After My Rebirth, My Husband Pampers Me Everyday!

Chapter 235: Chapter 235: MAY GOD HELP YOU

Shen Zihao made his way down to the study at an unhurried pace. There were already a dozen possibilities, and none of them were good. His parents couldn’t and didn’t drive across the city in a weekday afternoon for mere pleasantries.

He pushed the door open to find them already seated side by side.

His mother, Lin Sujun, upright and sat composed on the edge of his chair, while he father stood near the window with his hands clasped behind his back as he took in the view outside.

"Mother...father," Shen Zihao greeted with much efforts to hide his anxiousness as he closed the door behind him, "This is unexpected."

"Don’t." Lin Suyin’s voice cut through before he could say anything else, sharp in a way that made even Shen Zihao’s expression flicker a bit and his father turned around. "Don’t stand there and act like you don’t know why we’re here."

Shen Zihao crossed the room and sat, unbothered on the surface, though his fingers had gone still against the armrest and were damp with sweat.

His father remained by the window, silently watching his son with an expression that said he had long since stopped being surprised by anything he did.

The man cast a brief glance at his son, before turning back to the window, as though there was something more interesting.

"We know what you’re keeping in this house." Lin Suyin didn’t rise from her seat, but her eyes never left him. "How long has it been now? Three weeks?"

"That’s not your concern."

"Everything you do becomes my concern the moment it becomes a body we have to explain." Her voice didn’t rise, which somehow made it worse than if it had.

"Your father and I have spent years cleaning up after you. Do you understand that? Years. Every time, we told ourselves it would be the last one. And every time, it wasn’t."

Shen Zihao’s clenched his jaw, veins popping on his forehead, but he said nothing.

"Our hands are filthy from it." She glanced at her husband, who kept his gaze fixed somewhere past the window, unwilling or unable to meet either of their eyes. Then she let out a sigh and continued.

"Filthy, Zihao," her tone dropped. "You think none of it stuck to us? You think we sleep well at night, knowing what we’ve paid for, what we’ve buried, who we’ve silenced so you could keep walking around like none of it happened?"

"You didn’t have to do any of it." Shen Zihao’s voice stayed even, but he was already sharpening his tongue, preparing to unleash sharp and harsh words.

"We didn’t have a choice." His father finally spoke, turning from the window, his face pale with something closer to exhaustion than anger. "You never gave us one. Every time we thought it was over, there was another name, mess and person who needed to disappear quietly enough that no one asked questions."

"This has to stop." Lin Suyin stood now, smoothing the front of her jacket with hands that weren’t quite steady. "I have a bad feeling about this one, Zihao. A very bad feeling. I don’t think we can save you this time, not if this goes the way the others did."

"No one needs saving." Shen Zihao’s tone stayed level, almost bored, as if the conversation itself were beneath him. "Nothing is going to happen."

"Let him go." His mother said it plainly, without flinching, though the words clearly cost her something to say out loud. "We’ll pay him. Enough that he never speaks of this to anyone, enough that he disappears somewhere far from here and never comes back. Or we find another way to make sure he doesn’t talk...." She hesitated, "..the way we’ve handled things before."

Something in Shen Zihao’s expressions shifted, and a frown appeared on his face.

"He’s not going anywhere."

"Zihao." His father’s voice carried a warning tone. "Listen to your mother."

"You don’t understand." Shen Zihao leaned forward, and for the first time since he’d entered the room.

"He belongs to me. He’s always belonged to me, even when he didn’t know it yet. I’m not letting go of something that’s mine just because it makes you uncomfortable."

Lin Suyin’s face went pale.

"Do you hear yourself?" Her voice cracked, just slightly, the first real fracture in her composure since she’d walked in. She couldn’t believe her son, a human being could say such things about someone who was clearly alive and capable of thinking on their own.

"He belongs to you? Zihao," she asked in disbelief. " he is a person, not something you own."

"He’ll understand eventually." Shen Zihao’s gaze had gone distant, fixed on something neither of his parents could see, his voice softening into something almost tender, which made it so much worse. "He’ll learn to want me," he smiled now. "It only takes a matter of time and little effort."

The silence that followed stretched long enough that even his father, a man who had spent years finding ways to excuse his son’s behavior, couldn’t find anything to say.

Lin Suyin stared at him, really stared, as though seeing him clearly for the first time in years.

"I don’t know who you are anymore." Her voice had gone quiet now, stripped of the sharpness from before, replaced with something closer to fear. "I used to think it was just anger. A temper we could manage, an illness we could treat if you’d only let us. But this isn’t that anymore, is it?"

Shen Zihao didn’t answer.

His father took a slow step forward, the exhaustion on his face giving way to something sterner, something that hadn’t surfaced in years. "We should have taken you to see someone properly when you were younger. Someone who could have actually helped you before it became this."

"It’s a little late for that now, isn’t it?" Shen Zihao’s smile didn’t reach his eyes.

"It’s not too late to stop making it worse." Lin Suyin’s hands had curled into fists at her sides. "Zihao, I am telling you as your mother. Let him go, before this becomes something even we cannot bury."

"You’ve buried plenty before." Shen Zihao’s voice had gone quiet, almost gentle, which was somehow more unsettling than if he had shouted. "This isn’t any different."

"It is different." His father’s voice shook now, the composure finally cracking all the way through. "The others didn’t survive long enough for anyone to ask questions.

This one has people looking for him.

People with money, with power, with reasons to keep digging until they find exactly what we’ve spent years hiding."

Something flickered across Shen Zihao’s face, gone as quickly as it appeared.

"Let them look for him," he shrugged casually. "I’m not going to let him and it’s final, all you both have to do is keep quiet about it and cover up for me, not that it’s necessary anyway."

Lin Suyin closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, there was nothing left in her expression but a tired, hollow kind of grief, the look of a woman finally admitting to herself that whatever she had hoped to save was already gone.

"Then God help you," she said quietly, "because I don’t think we can anymore."