Dragon Raja 2; Chapter 93: Falling in the Courtyard (2)

Dragon Raja 2

“We’re twins. My brother was born six hours before me, but I wouldn’t come out, and it made the doctors and nurses panic, so they forgot to take care of him. He couldn’t breathe and ended up suffocating for half an hour, which left him mentally disabled,” Xia Mi said. “So my parents always said my brother gave me the opportunity. Originally, he would’ve been smart and capable. So I have to be better than everyone else because half of what I have belongs to my brother… no matter how much I achieve, I don’t get any praise.” She stuck out her tongue. “Oh well, senior, you’re a rich kid; you wouldn’t understand. Do your parents attend your parent-teacher meetings?”

Chu Zihang nodded. In his father’s view, a parent-teacher meeting was an important opportunity to show off family harmony. He always attended with Chu Zihang’s mother, treating teachers with the same seriousness as investors.

“They rarely attended my parent-teacher meetings. I was always the top student in my class, and they didn’t care anymore. In my first year of high school, I won a gold medal in the math olympiad. I was so excited and ran home to tell them, but when I got home, the house was a mess—furniture overturned, clothes and blankets everywhere, and torn fabric and cotton underfoot. There was no one there. I tried calling their phones, but couldn’t reach them, so I just sat in the mess waiting. Eventually, I fell asleep. They came back in the morning, exhausted, and told me my brother had been upset for some reason, banging his head against the wall and tearing things apart. They had to call a bunch of people to help take him to the hospital, gave him a sedative, and stayed with him all night,” Xia Mi said, hugging her knees, lost in thought. “They were really tired. They told me what happened with my brother and then went to sleep. No one asked how I spent that night, and no one cared that I had won an award.”

“You… don’t like your brother?” Chu Zihang asked.

“No, I like him a lot. Maybe it’s because we spent ten months together in our mom’s belly that he clings to me so much. When he’s restless, and my parents can’t calm him down, all I have to do is talk to him, and he settles down. That time he acted out was because I was always at school preparing for the olympiad, and he couldn’t see me. He thought my parents were hiding me from him, so he got upset—not sick. Later, I visited him in the hospital. He was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, refusing to sleep, but when he saw me, his expression changed immediately. I let him hold my hand, and he sniffed it. After he confirmed that it was really his sister, he finally fell asleep,” Xia Mi smiled. “He’s like a little puppy. Would you dislike your own puppy?”

“I can’t have a dog; my mom is allergic to cat and dog fur,” Chu Zihang said, apologizing for his lack of opportunity to bond with animals.

“I hate it when people bully him. When I was little, I took him out to buy something, and everyone looked at him with disdain, saying, ‘What irresponsible adults let such a small girl take a fool outside?’ Even though my brother’s slow, he’s sensitive—he grabbed my skirt and glared at them fiercely. Their stares made me uncomfortable, and I started feeling resentful toward my brother. On the way home, I wouldn’t let him get near me, telling him to stay ten meters behind. If he got any closer, I ignored him. He was afraid of being ignored, so he followed me exactly ten meters away. I was in a bad mood, didn’t turn back, and walked really fast. After a while, I looked back and realized he was gone. I was terrified and ran back to look for him. Eventually, I found him in an alley being beaten by a group of people. Leading them was a guy from our school—he was trying to date me. When he saw me, he quickly said that he happened to be passing by and saw a fool sneaking after me, looking at my legs with a smirk. He called a few friends to take him down, but the fool was strong. They were struggling and hadn’t had a chance to say hi to me yet,” Xia Mi sighed. “When I saw my brother in the crowd, his face covered in blood and dirt, he saw me and started smiling stupidly, even with someone’s foot on his face. I was so upset… I told him, ‘I’m not mad at you; go ahead and beat them.’”

“What do you mean?” Chu Zihang asked.

“My brother is really strong; even all those guys couldn’t take him down. But I didn’t let him hit people casually—if he hit someone, I’d ignore him for a month…” Xia Mi said. “So, he beat them all down, and I let him keep holding onto my skirt as we walked home. Those idiots didn’t understand why he kept staring at my legs—he was just looking at my skirt’s hem, because he always held onto it while following me.”

“You’re really good to your brother.”

“But sometimes I wish he hadn’t been born at all,” Xia Mi whispered. “Then he wouldn’t have to suffer so much.”

“He’d probably be really happy if he could come to the amusement park,” she said, lost in thought.

Chu Zihang sat there, unsure of what to say. He didn’t know why Xia Mi was telling him about her family—he wasn’t really interested in knowing.

Everyone has things they keep in their hearts, right? Like the “absolute territory” in “EVA”—an absolute mental space that they don’t want others to enter. For example, in Chu Zihang’s heart, there was a battered Maybach. When he suddenly woke from a dream, he often felt like he was still sitting in that car, rain pouring outside, the stereo repeating that same song. He never spoke about it, because others wouldn’t understand. Since that was the case, why mention it to others?

Some memories aren’t pleasant, and it’s best to keep the bitterness to oneself—not much worth sharing. Is there anyone willing to sit with you in a broken car on a cold night to listen to the rain?

Xia Mi didn’t need to tell him these things, either.

Of course, Chu Zihang was a bit moved. And as Lu Mingfei once said, he could be nosy sometimes. If he had been there in that alley years ago, he probably wouldn’t have stood by idly. He would have stood in front of Xia Mi’s brother before those boys could drag him into the alley, with a cold expression. If those boys tried to use force, that would be great—Chu Zihang was truly someone capable of violence. That way, what upset Xia Mi wouldn’t have happened, and her brother would have chased after her all the way home. Down the long path, a girl in a white lace sundress would walk, followed by her silly, smiling brother.

But at that time, he wasn’t there. He had never shared time like that with anyone, not even Susie. He had just sat alone in a Maybach on a rainy night, listening to Irish folk songs.

He felt he needed to break the awkward atmosphere, so he cleared his throat: “This is also a kind of ‘Blood of Sorrow.’ As part of our group, we often come together because of our shared bloodline and our struggle to fit into society…”

“There you go again! We’re still on a Ferris wheel! The weather is nice, and the view is great—can we talk about life and dreams instead? I already learned all this initiation training stuff during prep school.” Xia Mi glared at him.

“Dear guests, you’ve already talked a lot about life and dreams. Your ten minutes are up—welcome back to the ground.” The pod door suddenly opened, and there stood the silver-haired old man, bowing like a servant.

“Principal?” Chu Zihang and Xia Mi were stunned.

It seemed time had passed faster than usual, and the cabin had already returned to the ground. Standing outside was Principal Anjou, along with Lu Mingfei, who wore an envious and resentful expression.

“I went to attend an event with Mingfei and had some free time in the afternoon. Mingfei said he had never been to Six Flags and was dissatisfied with the fact that the task we assigned him was not to train the pretty schoolgirls but to attend the event, so I brought him here to see it.” Anjou patted Xia Mi’s soft hand in his arm.

Series Navigation

<< Dragon Raja 2; Chapter 92: Falling in the Courtyard (1)Dragon Raja 2; Chapter 94: Falling in the Courtyard (3) >>