Fulfillment - Since You Asked So Sincerely

In recent years, a saying has become popular online: "What one desires in youth but cannot have will haunt them for a lifetime." Although most people find it's nothing special after they get it, the twisted feeling of 'unattainable desire' is often far more lasting and profound than simple 'like' or 'love'.

Shen Zhengning had no intention of digging up old scores. To be fair, he was just making an objective description, but Qi Yue felt as if an old fishbone lodged in her memory had stabbed her heart again—the first time was when he ran away from home over a puppy, after which Shen Zhengning never kept any pets again; the second time was when they had a huge argument over his college entrance exam choices. He went to school, worked, and lived alone, and his connection with her grew increasingly superficial. Every phone call consisted of the same few sentences repeated over and over, as polite as exchanging New Year's greetings, and he rarely mentioned his work or hobbies to her.

If she hadn't happened to overhear the hospital announcement, she might have really been deceived by Yuan Hang and Shen Zhengning, never knowing that her child had been involved in such a dangerous case.

Now was the third time. Shen Zhengning had admitted to 'liking' someone in front of her. Fortunately, despite being disappointed once or twice, he still held a certain amount of trust for his mother. Tragically, this trust was like the carved radish garnish on the side of a plate; whether it looked good, or even existed at all, didn't affect the dish being served.

"You don't need to convince me. You've already proven that even if I disagree, you'll find a way to take a detour and eventually return to the path you chose from the beginning." Qi Yue said, "You can't change what's innate, let alone someone as stubborn as you who couldn't be pulled back by ten bulls. So don't worry, I wasn't planning on objecting anyway."

"On this matter alone, I don't want you to follow my old path."

Her calm reaction was unexpected to Shen Zhengning. He raised an eyebrow in surprise, looking at his unusually composed mother.

Qi Yue pulled a chair from the side and sat down, glaring resentfully at Shen Zhengning, yet her tone was full of melancholy, "From elementary school to high school, every one of your homeroom teachers told me that you had classmates with crushes on you. I don't believe no one was interested in you in college either. But you've remained single until now. At this point, if I don't consider sexual orientation, there are no other options left."

She had lived for so many years and seen plenty of outrageous and bizarre things; homosexuality wasn't particularly strange. "I was even worried that the absence of a father's love had affected your view on relationships. Later I found out you weren't even looking for a boyfriend. Your Uncle Zhou said you might just not like humans..."

Shen Zhengning gazed up at the ceiling, his tone faint, his demeanor listless. "I really can't argue my way out of this."

Qi Yue asked quite curiously, "So what's so special about this one?"

Shen Zhengning paused suspiciously. "Uh, his personality is special—"

Qi Yue: "Especially good? He seems quite polite, but why do I get the feeling he's a bit shy? He didn't even dare to stand next to me."

"...You're right about that feeling." Shen Zhengning said decisively, "He has social anxiety, is shy with strangers, and gets stressed easily. So it's best to keep a certain distance from him for now. Don't scare him, or he'll easily run away."

That such a tall telephone pole of a person would have social anxiety and run away was a bit beyond Qi Yue's comprehension. She asked Shen Zhengning hesitantly, "You just said it's unrequited love, so how did you two end up living together? Did you rent your place to him?"

'As expected, I couldn't fool her. That big sieve Zhuang Mingqi is just as bad as Yuan Hang,' Shen Zhengning thought. "No, I'm temporarily staying at his place... There were some special circumstances before, I'm helping to look after his dog."

Qi Yue was completely unaware of Silver's value, thinking it was just a pretext for them to interact. "Speaking of which, you two are already living together, so why is it still unrequited love? I saw him..." She covered the lower half of her face and gave a soft cough, lowering her voice, "Cough, after you played the hero saving the damsel, he seemed quite moved, didn't he?"

"Although I've explained repeatedly that it was just a coincidence, no one cares. Precisely because it looks so much like a 'hero saving the damsel' scenario, I have to wait for the suspension bridge effect to pass, wait for him to overcome his psychological trauma, and be able to distinguish between gratitude and affection with a clear mind before we can decide which path to take next." Shen Zhengning said calmly, "Let me state first that I'm not targeting anyone, it's just my personal opinion that taking advantage of someone's vulnerability is immoral."

It had to be said, with such high standards for the purity of affection, no wonder he was almost thirty and still hadn't found a partner.

Qi Yue didn't want to judge his views on love, but she did have a question about the second half of his sentence, "Are you..."

"No." Before she could finish, Shen Zhengning denied it flatly. "I don't feel like anyone stole my mom, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone for it. I was just stating my opinion. If someone takes it personally, it means they have a guilty conscience. Also, I'm friendly to most humans. I don't spread rumors and I don't believe them. Erroneous ideas should be corrected in a timely manner."

Qi Yue: So he is holding a grudge!

"I understand." Qi Yue made a 'that's enough' gesture. "Keep your distance. I'll just treat you two as friends, like good buddies, the way you are with Yuan Hang, right?"

Shen Zhengning quickly said, "No, his status has to be a little higher than Yuan Hang's, otherwise if he gets jealous, he's liable to raise the roof."

Qi Yue: ...So troublesome. Can a personality this twisted really be tamed?

Perhaps sensing the thoughts written all over her face, Shen Zhengning's brows relaxed in a rare moment, and he smiled reassuringly at her. "Mom, don't be so nervous. Just interact with him normally. I'll handle it."

A slight sting seemed to flash through her heart. Perhaps when people get old, they tend to remember things from the past. On that evening more than a decade ago, the little boy had looked up at her anxiously and asked, "Can we bring Mimi back first?"

What had she said back then?

"No."

The somewhat blurry face in her memory gradually sharpened, overlapping with the face before her that so resembled her own, from almost the exact same angle. But he no longer needed to beg anyone or wait for anyone's approval. The eyes that had once strained wide to hold back anxiety could now calmly contain her unease.

"Okay."

"You and Auntie had a good chat?"

Zhuang Mingqi opened the suitcase and began arranging things around the hospital room like an ant moving house. "I feel like her mood has eased up quite a bit."

Shen Zhengning said in surprise, "You can tell? I thought you were insensitive to human emotions."

Zhuang Mingqi, half-squatting, shot him a look. "Why bother paying attention to unimportant people." He handed Shen Zhengning a worn-looking ball. "When Silver saw me packing, it insisted on stuffing this in. This is its favorite ball. It was carrying your slipper in its mouth and circling me at home all day."

The emerald worth millions was too hot for Shen Zhengning to handle, but for the teething ball that cost fifteen-point-eight yuan with free shipping, he was moved to tears of gratitude. "Oh, Lord—"

Zhuang Mingqi pursed his lips. "...I couldn't bring it to the hospital to see you. If you miss it, then hurry up and get well so you can go home."

"Isn't it because you're here that I can be hospitalized without worry?" Shen Zhengning changed the subject as fast as the wind, his skill in smoothing feathers having clearly reached a state of perfection. "Alright, Young Master, call off your magic. Bringing only the vinegar without the dumplings, I'm going to report you for patient abuse."

Zhuang Mingqi: "...You seem to be in a good mood too. Looks like you two talked things out?"

Shen Zhengning stroked his chin with one hand and said thoughtfully, "What on earth did my mom say to you? I get the feeling your assessment of our mother-son relationship has a very high-risk factor."

"You can see right through others with a single glance, but you're not so sure about your own affairs?" Zhuang Mingqi stared at him with some novelty. "I thought your mind-reading had no limits."

Shen Zhengning had given up trying to argue. He decided that after being discharged, he would contact Yuan Hang and have him give Zhuang Mingqi some anti-fraud education. "...Yes, that's right, dear. So could you mercifully give me a clear hint?"

The tips of Zhuang Mingqi's ears turned slightly red, but he didn't have the bad habit of keeping people in suspense. "It's nothing, really. She explained to us why you didn't become a police officer."

"Ah, that incident." Shen Zhengning's expression remained calm, with a hint of sudden realization. Unlike Qi Yue, he didn't seem to be emotionally tied to the past. "No wonder she had the air of someone who had a great epiphany today..."

Zhuang Mingqi sat down by his bed. "You said before that you don't like being called Sherlock Holmes. Is it because of that incident?"

Shen Zhengning glanced at him, asking with a half-smile, "Have we fast-forwarded to bedtime story time already? Why am I the one telling you the story?"

Zhuang Mingqi shamelessly mimicked his tone. "Yes, dear. Please be merciful and tell me."

To be honest, it wasn't a very pleasant memory, but for Zhuang Mingqi's sake, and adhering to the principle that one should hear the full story when it comes to gossip, Shen Zhengning thought for a moment and said, "After my father passed away, people started introducing potential partners to my mom. I remember once, around elementary school, one of her blind dates almost worked out. Both sides brought their children to meet at a restaurant. The man gave me a toy car and told me to play with his son."

"That little boy was the vicious type. He acted very well-behaved in front of his dad, but as soon as we were out the door, he started threatening me, warning me not to steal his real dad, telling me not to covet their family's money, and to get lost. As it happened, my mom overheard this. The blind date fell through, and she never mentioned the matter again after that."

"When I was a kid, I must have read too many fairy tales. I felt that having a stepmother or stepfather would be troublesome, and getting along with other kids was also troublesome, so I was actually quite happy she didn't remarry. But I never considered how hard that was for her—my paternal grandparents weren't in good health, and she couldn't just ignore them. My father's siblings were wary of her, afraid she would fight for the family inheritance. She also had her own parents to take care of. If she hadn't been so sentimental and soft-hearted, she could have lived a much easier and more comfortable life."

He grew up happily and ignorantly under the roof Qi Yue held up, ambitiously planning his own future. Then one day, he suddenly noticed an Audi with an out-of-town license plate appearing downstairs from his home for two consecutive weekends, dropping his mother off.

The moment he realized that possibility, Shen Zhengning's rationality went completely offline. Only one thought was breakdancing in his mind: 'Am I a burden to her? Like those couples who get divorced right after their child finishes the college entrance exams, have I been holding her back all this time?'

To this day, Qi Yue still thinks their argument that day was about his college entrance exam choices. But in reality, Shen Zhengning had long known Qi Yue wouldn't agree to him applying to the Police Academy. He had deliberately stepped on a landmine to provoke a war, just to pierce that layer of window paper, test Qi Yue's attitude, and incidentally make everyone miserable.

'Why not earlier, why not later, why did you have to choose this specific time?'

'I studied hard, shared the housework, and tried my best to be obedient and sensible, wanting to make things easier for you, hoping to make you happy. But in the end, I found out that I was the stumbling block preventing you from finding happiness, Mom.'

Zhuang Mingqi comfortingly patted his blanket. Shen Zhengning laughed, "Don't make that face. I'm not the innocent little victim you think I am. To be precise, I was a stupid and conceited asshole."

The hand that hadn't been withdrawn in time patted him again, this time as a warning. Zhuang Mingqi's face hardened slightly. "Don't talk about yourself like that."

"I'm not kidding, I was really asking for a beating back then." The corners of Shen Zhengning's mouth tilted up, but his eyes grew calm. "After the argument, that car didn't show up for a while. Then one day, the owner suddenly sought me out outside of school. His surname was Zhou, Zhou Xingchuan. He was a doctor at De City Second Hospital, and also my mom's current husband."

"He told me some things. For example, that he and my mom were first loves but were forced to break up due to family reasons, and they each started new families. For example, after my dad passed away, he had looked for my mom, but she didn't agree because the elders couldn't bear to part with their grandson, and she didn't want to leave me behind. And that they had only recently reconnected because my mom went to De City and happened to run into him."

"My mom said I was only a little clever, and I was so unconvinced. She really wasn't wrong. I only saw her coming home in a stranger's car, only cared about whether she was going to remarry, obsessed over trivial matters, and complained that she was irritable and quick to anger, yet I turned a blind eye to the biggest problem."

"Why did she go to De City? Where could she have happened to run into Doctor Zhou?"

"Her bad temper was because she had hyperthyroidism, and a thyroid nodule was pressing on her trachea. The endocrinology department at De City Second Hospital is famous throughout the province. She went there to ask if she could be admitted for surgery in June."

"A person whose head is clouded by emotion, who abandons reason for the sake of feelings, cannot be a Sherlock Holmes."