ASHES CH2: Photo

The night wind was cooler than usual.

Jian Huaiyi was taken away by Luo Jun to treat his injuries, and the well-trained bodyguards silently and swiftly withdrew. The fireworks display was over, leaving no trace in the silent, dark sky.

Luo Zhi rested for a while by himself before slowly sitting up straight.

He couldn’t steady himself on the first try, so he reached out to brace himself against the ground again, his shoulder leaning back against the car body.

Luo Zhi pulled his phone from his pocket, lit up the screen, and started a new game.

He wasn’t playing very well this time. Three times in a row, he hadn’t run more than a few hundred meters before the little character crashed into a subway train. After finally managing a front flip onto the roof of a train, a billboard smacked him in the face—GAME OVER—splattering colorful paint all over the ground.

Luo Zhi didn’t really care.

He exited the game interface, his gaze still on the screen, patiently waiting for his spinning, misaligned vision to slowly return to normal.

The night wind blew his messy bangs back, revealing pale eyelashes soaked in cold sweat.

Luo Zhi closed his eyes, leaning motionless against the car to steady himself. Cold sweat ran down the side of his face, stinging the glaringly red and swollen wound at the corner of his mouth.

After a few minutes like this, Luo Zhi finally let out a sigh of relief.

He raised his hand and rubbed his left ear a couple of times. There was still a noisy sound like cicadas chirping inside.

…

It wasn’t from the slap Luo Jun gave him.

Luo Zhi had suffered an accidental injury when he was a child. Because it wasn’t treated in time, this ear was once so severe he was almost deaf.

Even though it recovered somewhat later, the hearing in his left ear was still less than half that of a normal person, and he occasionally suffered from tinnitus. When it rang, it was so loud he couldn’t hear anything else.

Luo Zhi lowered his hand. He waited for the intense dizziness brought on by the tinnitus to pass before bracing himself against the ground to stand up.

This feeling was not pleasant at all. Once the dizziness struck, the state of feeling both heavily unsteady and lightheadedly spinning was simply agonizing.

Luo Zhi curled his knuckles, pressing them hard against his temples.

His shirt, hidden beneath the trench coat, wrapped around him, soaked through and icy cold, generously allowing the cold wind to drill all the way down his collar.

Luo Zhi felt as if he was drenched in cold sweat. He lowered his head, leaning on the car to steady himself. Imagining what he looked like right now, he couldn’t help but let out a light chuckle.

Coupled with this look, the way his eldest brother looked at him was very fitting.

Like a pile of utterly wretched fallen leaves, completely abandoned and thrown down by the tree, rolled in the mud a few times by the wind, battered by a few rains, and finally, soaked through, squeezed against the edge of the sidewalk, trampled on by people, waiting to be swept away.

…

This kind of thought occasionally came to him during bouts of dizziness, but once the symptoms passed and he recovered, Luo Zhi always felt it was somewhat exaggerated.

It wasn’t that bad.

He felt he shouldn’t be that terrible, at least.

Even if this leaf was casually thrown away, it could be picked up to make a bookmark or a sticker. Even if it was just randomly slipped into a page of a notebook, it would make it less wretched, right?

Even if only one person was willing to pick it up, it wouldn’t be mixed into a pile of unwanted garbage and thrown into an incinerator to be burned, right?

Luo Zhi took off his dirtied trench coat, balled it up, and tossed it into the backseat. The soaking wet shirt was so cold it made him cough twice.

Luo Zhi lit another cigarette, holding it in his mouth and tilting his head back. In the slowly dispersing smoke, he opened his eyes and saw a sky full of twinkling, cold stars.

Luo Zhi admired his birthday present for a while.

It wasn’t until he was almost frozen stiff that he got back in the car, turned on the heater, reclined the seat flat, and lay down.

Luo Zhi rested his head on his arm and pulled a thin blanket over himself.

He lay quietly for a few minutes, raised his eyes, blew a soft breath, and with a flick of his finger, turned off the dome light inside the car.

…

When he woke up again, it was already noon the next day.

Luo Zhi had been plagued by dizziness for half the night. After finally struggling out of a long, chaotic dream, he felt almost as if a lifetime had passed when he opened his eyes.

He recalled for a long time but still couldn’t remember if he had been so tired last night that he just fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow, or if he had accidentally passed out.

But the difference wasn’t that big anyway.

Luo Zhi didn’t get up immediately, still maintaining his supine position.

He groped around in the small storage compartment next to the driver’s seat, found a chocolate, pinched off the wrapper, and popped it into his mouth.

The rich, slightly bitter chocolate melted on the tip of his tongue.

Luo Zhi closed his eyes, waiting for that hint of sweet aftertaste to completely dissipate in his mouth.

Only after confirming his blood sugar had risen enough did Luo Zhi turn to adjust the seat, raising the backrest bit by bit.

Last night, he and Jian Huaiyi had a fight in the car, or rather, he had unilaterally beaten Jian Huaiyi up.

The modified seat seemed unable to fully withstand the abuse of a full-on brawl. At the last notch, it snapped out of the latch with a “click”, abruptly pushing him to a sitting position.

Luo Zhi’s face instantly turned pale, and he hastily closed his eyes.

A second before he closed his eyes, the vision before him began spinning violently at high speed without warning.

Luo Zhi lost his balance and fell onto the steering wheel. He only had time to bend his arm to protect half his face before he lost all strength to move. A sharp ringing pierced his brain, relentless, almost like an electric drill boring into his temple.

It took a full five minutes before Luo Zhi finally recovered from this unprovoked disaster, groping to raise his hand and roll down the car window.

The fresh air from outside poured into the car, reviving him considerably and making his body and mind feel refreshed as well.

Luo Zhi sighed in comfort and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead on his sleeve.

…

He didn’t know if it was his illusion, but recently the tinnitus and dizziness seemed to be occurring more and more frequently.

Luo Zhi had driven out last night originally intending to go get a physical checkup, but he was stopped by Jian Huaiyi on his way out, who said he had something to tell him.

By the time that farce ended, he didn’t have time to go to the hospital anymore.

He’d go next time he had time.

Luo Zhi readjusted the seat, grabbed his phone, lit up the screen, and scrolled through it.

An entire night and half a day had passed, but there were no missed calls on his phone, only a single text message.

The official game account registered with his real name wished him a happy birthday, enthusiastically persuading him that if he recharged an 888-yuan gift pack, he would receive a mysterious present.

Luo Zhi hadn’t received any presents for some years now. He studied that text message for a while, even weakly feeling tempted for a second.

He hesitated on the payment page for a while, then sighed, chose to give up, and exited.

Now was not the time to spend money recklessly.

Luo Zhi had a listed film and television company in his hands. Recently, several rival companies had teamed up against it, causing the stock price to slide a bit. Who knows when he might need to throw money at buying resources.

Although eight hundred and eighty-eight yuan was a drop in the bucket, even a small mosquito is still meat. He couldn’t fall into this clumsy consumer trap.

Luo Zhi rested his head on his arm, deleted the text message, and casually swiped on his phone screen.

It seemed the Luo family’s banquet indeed didn’t go very smoothly.

Jian Huaiyi’s injuries were on the most conspicuous parts of his face. Even the most genius makeup artist couldn’t hide them. They were noticed the moment he turned his head, and gossip naturally spread.

Gossip is probably mostly engraved in human DNA. Luo Zhi spent ten minutes scrolling through his social media feed and had already finished reading the general course of the entire farce.

The head of the Luo family was fuming with rage and severely reprimanded the eldest young master of the Luo family and Young Master Jian.

The Luo family publicly announced that Jian Huaiyi had suffered an accident and was in a car crash on the road. Fortunately, he wasn’t seriously injured, and the specific situation was still under investigation.

Jian Huaiyi gave a speech at the banquet bearing his injuries, officially taking over a portion of the Luo family’s business.

Jian Huaiyi didn’t want any shares in the company.

The three children of the Luo family were frantically trying to hide it, barely managing to fool Madam Luo into believing Jian Huaiyi had tripped into a ditch while walking at night, thus avoiding a major uproar.

…

Luo Zhi huddled in the seat, his fingertip hovering over that last social media post for two seconds before swiping up.

The “three children of the Luo family,” of course, didn’t include him. Luo Zhi had known this for a long time and didn’t feel much melancholy over it.

You get used to a lot of things.

Even if it’s unbearably painful at first, even if it feels as torturous as having a red-hot iron rod shoved into your body, once you get used to it, it’s just what it is.

As for how many cracks are hidden beneath the calm shell of this habit, how much slowly flowing karmic lava that could swallow everything, and when it will completely collapse when the last straw falls… no one knows.

At least for now, Luo Zhi still felt numb.

He didn’t feel any physical or mental discomfort, but out of rationality and a desire to survive, he still felt it was best not to return to the Luo family home during this period.

The incident was too big. The head of the Luo family had always valued the family’s face the most, and he had undoubtedly been truly furious last night.

Facing his most proud and excellent eldest son and his exceptionally appreciated adopted son, Father Luo only gave a severe reprimand. If Luo Zhi appeared before him, he might seriously use family law and break his legs.

Luo Zhi clicked into Luo Cheng’s social media page, found the shared family portrait, zoomed in, and looked at it.

There were five people in the photo.

Luo Chengxiu was the current head of the Luo family. In Luo Zhi’s impression, this man, whom he could only call “Father” with his head bowed, was sharp, strict, and unsmiling, capable of throwing him into the confinement room to kneel and reflect at any moment.

Mother Luo’s maiden name was Jian, named Jian Rou. The name Jian Huaiyi was changed to follow Madam Luo’s surname.

In the photo, Madam Luo hugged Jian Huaiyi tightly, her arm in a somewhat paranoid protective posture, as if guarding a recovered treasure.

Besides Luo Jun, there was a girl who looked very obedient beside Jian Huaiyi; that was their younger sister, Luo Cheng.

Luo Cheng was twenty this year, a sophomore at a university in the neighboring city. This time, she specifically took a leave of absence to rush back for Jian Huaiyi’s birthday and even secretly planned a fireworks show as a birthday surprise for her brother.

Although there was some unpleasant disturbance last night, the family still huddled intimately together.

Even the always serious Luo Chengxiu had a trace of imperceptible, faint gentleness in his expression the moment he looked at his children.

Luo Zhi saved the photo.

He was just about to put down his phone when an incoming call suddenly popped up on the screen.

Seeing the caller ID, Luo Zhi couldn’t help but freeze.

…Luo Cheng’s call.

Luo Zhi held the phone, not answering immediately.

He lowered his eyes, looking thoughtfully at the caller ID, his long, pale fingers hovering over the screen, a subtle pause he himself didn’t even notice.

Perhaps that family portrait had given him some unrealistic fantasies… In a fleeting thought, Luo Zhi actually wondered if there was any possibility this phone call might mention his birthday.

Luo Zhi quickly and rationally snuffed out this thought.

He answered the call: “Xiao Cheng? Is there any—”

“Luo Zhi.” The girl’s voice on the other end of the phone was cold. “Second Brother and I are at the film and television company.”

She seemed reluctant to say even half an extra word, speaking concisely: “Come over, Dad wants to see you.”