Chapter 29: “Are You Acting Spoiled?”
Huo Chen didn’t speak for a long time.
He wasn’t scared, but extremely curious about the complex emotions surging in Lin Huaizhi’s eyes.
He had never been firmly chosen.
He didn’t know that in this world, there was someone who would want him by any means necessary.
That intense desire burst from Lin Huaizhi’s eyes, like boiling magma flowing into his long-frozen heart. He clearly heard the sound of the iceberg cracking and saw the thick white steam emitted as a corner of the iceberg was melted by the magma.
“No one can force me.”
“Whether it’s life or feelings.”
Lin Huaizhi wasn’t scared at all. Instead, he asked back: “So?”
Huo Chen gazed at the young man. His expression seemed indifferent, but there was imperceptible excitement in his eyes: “So whatever Fang Mo says is nonsense. I don’t care about your means. On the contrary, I admire your courage very much.”
“Force is fine, other things are fine too, as long as you can make me feel love.”
The man reached out to brush aside the young man’s sweat-drenched bangs, his eyes deep as the abyss ocean, “Lin Huaizhi, let me see your liking and your love. How heavy are they when taken out?”
Huo Chen touched Lin Huaizhi’s forehead. This time the young man didn’t resist.
Whether his hand was too cold or Lin Huaizhi had a high fever, Huo Chen only felt a scalding heat.
“You need a doctor.”
To ensure game fairness and livestream viewability, guests were not allowed to bring mobile phones when filming the dating show. Even if they brought them, the program team would confiscate them and return them to the guests after the show was recorded.
With two accidents happening during the livestream today, the director should have appeared long ago.
Of course, it couldn’t be ruled out that the director thought the conflicts weren’t big, and appropriate conflicts could increase the audience’s desire to watch, so he didn’t intervene.
The director’s team plus the doctor amounted to seven or eight people.
They didn’t borrow lodging in farmers’ homes but rented empty rooms on the second floor of the village headquarters and set up beds there.
If Huo Chen wanted to find a doctor, he had to go to the village headquarters. The distance from the mud house to the village headquarters wasn’t far, less than three kilometers. Two or three minutes by car, half an hour by walking, or ten to twenty minutes for a fast walker.
Huo Chen wasn’t afraid of walking.
Three kilometers wasn’t even enough for his morning run distance. Let alone walking, even running there was an extremely simple matter for him.
But Lin Huaizhi wouldn’t let him.
The young man grabbed the hem of his clothes. The force was so great that Huo Chen had a vision that if he took another step forward, his hoodie would tear open right there for him to see.
“I won’t see a doctor.”
“If you go call the doctor, the moment you leave this door, I’ll disappear.”
Huo Chen looked at Lin Huaizhi’s look of a dead pig unafraid of boiling water, and sneered: “You play. Just right for me to see who is more capable, the director team’s tracking experts or you.”
This plan failing, he tried another.
Lin Huaizhi’s eyes moved slightly, and he began lying on the bed playing pitiful: “Then you go, you go, go, go call the doctor.”
He sniffled.
“Don’t know who it was, just talking about love and feelings with someone a moment ago, asking someone to give him love. Now only a few minutes passed and he turns his face and refuses to recognize people, insisting on sending me to someone I don’t like.”
Huo Chen frowned listening to this.
“Speak properly.”
Lin Huaizhi burrowed a bit more into the quilt, dragging his hoarse voice to shout: “Ah—I don’t want to see the doctor, I hate seeing the doctor, I just won’t see the doctor—”
This broken gong voice sounded like noise pollution.
Huo Chen, however, sensed a different emotion from it. He asked: “Are you acting spoiled?”
Lin Huaizhi stiffened for a moment.
“I am not.”
Denial didn’t work. Threads of a smile appeared in Huo Chen’s eyes. He concluded on his own: “You are just acting spoiled.”
The phrase “acting spoiled” had never appeared in Lin Huaizhi’s life, or rather, never appeared on him.
He was also born in a mountain village.
His dad was an old gambler, old and wifeless. Later he spent money to buy a silly woman from the neighboring village.
The old gambler liked to gamble. After marrying a wife and having someone to take care of the house, he liked gambling even more. He was invisible nine days out of ten, and on the remaining day, he came back to beat and kick the silly woman, demanding money.
The woman was silly.
She couldn’t manage money. Although she vaguely knew she shouldn’t give it, once the man’s slap and stick fell, she would hand over the money without hesitation.
Later he was born.
The child didn’t awaken the old gambler’s fatherly love. These two words meant nothing more to him than someone to carry on the family line, and another object to vent his anger on.
Lin Huaizhi couldn’t remember how many times he had been beaten.
Because he resisted the old gambler, because he wanted to protect the silly woman from being beaten by the old gambler, because he didn’t cook or do laundry in time, because he ate one more mouthful of rice, because he said one more sentence.
Anything could become a reason for him to be beaten.
Saying that even if silly, a mother would protect her child—this saying was pure bullshit in Lin Huaizhi’s view.
That silly woman never protected him.
On the contrary, to get beaten less by the old gambler, she would push Lin Huaizhi out again and again.
But what could be done?
She would push Lin Huaizhi out, but also when Lin Huaizhi was beaten black and blue, covered in wounds, and unable to sleep at night, she would hold Lin Huaizhi and coax him; she would also secretly hide a mouthful of rice and vegetables, saving them for Lin Huaizhi.
At seven, Lin Huaizhi had enough of the old gambler.
When the old gambler was beating the silly woman, he picked up the kitchen knife. The old gambler was stronger than him. He took a cut but didn’t die, and instead beat him half to death. That time he lay in bed for a full month.
Lin Huaizhi didn’t accept his fate.
As long as the old gambler beat him, as long as he beat the silly woman, he dared to fight the old gambler with his life. Moreover, there is only a thousand days of being a thief, but no thousand days of guarding against a thief. The old gambler needed him to carry on the line and couldn’t kill him. As he grew older and his strength grew, the gambler finally settled down a bit.
Since then, Lin Huaizhi learned a truth.
Don’t show weakness to those who bully you. As long as you are tougher than him, more fearless of death than him, he will fear you.
Because the family had no money, Lin Huaizhi started school very late, entering first grade at eight. But his brain was very smart. After studying first grade for a semester, he skipped to third grade. After third grade for a year, he skipped directly to sixth grade. Entering junior high, he skipped directly to second year.
Teachers didn’t really recommend skipping grades so frequently, but Lin Huaizhi said jump, and the old gambler felt the family produced a prodigy, so he must jump, and jump with fanfare.
But Lin Huaizhi was only eleven then.
He was the youngest in the class. Because he was smart and liked by teachers, and was a loner, he soon became the target of bullying.
Those petty tricks seemed very childish to Lin Huaizhi, but a rabbit will bite when anxious. When the student leading the bullying locked him in the toilet and drenched him with water, Lin Huaizhi exploded.
The opponent was stronger and taller than him, but he just grabbed the other’s hair tightly and beat him until two teeth fell out.
After that, no one dared to provoke him anymore.
Also, no one dared to approach him.
This was fine too. He didn’t need others’ pity, didn’t need sympathy, and didn’t need fake concern.
But fate is always unpredictable.
Then Lin Huaizhi encountered an accident, dropped out of school directly, and came to Long City. He washed dishes, moved bricks, earning money while studying. Relying on intelligence and a keen sense of smell, he successfully started a business.
Along this road, he relied on no one.
And there was no one to rely on.
Something like “acting spoiled” as Huo Chen said—if it had appeared in the first twenty years of his life, he wouldn’t possibly be who he was now.
So he wouldn’t act spoiled, nor did he have the qualification to act spoiled.
But now Huo Chen said he was acting spoiled.
Lin Huaizhi didn’t deny it anymore. He raised his eyebrows at Huo Chen, “Fine, I’m just acting spoiled. Just say if you buy it or not.”
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