Why is This Clingy Snow Leopard Acting So Innocent? - Chapter 20

Chapter 20: Distance—Hold a Little Tighter

“Wait!”

Su Wen grabbed the hem of Yun Shu’s jacket, his voice laced with an inexplicable panic. “Where are you going?”

Yun Shu turned around and sat down beside him, patting his shoulder reassuringly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Su Wen breathed a sigh of relief, but his heart was still pounding from the lingering fear.

“Who were those two?” he asked. “Why did that woman claim to be your mother?”

Yun Shu stiffened for a few seconds. He didn’t offer a direct explanation, only saying, “They aren’t good people. You did the right thing by not opening the door.”

Su Wen had been scared half to death. Forget opening the door—he hadn’t even had the strength to run out and see who they were. Those two had pounded on the gate with increasing violence; when no one answered, he was certain they were preparing to scale the wall.

They were either bandits using the guise of “acquaintances,” or those talking Blue Bears from the legend. If he hadn’t called Yun Shu, and if Yun Shu hadn’t arrived exactly when he did, Su Wen felt he might have ended up buried there. Whether they were ghosts or men, they were certainly nothing good.

As soon as the roar of Yun Shu’s motorcycle had approached, the two figures had vanished into the shadows.

“Is she really your mother?”

Yun Shu pulled a chair over to the bedside and sat facing him. His expression was strange—nervous, perhaps, would be a more accurate description.

“Do you trust me?”

Su Wen blinked, looking at him with confusion. “Of course.”

Yun Shu remained silent for a long while before finally speaking. “My mother passed away ten years ago.”

Su Wen froze. A wave of indignation washed over him. “Then why would she use your mother’s name to do something so heartless?!”

He was a grown man capable of protecting himself, yet he had been shaken by this malicious trick. He could hardly imagine how Yun Shu, having lost his mother at such a young age, had managed to grow up healthy in this cold, lifeless place.

Yun Shu seemed accustomed to it. There was no look of acute pain on his face, only the numbness of someone who had dealt with this many times before. He kept his head down, silent.

Su Wen sighed. An indescribable feeling—a mix of sympathy and heartache—swirled in his chest. Finally, he stood up, climbed off the bed, and took a careful step toward Yun Shu, pulling him into a gentle embrace.

Yun Shu’s body went rigid at first, but he quickly relaxed. He raised his hands, tentatively wrapping them around Su Wen’s waist, and buried his head against Su Wen’s stomach.

Su Wen usually hated sharing a bed. It was cramped, awkward, and felt like an invasion of personal space. But Yun Shu looked so desolate. Even though he wasn’t crying, the heavy gloom on his face made it clear he was at his breaking point. Perhaps it was the memory of his mother, or perhaps the years of being preyed upon.

At this moment, Su Wen felt a strange sense of being “fellow sufferers.”

…

They lay together on the narrow bed in the duty room—less than 1.5 meters wide. Shoulders pressed against shoulders. It was tight.

Through the veil of the night, Su Wen felt Yun Shu’s gaze fixed steadily on him. Then, Yun Shu’s voice came, very low, like a soft plea for something he feared he couldn’t have: “In the future… can you not always stay so far away from me?”

Su Wen opened his eyes. Turning his head, his gaze met Yun Shu’s. He didn’t speak. He simply turned onto his side, leaned in, and pulled Yun Shu into his arms. He reached out and gently patted the younger man’s back, just as his own mother used to do when he woke up from a nightmare as a child:

“Go to sleep. It’s very late.”

Silence fell around them. The rest of the world was blocked out. There was only the sound of a heartbeat—thump, thump, thump—passing between them.

Sleep now, sleep, the hour is late, Did you have a bad dream? Do not be afraid, Your brother is by your side. Nightmare, nightmare, go away, If you are frightened, Hold a little tighter, Brother will protect you always.

…

Two children had once fallen asleep huddled on a small bed in a guesthouse.

The door had been pulled shut softly. Outside, a woman’s gentle voice spoke to a man: “I didn’t expect Wenwen to enjoy playing with Little Shu so much.”

The man replied: “Why did he run over here in the middle of the night?”

“He probably knows we’re leaving in a few days and can’t bear to part with him.”

As the children slept, the woman’s voice dropped lower: “Should we… take him back to Linzhou? To keep Wenwen company?”

After a long silence, the man said, “Would his parents agree?”

“Looking at the way they are, if we give them enough money, it should be fine.”

“Let’s ask An’an (Su Jiyan) in a couple of days,” the man suggested. “She’s the boy’s teacher. She might be able to negotiate with them.”

The negotiation failed. Su Jiyan, who had been a volunteer teacher there for years, saw their true faces for the first time. She had wanted to slap them, but her parents held her back.

The Su family had offered to adopt Yun Shu and take him to Linzhou for school—a life of light compared to the one he had. But Yun Shu’s father had demanded a lump sum of one million yuan as an “adoption fee,” claiming it was to see if they were “truly sincere.” Furthermore, they demanded an annual “compensation fee” of no less than 100,000 yuan to soothe the pain of losing a child. Finally, they insisted the Sus pay for their younger son’s education, his future wedding, and even his bride price.

Their greed was shameless; they wanted the whole family to move to Linzhou and drain the Sus like leeches.

The Su parents were furious, but they were willing to agree just to save the boy.

But Yun Shu himself refused.

He had stood to the side and heard everything—the beautiful life that awaited him, the bright future just one “yes” away. But he said no.

Su Jiyan couldn’t understand. “Little Shu, if you go to Linzhou, Wenwen and I will be there with you.”

He threw away his only chance and chose to stay in the mud.

No one understood why, but Su Wen was angry. Truly, deeply angry. Not for any logical reason, but simply because Yun Shu had chosen to stay. They had a massive fight—or rather, Su Wen screamed at him. Called him a lunatic, a fool, an idiot, a moron…

He even asked: “Did you ever even consider me a friend?”

Su Wen didn’t wait for an answer. He went back to Linzhou the next day.

Su Jiyan, still in her teaching term, told Yun Shu: “If you want to explain things to him, then get into a university in Linzhou.”

The Sus supported all of Yun Shu’s tuition, even giving his parents extra money just to ensure they didn’t steal his school funds.

Su Wen had thought that after such a betrayal, he would never come back. And indeed, he stayed away for a long time. But the following year, he appeared at the door again. Su Wen decided he shouldn’t hold a grudge against a kid, so he returned.

He was going to the Film Academy the following year; he was about to star in a new movie. He would be busy, and it would be hard to visit. They would have to stay in touch by phone.

It was their secret phone—the latest model of the season. Yun Shu had to hide it carefully so his parents wouldn’t find it and give it to his younger brother.

The phone was old now, repaired once. On the eve of his college entrance exams, the younger brother had found it and stolen it. Unable to crack the password, the brother had smashed it.

But it could still turn on. The very last message in the chat log was:

—I’ve prepared a surprise for you. Do your best on the exam!

He never found out what the surprise was. They never spoke again after that. Because of that rain-slicked, horrific car accident.

…

“What are you doing?”

Yun Shu looked up. Su Wen was pulling on his clothes. Seeing him look over, Su Wen continued, “Why are you staring at a black screen with a face like you’re at a funeral?”

Yun Shu tucked the phone away and rubbed his face vigorously. He turned his gaze to the large computer monitor on the desk. “Was I?”

Su Wen walked over and stood beside him. He reached out and pinched Yun Shu’s cheek. “You aren’t now.”

Song Nan and the others had gone to the Xiping Wildlife Park and wouldn’t be back until tonight. The two of them were on duty. The village was quiet, so it wasn’t a busy shift.

Cheng Daozhi was extremely satisfied with the past few days of filming. Su Wen looked natural in front of the lens—he had almost entirely returned to his original state.

But on the screen right now was the snow leopard—the latest footage copied from a drone’s memory card.

“You really have a destiny with snow leopards,” Cheng Daozhi remarked.

“Oh?” Su Wen was curious but agreed. “How can you tell?”

Cheng Daozhi pointed to the two people organizing the footage. “Just the clips from the last few days are almost as much as we got in the whole of last year.”

That was true. Su Wen asked, “Is this enough then?”

Cheng Daozhi shook her head. “Not enough story.”

“What kind of story do you want?”

Originally, she had planned to use Su Wen as the entry point to document the survival of the leopards and the dedication of the rangers. But now there was a new option: that pregnant snow leopard was a godsend. If they could capture the birth in January, the documentary would have its “wow” moment. Snow leopards born in that window were rare, even in captivity.

“Just keep filming,” she said. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

Su Wen shrugged. “Are we filming tonight?”

“Of course,” she said. “If there’s patrol work, we film. If not, you can go home and rest once the captain returns.”

Preferably not, Su Wen thought. He waved to the others. “Then I’ll start packing and wait to go home.”

Just as the words left his mouth—Ring! Ring! The phone in the duty room shrieked.

A second later, Yun Shu poked his head out:

“Wait.”