The Genius Cannon Fodder's Counterattack 4

The plagiarism scandal was only the opening fanfare of Cheng Yuan's tragic fate.

When Yang Baihua got home and listened to Cheng Yuan sob out his despair, he gripped his shoulders and said, "Xiao Cheng, calm down."

Cheng Yuan's eyes were red. "Old Yang, believe me. You have to believe me."

Yang Baihua said, "Of course I believe you."

Cheng Yuan clutched at Yang Baihua, asking him over and over to confirm it, pleading for his help. "You watched me write that song, didn't you? I even played it for you, I even—"

Yang Baihua cupped Cheng Yuan's hand in his palm and pressed it against his own chest. "I know all of it."

Trembling, Cheng Yuan let himself lean into that solid, warm chest, like duckweed tossed in the wind finally finding something to cling to.

He listened to the heartbeat so close by, his ears going numb and hot, as if this one spot were the safest place in the whole world.

With that reassurance to lean on, fire flared up in Cheng Yuan's bloodshot eyes, and he said weakly through gritted teeth, "I can't just let this go. I'm going to sue Tang Huan. I want—"

Yang Baihua stiffened.

He stroked Cheng Yuan's back. "Xiao Cheng, you're too worked up right now. Don't make decisions at a time like this."

But Cheng Yuan could no longer be bothered with restraint.

His migraine was flaring badly. Before Yang Baihua got home he'd already taken two pills, but they hadn't kicked in yet. The headache and the fury tormented him until he was shaking all over, cold sweat pouring down him. "Why should I let it go? That's my song! I can't let her steal it and then frame me for it—"

Yang Baihua frowned, pushed him back a little, and raised his voice slightly. "Xiao Cheng, calm down and listen to me. You can't sue her."

Cheng Yuan opened his mouth soundlessly, staring at him, waiting for an explanation.

Yang Baihua sighed deeply. "...This whole mess—it was Xiaoyan who caused it."

Yang Baihua's cousin, Yang Xiaoyan, had been admitted to a second-tier teachers' college in the same city as her cousin a year and a half ago, and their third uncle had entrusted her care to Yang Baihua.

She came by often to eat at Yang Baihua's place, and she was the first person in the Yang family to find out about her cousin's orientation—she'd even used "keeping the secret" as an excuse to get Yang Baihua to treat her to several expensive meals.

The Yangs were all decent-looking people, and Yang Xiaoyan wasn't bad either, with a clean, pale, oval face. She liked music, and liked writing little tunes and lyrics of her own, which she posted online. Because her lyrics tended to strike a chord with the bright, melancholy feelings of young girls, she'd built up a following of nearly ten thousand fans. It made her quite proud of herself; she styled herself a gifted songwriter.

But in truth, Cheng Yuan didn't much like her.

Every time she came over, she pestered Cheng Yuan about how much a song could sell for, whether he had any connections for selling songs. Cheng Yuan didn't enjoy the subject and always brushed her off with some vague answer, but Yang Xiaoyan never seemed to read the room, and would even whine to Yang Baihua, saying, cousin, look at this, Brother Xiao Cheng's family has connections and he won't help me at all, it's no fun.

Xiaoyan lived in a four-person dorm room, and the other three girls were all local to the city. Not wanting to fall behind, she bought herself nice cosmetics and brand-name clothes.

At that rate of spending, of course her money never stretched far enough, so she often turned to Yang Baihua to borrow from. And Yang Baihua really did lend to her every single time, never once refusing—to the point that for a month straight he hadn't dared to order meat dishes in the company cafeteria.

Cheng Yuan found it painful to watch. It was around that time that he'd started learning to cook.

Cheng Yuan stared blankly at Yang Baihua, bewildered. "...What are you talking about?"

Yang Baihua, not without some chagrin, said, "Just now—right after I hung up with you—Xiaoyan called. Do you remember, the last time your parents and your third sister came into the city, you'd moved out to stay somewhere else. Her phone had died, so she used mine to browse Taobao, and while scrolling around she accidentally opened up the demo you wrote. She liked it a lot and asked if it was something you wrote, and kept complimenting you on it."

Cheng Yuan's eyes widened slightly.

Yang Baihua steeled himself. "I didn't think much of it at the time, I just said yes, you write songs often, and she just said 'oh' and kept playing around with it. I never expected she'd..."

Cheng Yuan finally understood, and said, unable to believe it, "She stole my song to sell it? And you just let her?"

"Don't put it that way," Yang Baihua said, helpless. "I didn't know about any of this. Xiaoyan... she really did just like your song, that's all. She told me she was short on money, wanted to earn some on her own, but the songs she wrote herself weren't good enough to pitch to companies, so she thought she'd mix some of your songs in with her own as a trial run. She never expected it would actually get picked—all six songs sold at once. 'Words from the Heart' and 'Autumn Thoughts'... Tang Huan picked those out for herself."

"'Just liked it'?" Every nerve in Cheng Yuan's body went rigid with fury. "She asked me once what I was going to name my song. I told her I'd already settled on one title: 'Words from the Heart.'"

He grabbed his phone, lit up the screen, and held up a line from Tang Huan's personal album for Yang Baihua to see. "...Old Yang, I'm asking you—what is this? She even copied the title word for word? And that's supposed to be an accident?"

"...You've written so many odds and ends of songs, and you never put any of them out there. She never expected you'd actually submit this one." Yang Baihua's tone, rare for him, grew heavier, and he reached out and gripped Cheng Yuan's wrist. "It's blown up into something this big—she never wanted that either. When she called me, she was terrified. She was crying, even."

Cheng Yuan thought numbly, what does she have to cry about.

Yang Baihua spoke earnestly, trying to talk him down. "She already knows she was wrong. But she's still young—you have to let her make mistakes, don't you? If you sue her, if this gets even bigger, how is she supposed to hold her head up at school? How am I supposed to explain myself to my family?"

As if a dash of cold water had been poured down his spine, Cheng Yuan gripped Yang Baihua and moaned in pain. "...And what about me? What about me? What am I supposed to do, then?"

Yang Baihua gently cupped Cheng Yuan's face. "It's fine. I believe you. Those netizens don't know the real situation, they're just running their mouths blindly. The second you pull the plug on the internet, none of them can hurt you."

Cheng Yuan had lived his whole life on smooth, easy ground, never once facing a real crisis, and this hit him like the earth cracking open and mountains collapsing—his mind was already a tangle of confusion, and Yang Baihua's steady tone shook him further. "...Is that so?"

"It is." Yang Baihua coaxed him on, patiently. "Think about it. My parents have doted on Xiaoyan like their own daughter since she was little. If our relationship gets exposed because of what Xiaoyan did, and Xiaoyan's reputation is ruined, tangled up in lawsuits—how do you expect them to accept you, after that?"

Cheng Yuan held his head in his hands and curled in on himself.

"...Why," Cheng Yuan murmured, "why..."

His dreams, his musical ambitions—all ruined.

And on top of that, the man he loved had firmly planted himself on the side of his own family. If he refused to take the blame for Yang Xiaoyan, there would be no future left for him and Yang Baihua.

The man he loved, or his ideals—which was he supposed to choose?

Cheng Yuan had been well-behaved since childhood, with no hobbies apart from music, and Yang Baihua was the first person he had ever cherished and loved with his whole heart.

To love someone is to tuck them away carefully in your heart, and still worry that your heart isn't soft enough for them.

Yang Baihua was good to him, gentle with him, would coax him through his artistic temper tantrums, was steady, hardworking, and the two of them were well matched even in bed.

Cheng Yuan couldn't bear it—after already surviving one storm that had broken him down to the bone, to have to tear his own chest open again, bleeding, and rip out by force the man he'd loved for three years.

He couldn't do it.

Cheng Yuan grabbed the hem of Yang Baihua's shirt and asked quietly, "If I carry this reputation on my back, how am I supposed to write songs anymore? Will anyone still want me?"

Hearing him soften, Yang Baihua let out a long breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

He pulled Cheng Yuan into his arms. "I want you."

...That was not the answer Cheng Yuan had wanted.

But it was also the best answer he could get, at this point.

Cheng Yuan's company issued a statement at lightning speed, sternly condemning the vile act of plagiarism, and promptly moved to terminate his contract, demanding he pay a breach-of-contract penalty.

At this critical moment, Cheng Yuan's older brother, Cheng Jian, came storming over and jabbed a finger at his younger brother's nose, laying into him. "Cheng Yuan, have you lost your mind? Something this huge happens and you don't even contact your family? If you didn't want to keep the Cheng name, you should have said so sooner!"

Cheng Yuan said nothing.

His own reputation was already ruined—and since he'd decided to hide the truth, he had to hide it from his own family too.

His older brother scolded him, paid off the settlement for him, spent money to get posts taken down online, and still wasn't satisfied—he even waded into the comments himself to trade insults with strangers.

When netizens noticed their comments were being deleted, the backlash only grew, and the controversy kept getting hotter. Tang Huan's company had no intention of letting such free publicity go to waste, either, and poured money into hiring paid online trolls and clickbait aggregator accounts to fan the flames from the shadows. Among them, one online singer-songwriter with over five hundred thousand followers was especially vicious—a well-known fan of Tang Huan's, he posted six or seven Weibo updates a day, hounding Cheng Yuan with mockery.

One of his posts read: "I bet the plagiarizing dog is curled up under the covers shaking in fear right now [doghead][doghead][doghead]."

Below it was a frenzy of Tang Huan's fans piling on, filthy language that made people sick to read.

Cheng Yuan was genuinely terrified by this point. He turned off his private messages, turned off his phone, and shut himself away. Yang Baihua, patient as he was, had only just started his job and didn't have the time to be with him every single day.

Cheng Yuan told himself, it would pass in time—if he could just hold on through this stretch, he could come back from it.

But afterward, Cheng Yuan found he couldn't write songs anymore, couldn't even bring himself to touch the piano. The moment he pressed down on a key, he'd think of the piano intro he'd so carefully composed for "Words from the Heart," and his heart would seize up with such sick dread that his hands shook—he couldn't get through a single complete song.

After trying over and over, he suddenly clenched both fists and slammed them down onto the piano.

The piano let out two groans, one high and one low.

In college, Cheng Yuan—the kind of genius who could single-handedly carry an entire orchestra—couldn't even play "Ode to Joy" anymore.

That day, he broke down and cried for a long time.

When Yang Baihua came home, he held him and tried to comfort him. "If you can't write, you can't write. I'll support you."

Yang Baihua had always been this gentle, as if what Cheng Yuan was going through wasn't anything so terrible, as if he would simply stand by him and shoulder it together.

But Cheng Yuan grew more and more unwell.

He would often sit on the edge of the bed for an entire day, not knowing what to do with himself; even a little sunlight would frighten him; he went through long stretches without eating, then the occasional binge; he kept forgetting where he'd put his keys and his wallet, and the sticky notes on his desk hadn't been updated in a long while.

He knew something was wrong with him, but whenever he tried to talk to Yang Baihua about it, all Yang Baihua would say was, you're just in a bad mood, go out and walk around more and you'll be fine.

Three months or so later, Cheng Jian—who still hadn't fully gotten over the fight with his younger brother—couldn't hold back any longer and snuck over to check on him.

Seeing his brother thinned down almost beyond recognition, Cheng Jian was shocked, and forcibly dragged him off to see a psychiatrist.

Cheng Jian laid the diagnosis of moderate depression down in front of their parents, and their mother burst into tears on the spot.

Their perfectly fine son, reduced to this—their father immediately set about contacting Yang Baihua's parents, wanting to know what exactly they thought they were doing.

It wasn't until they met with the Yang parents, whose faces were frozen in shock, that the Chengs learned that Yang Baihua had never, not once, told his own family that he had been in a relationship with a man for over three years.

The Cheng parents' position was clear: the domestic environment wasn't good for him. They intended to send little Yuan abroad to recuperate in a quiet small town, where there was a hospital that specialized in treating depression.

Given how sick he was, he couldn't do without Yang Baihua—Yang Baihua could go with him, and whether it was a work visa or emigration, the Chengs would handle it.

That small town was in Europe, in a country that had legalized same-sex marriage more than a decade earlier.

It could fairly be said that the Cheng parents had made an enormous concession, for their son's sake.

The Chengs had expected the Yangs to object, and had already prepared a stomach full of arguments to persuade them—but after a night of discussing it, the Yangs agreed the very next day.

Cheng Yuan and Yang Baihua emigrated together.

In the second year abroad, Cheng Yuan's condition improved enough that he could play piano again. When he sat back down on the piano bench, he smiled like a child. "Old Yang, what do you want to hear? I'll play it for you."

That year, they registered their marriage and held a simple ceremony at a church.

In the third year, Yang Baihua's career took off, and he suggested arranging for his own parents to emigrate as well. Cheng Yuan agreed.

In the fourth year, Yang Baihua grew busier and busier. One day when he came home, Cheng Yuan noticed the shirt he was wearing wasn't the one he'd gone out in the day before.

Cheng Yuan started taking his medication again.

He didn't know how to ask Yang Baihua about it, and didn't really want to know the answer. As for the Yang parents, they'd always kept a cool distance from him—not exactly unkind, but not warm either. Even living under the same roof, they barely exchanged two sentences in a day.

Yang Baihua was too busy, and Cheng Yuan was stuck at home with two elderly people he couldn't talk to—unbearably lonely.

But he didn't want his own parents to worry that he wasn't doing well, so every time he called them, he forced himself to put on the brightest smile he could manage and tell them, I'm doing great, don't worry about me.

In truth, he wasn't doing great at all.

After his illness relapsed, he thought about dying constantly, but didn't dare to go through with it—afraid of letting his parents down, afraid of hurting Yang Baihua. For their sake, he forced himself to keep living, forced himself to try to climb back out of the mire.

He wasn't afraid of being covered in mud himself. He was only afraid of accidentally dirtying the people he cared about.

Then one day, while Yang Baihua was off work, Cheng Yuan decided to drive to a supermarket about two kilometers away to buy groceries. He forgot his wallet and had to turn back, and on his way in, he happened to overhear a conversation between Yang Baihua and his mother outside the kitchen door.

Yang Baihua's mother was complaining, "You have no idea, Xiao Cheng is like a mute cricket with its mouth sewn shut—if he says five whole sentences in two days, I count myself lucky."

Even after all these years, Yang Baihua's tone was still as gentle as ever. "Xiao Cheng doesn't like talking much, Mom. Don't be hard on him for it."

Cheng Yuan lowered his head, embarrassed.

...In truth, he used to love talking.

Thinking this, he crept quietly toward the table to grab his wallet, and the moment he turned around, he heard Yang Baihua's mother say from behind him, "We've already got the immigration papers sorted for our family. When exactly are you planning to divorce him?"

Cheng Yuan: "..."

His neck had gone so stiff he couldn't turn it. He stood there, head down, staring blankly at the floor in front of his toes, waiting for Yang Baihua's answer.

Yang Baihua said nothing.

Cheng Yuan felt as if that silence had closed around his throat, choking the air out of him.

Yang Baihua's mother went on, "Being with a man, you can't have kids—that's never going to work out long-term. Your father and I have been lying to the relatives, telling them you're working abroad, and everyone keeps praising how well you've done for yourself. A couple days ago your uncle called, asked your dad to bring him back some foreign cigarettes and liquor, and asked after you too—asked if you'd found yourself a foreign wife yet, had a foreign baby. What am I supposed to tell him?!"

Each word landed on Cheng Yuan like a blade, and he shook all over, his stomach twisting and knotting with pain.

He bent slightly at the waist, wrapped his arms around his own paper-thin middle, and pressed in hard, trying to hold himself together.

"You could really stand a foreign wife, could you?" After a long pause, Yang Baihua's warm voice rose again. "A while back, we had a new girl join the company. Chinese. We get along quite well."

Satisfied, but with a new problem occurring to her, his mother asked, "So how do you plan to tell Xiao Cheng?"

This time, Yang Baihua was silent for even longer.

Cheng Yuan never got to hear Yang Baihua's answer—but he also didn't make Yang Baihua suffer through the discomfort of giving one for very long.

That night, he took a utility knife into the music room and cut open his own wrist.

Which was why Chi Xiaochi's initial impulse to run Yang Baihua down with a car had been entirely sincere.

Yang Baihua liked Cheng Yuan—but only liked him, nothing more.

Affection points: 72. Just thirteen points away from failing. Worth exactly one card, and one firework.

Chi Xiaochi went home with Yang Baihua.

The living room television murmured with city news, and every so often Yang Baihua's voice carried from his calls.

Chi Xiaochi changed into house clothes, went into the kitchen, rolled up his sleeves, and washed the dishes that had been piling up in the sink for two days.

In his relaxed state, Chi Xiaochi always wore an air of lazy indifference. Standing in front of a sink clogged with food scraps, lids drooping low over his eyes, letting the water slide off his long, pale fingers, his whole body radiated an unhurried, languid elegance—a kind of innate nobility that actually fit rather well with young Master Cheng's identity.

But the way he washed dishes was oddly skilled, nothing like someone whose hands had never touched dishwater.

The system asked him, "You know how to wash dishes?"

Chi Xiaochi said, perfectly straight-faced, "I can cook too."

The system didn't believe him for a second—because the moment Chi Xiaochi put on a serious face, something was never quite serious.

Sure enough, the very next second, with that same solemn expression, he asked, "By the way, is there any rat poison in storage?"

The system said flatly, "No."

The system now seriously suspected that Chi Xiaochi's sudden enthusiasm for housework was just him scouting out a crime scene.

Chi Xiaochi said, "I was just asking."

The system, deadpan: "...Oh."

Chi Xiaochi proposed, "Could we stock some? It's a customer request."

The system said, "No."

Chi Xiaochi said, "To poison a rat."

The system: "..." May I ask whether this rat weighs about a hundred and thirty pounds and goes by the surname Yang?

The system couldn't hold back any longer. "Mr. Chi, is there not a slightly less violent solution available?"

"There is." Chi Xiaochi, taking his time, wiped the washed dishes dry with a cloth and set them neatly into the rack, and finally said something that sounded almost normal. "Tomorrow I'm planning to go see Cheng Yuan's older brother."