A guest table with two people sitting against each other.
Gao Shi clasped his arms and folded his legs, looking from top to down at his good son, whom he had just brought home from the police station.
“Explain, what happened?”
GaoGusheng hung his head, his thick bangs covering his eyes, looking like a shriveled cabbage, “I don’t know what’s going on either.”
Gao Shi slapped the table, and the oranges on the table jumped with him, “Don’t know what’s going on. Why are you in a hotel?!”
As soon as he said this, Gao Gusheng didn’t mourn anymore; he also followed with a slap —— and didn’t slap down, went for a turn of the hand to grab an orange.
He peeled the orange while saying, “I put that dog sh*t thing ……”
“(Slap!)”
This time, Gao Shi’s slap landed on Gao Gusheng’s head.
“No swearing!”
“Owww——! It hurts, Dad!”
Gao Gusheng rubbed his hair wildly, and his thick bangs were lifted, revealing a breathtaking face.
He was completely unaware, gently plucking an orange from its white stem in one smooth motion and offering it to Gao Shi in an attempt to please. ‘Here, Dad, have an orange.”
Seeing Gao Shi take the orange, Gao Gusheng then spoke seriously, “Actually, today is Wen Liang’s birthday. He invited many classmates to a dinner party. You know about my alcohol tolerance, Dad. Normally, two Kilos of white wine just whets my appetite—but this time, I felt dizzy and lacked strength after just half a glass of beer.”
“I did pay attention; that beer was poured from the same bottle, the student next to me drank it all right, I got drunk on it alone.”
“He must have done something.”
“What happened later, *cough*, Dad knew it already; he took me to the hotel, I was not completely drunk, and beat him by surprise.”
Gao Gusheng watched Gao Shi put the last piece of orange into his mouth, succinctly and forcefully making a final summary for this matter- “Anyways, it’s just that I treated him as a brother, and he actually wanted to f*** me!”
“You…” Gao Shi’s head aches, suspecting he might have caught a cold. After briefly rubbing his temples, he continues, “What’s the deal with that Wen…What’s his name, Wen? Wen senior? How did you get involved with him?”
Gao Gusheng had known from a young age that he had a peculiar knack for attracting strange people.
He didn’t care about appearances. To avoid any future troubles, he had opted for a ragged haircut, shaved off his eyebrows, and wore huge glasses that covered half of his face, thoroughly concealing his features that seemed to draw people in.
Afterward, his surroundings indeed became much more peaceful, allowing his father, who had been shielding him from unwanted attention, to finally have a few years of silence.
Gao Gusheng was always proud of this tactic, claiming that the friends he made this way were genuine friends who didn’t care about appearances.
And indeed, it turned out to be true. Those who could see past Gao Gusheng’s mediocre, old-fashioned, and nearly slovenly exterior to recognize his interesting soul—a trait Gao Gusheng prided himself on—ultimately became his closest friends.
…Although Gao Shi suspected that Gao Gusheng was just too lazy to tidy himself up.
After entering university, Gao Gusheng still maintained such a look but unexpectedly gained the favor of senior Wen Liang. Gao Gusheng felt an instant connection with Wen Liang and thought he had made another friend, but he didn’t anticipate what would happen next.
Gao Gusheng rubbed his head in distress and said, “I don’t know why Wen Liang made a move on me. Could it be that he saw my face when I wasn’t paying attention?”
Gao Gusheng lifted the bangs on his forehead, revealing his eyebrows that were shaved in a messy manner.
“Dad, look at my eyebrows, aren’t they shaved edgy enough this time?”
Gao Shi took a closer look and saw that one of the eyebrows was shaved extremely thin and arched high, as if it were cleaving the heavens; the other was trimmed into an oval and drooped down, resembling the bold spirit of splitting the earth.
Not stopping there, the owner of these eyebrows, in an effort to let his “artistic bacteria” flourish exceptionally, repeatedly outlined the drooping one with an eyebrow pencil, aiming for a look reminiscent of Crayon Shin-chan.
When Gao Gusheng raised his head, the “blood basin big mouth” painted to resemble a sausage lip under his prominent nose bridge was also exposed, inevitably reminding one of the Western Poison from “The Eagle Shooting Heroes”.
Gao Shi felt as if his eyes were assaulted at the sight.
Gao Shi: Take it away take it away take it away, quick, take it away.
This face could be described as.
Unbearably hideous.
However, when Gao Shi encountered them at the hotel, the mess on Gao Gusheng’s face had already been wiped clean, and even the haphazardly shaved eyebrows couldn’t hide his good looks.
Gao Shi pressed his temples again, considering another possibility.
Gao Gusheng’s “camouflage” was beginning to fail.
He looked up to see his son picking up another orange and beginning to peel it. His slender and fair fingers moved skillfully, caressing the orange peel with an inexplicably enticing grace.
Bits and pieces flooded into his mind, causing Gao Shi to jolt suddenly, a sense of indescribable oppression surging in his heart, followed by a severe headache.
“Dad, what’s wrong? Does your head hurt again?”
Gao Gusheng quickly put down the orange and squatted next to Gao Shi in a few steps.
Gao Shi lowered the hand that was massaging his temple and saw his son’s face full of concern, asking, “Dad, is it *that time* of the month again?”
The old father endured, saying to himself “this is my child” twice, ultimately refraining from slapping.
He placed his hand on Gao Gusheng’s head and rubbed it vigorously, like petting a dog’s head, “I’m fine.”
“Dad knows why Wen Liang noticed you, but we still need to consult a Taoist priest to confirm the specific reason. Take a few days off and ask for leave from your teachers.”
His tousled hair lifted to reveal a bloodstain on the side of his ear, a scrape he got during the scuffle with Wen Liang.
The area around the bloodstain was tinged with purple and blue, standing out starkly against his pale skin, making it particularly striking.
Gao Shi paused his hand, facing Gao Gusheng’s surprised gaze, he lifted him up and then pressed his head into his chest to smooth his hair.
“Scared?”
Gao Gusheng wanted to crack a joke to lighten the mood or laugh it off.
He knew his dad hadn’t had a good rest because of his troubles and didn’t want to worry him further. But still, just a kid, when he buried his head in his dad’s chest, the humiliation and near assault he experienced at the hotel surged back.
He quietly shed a few tears.
After a while, he took a deep breath and pulled his head out of Gao Shi’s embrace like pulling a radish, his hair sticking out like a sea urchin.
His eyes weren’t red or swollen, and there were no tear stains on his cheeks. He smiled cheekily, showing off his white teeth, “What are you talking about, Dad!”
“In front of you stands the son of Captain Gao Shi, a taekwondo black belt, a Muay Thai expert, a senior Tai Chi enthusiast, a master of self-defense, and the undefeated champion of eight no-limits fights! Wen Liang, that little weakling, Laozi(1) can take him down with one punch!”
Gao Shi slapped Gao Gusheng on the top of his head.
“Who are you calling ‘Laozi’?!”
Gao Gusheng dashed off in a flash, not forgetting to grab an orange on his way out, “Dad, I’m going to ask for a leave from the teacher!”
“Get lost, get lost.”
……
After Gao GuSheng left, Gao Shi leaned his back on the sofa and pulled out a cigarette from the cigarette box.
He didn’t light it, just held it in his mouth while then tapping the watch he wore on his left arm.
This watch was a mechanical watch with a silver-white dial and strap; it looked plain and ordinary, no different from the ones bought for a dozen dollars on the side of the road.
However, under Gao Oath’s light click, the watch quickly deformed, the button that was supposed to adjust the time cracked, revealing a USB port, the watch dial lit up, and a smiley face was revealed on the dial.
“STAR at your service.” ^v^
Gao Shi connects the watch to his laptop and opens the watch folder, several documents slide across the computer screen.
Clicking on the document named “Plot,” he found one of the paragraphs highlighted in red.
[ The plot begins when Lele is eighteen years old. ]
The entire document was densely packed with records of a nightmare he had between the ages of eight and ten.
When Gao Shi was eight years old, he experienced a bizarre car accident in which everyone in the car saw a white figure flash in front of the car.
In order to avoid the white figure, the driver jerked the steering wheel, the body brushed the guardrail on the side, and Gao Shi’s head hit the car glass, leaving a red swelling and fainted out. Strangely enough, when the crowd got out of the car, the white figure disappeared, and the car recorder didn’t capture anything but only caught the driver inexplicably hit the steering wheel, and the body rubbed off a piece of paint on the guardrail.
What’s even stranger is that after the accident, Gao Shi fell into deep sleep.
The doctor examined that the redness shouldn’t have had any effect on his brain, and Gao Shi wasn’t in a coma, he was just asleep.
But no matter how much they called, they couldn’t wake him up.
This sleep lasted for three whole days, and during these three days, Gao Shi had a dream.
It was a nightmare, to be precise.
It was like watching a movie, watching the life of a teenager.
After three days, he woke up, but never remembered having dreamed of anything.
However, from that point on, every time he fell asleep, the same dream would occur, and upon waking, he would remember nothing.
Perhaps due to the frequency of the dream, or maybe for some other reason, at the age of ten, he woke from the dream and, before even opening his eyes, loudly exclaimed a location.
“Ling Mountain!”
For some reason, the memory of this dream did not completely fade away, possibly related to him shouting out the dream’s location.
He clung to the fragments of memory, urging his parents to take him to Ling Mountain.
Upon arriving at Ling Mountain, as if something was drawing him, he followed his instincts and found a child.
Just two years old.
Naked, with eyes closed, curled up in the bushes.
Gao Shi took the child home.
This child was Gao Gusheng.
……
Gao Shi couldn’t help but smile at the memory. At that time, Gao Shi’s parents wanted to send the child to an orphanage because of the situation at Ling Mountain: located on a deserted outskirt, Gao Gusheng was found naked and curled up in the bushes without any other signs of human or animal presence, seemed too peculiar.
Considering Gao Shi’s safety, his parents planned to send Gao Gusheng to an orphanage.
But Gao Shi, clutching the child tightly and refusing to let go, instinctively felt that if the child was sent away, the unclear nightmare would become real. In a moment of vexation, he blurted out, “Dad, we can’t send him away; he’s your grandson!”
Gao Shi still remembers the twitching expression on his father’s face.
Ironically, the more Gao Shi spoke, the more convinced he became of his argument, standing tall and speaking boldly, “Look, mum, dad, this kid looks so much like me.”
Gao mom and Gao dad were speechless. However, Gao Shi’s father, always a believer in evidence and reason, did not dismiss the absurd claim lightly. To dissuade Gao Shi from his connection to the child, he simply said, “Since you say so, let’s do a DNA test to see if there’s any blood relation between you two.”
“If he’s not my grandson, then we’ll send him to the orphanage, and you can go visit him if you miss this little friend.”
Isn’t it preposterous to conduct a paternity test for children whose combined ages don’t even add up to a shoe size just because of a son’s flimsy excuse?
Ah, but Gao Shi’s father would do just that.
Thus, in the Gao family, unreasonable persistence doesn’t work.
Little Gao Shi was dumbfounded; of course, he knew what DNA testing was and that the child couldn’t be his own.
He could only watch helplessly as the samples were taken to the lab.
With a father who only deals in reason, acting cute, throwing tantrums, or being sly were all ineffective.
However, three hours later, the doctor came out, his steps heavy and his hands rigid, holding a test report.
It read: “Detection Results: Combined Paternity Index 47271128.1234, Probability of Paternity 99.9999%.”
Not only were the parents stunned, Gao Shi was as well.
1：there are many ways of saying “me”” I” in Chinese, 老子/lao zi/ is one kind of expression——not the polite kind, usually used in bragging, swearing, etc.
The word 老子/lao zi/. Translated directly, means “the old one”, by self-assuming /lao zi/ will give people a kind of linguistic scene suppression(?)
There is also some age pressure in it (like I am older than you so I can dress you down), and so the self-assumption /lao zi/ is usually used by the elders, thats why GGS was beaten by his dad when self-claimed /lao zi/.
