Chapter 80: Childhood Trauma
The thunder outside grew faint, fading into a muffled drone, like a sob smothered by the clouds.
Su Yuqing’s forehead rested against his collarbone, her breath carrying the bittersweet scent of honey lemon water.
"Can you tell me why you’re so afraid of thunder?" Chen Mo asked curiously, gently embracing Su Yuqing to comfort her.
"When I was little..." she suddenly began, her voice muffled by his shirt. "After Mom and Dad had a fight, during a thunderstorm, she suddenly took a rope and tightened it around my neck. She said Dad didn’t want us anymore, that she wanted us to go together, so he would feel guilty for the rest of his life.
I was woken up by the thunder and the feeling of suffocation..."
Hearing this, Chen Mo couldn’t help but feel his own breath catch in his throat.
’He never would have imagined that something like this had happened to Su Yuqing when she was a child.’
"That time, it was Dad who was woken by the thunder. He realized Mom wasn’t beside him, and that’s when he found her strangling me. But she hadn’t fully made up her mind, so her grip would tighten and loosen. That’s why she didn’t kill me, and why it didn’t leave any marks on my neck."
Su Yuqing recounted her childhood ordeal, her tone calm.
Even though her mother had treated her so horrifically, nearly taking her life, Su Yuqing had never hated her mother.
Because she understood her mother, and sympathized with her.
’Her mother was just sick.’
’It was because of what Dad did. She got sick. She didn’t really want to hurt me; she just couldn’t control herself.’
’Her situation was actually quite tragic.’
’If it weren’t for the wrong Dad committed, Mom wouldn’t have fallen into such a hopeless abyss.’
So, from a young age, Su Yuqing knew very clearly that she shouldn’t blame her mother.
Her father, the very man who had saved her, was the true culprit behind all the tragedy in their family.
Her mother, who had tried to strangle her, was just a walking corpse whose spirit had been half-killed.
She often saw her mother crying without tears.
This love meant everything to her; she simply couldn’t accept her husband’s betrayal and abandonment.
Several times, she had wanted to just leave it all behind.
But the thought of her daughter always made her stop.
As for why she never tried to harm Su Yuqing again after the divorce, it was purely because she had never truly decided to take Su Yuqing with her in the first place.
Her actions that night were more of an irrational outburst of anger.
But even so, her grip on Su Yuqing’s throat had tightened and loosened. Every time it loosened, it was because she heard her daughter’s pained gasps.
She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Rather than truly wanting to die with Su Yuqing, she was using this act to test if her husband still had any lingering affection or concern for their family.
’Even if he doesn’t want me as his wife anymore, what about his daughter?’
’Was he going to abandon his own flesh and blood, too?’
After that night’s test, she learned that Su Chengfeng did care about his daughter, at least a little.
So she decided to fight for custody at all costs, forcing Su Chengfeng to see her whenever he came to see their daughter, which she hoped would create a chance for them to reconcile. But she was wrong.
Terribly wrong.
The only reason Su Chengfeng had intervened was because he didn’t want family matters to ruin his reputation and make him a laughingstock at the company.
He had no love for mother or daughter.
In fact, he was even grateful that Li Fengzhi had fought for and taken Su Yuqing.
This way, he could be more carefree and at ease with his new lover. With no baggage dragging him down, it was easier to explain things on her side.
A daughter, a wife—he couldn’t care less about them.
His smiling welcome every time Su Yuqing visited wasn’t because he loved his daughter. It was simply a reflex to maintain his public persona.
He didn’t want the reputation of a heartless man to get out and tarnish his image at the company.
In the end, everything he did was for himself.
Abandoning his wife and child had already given people plenty of ammunition for gossip. To be badmouthed for other trivial reasons on top of that would be even more unsightly.
Li Fengzhi’s actions that night, forcing Su Chengfeng to show his hand, were merely a test.
But for the young Su Yuqing, it became a lifelong nightmare.
Every time a thunderstorm rolled in, she would feel that same suffocating, breathless sensation wash over her.
This feeling of suffocation transformed into fear—a fear of the sound of thunderstorms.
Because the moment the thunder had woken her, it was accompanied by the extreme agony of suffocation.
This painful memory had become intertwined with the sound of thunder.
So every time it thundered, it was as if she were reliving the agony of that night all over again.
Listening to Su Yuqing calmly recount all this from the circle of his arms, a pang of pain shot through Chen Mo’s heart and his fingers paused. He no longer cared about maintaining any sense of propriety.
He reached out and simply pulled Su Yuqing even tighter against him.
The girl in his arms seemed to curl up tighter in sync with him, as if trying to shrink into a non-existent shell.
Her arms unconsciously wrapped around his sturdy torso.
She was still murmuring about things from her childhood.
Since Chen Mo was interested in knowing more about her, Su Yuqing didn’t mind sharing more with him.
In fact, Su Yuqing felt that sharing each painful memory with Chen Mo was like undoing a shackle.
For some reason, in this boy’s arms, all the pain she had ever felt seemed to become insignificant.
The moment each painful experience and encounter left her lips, it seemed to lose its weight.
It felt as if all the bad things she had been through in the past no longer mattered as much.
This feeling of incredible lightness, which suffused her entire being, brought Su Yuqing’s desire to confide in him to its peak.
One person willing to speak, and another willing to listen—that is the most beautiful kind of encounter.
The end of Su Yuqing’s sentence was swallowed by the vibration of Chen Mo’s chest.
The young man’s palm covered the nape of her neck, his knuckles threading through her damp hair as if combing fragile glass. Outside, the curtain of rain suddenly poured down like a waterfall, slicing their intertwined breaths into fine threads.
After Su Yuqing had been speaking for a while, the thunder outside gradually subsided. Only then did Su Yuqing snap out of the state of engrossed storytelling she had been in.
Not knowing if Chen Mo even wanted to hear her ramble on and on, and seeing that he hadn’t said a word, she immediately tilted her head up to look at him.
But what she met was the dark tide swirling in the depths of his eyes—there was no pity there, only a heart-wrenching ache, scorching and boiling like molten lava.
Seeing Chen Mo give her a gentle smile, the gloom in Su Yuqing’s heart immediately dissipated.
However, the sudden shift from intense tension to relaxation made her rub her temples, a look of mental exhaustion on her face.
Seeing her in this state, Chen Mo smiled and said, "Your hair got wet in the rain tonight, you should wash it. Rainwater has too much dust in it. Let me wash it for you. I know a set of head massage techniques that will help you sleep more soundly."
After speaking, without waiting for Su Yuqing’s reply, Chen Mo began to get things ready for her.