There’s a psycho who has a crush on me

Chapter 45

Editor: Princess

Yu Qing was sitting in the driver’s seat, the car window beside him opened wide, allowing the cool night breeze to flow in and clear his mind. His gaze through the rearview mirror appeared deep and dark, as if harboring countless unspoken words.

The two brothers actually resembled each other quite closely. Although Yu Pei had gradually gained weight during his middle school years, when he was younger, he had been almost a carbon copy of Yu Qing. Even though they were not twins but brothers separated by ten years, even though Yu Qing’s features leaned toward their father’s ruggedness while Yu Pei’s favored their mother’s gentleness, anyone could easily recognize them as blood-related brothers whenever they stood together.

Therefore, Yu Pei had never understood why he, who clearly resembled their mother more closely, was not considered her child in Ning Jinglan’s eyes.

Yu Qing had always been busy with work. Yu Pei had not seen him for several days, so suddenly seeing his familiar face this time, he first froze, then felt a sudden shock that sent chills from his forehead down his spine. Even his palms began producing slippery, clammy cold sweat.

His first reaction was to wonder whether Yu Qing had witnessed the intimate scene between him and Luo Changzhou.

He had originally planned to walk to the roadside before calling Zhang Geng to pick him up. However, for some unknown reason, the person who came to collect him had turned out to be Yu Qing instead.

He had not yet prepared himself for coming out of the closet. He also did not know how to explain his relationship with Luo Changzhou to Yu Qing. Moreover, he didn’t know what he should do if Yu Qing disapproved of his relationship with Luo Changzhou.

He tapped his palm anxiously. In the end, he could only manage to force a stiff smile onto his face and say weakly, “Big brother… why is it you…”

“What, are you unhappy to see your big brother?” Yu Qing looked at him through the rearview mirror. After remaining silent for several seconds, he smiled while curving his lips and started the car.

“No.” Seeing that Yu Qing asked nothing, Yu Pei assumed he had seen nothing. He immediately felt relieved and relaxed his tense body. “It’s just that big brother is usually very busy, isn’t he?”

“No matter how busy I am, I still need to take weekends off.” Yu Qing chuckled softly. “Your big brother isn’t made of iron. Tomorrow, your big brother can rest at home.”

As the shock and suspicion in his heart gradually dissipated, Yu Pei heard that Yu Qing could stay home tomorrow and share a lunch with him. The joy of reuniting with family diluted his previous panic and confusion. He also smiled and asked Yu Qing, “Really?”

“Of course it’s true.” Yu Qing answered him with a smile, his voice very gentle.

He raised his eyes to glance at Yu Pei through the rearview mirror. In the mirror, the young man’s eyes and brows contained smiles. His pale cheeks had developed a thin layer of pink due to happiness, making his entire being finally possess some vitality.

This was completely different from how he had been while staying at the sanatorium.

Yu Pei had not initially stayed at the sanatorium. He had simply been hospitalized normally to recover from his illness. Due to a severe asthma attack, his limbs had developed serious spasms. When he was loaded into the ambulance, he had already lost consciousness. He had spent two hours in the emergency room before gradually regaining his breath. When Yu Qing went to see him, he was still lying on the monitoring bed with his eyes closed, a monitor clipped to his finger and an oxygen tube inserted into his nose.

At that time, he had not yet lost weight. His chubby entire body had sunk into the bed. The excess fat had squeezed his facial features into an unattractive appearance. His lips and fingernails had turned somewhat purple due to oxygen deficiency. That appearance, to be honest, had indeed failed to inspire much sympathy.

Yu Qing had only managed to glance at him hurriedly. After learning that he was out of danger, he had left the hospital and asked Uncle Zhuang to care for him. He had needed to handle matters related to their father’s death. He had needed to deal with the police because his mother, Ning Jinglan, had switched their father’s asthma inhaler. The inhaler their father had taken was an empty one—the inhaler that Ning Jinglan had deceived away from Yu Pei.

Ning Jinglan had been single-mindedly focused on wanting their father dead. She had completely disregarded whether Yu Pei, who no longer had an inhaler, would also die during his next attack. Perhaps in her eyes, the death of this young man who was not her “son” would have been even better.

To this day, Yu Qing didn’t dare ask Yu Pei whether his asthma attack that day had occurred because he had discovered that Ning Jinglan had taken away his inhaler.

That incident had become an exposed, festering scar on their bodies, forever silently bleeding pus and impossible to touch.

On one side was their mother, on the other was his little brother. Yu Qing couldn’t make a choice between them. It was only after he had watched medical personnel and police take their mother away that he could extricate himself from his bewilderment to visit Yu Pei at the hospital.

However, Uncle Zhuang, who had been constantly watching over Yu Pei, told him that Yu Pei’s condition seemed somewhat problematic.

Since waking up, Yu Pei had remained very silent. He neither spoke nor ate, allowing doctors and nurses to manipulate his body as they pleased. When Uncle Zhuang tried to force-feed him some food, he didn’t resist either, however he would quickly vomit everything up after eating.

Most of the time, he kept his eyes closed. His breathing was very slow and shallow, making it impossible for people to distinguish whether he was awake or asleep. Only occasionally, when nurses and doctors moved his body, would he open his eyes.

Therefore, when Yu Qing visited him at the hospital again, Yu Pei had already lost considerable weight. He couldn’t consume anything, surviving only on nutritional IV drips that provided the essential elements his body required. Yu Qing and Uncle Zhuang quickly contacted a psychiatrist for him.

The diagnosis the doctor reached was also quite pessimistic. Yu Pei had developed Cotard’s syndrome, a relatively rare mental illness. Patients would feel they were dying or had already died. They would strangely perceive their bodies rotting bit by bit, even producing maggots. Even if they could occasionally open their eyes and move, they would only believe themselves to be walking corpses.

As for why Yu Pei had developed such an illness, the psychiatrist’s explanation was that Yu Pei had likely already been suffering from severe depression previously. Combined with the hereditary schizophrenia from the Ning family, Yu Pei’s development of such an illness was actually not surprising. There was a high probability that he believed he had already died during that previous severe asthma attack.

People who had never experienced an asthma attack could never understand what kind of feeling it was. When it struck, it was as if your lungs had been stuffed full of cotton, and both your mouth and nose had been covered by a huge plastic bag. You opened your mouth wide to breathe, but the air that could enter your lungs became less and less. Your limbs would also become paralyzed and spastic. Most terrifying of all, your consciousness could remain clear before you completely lost consciousness. You would slowly feel yourself suffocating in the thin air. That was a feeling of infinitely approaching death, and you were perceiving your own death.

Just how much had Ning Jinglan hated their father to choose to let him die in such agony? And Yu Pei, whom she had disregarded completely, what kind of despair had he experienced while believing he too had died in the pain of suffocation?

Yu Qing had hired countless top psychologists. No matter how busy company affairs became, he insisted on visiting Yu Pei at the hospital every evening. Perhaps heaven had shown favor, because Yu Pei’s treatment had progressed very smoothly. His emotions could also be effectively controlled with various expensive medications, even though most of the time the smiles on his face and the inexplicable joy in his heart didn’t originate from his true feelings. Those were merely chemical effects produced under the influence of drugs.

Yu Qing didn’t want to see Yu Pei’s face lose its smile once again.

After Ning Jinglan had called him last night, he had his secretary cancel all afternoon and tomorrow’s scheduled appointments today. He had rushed to the psychiatric hospital to see Ning Jinglan.

Even though Ning Jinglan had not been good to Yu Pei, this couldn’t erase the fact that she had been good to Yu Qing. She had been as cruel to Yu Pei as she had been gentle to Yu Qing.

Yu Qing couldn’t bring himself to disown this mother. He had donated large sums of money to the hospital, allowing their mother to live alone in a building. He had even moved furniture and clothes that belonged to her from the Yu residence to the hospital, all to make her living conditions better. Beyond that, he could do nothing more.

He had not met Ning Jinglan face to face. He had only watched Ning Jinglan from afar through a window, accompanied by a nurse. She had not noticed his arrival. She had simply sat alone on her bed, quietly flipping through a photo album in her hands, wearing a faint smile on her face. The album contained entirely photos of Yu Qing, from childhood to adulthood.

On the day of their father’s burial, Yu Qing had not shed a single tear. However, witnessing this scene, he could not control his sobbing.

At this moment, looking at Yu Pei’s face in the rearview mirror, a face that had finally gained some color after being nurtured for so long but still remained very pale, Yu Qing found himself also feeling an impulse to weep.

After visiting Ning Jinglan today, he had returned to the Yu residence. He had given Zhang Geng time off and driven alone to pick up Yu Pei and bring him home. He had specifically cleared his Sunday schedule, wanting to spend time with Yu Pei at home.

After parking by the roadside, he had waited for a long time. Since the car window was wide open, he had seen from a distance two male students walking hand in hand toward the roadside. One of them had been Yu Pei.

The two had been chatting and laughing all the way, appearing intimate in a manner unlike ordinary friends but more like a couple. Yu Qing had told himself that perhaps he had seen incorrectly, or perhaps it was normal for two male students to be somewhat close.

However, when Yu Pei had gotten into the car and seen him, his pale expression had undoubtedly confirmed that answer. Yu Qing could no longer find any excuses for him.

Nevertheless, he had ultimately chosen not to expose the truth. He had simply pretended to have seen nothing while talking with Yu Pei. Why would Yu Pei worry about him discovering this matter if not because he feared his opposition?

In fact, Yu Qing had no intention of opposing it. He felt that there was nothing wrong with Yu Pei liking a man. The only difference between them and ordinary couples was that they would never have children. Having experienced so many events, he even felt that not having children was quite good. If they had children who inherited the family’s mental illness, that would be the greatest tragedy.

Yu Pei having someone he liked was actually a good thing. What Yu Qing worried about more was him having no attachments and no motivation to continue living. The greatest despair for depression patients was not their inability to escape from pain, but their loss of the ability to perceive love and being loved, because they could not perceive love, only pain remained for them to feel.

“Ah Pei—” Yu Qing thought for a moment and decided to share his thoughts with Yu Pei, to indicate that he would have no objections and that Yu Pei need not live in constant anxiety.

However, just as he had begun to speak, his temple experienced a burst of severe pain, as if someone had violently struck his head with a hammer, causing him to feel dizzy and see stars.

When he shook his head to expel the dizziness from his mind, intense and blinding lights appeared before his eyes. Yu Pei’s anxious voice also shouted behind him, “Big brother, watch out!”