Mother of School Grass

While scratching her messy hair, Chai Meichen languidly walked out of the bedroom as she yawned. 

Sliding open the kitchen door, she entered and opened the refrigerator, grabbed four eggs, then began making breakfast for her son. 

Chai Meichen was a little dazed while making the omelet.

Yesterday evening, she had a fight with her son, and in her rage, she raised her hand against him. Even now, recalling the slap elicited a dull throbbing pain. 

Not in her hand, but in her heart.

This year her son was entering his second year of high school. He was a student of the international class in a private school. 

Though the international class sounded prestigious and was said to specialize in aiding overseas study, she was nevertheless acutely aware of what actually was going on in the school. 

With the little money she had to her name, she enrolled her son into the city’s most expensive private school. 

One of the benefits of studying at this school at a young age was that even if one’s scores in the high school entrance examination were not good, as long as their scores in English met the minimum requirement, the student would get promoted to the middle school international class, and get tutored under top-class teaching staff. 

She didn’t have to fret over her son’s grades for the high school entrance examination.

Fortunately, she had sent her son there, otherwise, her son wouldn’t have even gotten into a high school. 

Just yesterday, the school teacher had called her out of the blue, saying her son had beaten someone to the point that the other kid had almost lost his life.  

Panic-stricken, she rushed to the hospital along with her cheque book. 

At the hospital, she apologized to the kid’s parents, hoping to settle the matter privately. After all, her son was only sixteen, and she didn’t want this matter to escalate to the police station.  

After apologizing to the parents till noon that day, they finally agreed to the compensation of 150,000 yuan.

She immediately gave them the money, fearing that the other side might change their minds, and even asked them to draft up a contract. 

Handling this sort of matter seemed to be akin to a walk in the park for her. After all, this wasn’t the first time her son had engaged in such a scuffle.

After settling the matter with the kid’s parents, she rushed to the school director’s house the very same night. When she reached there, the other party was in the middle of having dinner. 

Seeing her come, the director’s complexion became ugly. But she thickened her face and remained sitting there, and had a chat with the director for over two hours before she managed to change his thoughts. 

She changed his mind from her son being expelled with a major demerit in his record, to him being given a criticism notice, which wouldn’t leave a mark on his record.

She also gifted the school director a fruit basket. 

The fruit basket was quite good-looking, but in actuality, it was filled with money. 

She was not a good-tempered person to begin with. Running around for a day had accumulated a bellyful of anger within her. But for her son’s sake, she endured it. 

When she got home, what came into her sight was her son, with a face full of injuries, slowly limping his way through the kitchen. Though his pace was slow, he resolutely persisted in walking up to the refrigerator to eat ice cream. Finally, the rage in her exploded. 

She had a big quarrel with her son.  Initially, her son’s attitude was quite good, as he obediently remained silent, without a squeak.  

However, later, when he heard her say, “You are the scum of society. I don’t ask you to become a good-natured person, but I did not want you to become social scum like your father. My only wish for you was to behave like a decent human being.” Zhou Rui immediately became anxious.

“How am I not a good person? The moment you stepped in, you began scolding me. Did you even ask why I fought?” He yelled at the top of his lungs, apoplectic with rage. 

“Fine, tell me. Why did you get into a fight?! Tell me, what’s your reason for fighting?! Were you brimming with a strong sense of justice, and chivalrously fought to help the weak?” She quivered with anger.

This question of hers seemed to have choked him. He flung back his head, and stubbornly replied, “You wouldn’t believe me anyway. You can think of me as scum if you wish. And I may have had a dad, but he wasn’t the one who raised me. You can throw me away if you want, then maybe you can even get remarried!” 

At this, she slapped him. 

After slapping him, she was dumbfounded. Although, in the past, she used to pinch Zhou Rui’s arm or even sometimes kick his leg, they were very light, and for the most part, were only done as a way to get him to listen.  

Very rarely did she ever hit him.

The remarks he had made after she slapped him were still reverberating through her head. “Do you even understand me?!”

Immediately after that, Zhou Rui dashed into his room and slammed the door shut. 

Previously she had once attended a few parenting classes. Although most of the content being taught was just things to brainwash their kids and utter nonsense, there was this one sentence she still remembered “You as a parent, do you truly set yourself as an example to your kids? If there is any issue with your kid, you should try to look for the root of the problem within you or in the surroundings in which they grew up.”

Zhou Rui grew up in a single-parent family. Chai Meicen was a regular viewer of a television channel featuring law regulation issues. The majority of the juvenile delinquents shown in it were from single-parent families. This had caused Chai Meicen to be apprehensive.  

Particularly now, seeing Zhou Rui behaving as an overload, had caused her to become even more terrified. 

While her thoughts were occupied over the previous day’s incident, the eggs had become slightly charred. The slightly burnt smell coming from it drifted around to her nostrils, instantly sobering her up.

She quickly discarded the charred eggs and beat another egg into the pan. 

At this moment, Zhou Rui’s room door opened. She immediately pretended to be indifferent as she continued to fry the omelet.  

Zhou Rui walked out of the room and entered the washroom unperturbed and unhurried. But when he was closing the washroom door, he peeked from the narrow gap of the door, secretly stealing a glance to see what his mother was doing. 

He saw that Chai Meicen was making an omelet, not even bothering to glance at him from beginning to end. From his angle, he could only see the corner of Chai Meicen’s unaesthetic goose yellow pajamas. 

Closing the door, he squatted on the toilet seat. 

Yesterday he had been involved in a scuffle, which simply made Chai Meicen go berserk.  

At that time, Chai Meicen’s, short, plump body, which weighed over 60kg was trembling with rage. As she slammed her hands on the tabletop, the fat in her arms trembled, appearing ‘lively and lovely’.  

She was almost into her late 30s, yet for a split second, she brimmed with ‘youthful vitality’, for some reason.

He at once became obedient, intending to listen to her scoldings and be done with this matter, let her say whatever she wanted to. 

But, who would have imagined that the more Chai Meichen scolded him the more excessive it became. In terms of temperament, he took after Chai Meicen, and was also extremely ill-tempered. Moreover, in the school, everyone was afraid of him and flattered him. Even teachers found him hard to deal with and wouldn’t provoke him much. Thus, after being scolded like that, he couldn’t hold down his temper and exploded.

Actually, he, too, felt regretful for saying such words. After getting slapped by Chai Meicen, he immediately became clear-headed. But, unable to put down his face, he chose to march back into his room.

It had to be said. 

Chai Meicen’s character… was not so good.

Her temper… was not so good.

Her appearance…was not so good.

However, he didn’t have much to say about it. A lot of people even envy him for having this sort of mother.  

Last night, he didn’t know what had gotten into him, but somehow he got irked and such words rolled out of his mouth. After shooting his mouth off, he truly wanted to bite off his tongue. 

After going back into his room, he began reflecting on his actions. He wanted to apologize, but didn’t know how to. Thus, he reclined on his bed and began racking his brain for words.

In the wee hours of the night, around 3 o’clock, he heard sobbing sounds from next door. 

Perhaps, Chai Meicen was suppressing her sobs till now, not wanting him to hear, and only dared to cry in the middle of the night. 

Those who knew Chai Meicen would know that she was crying, but those who didn’t would think it was the wailing of a ghost.

Chai Meicen’s sobs seemed to be infused with subtle grievousness to the point that she began hiccupping. The sound of her blowing her nose was truly earth-shattering in the silence of the night.   

Those sounds seem to have affected him too, for he too wrapped himself in quilts and began sobbing. 

Reasonably speaking, a great man like him shouldn’t be this melancholy and emotional, but the situation seemed to have infected him, taking him down the memory lane to his childhood.