My Dearest General: It Has Always Been You

The man in front of Qin Weizhe had taken off the suit he had always worn, replacing it with a loose comfy sweater and cotton pants. His expression looked far more relaxed than before, as if a huge burden had been lifted off his shoulder despite his current status as a criminal accomplice.

It was like he had given up trying to hide behind the hard shell.

"How are you today, Mr. Si?" Qin Weizhe asked with a smile.

"I\'m fine, thank you for asking." He answered politely and took the initiative to offer. "Feel free to ask your questions, Detective Qin. I will try to answer as best as I can."

Qin Weizhe scribbled on his notebook and chuckled. "You look very different from the last time I saw you. I almost can\'t adjust with how cooperating you are. May I ask if there\'s a reason for that?"

"Reason?" Si Zhening hummed. "I guess…it\'s because deep down, I have always known that things will turn out this way."

Qin Weizhe raised one of his brows and leaned back on his chair. Staring at Si Zhening for a while, he asked a simple question. "Why are you pretending to be the serial killer?"

That single question managed to open the lock to Si Zhening\'s distant memory. He closed his eyes and immersed himself in the images surging in his mind.

If he had to tell a reason, then it must be to repay his sister, Si Qingzhao\'s kindness. 

One ought to return kindness a hundred fold and similarly, one also shouldn\'t keep still in face of another\'s animosity. 

That was the first thing Si Qingzhao taught him.

Growing up in an orphanage, Si Zhening didn\'t feel like he lived a bad life. The director was a middle aged woman who was unable to have her own child. That\'s why she and her husband started to take in abandoned children one after another until the habit evolved into opening an orphanage. 

Si Zhening was a baby abandoned in front of the orphanage when he was only a few months old. He had always been a quiet child; he didn\'t laugh when others told jokes, nor did he cry when he was bullied. No, to be exact, he didn\'t even know he was bullied.

Life at the orphanage was the survival of the fittest. The food was only enough to pad their stomach, full tummy was merely a pipe dream. Thus, stronger and more selfish children would start to snatch food from another behind the director\'s back. 

Si Zhening was the perfect target for that. He never reacted when his food was taken and he didn\'t tattletale either.

It was a perfectly ordinary day in summer when six-years-old Si Zhening found the portion of his food missing yet again. He turned around and tiptoed to drink from the water barrel instead so that he could last until dinnertime, then proceeded to scribble on the sand with a tiny branch. 

All of a sudden, someone handed him a loaf of bread, still warm and fresh from the oven.

"I made this myself." The girl smiled widely, her long hair fluttered along with the wind. "Do you want to try it?"

That was his first meeting with Si Qingzhao. Following that, Si Zhening would find Si Qingzhao visiting the orphanage once in a while. It turned out that she was doing volunteer work during weekends to fill her missing high school graduation credits. She would go around helping the director to watch over the babies and help her cook. She also liked to bring homemade breads and cookies for them.

Compared to other children, she was closest to Si Zhening. When he did his homework, she would watch over him and correct his mistakes. When he ate, she would sit beside him and place food in his bowl. Also, when Si Zhening scribbled on the sand, she would crouch down and observe what he wrote.

One day, she suddenly asked. "Aren\'t you angry?"

Si Zhening looked at her blankly.

"They snatched your food again. If it\'s not enough, then they should have told the director directly!" She huffed angrily. "There\'s no need to take yours! And you, why are you keeping mum everytime it happens?!"

"Then what should I do?" Si Zhening asked naively.

"Be angry! Hit them! Tell the director about their misdeeds!"

"Angry?" Si Zhening stared at her with an inquiring look. "Are you angry right now?"

"Of course I am!" 

"Why?"

"Why, you asked…" Si Qingzhao revealed a bewildered expression. "Isn\'t it common sense to be angry in a situation like this?"

"Really?" Si Zhening tilted his head, confused.

He had seen many people get angry. When the child who slept in the same bunk bed with him got his toys taken away, he got angry and started to throw tantrums. When a girl\'s ponytail was pulled, she would get angry and then cry. When the director saw the mess they had caused over one meal, she would also get angry but it soon subsided after she nagged for an hour. 

The way people expressed their anger was different. Si Zhening gradually understood that.

But in his case, when should he get angry and how? Should he cry? Or should he throw tantrums? How could people decide that? He couldn\'t get a hang of it no matter how hard he tried.

He had always thought that he was normal and it wasn\'t until Si Qingzhao asked that question did the seed of doubt spurt in his heart. 

Why was he different from other people?

Was he…abnormal?

"You\'re not." Si Qingzhao answered with a smile. She bent down to level her gaze with him, something he didn\'t understand flashed within her eyes. It wasn\'t years later that he knew it was sympathy tinged with a hint of affection and pity. "Everyone has something they\'re bad at. Some people aren\'t good with mathematics, some people have a bad memory. In your case, you only have difficulties in expressing your feelings."

"Then what should I do?" If there was something he wasn\'t good at, then he should practice on it more, just like how he practiced writing characters, stroke by stroke until in the end, he made no mistake.

But feelings… How could one define it? He couldn\'t see it, nor could he write it down. It was so vague and abstract, Si Zhening thought this must be the most difficult problem he had encountered all his life.

Si Qingzhao pondered deeply. "Observe, imitate and modify. You should go out and meet a lot of people. Only then will you understand that there\'s a lot of different kinds of feelings you never know out there. How about this, do you want to go with me?"

Si Zhening blinked. "Go with you? Where to?"

"To my house." She beamed and harrumphed proudly. "I have an older brother. He\'s very nice and gentle. If you come with me, then he will become your older brother too."

Si Zhening didn\'t hesitate to agree. Not because of the temptation of having an older brother, but because he didn\'t want to separate from Si Qingzhao. There was a slight complication in the process but Si Zhening was still too young to understand that. The criteria for the adoption wasn\'t fulfilled, thus it was difficult for Si Qingzhao\'s parents to officially adopt him into the family. 

However, Si Qingzhao insisted stubbornly. She said that she had treated Si Zhening as his younger brother and there\'s no way for her to leave him behind like this.

The director held his shoulders and asked seriously. "Do you really want to go with her? You should understand that your status as their adopted son will be unofficial. Your name will not be registered in their family. Regardless of that, you can still treat this orphanage as your house."

Si Zhening looked at the director and the dejected Si Qingzhao back and forth. In the end, he walked toward Si Qingzhao and held her hand with barely any hesitation at all. "I want to go with her."

Si Qingzhao instantly burst into tears and smothered him into a tight hug. 

As he expected, Si Qingzhao was the most interesting person he had ever known so far.

She was good at showing various kinds of vivid expressions. She would cry when someone cried and she would also get angry on behalf of another. Si Zhening couldn\'t fathom how someone could hold that many feelings inside them. Wouldn\'t they burst by then?

Originally, he thought that it would take forever for him to figure out how Si Qingzhao\'s brain was wired. Never had he expected that he would understand it so soon in the year he turned ten, four years after he joined the Si Family.

It all started when Si Qingzhao suddenly disappeared for a week.

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A/N: Finally, Si Zhening\'s backstory is here! Omo, he\'s so cute and clueless as a child QAQ