Chapter 7

After Xi Siyan left, everyone quickly lost interest and dispersed.
They were no longer in their early twenties, no longer at the age of wild nights for their own sake. Most already had careers and families. Every gathering was just a taste of something different.
And Xi Siyan with Jing Miao—whenever those two appeared, even for someone as used to them as Wang Song, it still felt “different.”
Some things could be half-understood, half-spoken, never fully explained.
In short, they were the part of normal life that had gone off-track.
Chen Tianruo snorted. “So he stays foolish forever, and Xi Siyan raises him forever?”
Wang Song sighed. “You’ve been gone three years. You don’t know what happened in between. What I told you on WeChat was only the outline. I’ll just say this: not just ‘raise him forever’—if Jing Miao were gone…”
He turned his head. Their car was crossing the river bridge.
“Your Siyan-ge would jump into that river in minutes and take himself with him.”
Chen Tianruo froze. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. If Jing Miao is gone, Xi Siyan can’t survive.”
When Wang Song said this, his usual careless tone and resentment were gone.
He sounded serious. And sad.
At first, Jing Miao’s life was tied to Xi Siyan’s. Without Xi Siyan, Jing Miao didn’t know how to live.
Back then, Xi Siyan smoked a pack a day and drank without restraint. He moved through life in a haze, sighing as if he had been widowed. Mention Jing Miao, and he could smash everything in sight.
He was only twenty-four then—his best years—yet chained by “moral duty” to a simple-minded survivor he couldn’t shake off and couldn’t calmly accept.
The Xi family had money beyond measure, yet couldn’t solve one brain-damaged person.
Too many political eyes were on the family. A young man whose future was destroyed while saving their only son could be praised as moral achievement—or become a blade pressed to their throat.
They couldn’t “handle” him carelessly. Couldn’t send him to the most expensive institutions, to another province, or overseas…
They passed him through several middle-class relatives for foster care. None worked. No matter what they did, Jing Miao would find his way back, disheveled and desperate.
He recognized only Xi Siyan. No one else.
After this repeated several times, opponents got photos of Jing Miao in thin clothes, squatting in heavy rain at the Xi family gate, and spread them everywhere.
The Xi family had no choice but to announce they had adopted him as a godson.
But this godson didn’t recognize foster parents.
He recognized only his gege.
During that period, Xi Siyan hated Jing Miao.
He used vicious words, often shoved him away.
At his most hopeless, he grabbed Jing Miao by the throat and squeezed until his face turned red, eyes rolling back, dark finger marks left on his pale neck.
At that time, Xi Siyan truly wanted to kill him.
Yes, he owed Jing Miao his life.
But it wasn’t intentional. Jing Miao had rushed in and pushed him away. Xi Siyan hadn’t known anything in that instant.
After letting go, Xi Siyan crouched and cried, saying he would repay that life.
Jing Miao—who had just nearly been choked unconscious—struggled over to him and said, “Gege, don’t cry. I’ll be good from now on. I won’t make gege angry.”
He said, “Gege, hit me. Gege, scold me.”
Xi Siyan’s eyes were bloodshot as he glared at him.
Jing Miao trembled and said, “Gege, I’ll go squat outside. Don’t be angry.”
His clothes were torn and ragged. In deep winter below freezing, Jing Miao stood and walked out the door.
No sulking. No performance.
In his seven-year-old logic, he just wanted Xi Siyan to stop being angry.
He opened the door of the Xi family residence. Wind and snow swept in.
Then he gently closed the door, squatted by it, and repeated over and over:
“Gege, don’t be angry.”
He remembered that last time he squatted outside, Xi Siyan had exploded, saying he did it on purpose to make a scene.
So this time, he hid softly behind a stone pillar where no one could see him, sitting directly in snow already fist-deep.
Just one door separated him from Xi Siyan.
Outside, Jing Miao prayed to “Grandpa Snow” to make gege stop being angry.
Inside, Xi Siyan leaned against the door and cried.
In despair, Xi Siyan thought: my life is ruined. I’m hanging to death.
After that incident, Xi Siyan stopped resisting.
Jing Miao sat outside for half an hour. When he came back, his body was burning hot. Xi Siyan drove him to the family’s private hospital in the middle of the night.
The doctor said he was close to 39°C, and with existing brain damage…
Then the doctor muttered bitterly, pretending not to see the bruised choke marks on Jing Miao’s neck:
“Fine. Worst case he becomes a drooling idiot for life.”
Xi Siyan sat by the hospital bed, holding Jing Miao’s hand and saying sorry.
Even while sick, Jing Miao only called for “gege” again and again.
After Jing Miao recovered, Xi Siyan completely changed his old attitude and truly began acting like a brother.
In Jing Miao’s second year with the Xi family, the pampered young master learned to cook, wash clothes, clean, and handle every tiny detail of caring for a child.
At first, his parents were relieved.
The first year, Xi Siyan’s rebellion had disappointed them. A boy had become this way saving their son. His promising life had been rewound to seven years old. Any compensation from Xi Siyan and the Xi family was only right.
With the Xi family’s resources, raising ten more like him was nothing. It should have been simple: hire people and care for one fool until death.
But reality differed from expectation:
this “fool” was excessively dependent on their son from the moment he woke up, and it put immense pressure on Xi Siyan.
Xi Siyan had always been independent and hard to control. He hated being bound. Such a sudden burden was hard for him to accept—Su Wan and Xi Yucheng could understand that.
But they also couldn’t let him treat his savior too harshly.
So after Xi Siyan changed, they were actually happy.
They thought he had finally grown up.
That relief didn’t last long.
Su Wan began noticing signs.