In Perpetual Flight Chapter 2

Bending down, I picked up the fruits that had fallen to the ground one by one and put them back into the basket. I coaxed her, "Don't be angry, don't be angry, he's gone. If you don't want to eat fruit, eat the pancakes I bought for you. They're delicious."

She tightly grasped the quilt in her hands, her eyeballs bulged slightly with anger, making her eyes look scary-sized.

"He is a jinx! A blood-sucking bug! An ungrateful wolf who repays kindness with enmity!"

The fruit basket was placed on the floor, and I sat down on the edge of the bed, acting as a perfect listener, listening to her curse Brandon Shengou with all the vicious words she could without interrupting.

I never knew she could curse people like this, and she never repeated herself. It seemed like she had cursed a lot over the years and had become an expert at it.

The nurse showed an expression of shock that she could not hide as my mother cursed at the top of her lungs. She would probably never say again that Teacher Lin was the most elegant terminally ill patient she had ever met, because at this moment, Teacher Lin really had no elegance at all.

On the way back, there were still not many people on the bus. I was holding a basket of fruit in my arms and lied to my mom that I was going to throw it away, but I was actually going to take it home to eat.

This basket is worth at least a few hundred dollars. It would be a shame to throw it away.

Looking at the scenery passing by quickly outside the window, my thoughts couldn't help but drift, from my mother to the future, and gradually fell on the man I met again after a long time today.

Brandon Sheng'ou was only three years old when he was adopted by my family. The reason for the adoption was simply that - my parents couldn't have children.

But just like many families who have difficulty in having children, they finally made the mental preparations and decided to adopt someone else's child, but they were able to have a child themselves.

Before I had time to change Brandon Shenggou's name and the household registration procedures had just been completed, my mother found out that she was pregnant.

She wanted to give up the support at that time, but my father disagreed. He felt sorry for Brandon Shenggou and couldn't bear to see him suffer a second injury at such a young age. He also stubbornly believed that it was the arrival of Brandon Shenggou, the child-bearing boy, that allowed the Lu family to flourish. If we didn't treat him well, we would suffer misfortune.

Although my mother is not a teacher, she worked in finance in elementary school for many years. Colleagues and neighbors would politely call her "Teacher Lin". She has been deeply influenced by modern scientific education for many years and does not believe in my father's feudal superstitious theories at all. The two quarreled so much that they almost got divorced.

But in the end, there was no problem with their relationship, they just didn't know how to make peace with each other. It seemed that there was no way to end it, and I didn't know how the two of them communicated. Anyway, in the end, my mother took a step back and kept Brandon Sheng'ou.

But at this point, he became a redundant person.

Rather than being a member of our family, he was just a temporary guest living under someone else's roof. My dad was fine, but my mom's attitude was particularly obvious. She didn't treat him as her son at all. At most, he was just a piece of air with a name and surname.

When I was young and ignorant, I was so proud of my mother's infinite favoritism that I showed off in front of Brandon Shenggou the cake toys she bought only for me and asked him if he wanted them.

Brandon Sheng'ou always looked at me expressionlessly, his dark pupils were particularly deep and cold. When he saw that I was timid and offered my "filial piety", he would tell me without hesitation that he didn't like it, and then turn around and leave without looking back.

Only when I grew up did I realize how much I thought of myself back then. Brandon Shengou must have looked at me as if I were a fool.

He hates me, I can feel it.

Every time I acted coquettishly with him and talked to him, I could feel his well-hidden rejection, and after a long time I became a little afraid of him.

It's not that he didn't smile at me, but his smile could never penetrate into his eyes, as if he was wearing a mask of pretending to be kind. All his kindness and affection to me was just to please the adults in this family so that he could have a place to stay.

This "hate" may have been vaguely apparent to me when I was a child, but as I grew up, I have gradually understood it over the past ten years.

When I was ten years old, something big happened in my family.

My dad was in a car accident on his way home from work. He was rolled under the wheels of a truck and his electric vehicle. When the ambulance took him to the hospital, he was already dying. The wound was too deep and the amount of blood loss was too great, even a god could not save him.

On his deathbed, my father held my mother's hand and asked her to swear that she would raise us well, especially Brandon Sheng'ou, and support him to go to high school and college. After more than ten years of marriage, he knew my mother's character very well.

Although my mother was reluctant in her heart, she had no choice but to nod and agree when facing a dying person.

Since then, she has been an orphan and a widow with a burden, and she is even more indifferent and disgusted with Brandon Shengou.

After Brandon Sheng'ou went to boarding school in high school, he rarely went home. He only came back during the Chinese New Year and the anniversary of his father's death. He worked outside during the winter and summer vacations.

He stopped asking my mom for money in his senior year of high school, and earned his living expenses and tuition by doing odd jobs. He also applied for a scholarship for college. The relationship between him and me, which was not very close to begin with, became even more distant after he moved out of the house.

When I was a freshman in high school, he was already a sophomore, studying law at the best university in Qingwan City. He came back less often, and often just ate a quick meal before leaving in a hurry.

I had to use all my skills and ask him various questions that I had already mastered by heart, so that he would stay at home a little longer.

When he was explaining a subject to me, I always liked to look at his profile and see the sunlight shining down on his thick eyelashes, casting a light shadow from the bottom of his eyes.

Every time I would marvel at his good looks and wonder if his biological parents were fools, otherwise how could normal people abandon such a beautiful and healthy child.

At that time, I thought that the strong and unshakable yearning in my heart was nothing more than my attachment to my brother, a manifestation of the lack of fatherly love.

Until Isaac Qi appeared.

He pestered Brandon Sheng'ou, craving for Brandon Sheng'ou's gaze, greedy and mean, exactly like my own reflection that I once saw in the mirror.

At that moment, I suddenly realized that the strong emotions and the unshakable yearning were all driven by desire. I coveted Brandon Shengou so much that I wanted to hold on to him tightly.

I have thought a lot in the past ten years. In fact, Isaac Qi and I are essentially the same people, indulging in immoral love and unwilling to be ignored by Brandon Sheng'ou. It's just that he went a little too far and crossed my line.

When in prison, most prisoners are indifferent, but after a long time, there will always be a few who get along well with each other.

In cell No. 67, I have the best relationship with three people - Third Brother, Monkey, and Leo Shen.

These people came in later than me, but left earlier than me.

The third brother's real name is Tony Wei. He is a generous man. Although he looks big and strong, he has a good sense for business. When he came in, he already ran several massage parlors and had countless subordinates.

I asked him the reason why he came in when I had nothing to do. He slapped his bald head and cursed the guy who had sentenced him to five years in prison to his entire ancestors.

This is quite dramatic. His massage parlor is expanding day by day, and all kinds of people want to be invited to entertain him. If he can get in touch with a big brother in the underworld, the massage parlor business will be worry-free and he can make a fortune every day.

He and his good brother and business partner came up with a plan. They invited the eldest brother to go to the casino and have a good time. If he won, it would all belong to the eldest brother. If he lost, he and his business partner would share the responsibility. The eldest brother was happy, and their business would be good.

Everything was fine when they went there, and the group was in high spirits. But who would have thought that the eldest brother was such a unlucky guy that he kept losing more and more, and finally lost tens of millions.

Tens of millions is not a small sum for Tony Wei. He has to pay out all the cash and lose several stores. But the big brother's line is stable, and it is not difficult to make it back.

The bad thing was that his good brother turned against him and refused to honor his verbal promise. He also blamed the entire trip to Las Vegas on Tony Wei.

Tony Wei paid the full amount by himself, suppressed his temper and returned home. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. A few days later, he suddenly ran to his brother's house in the middle of the night, tied up the man, stuffed him into the car, drove him out of the city, drove him to a deserted place, beat him up, and then drove the car away and sold it.

When the police found him, he had not yet realized the seriousness of the problem. He was sentenced to five years in prison for illegal detention and embezzlement of other people's property.

"You said I'm not unlucky, but what crap did I meet?" His heroic long eyebrows were standing upside down, and the kind-looking Guanyin statue on his arm was a little distorted because of his tense muscles, and his face suddenly became gloomy.

I patted him on the shoulder, but there was no way to comfort him. The only thing I could do was to tell him my story and cheer him up.

After listening to me, he looked at me in shock and gave me a thumbs up after a while.

"There are mountains that are higher than the other, and what you encounter is even worse."

I smiled and said, "Who says it's not true? So you are not the most unlucky one."

After that, it seemed that some kind of friendship developed between us. We took care of each other in prison and looked after each other after we were released.

On the day I regained my freedom, he and Leo Shen came to pick me up together. Not only did they welcome me home, they also asked me to be the manager of a pawn shop he had just opened.

When I heard that "manager" was a very high-ranking position, I asked him how many people he was in charge of.

He took a big gulp of cold beer, held up two fingers and said, "Two, one is from the finance department, and one is from the clerk." He pointed to Leo Shen next to him and said, "This is your clerk. You will see the finance department tomorrow when you go to work. She is a beauty."

People with business sense can always make a comeback. In the past few years since Tony Wei was released from prison, he has stopped running massage parlors and opened two pawnshops, which are doing very well. The one I am asked to manage is the third store in the chain, which is not large in scale and needs a trustworthy person to take care of it.

"I don't know anything. If you ask me to manage a store all of a sudden, I can't do it." I said frankly that I didn't have the ability and wanted to refuse.

In addition to the reasons I mentioned, there was also my mother's illness. In her last days, I wanted to spend more time with her.

"You know nothing, have no education and no experience. If you don't work for me, where else can you find a job that suits you? I know you are worried about your mother, so I will enroll you in a class to learn how to identify jewelry. It will take at least one or two months to complete these classes, and then you can decide whether to come to work for me or not."

Tony Wei looks rough, but he speaks very carefully and does things attentively. If I refuse again, it would seem that I don't know what's good for me.

It's a good thing that I didn't refuse. After living in the "ivory tower" for too long, the prices outside are far beyond my imagination, even the prices of pancakes have increased.

My mother was very happy when she knew I found a job so quickly. She jokingly said that she wouldn't have to worry about me dying from overwork in the future.

If she had seen how skillfully I folded the quilt, she would have put her worries to rest long ago.

The so-called treasure appraisal course is not difficult, at least much simpler than high school courses. It mainly teaches people how to quickly identify those famous watches and bags, real gold and silver. Occasionally, when the teacher is in the mood, he will also talk about the international luxury trends.

In general, trends are like a frenzy, coming violently and leaving silently.

The courses all ended three weeks ago. The school gave out graduation certificates in a formal manner, and the teachers also wrote future wishes for each student.

Mine reads: "Student Nathan Lu, your future is full of possibilities and your hard work will be rewarded. I hope you take care and everything goes well."

Thanks to his good words, if I get rich, I will go back and give him a big red envelope.

I returned home with a basket of fruit and had just poured myself a glass of water when Tony Wei called and asked me to go for hotpot.

It was quite noisy and lively over there.

I had no choice but to take the key and go out again. When I walked to the door, I lowered my head and sniffed my denim jacket. The faint scent of leather and wood had almost dissipated.

After hesitating for a moment, I turned and went into the house, took off my clothes, put on another coat in the closet, and then rushed to the invitation.