There’s a psycho who has a crush on me

Chapter 60

Yu Pei quietly rested his arms on the table, lying prone with his head down.

People said that when a person was on the verge of death, all the memories of their life flashed through their mind like a revolving lantern, and he had experienced two near-death experiences.

He had reviewed his brief life twice.

Not many people had such experiences, and Yu Pei didn’t know why he was so fortunate to be able to experience it twice.

The first time, he truly believed he was going to die.

Many details about how Ning Jinglan killed Father Yu weren’t well known to either the Yu family or the Ning family. At most, they only knew that Ning Jinglan had taken away Father Yu’s asthma inhaler, causing him to die miserably from an asthma attack. The rest of the secrets had all turned into a thick glob of phlegm in their throats, rotting disgustingly in the bellies of everyone living in the Yu residence who knew the complete story of this incident, preserving Ning Jinglan’s final dignity.

This wasn’t because Yu Pei hated her to an unforgivable degree, but because he and Ning Jinglan had truly reached a point where only one of them could survive.

When he was young, he couldn’t understand why when his big brother was around, she would always smile gently, serve food to his big brother, and care about his daily life. But when his big brother left and she faced him, there would be no expression on her face at all. She would always look at him coldly, and when he tried to hold her hand, she would shake him off harshly, as if he were something filthy.

He didn’t know why his mother didn’t like him, but driven by his inner longing for maternal love, he would still instinctively and carefully approach Ning Jinglan.

He would do everything she liked but he didn’t like, just to cater to her preferences.

Ning Jinglan hoped he would be mediocre in his studies, so he worked hard to become an art student who only knew how to paint and play piano. Ning Jinglan liked him to be quiet, so he would shut his mouth and become the most silent child by her side. Sometimes when she was angry or sad, he would clumsily try to comfort her. Even when she would slap him or pinch and hit him, he never made a fuss or cried.

But despite all his efforts, he still couldn’t make Ning Jinglan like him.

It wasn’t until she had a fight with Father Yu, hysterically shouting that Father Yu had humiliated her by bringing home his mistress’s child from outside and tricking her into thinking it was her child, that everyone realized she was ill.

But at that time, everyone couldn’t blame Ning Jinglan too much.

Because Yu Pei was born prematurely, and the reason for the premature birth was that Father Yu’s pregnant mistress had found Ning Jinglan, who was also pregnant. She had suffered a great shock, and perhaps from that moment on, she had already gone mad.

Ning Jinglan and Father Yu’s marriage was the result of a business alliance. She truly loved Father Yu, but Father Yu didn’t love her.

In this absurd farce, she was also a victim, so everyone just arranged for a psychologist for her and regular psychological counseling. She seemed to calm down then.

And Yu Pei, who finally understood why his mother didn’t like him, probably also started getting sick from that time.

But he didn’t tell anyone. He just silently licked his wounds in the corner alone, digesting all the sorrow. He continued to live according to Ning Jinglan’s expectations, but no longer for her sake.

He had once changed himself into what she expected for her affection, so Yu Pei wasn’t even clear about what he truly liked in his heart, what kind of person he really was.

It was as if his unknowing soul lived in a shell shaped by Ning Jinglan.

Yu Pei had thought that this kind of life where he could see the end at a glance would probably be his entire existence, until Father Yu’s death shattered all the floating ice, revealing the turbulent sea beneath.

Father Yu was someone who cherished his life greatly. Anyone who had asthma and experienced an attack would fear that feeling of approaching death infinitely. Except for those who wanted to commit suicide, no one wasn’t afraid of death. So Father Yu would always carry his asthma inhaler with him, and there would be two spare bottles at home, in case Yu Pei or Father Yu couldn’t find an inhaler during an attack.

The day Ning Jinglan chose to kill Father Yu was during Uncle Zhuang’s home leave, and it was also their wedding anniversary.

Uncle Zhuang had his own family, and every year he would go home for a period to visit his family members. That was a fixed schedule that everyone in the Yu family knew.

With the loyal old butler gone, no matter how attentive the remaining servants were, there were many details they couldn’t notice. They wouldn’t check daily whether the inhalers in the cabinet could function normally, wouldn’t notice that Ning Jinglan had taken away all the inhalers from the cabinet, and certainly wouldn’t notice that she later put an empty inhaler bottle back in.

That empty inhaler bottle was Yu Pei’s.

That day when Yu Pei came home from school, Ning Jinglan suddenly walked up to him with a box of paints, smiling as she asked him, “This is a gift Mom bought for you. Do you like it?”

Yu Pei truly loved painting, and he truly loved Ning Jinglan. Even though he found it strange why Ning Jinglan would give him an expensive set of paints, he wouldn’t suspect what Ning Jinglan wanted to do to him. He preferred to believe this was because the doctor’s treatment of Ning Jinglan had finally taken effect—

“Ah Pei, do you like it?”

“I like it very much… Thank you, Mom.”

“If you like it, go try it quickly. Mom will hold your backpack for you.”

Yu Pei still clearly remembered every word and sentence Ning Jinglan said to him then. He even remembered her expression when she spoke with perfect clarity. She smiled so gently, her voice was so pleasant, as if she had truly recovered and knew he was her child.

This was the last conversation he had with Ning Jinglan. From then on, he never spoke another word to Mother Yu.

So he eagerly handed his backpack to Ning Jinglan and excitedly ran to the art room to try the new paints she had given him. Until bedtime, he was still thinking about Ning Jinglan. He thought, Mom’s eyes could finally see him! The paints she bought were really good to use. Tomorrow morning at breakfast, he must properly thank Mom, but would saying that be too formal? They were mother and son, after all…

But the next day when Yu Pei woke up, he received a call from Yu Qing saying that Father Yu was already dead and Uncle Zhuang was rushing back.

When Yu Pei received this call, he immediately had trouble breathing.

Although he wasn’t very close to Father Yu, he was still his father after all. He had never abused him like Ning Jinglan did, and sometimes even gave him more warmth than Ning Jinglan ever had, so he would feel sad and shocked.

However, when Yu Pei habitually reached into his backpack for medicine, he discovered his inhaler was missing.

He stumbled out of his room, wanting to get medicine from the medicine cabinet, but on the way he encountered Ning Jinglan, who was humming and dancing.

Seeing him appear, Ning Jinglan smiled at him and came over to support him.

Yu Pei was completely unprepared and let her help him walk to the staircase. Just as he was about to go downstairs, Ning Jinglan suddenly let go.

As Yu Pei missed his footing and fell down the stairs, he had countless times wanted to turn back and look at Ning Jinglan, but never had the chance. Only when the spinning world stopped and he lay quietly at the bottom of the stairs could he look up at her in a daze.

He wasn’t nearsighted, so he could see Ning Jinglan looking down at him from above, with the gentle smile on her face that he had longed for so long.

Ning Jinglan just quietly watched him struggle and gasp on the ground. Even when the Filipino maid screamed and rushed up to help him, frantically calling for an ambulance, she still smiled with that cold yet gentle expression.

In his daze, he heard the maids saying there was no medicine left in the cabinet, and heard them ask, “Little young master, where is your medicine?”

Yes, where was his medicine?

Yu Pei couldn’t answer. All his feelings toward Ning Jinglan transformed from longing and hope to collapse and despair, and finally became quiet and indifferent. When he closed his eyes, he seemed to hear again Ning Jinglan’s words when she deceived him into signing the voluntary share transfer agreement. She was always able to do this. While speaking sweet words to confuse you, she would conveniently hand over a sharp blade. He should have known all along that Ning Jinglan wouldn’t be good to him for no reason; he just couldn’t remember the lesson.

The subsequent reasons for Father Yu’s death also gradually became clear. Mother Yu had secretly taken the inhaler from his clothes while he was at home. When Father Yu discovered his inhaler was missing before going out, he would naturally take a new bottle from the medicine cabinet. It was just that the inhaler was an empty bottle that Ning Jinglan had tricked away from Yu Pei and emptied.

And when Father Yu took such an important medicine for himself, he wouldn’t check whether it could still function normally. He deserved to die; he was even more stupid than Yu Pei. These were Ning Jinglan’s exact words when she was being interrogated by the police.

Yu Qing had listened to the entire interrogation, which was why Yu Qing would rather have people move all the furniture related to Mother Yu out of the Yu residence, have their room repainted and renovated, erase all traces of their life in this house, than let Ning Jinglan leave the hospital.

Despite Ning Jinglan treating him this way, he didn’t hate her. But Ning Jinglan hated him so much that she wanted to kill him. When Uncle Ning asked if he had visited Mother Yu, Yu Pei wanted to shout at him regardless of everything: Why should he go see Ning Jinglan? So she could kill him again?

He chose to preserve Ning Jinglan’s final dignity, so he said nothing. These people knew nothing, yet they still wanted to dip into his pain and take another bite of the bloody steamed bun. Such people were truly disgusting.

Yu Pei gasped heavily, feeling somewhat unable to breathe. He had no choice but to lift his head from his arms. The hot moisture on his face met the cool night breeze and instantly became ice-cold. Only then did Yu Pei realize he had been crying.

Tonight’s sky was clear and cloudless, with silver moonlight pouring down from above, very bright.

There was a tall ginkgo tree beside his room. Its branches cut the moonlight into bright and dark fragments that fell through the gaps, illuminating the exposed stones. Though southern summer hadn’t completely passed, Yu Pei felt surrounded by bitterly cold air. Every deep breath would choke him as the icy air drilled into his lungs, freezing his internal organs numb.

But tonight, he should have been sitting here making a phone call to Luo Changzhou, saying goodnight and then sleeping peacefully. Instead, that phone call had instantly plunged his mood into a deep valley, leaving him unable to do anything but stay here crying like a fool.

Yu Pei looked up at the moon, and suddenly a confused and helpless hatred rose in his heart. That hatred wasn’t directed at Ning Jinglan or Uncle Ning, but at himself.

He hated how useless he was, letting these negative emotions invade his thoughts. He was no longer his former self. His current life was so beautiful. He had close family, good friends as companions, and a lover who loved him. He couldn’t let himself be defeated by these negative emotions again, or else surviving his near-death experience would have no meaning at all.

Hiding here alone and crying was meaningless. Curling up in a corner when feeling wronged and sad was meaningless. No one knew how many snowfalls would fall in a person’s life. If you couldn’t run out from the snow, you would gradually be buried by the falling snowflakes, unable to run toward spring, never again able to feel warmth.

Because without special accidents, it was very difficult for people to lose their memory. Just like how he had once so desperately wanted to forget what happened in the past, to forget everything related to Ning Jinglan. But even though depression patients’ memory would become poor, he still couldn’t forget these memories he wanted to forget. These memories had merged into his flesh and blood, containing all the memory fragments related to the past, flowing through his blood vessels, silently intertwined with him for life.

But all of this would eventually pass, growing faint as time’s irresistible torrent washed over it. If you couldn’t forget, you had to learn to face it, until it could no longer bring salt-on-wound pain to your scarred wounds.

Yu Pei stood up from his chair, wiped away his tears, went to the bathroom to wash his face, then came back to pick up his phone and called Yu Qing.

“Big brother.” Although Yu Pei’s voice no longer carried the sound of crying, it was still hoarse.

Yu Qing heard something wrong in his tone and asked, “What’s wrong, Ah Pei? Still not sleeping so late?”

“Mm.” Yu Pei responded quietly, “Second Uncle called me.”

“Second Uncle?” Yu Qing was stunned for a moment, then realized Yu Pei’s strange mood was probably related to him. He immediately asked Yu Pei, his voice also turning cold, “What did he say to you?”

“He told me to go see Ning Jinglan.” Yu Pei didn’t mention Uncle Ning asking about Yu Qing’s girlfriend, only stating the reason that had upset him.

Yu Qing’s breathing immediately became heavy the moment Yu Pei said “Ning Jinglan.”

“He must want to do something bad. Whatever he wants to do, big brother, please don’t agree to it, okay?” When someone offers unexpected kindness, they’re either a traitor or a thief. Yu Pei had learned enough lessons and wouldn’t be fooled again.

“Alright, big brother will.” Yu Qing’s voice also became somewhat hoarse. He said nothing else, only made this promise.

“It’s very late now. I’m going to sleep. Good night, big brother.”

“Good night, Ah Pei.”

After Yu Pei hung up the phone, he originally wanted to call Luo Changzhou too, but seeing it was really very late, he gave up and just sent Luo Changzhou a good night text message.

Who would have known that as soon as the text was sent, Luo Changzhou’s call came through.