Oh no! My yandere school beauty is so clingy!

Zhang Shuyu did not immediately respond to Shen Yu's plans for the future, but instead asked about this.

Perhaps she wanted to find some real basis in the past to understand this "brother" in front of her, or perhaps she wanted to confirm what kind of story lay behind that blood relation...

Shen Yu remained silent for a few seconds.

The room was quiet. Lin Anran stood quietly to one side, not saying a word, but her gaze was fixed on Shen Yu's profile, her eyes filled with a barely perceptible tenderness...

She knew what Shen Yu was going to say, and she also knew that it wasn't a past that he could easily bring up.

"Okay." Shen Yu's voice was very calm, almost without any inflection, as if he were recounting someone else's story.

"From as far back as I can remember, until I was about fourteen or fifteen years old, my family seemed to be doing fairly normally..."

He paused, as if recalling something, or perhaps organizing his thoughts.

"My mom... is a very nice person, she's gentle with everyone, and she's also very good to me... Dad is a psychologist, and to outsiders, he has a respectable job and a fairly... normal personality. At home, he doesn't talk much, and he and my mom... aren't particularly close, but there aren't any major conflicts either. It's just... I feel like there's a bit of a distance between him and me, and between him and this family."

His description was brief, even somewhat dry, and lacked much emotion.

"Then, a few years ago..."

Shen Yu's speaking speed remained the same, but his voice seemed a little deeper, and his gaze lowered as he looked at the slightly worn cement floor beneath his feet.

"My dad... killed my mom."

He spoke those words softly and calmly, yet they were like a block of ice that instantly pierced the small room.

"??!!"

Zhang Shuyu tightened her grip on the child's arm, her body trembled violently, and she abruptly raised her head, her eyes wide with disbelief as she stared at Shen Yu, her breath seemingly caught in her throat.

The baby in her arms seemed uncomfortable from being constricted and shifted restlessly.

"He was sentenced to life imprisonment," Shen Yu added, still expressionless.

"Grandpa... also did it to... protect me. He was afraid that I would be bullied by relatives if I didn't have parents, so he kicked me out of the house. He also left me a sum of money that my relatives didn't know about after he died. From then on, I was all alone."

The "one person" he mentioned encompassed so much.

It wasn't just about leaving that home; it was about witnessing the bloodshed firsthand, losing her mother, having her family completely destroyed by her father, and being expelled from her closest relatives under the guise of "protection."

Zhang Shuyu's lips trembled, and her face was even paler than before.

Just listening to it made her feel a chill run from the soles of her feet to the top of her head, and her heart felt like it was being squeezed tightly by an invisible hand, causing a tingling pain.

Witnessing your own father kill your mother? Just imagining that scene is enough to break a person and leave an indelible shadow for life.

But Shen Yu... how could he... say it in such a calm tone?

She looked at Shen Yu, at his young but pale face, at his calm, almost numb eyes, and her heart was in turmoil.

What exactly did he go through to make such a tragic event sound so ordinary?

Zhang Shuyu was still reeling from the shock of the horrifying narration she had just heard; her chest felt tight and she had difficulty breathing.

Looking at Shen Yu's terrifyingly calm face, she subconsciously pointed to Lin Anran, who had been standing quietly beside her, and asked in a trembling, somewhat incoherent voice:

"Then she...she..."

She wanted to ask, "Then what about this girl? How did she end up with him?"

Following the direction of her finger, Shen Yu turned her head and glanced at Lin Anran. Something in the depths of her eyes seemed to soften for a moment, but it quickly returned to calm.

He opened his mouth as if to say something, but after pausing for a few seconds, he ultimately didn't speak, only saying briefly:

"And then... I met her. She..."

He seemed unskilled at recounting these things, or perhaps he didn't want to use overly simplistic language to summarize that encounter that was so significant for both of them...

Seeing this, Lin Anran took a small step forward and naturally took over the conversation.

She looked at Zhang Shuyu, her voice not loud, but very clear:

"Let me speak."

"My name is Lin Anran. Shen Yu and I were classmates in high school." She began her self-introduction, her tone calm.

"He's the class monitor, very outstanding, with excellent grades and a good personality. Teachers and classmates all like him and trust him..."

As she spoke, her gaze unconsciously drifted towards Shen Yu, a focused light in it, but she quickly looked away, continuing to gaze at Zhang Shuyu, her voice remaining steady:

"As for me... my mother... committed suicide a long time ago. My father... gambled, drank heavily, and beat people when he was drunk..."

When she said "hitting someone," her tone remained completely unchanged.

"Then one day, he caught us." She looked at Shen Yu, this time lingering a little longer.

"He took me home and took care of me...and slowly...we got together."

She spoke all of the above very quickly and concisely.

But what they said next caused Zhang Shuyu, and even Shen Yu standing next to her, to change their expressions slightly.

Lin Anran's tone remained flat, but the content of her words began to become... extremely detailed, even with a kind of obsessive precision.

"He's so good to me, incredibly good... He remembers all the dishes I don't like and the dishes I do like. When I'm on my period and can't sleep, he'll stay up all night with me, massaging my stomach. He never raises his voice at me, and he's never impatient, even when I'm sometimes... temperamental and willful..."

Her speech became faster and faster, and the things she described became more and more specific, more and more trivial, even frighteningly detailed...

It seemed she remembered every glance and every change in Shen Yu's expression perfectly...

The more she spoke, the faint smile on her lips grew more pronounced, eventually turning upwards uncontrollably, and her eyes shone with an unusual brightness.

There was an almost fanatical dependence and...satisfaction surging within it.

"He is the best person I have ever met, the best person in the world. He is only this good to me, only looks at me, only protects me... If I find out who else dares to do this to him..."

Zhang Shuyu was stunned, and forgot to shake the arm holding the child.

Looking at Lin Anran's delicate and calm face, and listening to the increasingly... strange descriptions, she felt a chill run down her spine.

This...this sounds...it feels like...

This doesn't seem like the normal kind of romance she envisions...

Just then, Shen Yu, who had been listening silently, suddenly stepped forward, reached out his arm, and gently pulled Lin Anran into his embrace, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and turning her slightly to the side...

He lowered his head, leaned close to Lin Anran's ear, and spoke in a very low voice, tinged with a hint of helplessness. As he spoke, he gently patted Lin Anran's back with his palm...

"Alright, alright, Ranran, that's enough..."