Translator: Lonelytree Editor: Millman97
Song Qingchun smiled gently at Su Zhinian and raised her finger to point at the completely-burnt candles, adding,
It’s time to cut the cake.
Okay,
Su Zhinian replied as he reached for the knife, stood up slightly, and cut the small cake into four pieces. He then put one slice on Song Qingchun’s plate before getting one for himself.
Su Zhinian was not a fan of sweet food; he merely took one bite of the cake before he was overwhelmed by the artificial sweetness. However, he still held his spoon and continued to eat, one serious bite after another, because this was a birthday cake she had specially bought for him.
He could not even remember the last time he had his own birthday cake. His last memory of that was when he was six.
At the time, he and his mother had still been staying at his grandparent’s. That day, his mother had been given a bonus at work, and she had used it to buy him a birthday cake.
Soon after that, he discovered how different he was from everyone else. The aunt and uncle that had extreme distaste regarding him and his mother started to freeze them out. During his seventh birthday, his mother’s bonus was snatched away by his aunt, and that was how his birthday party fizzled to nothing. Then, he became a monster in everyone’s eyes. He spent his eighth birthday in the sanatorium. He did not even get a birthday wish, much less a cake or present. He spent that birthday trapped in his cell, looking at the blue sky through the small window in his room.
After he was released from the sanatorium, he started staying at the hostel, and that was also when his reluctance to interact with people started. He stopped talking and smiling, his classmates did not know about his birthday, and his mother would not be able to spend it with him because she would be too busy at work. As the years passed, his birthday gradually became just another day; there was nothing unique about it.
Until… until he met her, and that was the first time in a long time that he felt like celebrating his birthday again, even if the only thing he wanted to do was to have a simple dinner with her.
However, that small wish was dashed easily.
She had stood him up. There was radio silence on her end while he stood like an idiot by the street, watching as she shared a romantic dinner with Qin Yinan in a high-class restaurant, listening to the words
Brother Yinan
fall out of her supple lips.
However, that was not the worst. The worst thing was, in his state of inebriation, he committed the greatest sin, the sin that shattered all form of friendliness between them.
That birthday, he… raped her.
The spoon Su Zhinian had in his hand started to shake slightly.
Ever since that day, he had stopped treating his birthday as something worth celebrating. He really thought he would spend the rest of his life without celebrating another birthday.
He did not expect she would give him such a surprise. It reminded him of how she placed her trust in him when the world had abandoned him.
Big Brother says you’re a bad man, so you have to be a bad man!
The familiar softening in the heart that he had never forgotten through the years started to appear once more, causing Su Zhinian’s throat to close.
The cake was soft and airy, but he had a hard time swallowing.
He felt the tears that were coming to his eyes.
