The suitcase’s wheels rumbled on the concrete. Shattered red bricks, left by some unknown child, littered the road. Chen Yuan carefully steered around the fragments, afraid the shoddy wheels would get knocked off.

His mom, Mrs. Chen, had bought the black suitcase. The quality wasn’t great. The first time Chen Yuan had taken it to college, he’d felt that it would fall apart with the slightest bit of force. Both the exterior, made of some unknown material, and the polyester-lined interior seemed paper-thin.

‘And this damn thing cost a hundred yuan,’ Chen Yuan grumbled to himself.

As the saying goes, they’ll rip off a stranger, but they’ll fleece an acquaintance. Mrs. Chen never should have trusted the general store run by their neighbor, the teacher. This suitcase must have been sitting in their stock for at least two years, unsold.

And they had the nerve to say it was new stock.

‘If I’d known, it would’ve been so much better to just buy a cheap, good-quality one online…’

「Downstairs from the apartment building.」

With Mrs. Chen standing right there, he didn’t dare utter a single complaint. In fact, he couldn’t even meet her eyes. He just steeled himself and mumbled, “I’m heading out. Mom, you can go back inside. It’s fine with Dad taking me.”

“Hmph.” Mrs. Chen forced out a reluctant grunt.

Chen Yuan knew what that meant; she didn’t have to say a word.

It was the usual unspoken complaints: ‘He comes home for half a month and then just runs off.’ ‘I guess the world outside is just better. Ever since he went to college, he doesn’t miss home at all.’ Her resentment would then coalesce around an undeniable fact: he’d taken a week-long trip and was returning to Lanjing a week early. All told, he had only spent the bookends of the New Year holiday in Qishui County.

He couldn’t argue with the facts.

“I’ll be back for the Qingming or Dragon Boat Festival holidays. You can make me all my favorites then, Mom,” Chen Yuan said cheekily.

“Fine, I’ll wait… I just hope that by the time you come back, my hair won’t be gray and my eyes so dim that I can’t recognize my own son.”

The corner of Mrs. Chen’s mouth twitched into something that wasn’t quite a smile, and Chen Yuan felt his butt clench.

“No way! You’re so young, Mom. I can’t see a single gray hair on your head.”

“Of course you can’t. I just had it dyed a few days ago.”

“…”

Seeing the look on his wife’s face, Mr. Chen tactfully excused himself to go warm up the car. He scurried out of the complex so quickly that Chen Yuan had every reason to suspect his dad had insisted on parking outside the gate yesterday for this exact purpose.

Cold gusts of wind swept through the courtyard.

Chen Yuan sighed.

‘It wasn’t like he was trying to fly the coop just for the sake of it.’

The company was reopening before the semester began, so it was the perfect time to go and familiarize himself with Pei’s firm. It would make things easier when he started his weekend internship. Otherwise, if he waited until after classes began, two weekend days wouldn’t even be enough to learn the basic workflow. Then it would be Monday and time for class, forcing him to wait another whole week.

That wouldn’t look like he was taking the internship seriously at all.

Pei Youwen might think he was just some rich kid there to fool around. If word of that got back to Jiang Zhengfeng, even if he didn’t say anything, he would surely have his doubts.

Chen Yuan wanted to show his commitment. Besides, he genuinely wanted to understand the adult world.

‘What is it really like?’

That other world he knew nothing about—the one Jiang Ning lived in every single day.

Though they existed in the same space, a chasm separated their worlds.

‘Once you leave the ivory tower of school, is the world outside really as treacherous as a dark jungle?’

‘Probably not that dramatic,’ Chen Yuan thought.

Seeing that Chen Yuan’s departure was set in stone, Mrs. Chen, despite her resentment, could only resign herself to the fact.

“Did you pack everything? You should check for your ID, your laptop, all that.”

“I checked before I came down. I’ve got it all.”

“All right, then. Go on, don’t keep your dad waiting.”

“Mom…” Chen Yuan started, but then trailed off.

“You brat,” Mrs. Chen glared at him, the rims of her eyes suddenly turning red. “Putting on a show of being reluctant to leave now, are we? Why didn’t you agree to stay last night when I asked you? Now, get going.”

Dragging his suitcase, Chen Yuan was shooed out of the complex.

He should have felt relieved, but when he reached the car and looked back, his mother was gone. A sudden feeling of loss washed over him.

After he put his suitcase in the trunk, he shut the car door.

Mr. Chen leaned over and helped him with his seatbelt, attentive to every detail.

“Off we go.”

“Yeah… Let’s go!”

The old sedan drove steadily down the road. As the car warmed up, the faint smell of old leather filled the air.

It wasn’t a pleasant smell.

Chen Yuan had never thought much about his family’s car before. As long as it provided shelter from the wind and rain, it was good enough. But looking at it closely now, he noticed how many things inside had faded with age. Even the once-festive Chinese knot hanging from the rearview mirror had become a gloomy, dull red.

Come to think of it, the car needed repairs every year. It was always plagued by minor problems.

Mr. Chen had complained about it countless times and had wanted to replace it for ages, but Mrs. Chen never agreed.

So they made do, and had been driving it for nearly ten years.

Lately, Chen Yuan had been spending time with his biological father, Jiang Zhengfeng, and had gotten used to riding in understated luxury cars. Having experienced better, the difference in his family’s old car was immediately obvious. His butt could definitely tell the difference.

“Dad, why don’t you buy a new car? I thought you always wanted to replace this one,” Chen Yuan asked after a moment’s hesitation.

“Hm? Why do you ask… Is the ride uncomfortable?”

“The seat’s a bit hard on my butt.”

“Tsk, I’d forgotten until you said something. I took the seat cushions out to replace them and forgot to put the new ones in… Oh well, we’re too far to go back now.”

“It’s fine. We’ll be at the station in a couple of hours.”

“All right. Just bear with it, then.”

Mr. Chen flicked on the wipers, which cleared the condensation from the windshield with a loud SQUEAK, SQUEAK. Even with his foot pressed to the floor, the car remained sluggish.

“All that talk about getting a new car was just me grumbling. If your mom actually told me to go ahead, I don’t think I could bring myself to do it.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep