If the stove won’t light, ask a neighbor for help. Don’t be lazy, your body just got better, don’t catch another cold.
If you can’t cook, then don’t. When I’m not home, go eat at the cafeteria. Don’t try to save money; if the meal coupons aren’t enough, buy more yourself. When I get back, I’ll check, if there’s too much leftover, I won’t allow it.
I’ll be back as soon as I finish; it shouldn’t take more than a few days.”
He kept talking, but his hands didn’t stop.
In the blink of an eye, he had transformed back into that upright, imposing military figure.
Yet no matter how upright or imposing he looked, in Wei Nan’s eyes it didn’t feel the same as the first time they met.
She fixed her gaze on his constantly chattering mouth and finally couldn’t hold back, asking, “Since when did you and Xiao Pei get so close? What have you two been whispering about me behind my back? Couldn’t I have starved without you?”
Jiang Sirui paused, then laughed as he walked over and “ferociously” pinched her cheek.
Feigning severity, he said, “Not only can’t you starve, you can’t lose weight either! The little bit of flesh I’ve worked so hard to fatten you with, if it disappears in a few days when I’m not around, you’ll see how I deal with you when I get back!”
Wei Nan slapped his hand away, glaring at him in both embarrassment and anger, then turned her back and ignored him.
Seeing her like this, cute and flustered—Jiang Sirui felt a tingling warmth in his chest, and his hands clenched repeatedly without him realizing.
A sense of attachment and reluctance welled up inside him, unlike anything he had felt before. He wished he could just put her in his pocket and take her along.
He sighed quietly, then walked over and stood in front of her again.
He placed the envelope back into her palm, then covered her small hand and the envelope with his large, firm hand.
In a threatening tone, he said, “Erase that thought from your mind! Everything else can be negotiated, but not this!”
Outside, the sound of bicycle bells rang a few more times, clearly signaling urgency.
Jiang Sirui didn’t say anything more. He pressed her hand firmly, marking his claim, then briskly walked out.
ᘻᘿᓍᘺ
Wei Nan had no idea what mission Jiang Sirui was talking about.
It probably wasn’t as simple as he made it sound.
He said it wouldn’t take more than a few days, yet in the blink of an eye, nearly ten days had passed, and he still hadn’t shown up.
During this time, Wei Pei was recovering quite well. By all rights, she could have been discharged long ago.
But after her back injury stabilized, Dr. Ling Bai Lan transferred her from orthopedics to his internal medicine department.
In Dr. Ling’s words: “Your children’s medical insurance won’t be valid after the New Year. Since it’s the end of the year and there are fewer patients, we should take advantage of this time to give Xiao Pei a proper course of treatment.”
And Dr. Ling meant what he said.
Wei Nan didn’t know exactly how he arranged it, but he managed to get quite a bit of traditional Chinese medicine, which the pharmacy prepared daily for Wei Pei to drink.
Of course, a significant portion of these were self-paid nutritional medicines, but Wei Nan wasn’t short on money. She could easily afford to cover the cost to help her sister recover.
So although Wei Pei stayed in the hospital a bit longer, her little face gradually became rounder and healthier-looking.
Before she knew it, tomorrow would be the day Wei Pei was discharged.
That afternoon, Wei Nan went out to buy some expensive fruits and a few snacks.
Back at home, she also did a major rearrangement, moving anything that might obstruct her sister’s walking to safer positions.
Wei Nan spent the entire afternoon working, almost missing her chance to pick up meals from the cafeteria.
After buying meals and delivering them to her sister, and confirming the time to pick her up from the hospital tomorrow, Wei Nan returned home.
By this point, the house was already very clean; she only had a few finishing touches left to do.
While tidying up the kitchen, her eyes fell on the window at the far end, which had been closed.
That window had always been shut; since coming to this house, Wei Nan had never opened it.
She had looked out through it before and knew that outside was a dead corner formed by the family apartment building and the courtyard wall, a piece of unused land.
Perhaps in the past, Wei Damin had lived alone and didn’t need that much space, so the area had never been put to use.
It was overgrown with weeds, littered with fallen leaves, and clutter dropped by careless neighbors from above.
It might have been fine if she hadn’t seen it, but now, looking at that filthy spot through the window, Wei Nan felt increasingly uncomfortable.
She decided to take advantage of the remaining daylight and jump out to clean it up.
At the very least, she thought, she had to get rid of the trash.
With the New Year approaching, the area right at the doorstep being this dirty was not only unpleasant to look at but also uncomfortable just to think about.
She grabbed a broom and dustpan and pushed open the window.
Before she could even lift her leg, in the next second, Wei Nan suddenly realized she was standing in her bedroom back in her modern home.
Wei Nan was completely stunned.
Her breath stopped.
She stood there, frozen, not daring to move.
At that moment, she could not believe her own eyes.
Or rather, she felt like she was dreaming.
She stood in the very center of the bedroom, still holding the broom and dustpan in one hand, staring dumbfounded at the home she had lived in for twenty years.
Her heart felt like it was about to leap out of her throat.
This was… really home?
The overwhelming joy made Wei Nan’s head spin, and she couldn’t help but pinch her own thigh hard to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.
Just then—
Bang!
A sudden crisp crash came from the kitchen as something ceramic hit the floor.
Before Wei Nan could react, the study door next to her bedroom swung open, and her father’s figure flashed past the slightly ajar doorway.
Then her dad’s concerned voice came from the kitchen: “I told you to stay inside and rest properly. Wait for dinner; I’ll get it from the cafeteria. Why are you running over here again?”
“I just slipped, it’s really nothing. I wanted to make some soup, you haven’t had a proper meal in days, and you still have classes,” her mother’s familiar voice responded from the kitchen.
But after just over ten days apart, her mom’s voice sounded like it had changed, it was so weak, so fragile.
The raw reality made Wei Nan take a tentative step forward.
Carefully.
Afraid that if she took a single wrong step, she would wake up from this beautiful dream.
She took one step… then another… and another…
“Mom!” she suddenly shouted, bursting out of the bedroom door and rushing straight into her mother’s arms in the kitchen.
Clang! Another loud crash followed.
This time it was her father, Wei Rusheng, who dropped the soup bowl he was holding onto the floor.
“Nannan?” he called out in disbelief.
“Mm, it’s me, Dad, Mom, it’s me. Wuwuwu, I missed you so much! I’m home, I’m finally home!”
Wei Nan hugged her mother, Lin Ru, tightly around the neck, pressing her face against her mother’s shoulder, breathing in that familiar scent, and sobbing uncontrollably.
Lin Ru staggered slightly under her daughter’s embrace, her eyes wide with shock.
She seemed unable to fully believe what was happening in that moment.
It wasn’t until she felt the wet warmth of her daughter’s tears on her skin that she shakily stroked Wei Nan’s back and called out, “Nannan? Is it really you? You’ve come back?”
“It’s me, I’m back, Mom, I’m back!” Wei Nan hugged her mother even tighter, crying as she replied in her arms.
“Nannan!” Lin Ru suddenly hugged her daughter with all her strength.
She used every ounce of energy, locking Wei Nan tightly from behind. Her fingers turned white from gripping so hard.
Even then, she didn’t lessen her hold at all, as if afraid that even a slight loosening would make her daughter slip away again.
Wei Rusheng’s face was wet with tears as well.
Without saying a word, he spread his arms and pulled both his wife and daughter into his embrace.
He held them tightly, letting the tears fall freely down his cheeks and into his daughter’s hair.
The three of them stayed like that in the kitchen for a long time, clinging to one another.
Finally, Wei Rusheng was the first to react.
He wiped the tears from his face and said, “Go outside and talk, go outside and talk. Nannan, where have you been? Do you know you scared Mom and Dad half to death?!”
By now, Lin Ru finally fully believed that her daughter had really come back.
She loosened her tight hold on Wei Nan’s arms and immediately noticed something was wrong.
“Nannan, why are you so thin?!”
After saying that, she stepped back and stared at her daughter closely.
When she saw the clothes Wei Nan was wearing, her expression instantly changed.
She placed a trembling hand on Wei Nan’s shoulder and asked in a quivering voice, “Nannan, where did you go? Tell Mom exactly what happened. You… you’re not afraid, right? No matter what happened, you’re not afraid? Dad and Mom are here. You tell us.”
As she spoke, she choked on her words and couldn’t continue.
Her face grew paler and paler, her lips lost all color.
She seemed to be imagining the disasters her daughter might have faced, and it made her whole body shiver in fear.
“Mom, I’m fine.” Wei Nan quickly hugged Lin Ru again.
She knew her mother was overthinking.
Before her mother could speak again, she hurriedly said, “Mom, Dad, let’s go outside and talk. Don’t worry, I’m really fine. I wasn’t kidnapped, and I didn’t run into any gangs. I just… experienced something very strange.”
Wei Nan hadn’t planned to hide the whole time-travel thing from her parents, but she couldn’t.
There was no way to explain how she had disappeared all of a sudden and then returned just as suddenly.
Moreover, she was still wearing 1980s clothes, and occupying the unfortunate girl’s body.
Although they looked exactly alike, this body was thin and small, like a bean sprout.
If she didn’t tell the truth, how could her parents believe that she hadn’t faced any extreme danger, yet in just over ten days had ended up in this state?
Wei Nan took her parents into the living room. The three of them sat on the sofa, and she recounted everything that had happened over the past days, leaving nothing out.
Of course, when it came to the fight with Wang Sanhua, she held back, not revealing all the grievances she had suffered.
Even so, it was enough to make Wei Rusheng and Lin Ru feel so heartbroken that they could hardly breathe.
Both of them had spent their lives in academia; they had never encountered stories about time travel or reincarnation.
The incredible experiences their daughter described shouldn’t have been so easy to accept.
But if they didn’t accept it, how could they cope?
This was their daughter, they had spent twenty years together, day in and day out.
No one knew Wei Nan better than them.
Now, the child was sitting right in front of them. Beyond the change in her clothing, her appearance and physique had truly altered.
Even if they didn’t fully understand, they had to believe: the soul before them was their daughter Nannan, even if the body was not.
Thinking of this, Lin Ru felt as if her heart was being torn apart; she could barely breathe.
Wei Rusheng, meanwhile, let out a deep sigh and clasped Wei Nan’s hand tightly.
He comforted her: “The important thing is that you’re back. As long as you’re back, that’s all that matters. Whatever happened before is past, don’t dwell on it. We’ll take good care of you from now on, and your body will recover soon.”
Her husband’s words reminded Lin Ru that her daughter returning home was the best outcome.
What else could matter more than that?
She nodded repeatedly and said over and over: “Yes, yes, yes! Mom will cook for you! We’ll make sure you recover properly. Your body will get better, and you’ll even grow taller!”
The Wei Nan of the past was 1.68 meters tall, but now, due to malnutrition, this body was probably just a little over 1.6 meters.
This was also why the couple quickly accepted that Wei Nan had traveled through time. After all, once your height has been lost, it’s not going to grow back on its own!
After the three of them had cried their hearts out and Wei Nan had said everything she could, she asked about what had been happening at home.
Only then did Wei Rusheng tell her that when they returned that day and found she wasn’t home, at first neither of them had paid it much attention.
When her phone didn’t answer, they discovered it was still in her bedroom, and they even complained a little about it.
But when she still hadn’t returned by nightfall, both of them began to worry.
After all, this was something that had never happened in Wei Nan’s life before.
They went to check her bedroom thoroughly.
That’s when panic set in.
They discovered she hadn’t taken her phone or her bag.
Lin Ru even checked her wardrobe and found that all her clothes and shoes were still there.
Everything was in place, but she was gone!
They immediately started calling all their relatives and friends.
Since Wei Nan had attended children-of-officers schools all her life and even got into university at her current school, her social circle almost completely overlapped with her parents’.
In no time at all, they confirmed that she hadn’t gone anywhere with friends, classmates, or relatives.
Everyone panicked.
Wei Rusheng went to report to the police, and the school also organized people to help search the surrounding area.
They searched for a long time, checking every place they could think of, but found no clue at all.
Wei Nan had completely vanished, like a drop of water poured into the sea.
From then on, Wei Nan could see everything unfold on the glass screen.
The entire family was completely devastated by the incident.
Even Wei Ning, who was in closed training, was called back for questioning. The lives of the whole family were thrown into chaos.
“I’ll call Ningning,” Wei Nan said immediately after hearing her parents’ account.
“Ningning is on a plane right now, they went abroad for a competition. Call him tomorrow morning. If he knows you’re back, he’ll be so happy, he might even perform exceptionally well.”
Hearing this, a trace of relief finally appeared on Wei Rusheng’s face.
Wei Nan saw her brother on the screen that day and knew her father was right.
She quickly nodded and promised, “I’ll call him tomorrow morning.”
With their daughter back, Lin Ru felt some energy return.
She stood up, worried, and said, “Nannan, go change your clothes and take a proper bath. I’ll make dinner, tonight we’ll eat something delicious!”
“Yes, you go wash up. Dad will get your favorite pig’s trotters, the roasted ones you like, and a salted duck,” Wei Rusheng said as he stood up too.
Wei Nan knew her parents were concerned for her. She didn’t want to upset them further, so she didn’t resist.
She nodded in agreement, took her clothes, and went to the bathroom.
She filled the Jacuzzi with water, set it to relaxation mode, and poured in her favorite lavender bubble bath oil.
Lying in the tub, Wei Nan let out a long, deep breath, finally allowing herself to truly believe she was back.
Back in the home she had missed for so long, back in the environment she knew best.
Completely relaxed, Wei Nan gradually felt drowsy.
Leaning against the soft massage pillow, she slowly closed her eyes.
As soon as she did, her mind flashed with the image of Xiao Pei’s little face.
Her heart skipped a beat—
Xiao Pei was still in the hospital. Tomorrow morning was the day they had planned for her to come home!
The little girl had been counting the days, eagerly waiting for Wei Nan to pick her up.
And now… Wei Nan had returned to her own home.
What about her sister?
Would Xiao Pei now become an orphan again, with no one to care for her?
Thinking of this, a sharp pang of guilt and sorrow twisted in Wei Nan’s heart.