Chapter 183 (Bitter)Sweet 16 (Part 1)

In a flash, three years have passed. Losing his mother still hurt, but it hurt a bit less every day. Jingwei knew there was no way he would ever stop missing his mother, but at least he had Shang Jing for company.

Jingwei was now 16, and he had gone from school pariah to school heartthrob, the one person everyone wanted to date or become.

He was now their campus superstar. Girls that used to frown at him for his mischief or give him disparaging looks for his grades had begun to giggle and blush at him instead, offering to tutor him one-on-one.

Needless to say, there wasn't any learning done when he took them up on their offers. At least not any that was actually useful in an exam. But then again, he no longer needed to care about his grades. Tianwei was too busy shadowing his father at the company, and his father was too busy teaching Tianwei the ropes of the business to even remember he had a second son.

That was all fine with Jingwei. It wasn't as though he lacked company. Other than Shang Jing, he also made friends easily with his other classmates because in the span of those few years, he had grown tall and handsome.

Jingwei wasn't plagued with acne, much to the jealousy of his other, more unfortunate schoolmates. In addition, he took up boxing, and his face had lost enough baby fat to reveal high cheekbones and a sharp jawline. His muscles had also developed, giving him a more mature, manly look despite only being 16.

When he dressed up in a suit, older women flocked around him like bees to honey, thinking he was a university student! It was a huge ego boost, much to the jealousy of his classmates.

His voice had also stopped cracking at every third word. Instead it deepened into a comfortable baritone that he overheard girls describe as 'mouth-wateringly sexy'.

What's more, a quick look at the boy's restrooms proved that he was well-endowed in that area too.

Add the fact he was loaded with money? Jingwei knew that nothing could bring him down! If anyone tried, he knew how to deal with them - and not using his fists, but with his computer.

If he could hack into the Pentagon, what else could he not do? He thought smugly to himself, as he and Shang Jing lounged around in one of his mansion's empty rooms on a warm summer's day. Now all the both of them needed were cool hacker aliases, and they were set for life.

"Come on, Jingwei, you have to admit Alexander Grande is a good name!"

"Are you kidding me Shang Jing? Alexander Grande sounds so dumb. There was some king called Alexander, wasn't there?"

"He's a conqueror, you just have shitty taste!"

"Dude. He died. He's clearly not that good at his job because he didn't conquer death. And isn't that surname taken from a Starbucks sizing?"

"Well no one could conquer death. Do you think he's Voldermort?! Anyway, the surname is based on an American singer. She really can hit the high notes, just like you when you see a cockroach fly - ouch, you shithead, what was that for?"

"Ouch, stop hitting me! Voldermort couldn't conquer death either, you dumbass! This is me whacking you for your shitty nickname."

"Huh, then what's your hacker alias going to be? I bet it's something stupid like Expired Furball."

"Of course not?! I've picked a really cool name."

"Yeah right. I'll believe it when I hear it."

"Yes it is… just wait… it's 'Dimitri Von Holson.'"

"What. The. Fuck. That's nonsense. And you're insulting my name? Get some taste man."

"I don't care, it's cool! And look, internet commenters think so too," Jingwei said, brandishing his phone, where a foreign news article was talking about their recent actions.

He and his best friend Wu Shang Jing had just successfully hacked through the first layer of the Pentagon, and Jingwei had changed their background to include pictures of cat memes.

The furor on the western Internet world after someone had leaked that news that the Pentagon had been taken over by cat memes had even been reported on the news! It made him laugh with glee.

Never did he think that he would have been able to do it so quickly - and it was so much easier than he expected!

He had come a long way from simply scamming and hacking game items from fellow players.

His actions might have been illegal, but still, he finally achieved something so big that his father couldn't lecture him that he was 'wasting his time' and 'ruining his potential' (if he even remembered Jingwei's existence.)

Best of all? This first real big accomplishment was achieved with no help from his father at all!

Initially, after his mother's death, he had lived the next few months in a blur. If not for Shang Jing staying by his side and introducing him to coding, he didn't know what would have become of him. His mom was no longer here to provide any warmth, and his father seemed to retreat into himself, pouring himself into his work.

He also had all of her things thrown away, and Jingwei had gone on his knees to beg him to reconsider, only to get a cup thrown at him. If not for Lady Yu salvaging a precious few items from the incinerator, it would be like his mother never existed.

p And that left Jingwei stewing alone in his grief and regrets. There was no space to mourn, and nothing he could mourn to.

Coding gave him a new purpose, something to focus on when the miasma of grief that threatened to overwhelm him. Every time he successfully hacked into a company website, a bank account, a government agency database, he felt a little less numb, a little more alive.

It was as though unlocking all these tiny achievements gave him a sense of purpose.

Hacking through supposedly unbeatable security systems was fun, and when he succeeded, he sent their owners cat memes afterwards to let them know they were compromised. He saw it as a public service; he was letting them know about the flaws in their system, and he only left memes instead of viruses.

And the end goal was of course to catch up to Shang Jing's level of skills!

"I can't believe you're getting validation from internet commenters." Shang Jing said derisively, turning up his nose at the thought of the commoners sitting behind their screens, daring to comment on things they could not hope to understand. "Do lions need to care about the opinions of the sheep? I certainly think not."

"They're also people," Jingwei retorted cheerfully. "Their opinions matter."

"No they don't," Shang Jing said with a proud scoff. "Only our opinions matter. Their existences have no meaning in the grand scheme of things."

Jingwei only laughed, thinking that Shang Jing was still joking. After all, when he laid alone in bed at night, he sometimes felt like his existence was meaningless too, but that was fine. He wasn't alone - he had his best friend, and he was sure things would get even better as he grew older.

Then in that same year, everything came crashing down.