Zhou Heng walked over to the dining table and lifted the dish cover.

Inside was a lump of food made mostly of carbon.

Zhou Heng's face went dark.

Normally, he would've started mocking his own grandpa by now: if you can't cook something, don't meddle with it. Leave it to the expert.

That expert, of course, was Zhou Heng himself. Ever since he was old enough to understand things, his parents had been divorced. At first, he lived with his mother, a master painter who was also a lazy shut-in who never left the house. To survive, Zhou Heng had to take on the jobs of cleaner, cook, and servant all by himself.

But that was all in the past.

Zhou Heng didn't want to dredge up memories of that negligent mother anymore.

He got a bowl and chopsticks from the kitchen and began eating quietly.

His grandpa turned around, smiled at Zhou Heng, and said,

“So, how is it? Sure, these dishes look as black as wood after a fire, but they taste pretty good. Your grandpa's been around the block. I'm sixty years old—I've got plenty of life experience. If I set my mind to learning something, what could I not learn?”

Zhou Heng wanted to make a sarcastic remark, but the weight on his mind was so heavy that all he could do was sigh.

With that sigh, the last of his appetite disappeared.

He hurriedly wolfed down the food in his bowl, cleared away his and his grandpa's dishes, covered the cooked food, and went to wash the dishes.

This wasn't like him at all.

His grandpa's eyebrows drew together. He asked sharply,

“My boy, did something happen?”

Zhou Heng stiffened, then forced a smile.

“Ah, just the kind of trouble young people get into.”

His grandpa clicked his tongue and turned back toward the TV.

“Young people should handle their own problems. But if you can't deal with it yourself, let your grandpa know.”

Zhou Heng breathed a sigh of relief.

His grandpa treated him very well. But the kinder the old man was, the less Zhou Heng wanted to burden him with worry.

After washing the dishes, Zhou Heng hurried upstairs and returned to his room.

There, he had a punching bag that couldn't cry out in pain or fight back.

Chu Ji, Wang Ping, Wang Yang, Xu Jin—one by one, their faces appeared before him, transformed into punching bags standing straight up.

All the frustration and bitterness he couldn't show in front of his best friends or his grandpa finally had somewhere to go.

Zhou Heng poured all his anger and resentment into his fists and unleashed them on the punching bag.

His fury surged, and his punches grew faster.

Thud, thud, thud—the dull impacts kept coming.

His hands were busy, but that didn't mean his mouth had to stay shut. Zhou Heng lowered his voice and snarled at the swaying punching bag.

“Fuck you! How dare you betray me, Wang Ping? Did a dog eat your conscience?”

“Chu Ji, who the hell do you think you are? What gives you the right to decide my fate with a single word?”

“Wang Yang, Xu Jin? Heh. You two had the nerve to mess with me? Just wait till this is over. I'll break your legs and teach you who you can mess with and who you can't.”

He kept venting his anger through violence for a full hour.

Drained of energy, Zhou Heng sat down on the floor. Sweat dripped from his chin, one drop at a time. His T-shirt and pants were soaked through, clinging to his skin and making him deeply uncomfortable.

But Zhou Heng was too exhausted to take them off. He could only feel his heart pounding as if it might burst from his chest, while he panted heavily.

There was no denying it: violence and fantasy were two of the best ways to relieve stress. Zhou Heng could feel some of the gloom weighing on his chest begin to lift.

After resting for ten minutes to recover, Zhou Heng got up from the floor and looked at the phone on his bed.

He felt an urge to message Su Mo again and ask how far things had gone with Chu Ji.

But when he remembered Su Mo's one-word reply—“Annoying”—he lost the nerve to contact her.

There was nothing he could do. That was what it was like when you needed someone else's help.

What could he do when he was so weak?

What could he do when he had no ability of his own?

Feeling dejected, Zhou Heng walked over to the wardrobe. He planned to grab a change of clothes and rinse off the sweat in the master bathroom's shower on the second floor.

He opened the wardrobe door, and for some reason, a cloyingly sweet, sharp smell hit him in the face.

Zhou Heng covered his nose and muttered,

“Why does the wardrobe smell like this? Did a rat die in here? But... I feel like I've smelled this before.”

Where had he smelled it?

It must've been pretty recent, because the memory was still clear.

Zhou Heng reached for the nearest T-shirt. The moment his fingertips touched it, he jolted as if struck by lightning, his whole body trembling.

He remembered. He'd smelled this before, when he ran into that bug that called him Mom.

Just then, a piece of clothing hanging from a hanger suddenly turned around.

Zhou Heng glanced over, and the young man saw a spider perched on his own clothes.

It was a horrifying spider, big enough to rival a human head—its appearance could make 99.9 percent of women in the world scream hysterically.

The spider crawled toward Zhou Heng, opening its saw-toothed jaws. Clear slime stretched into threads from either side of its mouthparts.

With a look like that, it might even win an Oscar for Best Makeup as the final boss of a horror movie.