, but Yun Shu had no desire to guess her meaning. “What are you trying to say?”

“Asking him for twenty thousand yuan… it should be pretty easy, right?”

Yun Shu’s heart skipped a beat. An inexplicable sense of panic washed over him. He stood frozen for a long time before finally replying: “Impossible.”

“What?! What do you mean impossible?!” The woman dropped all pretenses. “He stayed at our house so many times before. It cost money to host him, didn’t it?”

“You played with him, which meant we had to do all the chores ourselves. That cost money, didn’t it?”

“Food, housing—which of those didn’t cost money?”

“He’s so rich, twenty thousand is just a drop in the bucket for him.”

“Go ask him. With your relationship, never mind twenty thousand, he’d give you two hundred thousand!”

Yun Shu held his breath, enduring it for a long time before he finally spoke. Clenching his fists and gritting his teeth, he said, “Impossible. Absolutely… impossible.”

With that, he slammed the gate shut and bolted it, ignoring the woman’s shouting outside.

He stood by the gate for a long time, not knowing how to explain.

Who was that woman? What was she here for? Why treat her like that?

Su Wen hadn’t remembered who he was yet. If he discovered how lowly and despicable Yun Shu’s background was, would he ever have the chance to return to the way they were?

The snow falling relentlessly began to pile up at his feet. His silver-grey hair was now completely white.

Click. The door opened.

Su Wen poked his head out. “Why are you standing there?”

“Oh,” Yun Shu snapped out of it. “I was just coming in.”

The atmosphere was awkward, but mostly on his part. Su Wen didn’t seem to have changed at all, nor did he seem to want to ask anything.

The two of them sat on opposite ends of the uncomfortable wooden sofa. Su Wen’s attention was entirely on his phone.

Yun Shu took off the jacket and placed it neatly beside Su Wen. “The clothes. Thank you.”

“No problem.”

The air grew stagnant again. Yun Shu thought for a while, stood up, poured a glass of water from the kettle, and handed it over. “Want some water?”

Su Wen glanced at him, then at the water, appearing somewhat confused, but he took it anyway. “Thanks.”

“Mhm.”

Su Wen took a sip and put the glass on the table. Turning to see Yun Shu looking distracted, he asked, “Do you have something you want to say?”

When he asked this, Yun Shu’s tense nerves finally relaxed. “I thought you would ask what my relationship was with that person.”

Su Wen shrugged. “I’m not interested in other people’s private affairs.”

The air froze for a second. It took a long time before Yun Shu finally replied:

“Mhm.”