I am the Zombie King of the Apocalyptic World
Chapter 1363 - 1358 Story 3

Chapter 1363: Chapter 1358 Story 3

He looked at the thirteen-year-old girl who was five years older than him, holding a plush teddy bear in her palm, with a tag hanging from its tail. On it were his name and a short message, as well as a simple emoticon she had drawn with a ballpoint pen.

That day, he just stared at her blankly, his eyes filled with indescribable emotions. He saw her smile as if she had encountered something interesting.

"I’m sorry, I wasn’t ignoring you at the time. It’s just that Yang Zhe was tricked into climbing a tree and fell. He was quite badly injured, and the teachers weren’t around. I was busy taking him to the hospital. Really, those troublemakers just know how to bully him."

"Alright, don’t be sad. Today is your birthday, and this is your birthday gift."

She might not have known that he actually preferred robots, Ultraman toys, but it was the first time he had heard the term "birthday gift." He had seen birthday gifts on the black and white TV at his great-uncle’s house, lots of them, enough to make one envious, but his family was too poor. Only those with better-off families killed a chicken to give their children a nice meal on their birthdays. In his family, he had never celebrated a birthday; he even thought that no one in the world had birthdays—that it was something that only existed on TV.

This plush teddy bear was the first birthday gift he had ever received. He couldn’t replicate the feelings of that moment, but he had etched the date deeply into his heart, not because it was the day he was born, but because of that gift.

It was his most precious possession, along with that hand wrapped in gauze. If possible, he wished it would never heal, that he could keep it wrapped forever.

It was also because of that day that his dependence on Qingbai became infinitely magnified. Since then, he stuck to her like a dog plaster every day, like a robot programmed to speak only when she spoke. Otherwise, he was just a moving statue.

He wanted to follow her forever, to follow this light, but he was afraid that one day she would suddenly disappear. Every time a couple came to adopt a child, he felt an inexplicable fear. Fortunately, Qingbai seemed to have experienced something that made her very resistant to these couples. Whenever it happened, she would hide and sit on the little stone bench under the dividing wall, watching the couples come and go with a child wearing a happy smile.

One day, due to some matters, Teacher Zhang forcibly took him to a room where he saw a doctor in a white coat. The doctor asked him some very strange questions. In the end, he only saw the doctor say something to Teacher Zhang, who frowned at him.

"Doctor, are you serious?"

"Well, I’ve been doing this for many years; I wouldn’t guess wrong. Although there are some personality defects, it’s not serious. Quite minor, barely acceptable. We’ll apply for him tomorrow."

"Alright then." Teacher Zhang’s voice came, her eyes on Lin Jie filled with concern. He didn’t know what it was about, so he could only glance at the door, feeling at a loss.

"Ouch, it’s better to report this. It’s not serious now, but who knows about the future."

The man beside Teacher Zhang seemed very serious, and for some reason, he seemed very afraid of Lin Jie.

He heard Teacher Zhang simply say, "Okay, I’ll report it to the higher-ups." Then she took him away from the place. When he went to look for Qingbai, he heard the man call him "little monster!"

He didn’t say anything; he also didn’t intentionally understand the real meaning of the words. To him, the words adults said were always strange.

In just a few days, he learned that the holidays were ending. That day, he also learned the term "summer vacation" and suddenly realized that before his parents divorced, he had been going to school.

His school had moved from the mountain area to an ordinary school nearby the community. He began to feel anxious, especially upon learning that the school was boarding, and that he couldn’t treat the orphanage like home and return after classes. His panic grew, but he dared not tell anyone. To him, his secret desires were very shameful!

People always say that once you reach fifteen, time seems to fly by, but he found that even though fifteen was still a long way off for him, time also seemed to pass very quickly. Fifty days of vacation sounded very long, yet it also seemed to be just a few weeks, passing swiftly...

The day to start school arrived, and he saw unfamiliar faces. He discovered that he was vastly different from them and couldn’t describe how he felt. He didn’t dare to speak, only when the new teacher’s lecture started did his heart settle down.

The new school was very big, utterly incomparable to the previous mountain school. And the bigger it was, the more he feared, the more panicked he felt. The vast environment didn’t seem friendly to him, but luckily, the school had a nine-year consistent education program, and Qingbai, who was starting seventh grade, was at the junior high section not far away.

At noon when school was out, she found him and asked if he was getting used to school on the first day. He nodded, indicating it was okay, without revealing his true feelings.

Perhaps out of sympathy, or perhaps because he had always been by her side, inhabiting a certain place in her heart, she treated him like family. Whatever the reason, he was very happy because he already regarded Qingbai as his own family, even more important than his real relatives.

Only in front of her could he react normally, speak normally, like a normal person.

But in the classroom, he was a freak. Though sitting there, he was almost isolated from everything else. His academic performance in the first test shocked everyone; it couldn’t get any lower, even the teachers teaching him found it unbelievable!

From that point on, he became the consolation for every classmate. Whenever their own grades were unsatisfactory, he was their reassurance.

At least they had the right to laugh at someone else!

Countless times he was called into the office, where the teachers forced him to study, to recognize the most basic knowledge.

And he didn’t know how many classes he spent standing at the lectern. But over time, even the most patient teachers had moments of exploding. In third grade, in the office, a normally gentle teacher finally lost all composure and lashed out in an uncontrolled rage, cursing his parents—how could they give birth to such an idiot?

In the end, the teacher realized her mistake and apologized to him, lamenting how she got driven to such a state by a child. But how would she know that in Lin Jie’s heart, his parents were like dust passing before his eyes, insignificant; he felt no anger, just silently listening to the teacher’s screams like a robot.

And then quickly forgetting them.