# New File
In the eyes of the general public, a child's memories from before the age of six should be extremely hazy. Because of this, the couple believed that with their care, Zheng Yixuan could emerge from the shadow of the car accident and become a happy child.
The results, however, were completely different. Zheng Yixuan refused to speak after leaving the hospital. He was always hiding in dark rooms. If someone entered, he wouldn't cry or make a fuss. Instead, he acted as though he didn't want to see anyone.
To address the child's psychological problems, the couple took him all over the country and even went abroad for treatment. They eventually concluded that the child's soul might have remained at the scene of the car accident, and that his parents' deaths had had a serious impact on him.
Psychological trauma—in other words, traumatic stress, or PTSD.
However, some doctors believed that Zheng Yixuan had been born with Asperger's syndrome because his behavior differed from the typical stress response of children.
Something happened after Zheng Yixuan grew older. That year, he developed an intense interest in painting.
Professor Zheng taught oil painting, so naturally, she had plenty of painting supplies at home. At the time, she often painted at home. Whenever she did, Zheng Yixuan would leave his room to watch. He would stand there the entire time, watching for a very long while.
After Professor Zheng realized that painting could calm Zheng Yixuan, she began teaching him to paint. The doctors also said that painting was an effective way to soothe his mind. With that treatment, Zheng Yixuan gradually became willing to speak and meet people.
Professor Zheng was overjoyed. As long as Zheng Yixuan was willing to take this step, she could guide him smoothly.
Under Professor Zheng's intervention and treatment, Zheng Yixuan entered school and underwent socialization training. He began learning how to communicate and handle basic social interactions, but he still didn't like to talk.
Zheng Yixuan silently made his way through elementary school, middle school, high school, and college. His differences isolated him in class, but fortunately, he never became the target of more serious bullying.
His paintings were worth more than Feng Yan had imagined. He had already been able to paint works that could be auctioned while he was in middle school. Professor Zheng even established a studio for him and continued running it for years afterward, saving up a substantial amount of money for her son.
The professor had a very open-minded attitude toward life. She didn't expect this child to enter an ordinary life and get married like everyone else. She only hoped that Zheng Yixuan would have enough money to spend his old age peacefully. His life would be more difficult than an ordinary person's, and being poor was even harder for someone with a mental disorder.
“I thought,” Professor Zheng said, tears welling in her eyes.
Her husband took out a handkerchief and wiped them away. They looked at each other and smiled lovingly, like a scene from a painting.
She composed herself and continued, “I thought he could go on living like this, but I never expected him to suddenly stop talking three years ago and spend long periods living alone in the painting studio. After finishing his painting, he said he wanted to move out and live by himself.”
“You must be wondering why we let him live alone.” Seeing how emotional his wife had become, Professor Wen spoke this time.
Feng Yan nodded slightly. He was indeed curious about that.
The old man sighed and said, “There was no way we could refuse him. He was incredibly stubborn. At the time, his condition was exactly the same as when he first came to our home more than twenty years ago. We didn't dare provoke him, so we hurriedly looked for a nearby house where he could live. The only community in the area where you live now doesn't have a school district, and very few people live there, so it's quiet and peaceful. We discussed it for a long time before he agreed to let Aunt Lin take care of him, but he wouldn't allow us to visit. He hasn't left the house once in the past three years and hasn't sent us a single message.”
Professor Zheng took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes, and put them back on. Feng Yan noticed that whenever the subject turned to Zheng Yixuan, the woman's gentle temperament completely disappeared, replaced by the distinctive turmoil of a mother.
She said softly, “Actually, we still don't know what happened. We've wondered whether something happened that day to upset him, whether we said or did something that triggered his condition, but no matter how much we thought about it, we couldn't find anything. You just said that he drew a cake and said his mother bought it for him...?”
When she mentioned the cake, her emotions surged again, and she suddenly clutched her chest. Her husband hurriedly helped her calm down. Seeing her like that frightened Feng Yan too. He grabbed the teapot beside him, poured a cup of hot water, and handed it to her.
Professor Zheng waved her hand and gradually calmed down. She asked Feng Yan, “I may be rambling a little, but did you really hear him say that his mother gave it to him? Was it really a piece of strawberry cake?”
Feng Yan nodded and said, “Yes, that's what he said. The painting showed a piece of strawberry cake, with one whole strawberry and another that had already been cut. The strawberries didn't seem very fresh...”
After talking for a while longer, Feng Yan learned why Professor Zheng was so agitated.
According to her story, the cake was connected to Zheng Yixuan's first arrival at their home more than twenty years ago.
At the time, she had bought the cake to welcome Zheng Yixuan. She cut a piece with her own hands and handed it to the child, accidentally getting a little butter on top of it.
Zheng Yixuan didn't eat even a bite of the cake. He simply stared at it in silence until the next day.
Professor Zheng also said that Zheng Yixuan had never called them Mom and Dad. The man had never called anyone anything. No one had ever heard a form of address from his mouth. He didn't even call anyone by name. He referred to everyone in the world only as “you,” “me,” and “him.”
“He actually called me Mom.” The professor's tears fell as her emotions overwhelmed her. After all, she had raised Zheng Yixuan for more than twenty years and had finally received a response from him.
What shocked Feng Yan wasn't that Zheng Yixuan had called Professor Zheng Mom. What shocked Feng Yan was the fact that Zheng Yixuan had been twenty-eight three years ago, yet he still clearly remembered every detail of the cake from twenty-one years earlier. A memory like that was too astonishing.
Were all these things stored with such perfect clarity in his mind? Could it be roughly understood as his brain not being cleared out for more than twenty years, causing the memory to become too large for the CPU to operate, which was why he crashed?
Then, was the reason he didn't go anywhere, see anyone, or do anything except live alone day after day that he didn't want to be exposed to a new environment that would create new memories?
It was said that the human brain would filter out repeated information, which was why adults had the illusion that life passed quickly.
In any case, Feng Yan wasn't a doctor, and this absurd idea was nothing more than a passing thought.
Now, no one knew exactly what had happened to Zheng Yixuan. He didn't seem to have been stimulated by anything, yet he also seemed capable of being triggered anytime, anywhere.