When I Meet the Moon - Chapter 83

Chapter 83

Before coming to Nanwu, Yun Li had already contacted Jiang Yuan's parents in advance to let them know she would be dropping by for a visit this afternoon.

Not lingering at Jiangnan Garden for too long, Yun Li used the excuse of heading to the Nanjing University of Science and Technology to see a female classmate, borrowing Fu Shize's car to head out.

Ever since Fu Shize had spoken to her about Jiang Yuan last time, the two of them had not brought up the topic again.

Yet his demeanor always gave the impression that nothing in the world was truly troubling him.

Yun Li remembered the bottle of sleeping pills in his drawer, most of which had already been consumed.

When she first joined the company, Zhou Tuo had mentioned to her that Jiang Yuan was an only child, and the few members of Unique had all been like brothers to him. After Jiang Yuan passed away, Zhou Tuo and the other members of Unique had pooled together a sum of money for his parents.

At the time, Jiang Yuan's parents had repeatedly confirmed with Zhou Tuo that none of the money came from Fu Shize before they were willing to accept it.

Fu Shize was well aware of this fact.

Zhou Tuo had also told her that someone had been secretly sending money to Jiang Yuan's parents all these years.

Yun Li pressed her lips into a tight line.

This whole situation felt as though Jiang Yuan's parents, unable to accept the loss of their son, had forcibly shifted the blame onto Fu Shize.

Yet what did he ever do wrong that he should be forced to shoulder this crushing guilt and the blame imposed by others for so many years?

The address Zhou Tuo had given her was only a half-hour drive from Jiangnan Garden, and all the way there under the guidance of the navigation system, her heart was filled with nervous trepidation.

The residential complex where Jiang Yuan's family lived had been built in the 1990s. The old buildings were dilapidated, their walls and antiquated protruding anti-theft window grills streaked with rust. Located in one of Nanwu's older urban districts, the neighborhood was now mostly inhabited by elderly residents after local industries had relocated.

Arriving downstairs, Yun Li pressed the doorbell, and Jiang's mother answered the door promptly.

The apartment was on the sixth floor without an elevator. By the time Yun Li reached the third floor, she spotted Jiang's father and mother coming down to welcome her.

Jiang Yuan was a few years older than Fu Shize, meaning his parents should have been around fifty, but their weathered faces made them look closer to sixty.

The couple greeted her warmly, showering her with solicitous questions. Since Jiang Yuan had studied at Xikeda and Yun Li had mentioned during her initial contact that she was from Xifu, they harbored not the slightest suspicion about her identity.

The apartment was small—a compact two-bedroom layout at a single glance. The interior decoration was simple and unpretentious, the furniture showing its age, yet right in the center of the living room sat a twenty-seven-inch LCD television.

"It's been a very long time since any of Yuan-yuan's classmates came to visit us," Jiang's mother said with a faint smile, gesturing for Yun Li to sit down by the coffee table.

Hearing this, Yun Li looked at her, the wrinkles around the older woman's eyes inexplicably tugging at her heartstrings.

A generous assortment of fruit was already prepared on the table.

Gesturing toward the television, Jiang's mother told her, "This TV was actually a gift from one of Yuan-yuan's classmates two years ago. But since his father and I are hardly ever home and never received a call, we still have no idea who sent it."

"Are the two of you doing well?" Yun Li asked.

Jiang's father smiled faintly. "We're doing alright. Life just goes on day by day. Whenever we miss our son, we go into his room and look at his things."

"May I take a look at Senior's room?" Yun Li didn't immediately state the real purpose of her visit. Accustomed to visitors, Jiang's mother stood up and led her toward the bedroom.

Jiang Yuan's room was small, featuring an old-fashioned window facing south where two potted plants sat on the sill. The bed was still made with its quilt neatly spread, and beside it stood a wooden student desk piled high with various reference books from elementary, middle, and high school.

The room's arrangement made it look as though someone were still actively living there.

A few group photos were pasted onto the wall, secured simply at the four corners with uneven strips of tape. Unlaminated, the photographs had already oxidized, turned yellow, and faded with age.

She spotted Fu Shize in several of the pictures—snapshots of Jiang Yuan's parents taking the two boys out fishing and playing ball.

Noticing Yun Li looking at the photographs, Jiang's mother remarked, "Most of the people in these pictures are his father, me, and a friend who grew up alongside Yuan-yuan since childhood. He was Yuan-yuan's classmate—do you happen to know him?" At that point, she let out a sigh. "Yuan-yuan treated him like a younger brother, and we looked at him like a son of our own. But ever since Yuan-yuan left, we haven't seen him for many years."

"..."

"He's a good kid, too."

Yun Li asked, "Doesn't he come to visit the two of you?"

The woman before her fell silent for a moment, her gaze dimming. "He used to come. We were the ones who told him not to come anymore."

Following the thread of conversation, Yun Li probed cautiously, "Did he do something wrong?"

"That boy is simple-minded. Perhaps his actions inadvertently hurt Yuan-yuan without him even realizing it," Jiang's mother said, staring fixedly at the photographs. "Yuan-yuan was ill, and that child had promised us he would keep an eye on him. But he was busy at the time and probably didn't pay close enough attention."

Her tone was calm yet utterly resolute: "As his parents, we have no qualification to accept his compensation on Yuan-yuan's behalf."

From the perspective of Jiang Yuan's parents, his final diary entry undoubtedly pointed to the fact that he had been crushed by Fu Shize's brilliance. Furthermore, they could not accept that Fu Shize had explicitly claimed he watched Jiang Yuan swallow his medicine, only for it to turn out that Jiang Yuan never took it.

It felt as though Fu Shize hadn't cared about Jiang Yuan's struggles at all—failing to supervise his medication, ignoring his emotional state, and focusing solely on his own advancement.

Before coming here, out of a protective urge and a deep ache for Fu Shize, Yun Li had felt a certain degree of resentment toward Jiang Yuan's parents. She had expected to confront stubborn, close-minded people who blamed the world for their woes.

Had that been the case, she might have found a reason to steel herself and reopen their painful wounds.

Yet the couple was remarkably calm, because from their vantage point, that was precisely what the facts appeared to be.

"May I look at his books?" Yun Li asked.

"Of course." Shaking off her previous melancholy with practiced ease, Jiang's mother said gently, "They're mostly study guides. There are also a few of Yuan-yuan's childhood diaries in here if you'd like to read them."

She pulled several notebooks from the bookshelf; their covers were almost entirely adorned with Ultraman designs.

Jiang Yuan hadn't kept his diary on a fixed schedule—roughly once a week, recording the major events of that period. Most of the entries were innocent and carefree, detailing various amusing anecdotes of his growing up, alongside numerous appearances by Fu Shize.

Reading through these early diaries, Yun Li gleaned only one undeniable conclusion.

-- Jiang Yuan had always looked up to Fu Shize as a younger brother.

Flipping through the pages, she found the entries abruptly stopped by the end of his freshman year. Up until that point, not a single trace of negative emotion existed in his journals.

Pausing, she looked up and asked, "Did Senior stop writing diaries after entering university?"

Jiang Yuan's depression must have manifested during his doctoral studies.

"We brought all his belongings back from his dormitory," Jiang's mother said, looking somewhat perplexed herself. "His father and I never found any other diaries."

Pondering for a moment, Yun Li asked, "Did Senior have a computer?"

"Yes, he did." Jiang's mother immediately pulled open a drawer, revealing a very thick laptop resting inside, next to which sat a neatly arranged collection of memorabilia. Yun Li noticed an item bearing the logo of Unique among them.

"This was the gaming team Yuan-yuan joined. He won a lot of championships with them." Mentioning Jiang Yuan's past glories as she handed the items to Yun Li, the mother's eyes flashed with a hint of maternal pride.

After studying the items for a moment, Yun Li realized that one of them was actually a USB flash drive.

The interface showed extremely clear signs of frequent use.

"Auntie, would you mind if I helped you search through it? There's a chance I might find Senior's later diaries."

Jiang Yuan's parents didn't seem particularly accustomed to using computers or smartphones. Hearing Yun Li offer to help find the diaries, they thanked her repeatedly.

Starting up the computer took a considerable amount of time; the antiquated laptop lagged severely. Waiting patiently for a few minutes, Yun Li watched as the desktop finally loaded, displaying an image of a drone as the wallpaper. She froze—it was the exact same drone that Yunye had taken away.

Without dwelling on it, Yun Li plugged the USB drive directly into the port.

The drive contained nothing else aside from a single Word document.

Opening it, Yun Li discovered that it contained Jiang Yuan's journal entries from his sophomore year onward.

His journaling frequency had dropped to roughly once a month, and Yun Li skimmed through them rapidly. The latter half of the entries documented his experiences starting from his senior year.

A crushing sense of disparity and overwhelming pressure stemmed entirely from his research life, and Jiang Yuan had begun growing increasingly swamped. Despite his grueling workload, his advisor continuously squeezed his personal time, repeatedly mocking and suppressing him across every imaginable front—whether in daily life, academic research, or professional tasks.

Initially, Jiang Yuan believed he could turn the situation around through his own competence, but his advisor systematically stripped away his time and achievements. The professor would make Jiang Yuan run errands like babysitting, buying lunch, and grocery shopping, while treating all of Jiang Yuan's academic output as garbage—only to turn around and steal the authorship credits for himself. When Jiang Yuan objected, the professor threatened him with expulsion.

Jiang Yuan reported the matter to the department and wrote letters to the university president, but none of it yielded any results. It only served to invite further public humiliation and verbal abuse from his advisor.

His self-confidence and high-spirited nature were chipped away piece by piece until he was left hollowed out. Yet, his parents held sky-high expectations for him, pinning their hopes on him becoming a professor to elevate the family's modest financial situation and social standing.

Whenever he picked up the phone intending to pour his heart out, upon hearing his parents' eager, loving inquiries, he forced the words back down his throat.

"Everything is going great over here."

By the first year, Jiang Yuan was already struggling to cope. Plunged into excruciating agony, he desperately wanted to change his circumstances. Yet everyone else in the laboratory silently endured the abuse, while he remained the one who resisted the most fiercely.

Fighting back entirely on his own, he ended up feeling like a bumbling clown.

Soon, he began doubting his own incompetence—believing that he was simply incapable of balancing everything, that he was at fault for failing to satisfy his advisor.

He had once casually mentioned the idea of dropping out to his parents, but it had met with their fierce opposition. In the early days, he had vented some of his frustrations to Fu Shize, but later, terrified that Fu Shize would think him incompetent, he buried everything deep inside his own heart.

Among the entries from these final years, the rare fragments of happiness were invariably tied to participating in competitions, playing ball games, and going mountain climbing with his good brothers.

...

[Feeling like the two luckiest things in my life are, first, that my parents love me so much, and second, that I have a great brother like Ah Ze.]

[Thought about it for a long time and finally decided to see a therapist. Ended up diagnosed with depression. I feel even more heartbroken, and I'm so sorry to my parents. But thinking that no matter what happens to me, Ah Ze will help me take care of my mom and dad, it still feels like a blessing after all.]

...

[Taking the meds is helping; I rarely dwell on those negative thoughts anymore. The competition is coming up soon, and we should be able to win another championship this year.]

...

[Doing a bit better lately. The boss seems to have let up on me a bit, telling me to focus on writing my paper. My concentration is really poor after taking the medication, so I'm planning to stop taking the pills for a short while, get my current paper submitted to meet the doctoral graduation requirements, and then resume the medication. Mom, Dad, and Ah Ze definitely won't agree—Ah Ze camps outside my office door every single day to watch me take my meds like some temple guardian deity. He'd flip out instantly if he found out I skipped them. Sigh, everyone cares about me so much, so I really don't want to let anyone down.]

This was the final entry in Jiang Yuan's document.

Reading through these words, Yun Li didn't realize until she regained her senses that tears were streaming down both cheeks.

Just as Fu Shize had described, Jiang Yuan had faced the world with gentleness and loved those around him, yet he had been met with monstrous unfairness.

Seeing her cry, Jiang's mother—who had just stepped back in with a plate of fruit—panicked. Yun Li quickly wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. Her phone buzzed at that exact moment with a message from Fu Shize: [Lili, when are you heading back?]

"I found Senior's diaries. I just read them." Yun Li sniffled. Hearing this, Jiang's father hurried back into the room; for the elderly couple, ever since their son's passing, they had frantically clung to anything and everything connected to his past.

Yun Li helped them unearth a full six years' worth of diaries.

The two elderly people put on their reading glasses to read, their failing eyesight making the screen smart and ache after only a brief moment. Seeing this, Yun Li explained the basic operation of the computer to them and then hurried downstairs to a nearby print shop to run off two bound copies.

On her way back to the complex, Fu Shize called her. The background on his end sounded somewhat bustling as he asked casually, "Shall I pick you up at the supermarket when you head back?"

"Ah Ze." Yun Li paused for a long, heavy moment before forcing herself to say, "I wasn't at the Department of Science and Technology visiting my advisor today."

"..." Fu Shize fell silent for a beat. "You're at Huayuan?"

"Yes..." Yun Li lowered her eyes. "I found Big Brother Jiang Yuan's diaries from his final years. Would you like me to drive over and pick you up?"

"No need, I'll take a cab over."

Fu Shize didn't ask why she was at Huayuan, nor did he ask about the contents of the diaries. Instead, he simply asked, "Did anyone give you a hard time?"

"No..."

"Alright, are you outside right now?" Hearing the ambient noise over the phone, Fu Shize deduced as much. When Yun Li confirmed it, his voice remained steady and calm. "Stay outside and wait for me to get there."

Yun Li hung up the phone, standing rooted to the spot in a daze.

She had assumed that at a moment like this, Fu Shize would be far more concerned with the contents of the diary than with her.

Yet he hadn't mentioned it at all. His sole objective in coming seemed driven entirely by the instinct to keep her from facing any potential trouble, which was why he told her to stay outside.

Disobeying Fu Shize's instructions, Yun Li walked back inside the apartment and handed the two printed copies of the diaries to Jiang Yuan's parents.

She accompanied the two elderly people patiently as they flipped through the pages.

By the final entries, Jiang's mother's face was completely drenched in tears. Covering her face, she wailed in agony, "So many things happened... why didn't you tell your mother, why didn't you listen to the doctors..."

A sudden, piercing realization struck her. Jiang Yuan had once mentioned to her that he was struggling to adapt to doctoral life and wanted to drop out to find a job directly.

Like so many parents, they hadn't truly listened; they had only had eyes for their son's bright future.

Yet...

If only Jiang Yuan had spoken to her just one more time.

No matter what else, what mattered most to her above all else was that her son stayed alive and safe.

Yun Li sat quietly by their side. Once both of them had grown somewhat calmer, she said softly, "Uncle, Auntie, please don't grieve anymore. Senior loved you both so much; he wouldn't want to see you like this..."

She paused, gathering her courage. "Actually, the reason I came here this time is because of Fu Shize. Because of what happened to Senior, Ah Ze has carried an immense amount of guilt, and it's the reason he took such a long leave of absence from school."

"Uncle, Auntie, what happened back then really cannot be blamed on Ah Ze. He is a person who values emotional bonds above all else, and he practically treated Senior like his own older brother. As you can read in Senior's diary, Ah Ze did watch him take his medicine, and he wanted nothing more than for Senior to survive."

Yun Li recounted bits and pieces of Fu Shize's story to them. Her phone kept vibrating persistently in her pocket. A few minutes later, someone knocked on the door.

Jiang's mother went to open it. When she caught sight of Fu Shize standing outside, she visibly froze. He stepped silently into the apartment, his furrowed brow relaxing only when he saw that Yun Li was sitting safely on the sofa.

Fu Shize hadn't seen Jiang Yuan's parents in over three years.

Nor had he set foot in this apartment for years.

The elderly couple's daily life appeared to go on just as it always had.

Out of long-standing habit, Fu Shize assumed they had no desire whatsoever to lay eyes on him.

For all these years, the endless guilt regarding Jiang Yuan and his parents had weighed on him so heavily he could barely breathe. Standing before them once more, Fu Shize found himself momentarily at a loss for words.

Yun Li watched as he lowered his head, his dark hair casting shadows across his eyes. Within this cramped, gloomy space, his slender shoulders appeared rigid and tense.

"You two should leave." Jiang's mother was still standing by the doorway, her voice trembling with fluctuating emotions.

"..."

Abruptly hit with a dismissal, Yun Li felt her voice quiver. "Uncle, Auntie, Senior never blamed Ah Ze. Please don't blame him either, okay?"

The two of them wore heavy, grim expressions as they repeated, "Please leave."

"Uncle, Auntie..." Yun Li repeated dazedly. Fu Shize walked over to her side, took her hand, and began leading her toward the exit.

As they reached the doorway, he paused, turned his head slightly, and spoke the only sentence he would offer.

"Please take good care of yourselves.”