🔊 TTS Settings
He hadn’t said goodbye to Meihe. He hadn’t said goodbye to his daisies, or to the paper tiger on the wall either.
He pressed himself against the car window, but still didn’t manage to say what he really wanted—“Stop.” He remembered what the director had told him: be good.
So he stayed quiet.
Yet he also remembered the pot of daisies he had planted by the gate, still waiting to bloom. It had remained nothing but bare soil and an empty pot, left behind just like that.
A tear slipped out before he even noticed. The beautiful lady beside him gently comforted him, telling him he could always come back to see them, telling him not to be sad.
“I’m not sad,” he said softly.
Only much later did he begin to suspect—maybe he would never see Meihe again. Maybe he would never see those daisies bloom.
The car was lined with a soft, furry carpet. He stepped in carefully. The lady kept talking to him in a gentle, endless stream of words, but his eyes never left the floor.
There was a hole in his shoe. His toes peeked out—red and swollen—looking completely out of place against the clean white carpet.
He kept thinking he couldn’t dirty it. So he kept lifting his foot slightly, holding it up until his leg ached, refusing to let it rest.
It wasn’t until they got out of the car that the lady finally noticed.
“Why are you walking like that? Are you uncomfortable?”
He hesitated, too embarrassed to admit it was just a cramp—an aching, stubborn pain from holding his foot up too long.
That woman treated him very well. She dressed him in neat little suits and polished leather shoes. There was also a man who liked to pat his head. The piano in their home was far nicer than the one in the orphanage.
They told him, this was his home now.
But the beautiful lady always wanted him to call her “Mom.”
He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
He only remembered what the director had told him: his mother was gone. And once gone, the word “mom” could no longer be spoken.
At times like this, he missed the paper tiger on the orphanage wall. The paper tiger never asked anything of him. It always just smiled.
Whenever he stayed silent, the lady’s expression would lose its light. He could vaguely sense it—his silence was making her sad.
He lived there for three full years.
They took him to amusement parks, music classes, bought him countless toys. They were very kind to him.
But he still couldn’t call them “Mom” or “Dad.”
Even though they repeatedly told him he didn’t need to do chores, he still instinctively followed the orphanage’s duty chart—he had always been assigned to sweep the floor.
He once overheard them talking about him.
He had been standing outside their bedroom door. He only wanted to call them down to listen to a piece he had just learned. But instead, he heard the lady crying in the man’s arms:
“It’s been three years. He still barely smiles at us, still barely speaks to us… I’ve tried so hard. I’ve really tried to build a relationship with him. But why—why is he still like this…”
“I told you back then, we should’ve adopted younger. Older kids from orphanages… they’re always a bit ‘different.’ Younger ones bond easier.”
“But he looked so well-behaved, so beautiful, and he could play piano. I thought he was kind and smart. I didn’t expect this… What do we do? Sending him back would be too cruel. I can’t bear it…”
“Let’s wait and see. Maybe we can have our own child. My mom found some new remedies. We’ll try again. Maybe that’ll work.”
The lady was still crying.
He quietly closed the door.
He didn’t tell them that he had been praised in music class that day. That he had learned a new piece.
He lay down on his bed in silence.
Maybe… maybe he could still go back. Back to Meihe. Back to the director. Back to that pot of daisies.
But he was going to lose his home again.
In the spring of the second year, the beautiful lady became pregnant.
They stopped insisting that he call them Mom and Dad. Instead, they prepared a small room—filled it with diapers, milk powder, tiny socks no longer than his palm.
Had he once worn socks that small too?
But what came to his mind instead was the pair he had arrived in—torn, with holes in them.
He knew, somehow, that the lady would eventually “be able to bear it.”
In winter, the wrinkled little baby was born.
It was time for him to return to the orphanage.
The beautiful lady held him tightly, apologizing over and over again, asking him if he would still come visit someday. The man stood nearby, smoking in silence.
He hugged her back gently.
Only then did he realize—their once towering figures were actually so small.
And he also realized he had grown up. He was taller now. He no longer had to look up at her.
He stared at her aging hands for a long time, then suddenly wanted to say:
“Your red nails were really beautiful back then.”
The lady froze.
Then she broke down crying even harder.
But he didn’t understand where her tears were coming from. He only felt something swelling quietly in his chest, heavy and unclear.
After four years apart, he returned to the orphanage.
Xu Si was still there. The director was still there.
But his pot of daisies had already been thrown away.
They said they thought it was just trash.
He thought to himself—he probably did belong here more.
That night, he folded up the beautiful suit he had returned in and threw it into the trash.
When he was fourteen, the kids led by Xu Si didn’t mock him. Instead, they accepted him.
They became friends.
Sometimes Xu Si would bring up their past cruelty and ask if he hated them.
He would always say no.
He had already forgotten it.
What he had always wanted was simple: not to be cold, not to be hungry.
Beautiful cars weren’t for him. Grand pianos weren’t for him either.
He just wanted to live. To grow old naturally. To stare at the paper tiger with one ear missing… and then slowly crawl into the earth.
Chapter Twelve
Shen Wang started drinking again.
He hadn’t planned to. He couldn’t control his emotions. He had already eaten enough sugar, but the bitterness still rose inside him—eyes stinging, tears threatening, like a faucet that wouldn’t shut off.
He had become a fish, quietly shedding tears all the time.
He wasn’t someone who cried easily. He barely ever cried.
But anything involving Gu Zhong made his emotions swell until they overflowed.
While he was drinking, an old song happened to be playing on TV—Hopeless.
There was a line in it:
“Secret love is a kind of politeness, building a castle in the dark.”
