Chapter 4

After the chemotherapy, I stared blankly at the ceiling of the hospital room as usual.

The color was so white it made me feel cold.

It reminded me of the morgue where my adoptive father's body was kept twenty years ago.

Everything there was equally hopeless.

As far back as I could remember, the only person by my side was my adoptive father.

My adoptive father made a living as a taxi driver. The neighbors all said he was a bachelor approaching thirty who still hadn't found a wife.

And I was an orphan abandoned by my birth parents from birth.

At that time, I was just a baby, thrown like garbage at my adoptive father's doorstep.

Seeing that I was as pitiful as him, he took me in.

For the next eight years, it was just me and my adoptive father relying on each other to survive.

Although life was tight then, those were some of the few happy days in my impoverished life.

Perhaps it was destined that I shouldn't have lived a peaceful life.

When I was eight, my adoptive father went out to work a night shift in the rain and never came back.

I only remember being led by a group of people in white coats into a very cold place.

My adoptive father's cold body was lying there stiffly.

No matter how heart-wrenchingly I cried, he wouldn't get up and hold me like he used to.

Gently patting my back, telling me not to cry, that everything would be alright.

After my adoptive father's death, the neighbors avoided me like the plague.

I became an orphan once again, entering the orphanage as my final destination.

The long night was hard to endure, but the sun would always rise as usual.

On the second day after I entered the orphanage, Grandpa Pei personally came to take me back to the Pei family.

"Child, what's your name? Would you like to come with me?"

"My name is Ethan, meaning peace."

Ethan means long-lasting peace, to be safe and sound for life.

My adoptive father hadn't read much, I only heard him often murmuring in my ear that as long as one lived peacefully, it was good enough.

After I finished speaking, he gave me a smile. That smile made me feel like my adoptive father had returned.

It was also this smile that made me plunge headfirst into a world that didn't originally belong to me.

It was in this world that I met the person I would chase for most of my life.

When we first met, Zoe was wearing a pure white princess dress, sitting at the grand piano in the center of the spacious living room.

Her fingers, white as jade, continuously played beautiful notes. At that moment, I gazed at her as if entranced.

Perhaps seeing my gaze was too intense, Zoe looked at me and walked over with a smile.

"Are you the new friend Grandpa mentioned? Hello, I'm Zoe Pei."

"Zoe means 'like' or 'love', you know!"

As she spoke, she reached out her hand to hold mine, leading me to tour every corner of the Pei house.

At that time, I didn't ask for anything, didn't want anything, just a home, just love.

Even if I died, I didn't want to be abandoned again. Thinking of this, I unconsciously gripped Zoe's hand tightly.

Like a drowning person clinging desperately to the only lifeline nearby.

In the days that followed, Zoe became like my little shadow, following me wherever I went.

In her words, I was the only one in this family willing to play and have fun with her, her best companion.

We absolutely couldn't be separated.

And so, Zoe and I grew closer and closer.

Sometimes, the colder a person is, the more they want to get close to something warm.

Zoe was gentle and passionate, like a ray of sunshine illuminating my originally barren life.

When I was with her, I always felt a long-lost sense of peace and tranquility.

So, I will never forget what she once said to me: "From now on, this is your home, and I am your family."

But now, hearing these words, I only feel extremely bitter.