Mai Dong was a child whose family of origin was healthy and happy.
Contrary to the typical family setup where parents are often busy with work and lack time to accompany their children as they grow up, Mai Dong’s parents made every effort to be there for him throughout his childhood, never missing any significant events.
Of course, all these moments unfolded during Mai Dong’s time in kindergarten and elementary school.
During Mai Dong’s first kindergarten family sports day, the entire family was dispatched in full force. His parents accompanied little Mai Dong, skillfully navigating through the sports events, while his grandparents cheered loudly from the audience. After the sports day concluded, Mai Dong was so excited that his cheeks flushed red. The whole family then went to KFC to celebrate.
As a result, when he first glimpsed the world, he felt bewildered. Growing up in such happiness, and being so young, he thought everyone in the world lived without financial difficulties. He believed every child had loving parents, and everyone treated others kindly out of pure affection and a desire to be close.
It took Mai Dong a long time to observe and understand the world during his elementary school days.
At that time, due to his academic achievements, Mai Dong became the class monitor and helped the teacher with various tasks.
The first memorable experience for him was with a girl in the class who had average grades. It was always a challenge to collect her assignments, as she would come up with various excuses, either forgetting to bring her workbook home or to school, or claiming she felt unwell the previous night.
Repeatedly, Mai Dong reported the situation to the class teacher, but the teacher advised him not to pay too much attention in the future.
It was later revealed to Mai Dong that the girl’s father had cheated on her mother and left the family. Her mother was bedridden, and every day after school, she had to go home to cook for her mother, help her turn in bed, and wash her, leaving her with little time to complete her homework.
During that time, he frequently observed the girl.
While other classmates were typically picked up and dropped off by their parents, she would sprint to school alone every time, often arriving late in inclement weather. She wasn’t very fond of talking to others, and she never went to the cafeteria for lunch.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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Mai Dong’s excuse was that he accidentally brought the wrong lunchbox, containing his dad’s meal, which was too much for him alone. The girl stared blankly for a while, her eyes turning red, and uttered two firm words, “No need.”
Feeling somewhat lost, Mai Dong thought he had done his best to preserve her sense of pride.
The girl reacted like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, saying, “You’ve been secretly watching me these past few days. I know you deliberately offered me food, but I’m not pitiful enough to need someone else’s charity.”
Mai Dong felt deeply saddened; he didn’t understand what he had done wrong.
However, Mai Dong didn’t blame the girl. He only felt that he still hadn’t mastered the right approach.
There was another boy in the class with some disabilities, walking with a noticeable limp. It was said that he had a serious illness in childhood that wasn’t treated promptly. He had consecutive high fevers, and his family initially thought it was just a common cold. Unfortunately, it developed into a lasting condition.
Not only did he have physical disabilities, but his academic performance was also poor. People speculated that the fevers had damaged his brain. Classmates nicknamed him “idiot,” teasing him and often snatching his belongings. A few of them would pass his things around, laughing as they watched him hobble between them. As the class monitor, Mai Dong intervened several times, disrupting the thieving boys and making them lose interest, causing them to scatter the items on the ground.
The boy whispered a “thank you” to Mai Dong. He quietly picked up his belongings, and without a glance at Mai Dong, he added, “Class monitor, please don’t help me anymore. The more people help me, the more they’ll bully me.”
Mai Dong reported this incident, which could be defined as “school bullying,” to the class teacher. The teacher was furious and punished the boys who bullied the student, making each of them write a self-reflection. Mai Dong found the punishment perplexing, lifted high, and dropped lightly.
The study committee member secretly told Mai Dong that one of the students was the relative of the class teacher, and many people were unaware of this. It seemed the class teacher wouldn’t actually punish them.
Sure enough, after this punishment, those few individuals intensified their harassment towards male students. Mai Dong stood on the sidelines, feeling a helpless sadness inside. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he might have truly done something wrong.
Later on, Mai Dong would sometimes feel like a cold and indifferent person.
Occasionally, he reflected on himself, realizing that there were so many people in the world facing hardships. Despite having a happy family, outstanding grades, and more pocket money than he could spend, he didn’t feel a strong desire to reach out and rescue them.
At a young age, Mai Dong already perceived a certain pitiable inertia within the human collective. They were accustomed to indulging in suffering, finding happiness and pleasure in comparing themselves with those less fortunate and habitually trampling on the underprivileged to satisfy their inner vanity.
Later, Mai Dong had a heart-to-heart talk with his mom, triggered by his refusal to accept the class teacher’s invitation to become the class monitor in middle school. Gazing coldly at the class teacher, Mai Dong stated that it would hinder his studies, he didn’t want to do tasks for the teacher, help classmates, or take on that role.
The class teacher approached Mai Dong’s mother, inquiring whether there were some personality issues with Mai Dong.
Mai Dong responded to his mother, “What do I gain from being the class monitor? The teacher’s favor, the admiration of classmates, or perhaps your and Dad’s pride. However, I don’t need the first two, and as for the latter, I know you and Dad won’t be upset with me for not being the class monitor. What do I lose? I have to do tasks for the teacher, help classmates with their difficulties and troubles, deal with a lot of trivial matters, and may not get good results. I’m not willing to do that. Mom, is sacrificing my time and energy to help others the right thing to do? Is it wrong not to want to help others?”
At that time, the two were on the rooftop of their home, during the first week of Mai Dong’s first year of middle school. It was still in the height of summer, under a sky full of stars. His mother gently encircled Mai Dong’s half-body with her right arm and asked, “Can you tell me why you don’t want to help others?”
Mai Dong said, “You love helping others. When the teacher in kindergarten begged you to save her mom, but in her eyes, it was just a big favor she owed you, and she had to pay it back through me. That’s why she has always been good to me. I used to be so naive, thinking everyone was as happy as I was. Later, I realized that people just hide their unhappiness and don’t show it to others. I can’t help everyone.”
It seemed like Mom took some time to digest Mai Dong’s words. Although his expression and choice of words appeared naive and childish, the underlying wisdom was a topic even adults were still researching. After a while, Mom spoke, “So, you actually want to help everyone but worry about not being fair, about situations where you help this person but that person, right?”
Mai Dong frowned in thought for a moment, then nodded, “Yeah, maybe. That’s why I just don’t want to help anyone at all.”
Mom chuckled, “So, our Xiao Mai is actually a kind and good child at heart. That’s enough.”
Mai Dong was still too young to fully grasp it, “How can I be considered kind like this? I sometimes feel like I’m really selfish.”
Mom shook her head, “Because it’s Mom who’s the selfish one. Mom wants you to be happy, and no matter what method you use, as long as it makes you happy, Mom will support you. In some aspects, you’re right. There are always many people in the world who need help. If your wish is for everyone in the world to be happy, you’ll probably end up exhausted. On the other hand, if your wish is to be alone, you’ll likely be happy.”
Mai Dong didn’t fully understand, prompting Mom to ask another question, “Do you ever feel lonely? I’ve never heard you mention having any close friends.”
Mai Dong nodded matter-of-factly, “Yes, I do. But I don’t know how to make friends with others. I’m afraid they’ll have expectations of me. Mom, if others have expectations of me, I won’t be able to be myself.”
Mom looked at him seriously, “So, for the current Mai Dong, what’s more important? Being true to yourself or having friends?”
Mai Dong thought for a moment, “I want to be true to myself.”
Mai Dong succeeded in being true to himself, but as he grew older, the question his mom had asked grew sharper. The older one gets, the more one needs friends, yet Mai Dong has none.
In his first year of high school, Mai Dong once made a silent resolution to become good friends with his deskmate.
Whenever his deskmate needed to copy homework, Mai Dong let him. When his deskmate felt too lazy to go to the cafeteria, Mai Dong brought food for him. Just as Mai Dong had anticipated, his deskmate developed many expectations of him. He always wanted to copy Mai Dong’s homework, and he avoided the cafeteria every day. These expectations made Mai Dong feel suffocated.
After bottling it up for a few days, Mai Dong stopped letting his deskmate copy his homework and refused to bring him food. The deskmate became angry and there were several days of loud arguments, attracting the attention of the class teacher who inquired about the conflict between the two.
Mai Dong was distressed about interpersonal relationships and the complexity of the human community. Just when he thought he would never be able to understand this issue throughout his life, Yan Xuming thoroughly appeared in his life.
I’m happy to see how our boy grew up!
Thank You for the new chapter (◦’ںˉ◦)♡
Yeah, world is a really hard place, I never experienced bulling in my life and apparently it’s rare situation, I was not ready to hear how many people were bulled by their classmates. So I felt lost and sad about it as Mai Dong I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why people doing it and how happy am I what I never have this in my life
Thank you for your translation 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚
At first, it seemed to be just a very simple sweet story, but I’m pleasantly surprised to see that there’s more to it.
Thank you for the update!❤
I feel bad for MC, it seems like he’s never learned how to set boundaries with people and got taken advantage of, so he chose to just stop forming connections altogether 😥 hopefully he will start learning to do so with ML!! Really enjoying this story, thanks for the translation!
Poorr mai dong.. He’s just surrounded by scummy pp l from a young age