Chapter 6 — The Bias Box

Shen Yen Chi ground his teeth, his voice laced with venom as he spat out her name. Shen Kieu Kieu recoiled in terror, not daring to utter a single syllable in response. I tucked my phone away, my gaze sweeping over the lot of them with icy indifference.

"From here on out, the three of you can shower each other with all the affection you can muster. Just stop coming to disturb my peace."

I turned my back on them and climbed into the head coach’s vehicle. As the car door swung shut, I caught a glimpse of Shen Yen Chi suddenly lunging at Shen Kieu Kieu’s collar, his face twisted into the expression of a cornered, feral beast. My parents rushed forward, frantically trying to pull the two apart. It was a chaotic, pathetic farce. And I had finally walked away from the stage entirely.

The chill of late autumn rain fell incessantly. Outside the gates of the special training camp, Shen Yen Chi had been standing in the downpour for three hours. He wore no umbrella, his clothes clinging to his frame, sodden and shivering like a stray dog with no home to return to. The security guard, watching from the booth, felt a pang of pity and radioed me.

"Coach Shen, that person is still outside. He looks like he is about to collapse."

I was sitting in my office, buried in tactical reports, not even bothering to look up.

"Ignore him."

Thirty minutes later, the guard called again.

"Coach Shen, he’s passed out! It looks like his stomach ulcer flared up; he’s vomiting up nothing but bile."

My fingers, hovering over the keyboard, froze. In the past, whenever his stomach ached, a single furrow of his brow would have sent me scrambling for medicine or waking in the dead of night to boil congee to soothe his pain. Now, as he lay writhing in the rain, my heart remained as still as a frozen lake.

"Call an ambulance," I commanded calmly.

The sirens wailed as the emergency vehicle arrived to haul him away. The following afternoon, as I exited the camp gates to head into the city for a meeting, a taxi pulled up. Shen Yen Chi stepped out. He was draped in loose, oversized hospital garb, his complexion as pale as parchment, his frame so gaunt that he looked entirely unrecognizable. The moment his eyes landed on me, a desperate light flickered within them, and he stumbled toward me.

"Van Van..."

He collapsed onto his knees at my feet, his trembling hands gripping my boots. "Van Van, I’ve kicked Shen Kieu Kieu out. I’ll never see her again, I promise."

"I’ve transferred every cent I have to you. Even the house in my name—it’s yours now."

"Can you please forgive me? I’m begging you, don’t leave me..."

His tears, mingled with the cold sweat of his illness, dripped onto my military-issued boots. I looked down at him. He had once been a man of such blinding arrogance; now, he trampled his own dignity into the mud just for a glance from me. I pulled an object from my pocket and flicked it into the puddle before him. It was the cooling patch with the smiley face he had given me long ago. I had kept it all this time, a bitter token to remind myself of how foolish I had truly been. Shen Yen Chi stared at the patch soaking in the murky water, his pupils dilating in shock.

"This very patch," I said, my voice cutting through the air like a blade, "was the one you gave to Shen Kieu Kieu right in front of me."

"Now, I’m returning it to you."

"Shen Yen Chi, you never loved me. You were simply addicted to my sacrifices, and you cannot accept the crushing defeat of losing control over me."

"The agony you feel now is a harvest of your own planting."

I pulled my leg away with a sharp tug. "Take your garbage and vanish from my world."

Shen Yen Chi sprawled in the puddle, his fingers clutching the sodden, bloated patch. He gasped, but no sound escaped his throat. A tidal wave of absolute despair crashed over him. He finally understood: he had lost me completely and forever. I opened the car door, slid into the driver’s seat, and pressed down on the accelerator. In the rearview mirror, Shen Yen Chi remained curled on the ground like a discarded, broken rag.

Two years later, the National Special Forces Competition was held in the northwestern desert. As captain of the provincial representative team, I led my squad to claim the overall gold in team points. Standing on the podium, cradling the heavy trophy, I watched my teammates cheering below and felt a genuine, deep-seated smile bloom on my face. The sun was fierce, yet it no longer blinded me. After the ceremonies, I caught a news notification in the lounge.

"Top-tier graduate of University A has had his postgraduate admission revoked due to chronic absenteeism and signs of severe mental instability; he has been expelled."

The attached photo showed a gaunt, hollow-eyed man sitting on a park bench outside the university gates, his hands white-knuckled as they squeezed an unrecognizable, soggy scrap of paper. It was Shen Yen Chi. Rumor had it that he had undergone surgery to remove half his stomach, and his mind had shattered entirely. Every single day, he muttered the same mantra: "Van Van will forgive me. She’s just angry with me, that’s all."

As for Shen Kieu Kieu, she had been heavily disciplined for forging medical records and spreading malicious rumors, eventually failing to earn even her degree. My parents, having coddled and enabled her, became a laughingstock among our relatives and friends, their business ventures crumbling into ruin. They had tried to reach out to me many times, but I had blocked their numbers long ago. I powered off my phone screen and tucked the trophy into my bag.