My Dearest General: It Has Always Been You

Warning: mild gore :)

...

Jia Renyu lifted a hand and his men let Si Zhening go. 

Panting, he repeated. "Please take me in."

"Brat," Jia Renyu smirked. "You know who I am?"

"I have asked around for you." He said with all honesty. "You're Jia Renyu, the newly risen leader of the underworld. I have been waiting for you here. Those people said that you're going to visit this restaurant soon."

Jia Renyu scoffed out a laugh and commanded the man beside him. "Find out who sold me out." After that, he looked down on Si Zhening without any expression whatsoever. Their eyes locked for a few moments. 

Si Zhening might look unaffected but in fact, his back had long been drenched by cold sweat. There was an instinct deep within that warned him to beware of someone like Jia Renyu — someone who had fought his way through by blood and death.

After an unknown amount of time, the corner of Jia Renyu's lips curled into an offhanded smirk. "Brat, I really like the look in your eyes." Turning around, he told Si Zhening without looking back. "Follow me."

Si Zhening scrambled to get into the car. They traveled for half an hour and arrived at a traditional styled house which seemed like the basecamp for the mafia. Walking in, Jia Renyu was showered with numerous loud greetings. Everyone bowed ninety degrees with their eyes nailed to the ground. "Good evening, Boss!"

Inside the main hall was a man whose limbs were tied and mouth shut with a tape. His eyes shook as soon as they landed on Nan Cheng then he started to thrash around, fear and dread reflected on the way tears streaming down his face. 

When Si Zhening looked closer, he realized that all of the man's fingers had been cut off, leaving stump palms covered in infected flesh. His shirt was also dyed in blood with multiple gashes all over his body. 

Jia Renyu sat on the Master chair and Si Zhening stood in front of him obediently, the gangsters surrounded them. The whole image was kinda comical, as if Si Zhening was a harmless rabbit that willingly sent himself to the wolf's mouth. 

"Do you know what crime he has done to warrant such a torture?"

"Betrayal?" He guessed.

Jia Renyu chuckled. "It seems like you have done your homework properly."

"I've heard about it," Si Zhening said. "That the most important aspect you uphold is loyalty. That's why I come to you. If you take me in, I will do anything — I will even sell my soul to you."

"Woah, easy." The man lifted both hands and slipped a cigar between his lips. "I still haven't agreed to anything yet."

It was bizarre; the way they conversed calmly as if there wasn't a dying and desperate man under their feet. "Then what should I do to make you agree?"

Smoke puffed out of Jia Renyu's mouth and Si Zhening resisted the urge to cough and turn his head away. He knew he shouldn't show a slightest bit of weakness here, not at this moment. 

"How old are you?"

"Fourteen."

"Where do you live?"

"Nowhere." Si Zhening lowered his sight. "I don't have a home." The person whom he thought would be able to grant him a place he called home was no more. She already had her own home and it wasn't his place to intrude on them.

"Have you killed someone?"

"No. But I can learn." He looked straight into Jia Renyu's eyes. "I have always been a fast learner."

Seemingly unprepared to receive this kind of answer, Jia Renyu was taken aback before bursting into laughter. Around them, his men also guffawed along, rowdy and riotous.

Jia Renyu received a knife from the subordinate behind him and threw it to Si Zhening. "I want fifty grams of his flesh." He jutted his chin toward the man on the ground, disgusted.

"Hmm—!!!" Hearing Jia Renyu's words, the man started to struggle even more desperately. However, his back was pressed to the ground, rendering him unable to move an inch. "Hmm—mm!!!" Tears streamed down his face and he looked at Si Zhening full of plea.

"What are you waiting for?" Jia Renyu clicked his tongue impatiently. "Scared?"

"No." Si Zhening held the bloodstained knife in his hand tighter. "Just wondering where I should start. Is there a digital scale I can use here?"

Once again, Jia Renyu broke out in laughter. 

A digital scale was put atop of the table and the man gestured for him to start. Si Zhening nodded and stalked toward the man. Without the slightest hint of hesitation, he started to slice the flesh on the man's thigh. The sensation of soft flesh under the knife and blood pouring onto his hand was something that Si Zhening wouldn't forget for the rest of his life.

The man's body convulsed from the pain and his eyes rolled back. Muffled screams rang out of his mouth. Yet Si Zhening kept relentlessly slicing bit by bit and threw it onto the digital scale as if he was weighing livestock.

Ten grams...fifteen grams...thirty grams…

"Exactly fifty grams." He put the knife down and stood up. However, before he could catch his breath, one of Jia Renyu's men suddenly attacked him from behind. Caught off guard, Si Zhening received a harsh blow on his back and his newly healed ribs started to throb again. Blood seeped out his mouth. 

The air seemed to have frozen at that second. Turning around, he directed a bloodshot glare toward the perpetrator. "Do you want to kill me?" 

Without a word, the man attacked again and Si Zhening fought back. It was as if he had returned to that day when Si Qingzhao found him. His eyes furious and the aura he exuded was murderous.

Hurry, he had to get rid of them as quickly as possible or else Sister would find him and cry again! 

"Stop!" Jia Renyu bellowed.

Si Zhening's movement halted and he snapped out of his thoughts. He looked down toward the man whose collar he was grasping, a knife held on his other hand without him realizing with its tip a hair's breadth away from the man's neck. Slowly, he let go, his ears ringing in pain.

He shut his eyes tight and opened them again. Instead of becoming clear, the scene in front of him turned even more blurry. His knees gave up beneath him and he gasped, his chest burning like never before.

Jia Renyu stopped in front of him and lifted his chin, forcing him to look into the man's eyes. "What's your name, child?"

"Si...Zhening…"

"Si Zhening," Jia Renyu smiled. "Welcome to the family."

Then Si Zhening blacked out. 

When he regained consciousness, three days had passed. The memory of that day was akin to a dream yet the scenery around him told him otherwise. He was lying on a bed in a single room in the basecamp; his own room. He had done it. Finally, there was something he could do with his own hands.

His chest turned a lot lighter, albeit it still hurt as hell because Jia Renyu's man had injured him again. But the knowledge that he was one step closer to Nan Cheng put him in a good mood. 

He returned to City A to inform Si Qingzhao that he would be going away for a while. If she asked further, he would only say that he was going back to school. Well, in fact he was really going back to school because Jia Renyu demanded him to continue his education so he wasn't considered lying, right?

Imagination was beautiful while reality would slap him on the face, reminding him of the hell he was living in.

Thinking that Si Zhening's absence had something to do with Nan Cheng, Si Qingzhao took the initiative to seek the man out. As soon as she was under Nan Cheng's radar, there was no way for her to escape anymore.

And the next time he met Si Qingzhao was when he stood in front of her fresh grave, with only a black and white photograph of the woman smiling back at him.

Si Zhening was already too...late.

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A/N: Second update! One more~

Fun facts I realize after finished writing Si Zhening's backstory:

1. He's kinda stalkerish, isn't he? He literally follows Si Qingzhao to every city she moved into lol

2.. Si Qingzhao and Nan Cheng's story really resembles NovelFull's popular trope of Mr. CEO's Runaway Bride right? So why does it turn this dark and thriller when I wrote it? *Facepalm cry*