The hospital room fell silent, leaving only Gu Wangshu and Sister Wen, who had been standing guard in the corner.
“Miss,” Sister Wen hesitated for a moment before asking, “you… you really don’t remember?”
Gu Wangshu set down her water glass and looked at her.
When the doctor had conducted the examination earlier, she had said she only remembered things from before her teenage years and had no memory of the past few years.
This was the best excuse she could come up with. Since she wasn’t the real Gu Xihe, many things would inevitably give her away. It was better to simply claim amnesia.
Gu Wangshu looked at this loyal old woman.
In her memory, Sister Wen was not only her cousin’s nanny but had also cooked soup for her when she was recuperating in Hong Kong years ago.
“I remember Aunt Wen’s soup was especially delicious,” she smiled faintly.
Sister Wen’s eyes instantly reddened: “Miss still remembers that…”
She wiped away her tears: “When we go home, I’ll make soup for you, to help you recover.”
Gu Wangshu hummed in agreement, then suddenly dropped her smile and asked, “Aunt Wen, earlier, when Mother told you to call the second wife’s place, what did she mean?”
Sister Wen paused, her expression growing complicated.
She looked at the young lady before her, her heart aching.
When the master had taken a second wife years ago, the young lady had already made a huge scene, arguing with the master several times and nearly running away from home. Now, with her memory gone, would she have to go through it all over again?
“Miss,” she carefully chose her words, “the master… the master married a second wife a few years ago, the lady from the Yang family.”
The Yang family.
Gu Wangshu’s heart stirred.
When she had been in Hong Kong years ago, she had heard her grandfather mention that her second uncle had a childhood sweetheart, a girl from the Yang family named Yang Huijuan.
The two had grown up together, shared deep feelings, and were originally planning to marry.
But Grandfather had disapproved.
The reason was simple: during the war, when Hong Kong fell, the Yang family had sided with the Japanese.
Not only that, but the Yang family had also betrayed Grandfather, who was supplying cotton yarn and medicine to the mainland, causing him to be captured by the Japanese and sent to a concentration camp, where he nearly lost his life.
After Grandfather narrowly escaped death in the concentration camp, he severed all ties with the Yang family and strictly forbade Second Uncle from having any further contact with Yang Huijuan.
Later, Yang Huijuan married a businessman, and the two left Hong Kong to develop their lives in Southeast Asia.
Gu Wangshu had thought this matter was long settled.
But now…
“That young lady from the Yang family,” she asked, “didn’t she already marry?”
Sister Wen sighed: “Ah, her husband passed away, and the Yang family fell into decline. She returned to Hong Kong with a daughter, desperate and with nowhere else to turn, seeking refuge with the master.”
“And then?”
“And then… the master took her in, saying he would let her work as a clerk in the company to settle down first. But before long, she… she became pregnant.”
Gu Wangshu sneered.
“And then?”
“And then, the master went along with it and formally held a banquet to marry her as his second wife.”
Sister Wen lowered her head, “By then, the old master had already passed away for three years, and no one could control the master anymore…”
Gu Wangshu fell silent.
In other words, all of this had happened after her death.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Grandfather had hated the Yang family his entire life and had specifically warned Second Uncle on his deathbed never to have any dealings with them.
As soon as Grandfather passed away, Second Uncle couldn’t wait to marry the Yang family’s daughter into the household.
Hah, truly filial.
“Miss…” Sister Wen looked at her with concern.
Gu Wangshu opened her eyes, her expression already restored to calm.
“It’s nothing,” she said, “I’m just a little tired.”
She leaned back against the pillow, gazing at the ceiling.
She was no longer the sickly invalid.
Gu Xihe’s body was young and healthy, only twenty-three years old—the prime of life.
Ten years ago, at twenty-three, she had died of tuberculosis.
Ten years later, she had returned to twenty-three again.
She stretched her arms and moved her legs, feeling the strength of this body.
She was no longer that sickly Gu Wangshu, who would gasp for breath after just a few steps.
Now she had a healthy body. How wonderful.
It was just that the real Gu Xihe… that foolish girl who gave up her life for a man, was truly gone.
Gu Wangshu sighed softly in her heart.
Her thoughts drifted involuntarily back to that “cold” spring in Beijing.
The spring of 1976 was, for Gu Wangshu, a complete nightmare.
That year, fate bared its most ferocious fangs at her.
First, her parents both passed away at a farm in the northwest. Her grandmother, unable to bear the blow of outliving her own children, soon followed them in death.
Before the news could even reach her older brother Gu Xiuyuan, who was working in the countryside in Yunnan, she instead received a telegram: while cutting sugarcane in Yunnan, her brother had accidentally fallen down a mountainside, his fate unknown.
That year, she was twenty-two, the third year of her marriage to Zhong Jiming.
Just as she felt her world collapsing, news arrived from Hong Kong.
Her grandfather, Gu Shiyong, had used his connections to reach the higher-ups.
This patriotic businessman claimed to be terminally ill, with little time left, and his only wish was to see his granddaughter one last time before his death.
Grandfather Gu Shiyong was originally from Suzhou. During the war, he had been separated from his pregnant wife.
Although they later reconnected, by then Grandfather had remarried in Hong Kong. Grandmother, with her strong-willed nature, refused to go to Hong Kong. Later, as the domestic situation grew tense, they lost contact completely.
But he was, after all, a patriotic businessman. During the most difficult years of the War of Resistance, he risked his life to break through blockades and deliver urgently needed supplies to the mainland.
Faced with a dying old man’s final request, the authorities approved it.
Under such circumstances, Gu Wangshu traveled alone to Hong Kong.
Before leaving Beijing, with the help of her father-in-law Zhong Mian, she and Zhong Jiming quickly went through divorce proceedings.
Aside from the doctor at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, no one knew that when she left Beijing, she was already coughing up blood into her handkerchief.
Six months after arriving in Hong Kong, Grandfather Gu Shiyong passed away.
Another six months later, in the spring of 1977, Gu Wangshu closed her eyes alone in a ward at Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital, suffering from severe tuberculosis.
Back then, she thought that was the end.
Gu Wangshu looked out the window at the dazzling nightscape of Victoria Harbour and took a deep breath. This time, no tearing pain came from her lungs.
It was truly wonderful to be alive.