Luo Zhi’s good mood lasted right up until the moment he left his room and the elevator descended to the hotel lobby.

Catching sight of the figure sitting in the distance, Luo Zhi halted in his tracks.

Without pausing, he turned around, intending to get back into the elevator.

Unfortunately, the person in the lobby had clearly been keeping a close watch on the area. Upon seeing him appear, she immediately stood up and walked over quickly.

In the brief interval between the elevator doors closing and reopening, the girl had already blocked his path. “Second Brother!”

Luo Zhi kept one hand on the elevator’s ‘up’ button, frowning slightly.

His memory had large blank spots, yet his body still reacted to this address, one that felt too strange and too distant. Even though he couldn’t hear Luo Cheng’s voice, just seeing the shape of her mouth caused a hidden, stinging pain to rush up his spine before his consciousness could even register it.

The elevator doors slowly opened behind Luo Cheng.

Luo Zhi lowered his gaze, raising a hand to pull down the brim of his hat.

He murmured an apology, intending to step around her and into the elevator, but Luo Cheng suddenly grabbed his arm.

“Second Brother.” Luo Cheng looked up at him, pursing her lips. “Are you still angry with me?”

Luo Zhi didn’t have the strength to pull his arm free from her grasp. He tried a few times, but ultimately had to stop and quietly watch the girl’s lips move.

Some blurry, fragmented, and chaotic images floated vaguely in his mind, but they couldn’t form a continuous sequence.

So, Luo Zhi could only ask her, “Why am I angry with you?”

After he asked this, Luo Cheng’s expression clearly showed a moment of panic and stagnation.

The smile could barely hold onto that bright face. Luo Cheng twisted the corner of her clothes hard, lowering her head to hide her guilty conscience.

She took this as Luo Zhi mocking and interrogating her. The instinctive panic lingered for a moment before being soaked through by suppressed disgust and resistance, quickly turning into groundless annoyance.

…She knew it. Luo Zhi definitely held a grudge against her.

Because he held a grudge over what she did before, he deliberately used this kind of question to corner her and embarrass her in public.

Indeed, she shouldn’t have just left without saying anything after realizing something was wrong with Luo Zhi’s condition, nor should she have lied when Brother Chenbai asked about it.

But if Luo Zhi hadn’t directed and acted in that suicidal farce to threaten his family, how would any of this have happened?

She was certainly in the wrong, but would Luo Zhi never learn self-reflection and shame? How did he have the nerve to act like a victim and question her here…

Luo Cheng buried her head very low to hide these thoughts, her fingertips turning white from twisting her clothes.

She disliked Luo Zhi so much. After learning some things from her eldest brother about events she had forgotten because she was too young, this aversion deepened another layer.

—It wasn’t until yesterday that she learned the reason her father and brother treated Luo Zhi so coldly was that when they were small, Luo Zhi had once lost her while wandering away from their mother due to his willful playfulness.

Fortunately, Luo Cheng was lucky. A few days later, she escaped from the bad guys and happened to be found by police nearby, eventually making it home safely.

It was the shock of this incident that caused their mother’s mental state to become unstable.

Luo Cheng was too young at the time; children are carefree and don’t remember things, so she had absolutely no impression of this experience… But these past few days, for Director Gong’s documentary, Luo Cheng had reviewed many real cases. Just closing her eyes and thinking about it made chills run down her spine.

What if she had really been lost?

If she had really been lost, what kind of life would she have led? What kind of suffering would she have endured?

She was only a few years old then. Luo Zhi had nearly ruined her entire life, so why had he never shown a shred of guilt?

These thoughts occupied her mind too vividly, completely overshadowing the instinctive shock and fear she felt upon learning that the prototype for “Huo Miao” in the records was actually Luo Zhi and reading about his tragic past.

Luo Cheng even felt she was ridiculously naive—that she would actually care about Luo Zhi.

It was clearly Luo Zhi, this brother, who caused her to nearly get lost, yet he refused to admit it. He never even felt a speck of conscience or unease over the fact that he nearly caused his own sister to suffer such a fate.

…

If it weren’t for the fact that she couldn’t fall out with Luo Zhi right now, Luo Cheng would have barely been able to suppress her temper, likely storming off just like every time before.

But she still needed Luo Zhi’s help. Keeping her agreement with Director Gong Hanrou in mind, Luo Cheng took a deep breath, readjusted her state, and looked up with a sweet smile. “Second Brother…”

She only managed to call out against her will once before stopping abruptly, stunned, hesitantly meeting Luo Zhi’s gaze.

Luo Zhi didn’t know how long he had been looking at her.

The expression in those eyes was very serious, and also very gentle—so gentle it was as if he were looking at someone unfamiliar, someone he had no impression of.

Although he still knew who she was, perhaps because they had been apart too long or too much had happened, she had begun to feel like a stranger.

Because she was becoming a stranger, he didn’t know how to respond to her enthusiasm, hence the polite, apologetic distance mixed with amiability.

Luo Cheng froze in place.

…For some reason, she suddenly felt a bit of panic.

It shouldn’t be like this.

Usually, whenever Luo Zhi looked at her, whether he masked it with a careless smile or an attitude of gentle indulgence, beneath that mask, there would always be a subtle, dim dejection.

Luo Cheng couldn’t help but lightly clench her palm. It was the first time she realized that she had always seen that look so clearly.

Every time she saw the dejection in Luo Zhi’s eyes, deep down, Luo Cheng actually felt a very hidden, unspeakable satisfaction.

She knew about Luo Zhi’s excessive tolerance and concessions toward her, so she often used this to punish him for breaking their family apart—in her heart, Luo Cheng considered this upholding justice.

She was protecting Second Brother Jian and Mom, venting anger for her father and eldest brother who were burnt out with worry; she was protecting her home.

As for someone like Luo Zhi, he naturally deserved it.

Luo Cheng never thought that one day, these emotions would vanish from those eyes without warning.

So, even after such a falling out, when Director Gong Hanrou asked if she could bring the person involved, Luo Cheng had agreed subconsciously without even thinking.

…Would Luo Zhi still agree to her request now?

What if Luo Zhi refused to show up?

Her performance when meeting Director Gong Hanrou last time hadn’t been great.

If she couldn’t bring Luo Zhi over, would she completely lose this opportunity?

Luo Cheng couldn’t help but feel nervous. She tried her best to steady her mind, digging her fingertips into her palm as she proposed her backup plan: “Second Brother, come with me. I want to make up a birthday celebration for you…”

As she spoke, she reached out to pull Luo Zhi, but he remained rooted to the spot.

“My birthday has passed, and I have something very important to do right now. I’m in a hurry.”

Luo Zhi shook his head gently. “I’m sorry, Xiao Cheng.”

Luo Cheng hadn’t expected him to be unmovable. A wave of annoyance rose up for no reason, and she blurted out, “What if our whole family wants to celebrate your birthday?”

This sentence finally caused a subtle change in those eyes that had remained calm and gentle throughout.

Luo Zhi slowly frowned.

He seemed to not quite understand her statement. After thinking for a while, he slowly repeated, “Your whole family?”

“Yes.” Luo Cheng bit her lower lip. She hadn’t actually discussed this with her parents or eldest brother, but since Luo Zhi was being stubborn, she had to play it by ear. “Mom and Dad, Big Brother, Second… Brother Huaiyi, we are all at Wanghai. We want to have a meal with you…”

Luo Zhi caught the keyword in her words: “Wanghai?”

“It’s that villa belonging to Brother Chenbai’s family.” To mask her guilt, Luo Cheng spoke in a rush. “Don’t you remember? Auntie Ren lived there when she was recovering from her illness, and didn’t you live there for a long time too? It’s very quiet, and the scenery is nice. Brother Chenbai lent it to us. Brother Huaiyi is accompanying Mom there for recuperation, and Dad and Big Brother came today too…”

She spoke too fast for Luo Zhi to read her lips fully, but the gist of the matter wasn’t hard to guess. The cause and effect began to link up vaguely in his mind.

So, this was the trap waiting for him at Wanghai.

…

If he had followed the text message Ren Chenbai sent him and couldn’t resist going to the Ren family villa, he would have run right into a happy, harmonious family reunion.

Luo Zhi was very familiar with how things would develop from there.

Ren Chenbai loved doing this.

Pushing Luo Zhi into their family without warning, then doing nothing but wait for Luo Zhi to be punished by family discipline until he was covered in cuts and bruises, or chased out in disgust.

Then he would take Luo Zhi back to the Ren family and tell him that the only person he could rely on was him.

When he was younger, Luo Zhi fell for this more than once because he trusted Ren Chenbai too much.

Unfortunately, this time there was the loose-lipped Luo Cheng. Although it wasn’t clear how Luo Cheng had found him, the clumsy collision of these two groups actually gave him advance warning.

Luo Zhi looked at Luo Cheng with apology still in his eyes. “Xiao Cheng, I really have something very important to do. I won’t trouble you all.”

His condition began to slip slightly. Seeing Luo Cheng’s face instantly turn cold with disappointment, a wave of headache-induced nausea and dizziness swept over him. Countless similar, or even colder and more sarcastic faces of Luo Cheng from his memory jumped out instantly.

Luo Zhi’s body swayed slightly.

He reached out to support himself against the wall, closed his eyes for a moment, then turned and walked quickly out of the hotel.

The sky outside the hotel was very gloomy, but without the accompanying coolness. The low air pressure made one’s chest tight; the air was muggy and sticky, clumped into an inseparable mass. Under the thick clouds, even the wind was too lazy to flow.

Luo Zhi exited the hotel’s revolving door. He took out his phone, preparing to confirm the direction to the seaside, when bright white flashes suddenly pierced his vision without obstruction.

The intense light briefly robbed him of his sight, triggering a wave of even more violent dizziness.

In those few seconds, Luo Zhi’s consciousness fell defenselessly into a blank void. He sensed people pulling at him, seemingly shouting questions for him to answer, or perhaps livesteaming. More hands reached out, seeming to fight to make him face the camera. Amidst the chaos, someone gave him a violent, hard shove, and his right leg suddenly couldn’t support his weight anymore…

…

When was his right leg injured?

In the exceptionally quiet darkness, Luo Zhi thought quietly, and then found the answer in a fragment of memory.

…Twelve-year-old Luo Zhi backed up to the edge of the balcony.

This was one of the times he had been tricked into returning home by Ren Chenbai.

He had forgotten that he didn’t eat pineapple when he was little, which provoked an episode in Mrs. Luo. Her hand, pierced by a dinner fork, hung down, blood dripping steadily.

“I lost my sister?” Twelve-year-old Luo Zhi’s eyelashes were pale as he stared fixedly at the hysterical Mrs. Luo in front of him. “Mom, did you tell them that I lost my sister?”

Mrs. Luo’s expression was terrified and vacant.

Her hair was completely messed up from her own scratching and pulling. She cried one moment and laughed the next, the only thing she wouldn’t do was answer Luo Zhi.

Not only did she not answer, but Mrs. Luo looked at him as if he were some terrifying monster, her bloodshot eyes staring dead at him.

Hearing that Luo Zhi had caused trouble again, even implicating Mrs. Luo, Luo Chengxiu had to put down his work and rush over with Luo Jun.

Luo Jun supported his mother who was having an episode, soothing her softly with practiced ease. When he looked at Luo Zhi, his face was already grim. “Luo Zhi, apologize to Mom.”

Luo Zhi shook his head.

“Apologize!” Luo Chengxiu scolded in a deep voice. He didn’t want to startle his wife, so he tried his best to control his volume, but his anger burned hotter due to this forced suppression.

Luo Chengxiu looked at this disappointing second son. The repeated incidents had exhausted his last bit of patience. Rage finally turned into cold disgust and disdain. “Is it impossible for you to ever be like Huaiyi and save me even a little bit of worry?”

Twelve-year-old Luo Zhi hadn’t yet kicked the habit of asking for trouble. Pain washed his vision white, and his ears wouldn’t stop ringing, but he insisted on speaking clearly, word by word. “Dad, Big Brother, it wasn’t me…”

Back then, there were many things Luo Zhi couldn’t figure out.

He saw his big brother using the tie clip and cufflinks he gave him; he saw his father placing the first-place trophy he won in a competition in the office bookcase. So, he thought he at least had the qualification and necessity to explain.

But he never got to finish his sentence that day.

Mrs. Luo suddenly screamed hysterically, interrupting him.

She struggled to push away her eldest son, pointing a trembling, withered finger at Luo Zhi. “You are not my son! You are a devil, a liar, here for revenge! You can’t be my son…”

Then Mrs. Luo charged over, shoving him hard with both hands.

Luo Zhi lost his balance and fell from the second-floor balcony.

He fell into the lotus pond downstairs used for landscaping. He kept his life, but he broke his right leg.

Later, Auntie Ren took him away, bringing him to the Wanghai villa and caring for him personally for three months.

Even later, Auntie Ren gave him that car.

That car he had lost.

…

A boundless, pitch-black karmic fire suddenly flared up, scorching a spot beneath his ribs, slowly roasting him until he turned to ash, leaving only pale, cold embers.

Luo Zhi’s heart felt as if it had been grabbed by a hand and squeezed violently without warning. His chest heaved rapidly, and he opened his eyes abruptly, propping himself up in bed.

He was lying in a room he couldn’t be more familiar with.

Even without turning on the lights or checking anything, Luo Zhi could recognize this room.

This was his living quarters in the Wanghai villa. He had spent three months here recovering from his leg injury; those were the most relaxed and happy three months of his life.

No Luo family, no nightmares, not even Ren Chenbai.

Auntie Ren came to see him every day, accompanying him as he practiced walking, listening to him play the guitar. He and Auntie Ren excitedly decorated his new car together, waiting with full hearts for him to come of age.

Auntie Ren didn’t know that his leg injury had actually healed in just over a month, but he really couldn’t resist pretending to limp for three months.

He was like an insatiably greedy thief, sinking with an uneasy conscience into a happiness that shouldn’t belong to him, enjoying it for a full three months before finally bringing himself to return everything.

Why was he here?

Luo Cheng had secretly brought him back. Afraid that their father and eldest brother would be angry if they found out, she hid him in this room.

Why did Luo Cheng bring him back?

Because he was blocked by Li Weiming’s fans at the hotel entrance. During the shoving, he accidentally fell and lost consciousness.

Why were Li Weiming’s fans able to block him so precisely?

Because that was how Luo Cheng had found him. She searched online for posters who were livesteaming Luo Zhi’s location and paid them to continue confirming his exact whereabouts… and this exact location wasn’t just provided to Luo Cheng.

…Jian Huaiyi really took good care of Luo Cheng.

Luo Zhi relaxed his arms and leaned back against the headboard.

He coughed a few times, choked by the rising dust. Closing his eyes, he waited for the palpitations and dizziness to pass, then fumbled to turn on the ambient light under the bed.

In the dim, soft light, the full appearance of the room emerged.

From the day it lost its owner, it seemed no one had ever entered here again, nor had anyone ever organized or cleaned it.

Luo Cheng hadn’t expected to be exposed in the livestream either. She was completely scared witless. Hurriedly bringing the unconscious Luo Zhi back, and fearing a scolding from her father and brother, she could only hide him in the old room no one cared about—naturally, she couldn’t care less about hiring someone to clean it.

A thick layer of dust had accumulated everywhere, as if freezing a moment in time back then, and then throwing it indifferently into an invisible corner.

Digging it out years later, only the familiar scenes forgotten by time remained, while all other people and things were completely different from how they were.

Luo Zhi wanted to come to the Ren home least of all.

Dust choked his throat, and he couldn’t stop coughing. Luo Zhi looked away, trying his best not to notice more details, but the images embraced by the dim light seemed to drill automatically into his brain.

His memory was already blurring irresistibly due to the passage of time, and finally, it was being slowly eroded by new images.

The windowsill, once full of flowers and vibrant life, was empty. Large patches of gray, mottled white remained, and concentric circles of mold crawled out from the corners, gathering into absurd shapes of varying depths.

The bookshelf, once full of books, was empty. The solid wood shelf had accepted termites or some other new tenants. Winding patterns climbed eerily along the edges; the wood of one shelf was nearly hollowed out, with sawdust and powder scattered below.

The heavy clouds that had been brewing all day didn’t go to waste. The pitch-black sky squeezed out large masses of leaden gray, pouring torrential rain onto the ground. The wind, silent during the day, came to life, whistling through the branches that swayed ceaselessly under the beating rain.

The guardrail outside the window was completely corroded with rust. Dark red rust stood out in the bright flashes of lightning, shocking to the eye like a wet smear of blood.

…

Luo Zhi withdrew his hand, looking at the bloodstain on his palm.

His legs felt like they had turned to stone, as did his body. If he could really turn into stone, that would be good; he wouldn’t have to futilely overestimate his ability to resist the roaring assault of memories.

But he wasn’t stone after all. So he could only be like an absurd knight utterly defeated by windmills, watching his final suit of armor rust and teeter on the verge of collapse.

He finally became covered in web-like cracks, just like the armor.

No blood seeped out, only specks of grayish-white, cold ash that scattered with a breath.

“Luo Zhi?” Luo Chengxiu’s voice came from outside the window. “What are you doing here?”

He had just handed over his work matters and was preparing to go to the family reunion dinner. Walking past the garden with an assistant holding an umbrella, he unexpectedly saw the person who shouldn’t be there.

Luo Chengxiu furrowed his brows, looking at Luo Zhi standing in front of the window.

Over the years, his feelings for this unruly second son had gone from disappointment to discouragement, then to undisguised disgust, and finally, only rejection remained.

Only this time, Luo Zhi looked inexplicably strange.

Luo Chengxiu knew he was sick, but a strapping young man in his twenties—what was there to say about getting sick for a few days? He’d be fine the next day.

Luo Chengxiu frowned deeply. He didn’t know exactly what was strange about Luo Zhi, but he was inexplicably an eyesore, annoying to look at.

…As if the whole world owed him something.

Luo Chengxiu could never figure out why, when they were both his sons, Luo Zhi was the only one who was melodramatic to this extent.

“I’m asking you a question.” Luo Chengxiu’s tone was icy. “What are you doing here? What are you planning? Want to cause another scene here?”

Only now did Luo Zhi seem to wake up. His gaze moved, stopping on the person outside the window.

Luo Zhi deciphered his lip movements, then turned his head away slightly, thinking for a while. “What am I doing here?”

His speech was very slow, almost as if he were learning to speak word by word. His voice was raspier than usual, and his tone carried a peculiar lightness.

Luo Chengxiu’s expression turned cold. “You’re asking me?”

Luo Zhi didn’t answer him again. Instead, he lowered his eyelashes, arriving at the answer to the previous question himself, and slowly spoke: “I don’t know.”

Luo Zhi said softly, “I don’t want to be here.”

The way he spoke still seemed strange, and the person seemed strange too. Perhaps due to the lighting outside, his pupils seemed dilated—very black, very quiet, empty with no focal point.

Seeing him like this, the anger that had risen to Luo Chengxiu’s chest suddenly lost its target for no apparent reason, scattering vaguely into the pouring rain.

“Then don’t be an eyesore here,” Luo Chengxiu said in a deep voice. “Go wherever you should go; no one cares about you.”

In his impression, Luo Zhi had always been hopeless—naturally unruly, rebellious, and eccentric, giving no one peace. He was the shame Luo Chengxiu was least willing to mention.

Looking at this pale, quiet Luo Zhi in front of him… for no reason, Luo Chengxiu suddenly felt an exceptionally bizarre and eerie irritability.

He finally attributed it to this damn weather.

Luo Chengxiu couldn’t help but curse silently. He brushed off the rainwater that had rolled onto his clothes, signaled his assistant not to waste any more time here, turned, and walked away quickly.

Out of the corner of his eye, Luo Chengxiu seemed to see Luo Zhi tilt his head slightly, his pale eyelashes curving very gently.

…

It wasn’t until he was sitting at the warm, bright dining table, relaxed in the lively atmosphere of his family and the aroma of delicious food, that Luo Chengxiu suddenly realized: Luo Zhi hadn’t been looking at him from the very beginning.

Luo Zhi’s gaze had been resting on the sea level shrouded by the night.

And then, even his eyes were dyed, bit by bit, with the color and temperature of the sea.