Chapter 48

*Crush: A Glimpse of Dawnlight*
“Sang-sang, I’m not as good as you think.”
Xie Yuncheng gave a quiet, self-mocking laugh. “You’ve met my mother. You can tell—between the two of us, there isn’t much warmth.”
Qin Sang paused and didn’t answer.
She thought of how she’d once heard them arguing in the office. In the middle of the clash, Lady Xie had been so worked up she slapped him.
She really had been frightened then. Her own parents loved each other and treated her well. She had never seen a mother hit her son that hard—so easily resorting to threats of death.
Even as an outsider just watching, that kind of family atmosphere felt suffocating.
Qin Sang didn’t know how to comfort him. The pain an original family brings isn’t something an ordinary person can truly understand, and those who haven’t lived it can’t easily empathize.
“My parents…”
Xie Yuncheng hooked his lips in a sardonic curve. “They separated early on and each started their own lives. You’ve probably heard about my father too—he’s recently been dragged into a corruption case. Do you want to know who reported him?”
Qin Sang thought for a moment. “Who?”
Xie Yuncheng smiled with mockery. “His mistress.”
Qin Sang was stunned. She didn’t know the fine details of the Xie family’s affairs. She’d only heard from Liu Chengcheng that Xie Zhenting had been reported for corruption. The investigation was still ongoing; if it was confirmed, it might even implicate Xie Yuncheng.
Look—how unfair the world could be.
Xie Yuncheng was clearly a victim too, yet he still had to be dragged down by his original family. He had never received even a fraction of the care and protection he should have gotten from his parents. Instead, because of blood, they could seize and bind him at every turn.
“My father and my mother married for love too. For my father, my mother broke with her family and married into the Xies despite all objections. At first, they had two years of calm days.”
Zhou Wanqing and Xie Zhenting being together had been the result of Xie Zhenting pursuing her. But Xie Zhenting had a notorious reputation; the Zhou family, a scholarly household, couldn’t tolerate such a libertine as a son-in-law. No matter what, they refused to approve the marriage.
Zhou Wanqing wouldn’t let go. She would rather cut ties with her parents than give him up, and in the early days of marriage they really did live well—husband and wife in love, sweet and close. But good times didn’t last. After Zhou Wanqing became pregnant, Xie Zhenting began staying out all night. At first he was cautious; later he grew more and more brazen, cheating frequently.
Their fights grew worse and worse. In the end, Xie Zhenting simply stopped coming home, spending nights elsewhere. The secretary by his side was his first love from long ago—the one that had once ended without a result. After she returned to the country, Xie Zhenting rekindled the old affair and kept her with him.
“Later their relationship broke down. They fought every day. The worst time was when I graduated from junior high—they were fighting for a divorce.”
Or rather, Xie Zhenting was determined to divorce to “give an explanation” to his first love, while Zhou Wanqing refused. No matter what, she wouldn’t surrender the position of ‘Madam Xie’ to someone else.
They argued fiercely, completely ignoring that he was still in the house. Xie Zhenting’s eyes were bloodshot. “Look at you—what do you even look like now? Do you still look like the young lady of a scholarly family? You’re a shrew! I’m divorcing you for our son’s sake. He can’t grow up with a crazy woman like you.”
Zhou Wanqing was completely provoked. She screamed hysterically, “Who made me like this? These past few years, everything you’ve done—I closed one eye and pretended not to see. Haven’t I endured enough? Now you want to kick me out just to prop up that woman? I’m telling you—no way! Our son is mine! If that woman wants to step into the Xie family, it’ll be over my dead body! Xie Zhenting, you’d better not push me! Push me too far and we can all die together!”
Xie Zhenting cursed a couple times, grabbed his suit jacket, and stormed out, stepping over shards of broken glass all over the floor. As he lifted his head, he happened to see Xie Yuncheng standing on the second floor.
Back then, the boy was in the middle of a rapid growth spurt—his frame all angles, his height already close to Xie Zhenting’s. He stood there watching, his face indifferent, emotionless.
Xie Zhenting felt guilty under that gaze. Before leaving, he spat out a spiteful curse: “A crazy woman raises nothing decent. One and all, you’re not right in the head.”
…
Xie Yuncheng still found it ironic. “My mother refused to give in. In the end, they only broke up in anger. But she couldn’t think it through—she wanted to kill herself.”
Zhou Wanqing probably couldn’t accept that she’d broken with her parents for Xie Zhenting, only to end up being swept out the door.
That night, after she fought with Xie Zhenting, Zhou Wanqing went to extremes. She knocked on Xie Yuncheng’s door and took him away by car. Before they left, she said with unusual gentleness, “Xiaochen, since the Xie family can’t容纳 us and your father is so heartless, then we’ll leave. We won’t stay here and get in their way. Come with Mom, alright?”
At the time, Xie Yuncheng didn’t think much of it. He only thought she had truly come to her senses—that she wanted to end a hopeless marriage and go back to the Zhou family, or start over with him somewhere else.
She did want to start over—but at the cost of life.
“She drove into the guardrail by the moat. The car got stuck at the edge and didn’t fall into the river. We were lucky and survived. She only suffered light injuries and fell into a coma.”
The moment he realized Zhou Wanqing wanted to commit suicide was when she sped wildly, trying to crash head-on into an oncoming heavy truck. He reacted quickly, unfastened his seat belt, and reached over to seize the steering wheel. The car swerved. The tires scraped the ground with a sharp screech. The body of the car brushed past the truck’s edge—and then, without warning, slammed into the moat guardrail.
The deployed airbag saved Zhou Wanqing’s life. She only struck her head and lost consciousness. Xie Yuncheng was hurt far more severely. Without a seat belt to reduce the force, the impact on his body was heavy, and he took almost all the shattered window glass. His hand was injured the worst; glass fragments pierced it and severed nerves.
He was hospitalized with severe injuries and lay unconscious. He spent almost the entire summer in the ICU, only waking up on the eve of the new semester.
But the incident was disgraceful. To minimize the impact, the story given to the outside was only that Zhou Wanqing had been in a car accident by mistake. As for the public, the news only reported that a mother and son had been in danger. No one knew their names.
He lay in bed for two months. Multiple fractures, a cracked sternum—he could barely move and couldn’t get out of bed. Later he gradually recovered, but his hand was left with lasting damage and required long-term rehabilitation to regain function.
Zhou Wanqing’s goal was still achieved. At that time, the old master of the Xie family hadn’t stepped down yet. He didn’t want to deal with his worthless son, Xie Zhenting, but he hadn’t expected it to go this far. The old man rushed back overnight from the capital to Jing City. He raised his blackwood cane and struck Xie Zhenting across the knee—right in front of the doctors. He even split his head open, then laid down a harsh warning:
“Even a tiger won’t eat its own cub! Fine—you two can be ridiculous with your marriage if you want. But to lay such a vicious hand on your own son? If you can’t clean up those women you keep outside, then get the hell out of the Xie family!”
Xie Zhenting covered his head, blood running down his face. “Dad, what does this have to do with Xiaoyue? If Zhou Wanqing hadn’t gone crazy, how would Xiaochen have been hurt? Besides, Xiaoyue is already pregnant—she’s due next year. At a time like this you want me to abandon her? Isn’t that being faithless? Dad, Xiaochen is your grandson, and the child in Xiaoyue’s belly—”
“You bastard!” The old master was furious. “How did I ever produce something lower than pigs and dogs? I’m warning you: the Xie family will only have one child—Xiaochen. I’d rather not have a son like you than let Xiaochen stay with you!”
The hospital became chaos. But Xie Yuncheng remained indifferent. Once his body improved, he went back to school.
…
Qin Sang suddenly thought of something—car accident? Back then he hadn’t attended military training, saying it was because of a car accident. At the opening ceremony he still hadn’t recovered, and his hand was in a cast.
Could it be…
When she realized the terrifying possibility, Qin Sang couldn’t breathe. She felt suffocated.
How could someone be so selfish?
To take your own child with you to die—to make such an irresponsible decision.
What right did she have to take away someone else’s right to live? And that person was her own son—the one who trusted her and depended on her.
Qin Sang didn’t even dare think deeper. When he realized that the person he trusted had actually wanted his life—how heartbroken and how shattered must he have been?
“Don’t look at me like that, Sang-sang.”
Xie Yuncheng’s smile was very faint. “You’re afraid that I confessed on a spur of pity. Now that you know my secret, you won’t be afraid that it was pity.”
“Sang-sang, my father has been in the hospital all this time. I’ve never once gone to see him. Only you would think I’m… someone with humanity.”
Xie Yuncheng’s expression didn’t change, as if what he was talking about didn’t matter, as if the person he mentioned had nothing to do with him at all.
But she knew—how could he truly not care?
He was easier to soften than anyone. In the past, for an old woman he didn’t even know, he’d hurt his own hand; even now, his hand might still not have fully recovered.
How could someone like him truly ignore a blood relative? Maybe he hated Xie Zhenting, but he wasn’t someone who disregarded life. If it weren’t for his bottom line—because he cared too much—he wouldn’t be suffering like this, and he wouldn’t be considering giving up the career he loved.
“Why do you belittle yourself?”
Qin Sang’s voice was dry. She hadn’t known that his past had been this hard. She had once seen conflict between him and his mother, the sharp contradictions, but she never imagined that, where others couldn’t see, it had escalated to the point of fighting with their lives.
“The Xie Yuncheng I know has never looked down on himself.”
Qin Sang leaned closer on her own initiative, her gaze gentle yet firm. “No matter what it was like before, at least now, you still have me. I’ll always be with you.”
All at once, she rose on tiptoe and kissed him lightly. Her soft lips pressed onto his thin lips like a hint, and she said very quietly, “If you need comfort, I’m always here.”