Chapter 464
Chapter 464
“Why are you upset?” Xie Yanzhi asked, looking baffled at the downcast Xu Qingshi.
“I’m not upset,” Xu Qingshi replied, pursing his lips. He was at a loss to explain why he felt Li Zhiwei seemed a little strange today.
“Then what are you thinking about?” Jiang Yu sounded a bit dissatisfied as he looked at Xu Qingshi. Ever since the last incident, it had been a long time since they’d seen each other.
Now that they were finally all together again, Xu Qingshi kept acting like his mind was elsewhere. Could it be that after all this time apart, Xu Qingshi had stopped wanting to hang out with them?
“I just feel like the beautiful sister—the one who’s going to marry my father—Li Jiejie, was acting weird,” Xu Qingshi said, struggling to describe the situation when he’d seen Li Zhiwei earlier.
He kept feeling that Li Zhiwei didn’t seem happy, and the things she said were strangely off, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on why.
The others exchanged glances at Xu Qingshi’s words.
Xie Yanzhi was puzzled. If he remembered correctly, his mother had said that Miss Li was about to marry the Prince of An.
Xu Qingshi’s glum expression left Xie Yanzhi confused. Could it be that Xu Qingshi didn’t want his father to marry Li Zhiwei?
But wasn’t Miss Li Xu Qingshi’s own choice from the very beginning?
“You don’t want her to marry your father anymore?” Xie Yanzhi asked, baffled.
“Did you discover her true colors?” Zhao Donglai said, wearing an expression that clearly said, “I knew it,” as he looked at Xu Qingshi.
“What true colors?” Three pairs of eyes turned to Zhao Donglai in unison.
Their gazes were filled with confusion.
Zhao Donglai had never met Li Zhiwei, but Jiang Yu and Xie Yanzhi had.
When they saw Li Zhiwei, she had always been gentle and kind to them.
They simply couldn’t imagine that Li Zhiwei might have a different side.
“Hmph, let me tell you, that woman definitely has bad intentions,” Zhao Donglai said, his expression serious. He looked at Xu Qingshi as if he had this all figured out.
“She’s been good to me,” Xu Qingshi said. Thinking it over, Li Zhiwei had always been patient with him.
He didn’t believe Li Zhiwei had any other side to her.
“She’s only nice to you now. Once she really marries your father, it’ll definitely change,” Zhao Donglai said, giving Xu Qingshi a look that said, “You’re so easy to fool,” before speaking solemnly.
“What will she become?” Xu Qingshi frowned, thinking back to the time Li Zhiwei had ignored him. Could that be what she’d be like?
Remembering how Li Zhiwei had drawn a clear line between them, Xu Qingshi felt a suffocating tightness in his chest.
He didn’t want a Li Zhiwei like that.
“I’m telling you, once you have a stepmother, you get a stepfather too. Look at me—I’m the best example,” Zhao Donglai said. He rolled up his sleeve, revealing a patch of bruises and some old scars.
The three children swallowed hard at the sight.
“She... wouldn’t treat me like that,” Xu Qingshi insisted, still convinced that Li Zhiwei wasn’t like Zhao Donglai’s stepmother.
She was different.
“That’s because she hasn’t married your father yet. Once she does, it’ll be a whole different story. She’s just using you,” Zhao Donglai said. He recalled how, before his stepmother married his father, she had been generous to him too, even buying him malt candy.
But now? Just so much as taking an extra bite of food brought on scolding and beatings from her. And his father never once spoke up to protect him.
Zhao Donglai was convinced that Xu Qingshi’s future stepmother would end up just like his.
Jiang Yu and Xie Yanzhi stood by, unable to contribute to the conversation.
Still, both of them looked sympathetically at Xu Qingshi, imagining that someone as gentle as Li Zhiwei might one day turn into a woman who beat and scolded Xu Qingshi.
“Li Jiejie must be different, right?” Xie Yanzhi recalled how Li Zhiwei had risked everything to protect them at Rushan Academy.
She didn’t seem at all like the type to lay a hand on Xu Qingshi the way Zhao Donglai’s mother did.
“I think so too. Li Jiejie isn’t like Zhao Donglai’s stepmother,” Jiang Yu mused, also believing it was unlikely.
After all, Li Zhiwei didn’t appear nearly as coarse as Zhao Donglai’s stepmother.
“Hmph, you don’t believe me?” Zhao Donglai was clearly displeased.
He was convinced that Li Zhiwei would turn out exactly like his stepmother. After all, he had suffered plenty at his stepmother’s hands.
“Maybe you did something wrong, and that’s why your stepmother hit you?” Xu Qingshi looked at Zhao Donglai, thinking that stepmothers probably weren’t that terrifying.
“What could I have done?” Zhao Donglai hadn’t expected Xu Qingshi to see it that way.
Wasn’t Xu Qingshi his friend? Why wasn’t he taking his side?
Zhao Donglai suddenly felt that Xu Qingshi wasn’t very loyal.
“Then tell me—what did you do that made your stepmother beat you?” Xu Qingshi pressed.
“Well... my stepmother has beaten me lots of times,” Zhao Donglai said, starting to feel a little guilty.
“Then just tell me about the most recent one.” Xu Qingshi glanced at the injuries on Zhao Donglai’s arm.
Zhao Donglai frowned, looking at his arm. Right—this was the beating from yesterday.
As for why he got beaten...
“I waited until my stepmother was asleep, then I set her hair on fire.” Zhao Donglai thought for a moment before admitting the truth.
“Set it on fire? How did you do that?” Xie Yanzhi looked at his own hair, baffled.
After all, their hair was long and hung down too.
Under normal circumstances, it shouldn’t be easy to burn, right?
The three children eyed Zhao Donglai curiously.
“I was just curious. Last night, I saw Aunt Wang next door using a fire-tong to curl her hair, and it turned all wavy—really pretty. So I wanted to give my stepmother the same style. But when I tried with the fire-tong, it didn’t work. So I thought maybe using direct fire was the key. Little did I know—hair catches fire instantly.” As Zhao Donglai spoke, he shrank his neck. His stepmother’s long hair had all burned off.
She had been so furious that she grabbed a stick on the spot and chased him down, beating him.
His father had even stood by and said she had been too lenient.
“Your stepmother ended up bald?” Jiang Yu’s eyes widened as he asked Zhao Donglai.
He recalled how much his own mother cherished her hair. If he ever did something like that, she’d definitely hit him too.
Xie Yanzhi’s lips twitched. He had to admit, Zhao Donglai probably deserved that beating.
“No, not really—but...” Zhao Donglai felt a twinge of guilt as he remembered how a strip down the middle of his stepmother’s scalp had been singed clean off.
“Then how did you get those other scars?”
Xu Qingshi figured he would never do something as stupid as burning Li Zhiwei’s hair, so Li Zhiwei probably wouldn’t hit him.
Besides, even as a child, he could tell that that incident was Zhao Donglai’s fault.
Xu Qingshi silently resolved not to make the same mistake, or else Li Zhiwei might beat him too.
Thinking of this, he felt he must make Zhao Donglai confess all his past mistakes in detail, so he could write them down in a little notebook and avoid repeating them.
What Xu Qingshi didn’t know was that when his three-year-old brother came across the notebook, he tried out every single thing written in it. Then, with a sad face, he ran to Xu Heming and claimed that it was Xu Qingshi who had made him do it.