“Hey, have you heard? Weike is coming to our school next month to hold a recruitment fair!”
At the Number Three Cafeteria of Luocheng University’s Seventh Branch, Lin Ya slammed her palm onto the dining table, sending ripples across the bowl of egg drop soup.
“Careful,” Qiu Wu pushed the wobbling bowl back from the edge of the table and smiled. “Do they even need to hold a recruitment fair? Aren’t more than half the people in the entire city working at Weike?”
“Tch, that is where you do not understand,” said Lin Ya, wagging her finger as a self-proclaimed die-hard fan of Future Technology. “That statistic includes all of Weike’s branch offices and subsidiaries. The ones coming this time are from the headquarters! They only want the absolute cream of the crop.” She mysteriously held up a digit. “Word has it that just for the probationary period, the annual salary is this much.”
“Then you are definitely a lock. Your grades are the best in our class, so prepare well and leave a good impression on your future leaders.” As she spoke, Qiu Wu picked out about seventy to eighty percent of the cilantro from her noodles.
“Not necessarily.” Lin Ya suddenly turned coy. “Your grades are pretty good too. Have you not thought about it?”
“Like you said, they only want the cream of the crop. How could I possibly measure up?” Qiu Wu smiled. “Still, I can tag along to keep you company.”
“Yay! I love you to death!” Lin Ya tried to lean across the table to give Qiu Wu a peck, but Qiu Wu stopped her. “Alright, cut it out. Your food is going to get cold.”
“Excuse me, can I add you on WeChat?” As soon as things settled down, someone gently tapped Qiu Wu on the shoulder.
She turned around to find two young girls whose attire instantly gave them away as first-year freshmen, looking at her with shy hesitation.
“Freshmen, it is not proper to poach across grade levels. We seniors still have plenty of singles left over here,” Lin Ya added fuel to the fire.
“Yaya.” Qiu Wu looked at the two girls’ hands tightly clasped together from nervousness, and smiled warmly. “Sure.”
Exchanging WeChat contacts and editing the remarks.
“My name is Qiu Wu, and I am in the Industrial Design department. Since you two just arrived at school, if there is anything you do not understand about campus life, feel free to ask me.”
“It is no trouble at all. Goodbye.”
After sending the two freshmen off, Qiu Wu sat back down. Lin Ya propped her chin in her hand and smiled, “I think you should become a celebrity. You add people on WeChat like you are giving out autographs.”
Qiu Wu gave her a half-lidded look, and Lin Ya dramatically clutched her chest. “Ah, please, stop radiating your charm! Until I strike it rich, I am strictly immune to beauty!”
“Fine, fine, it is all this humble servant’s fault. Please hurry up and finish your meal, and get some early rest afterwards.” Qiu Wu smiled helplessly.
Lin Ya lost her focus for a fraction of a second.
Admittedly, Qiu Wu truly had the capital to captivate people with her looks.
She had a head of natural, deep-orange hair and light-green eyes, which were quite rare in Luocheng, a city primarily populated by ancient Eastern Zhou descendants. Let alone the fact that she was quite striking to begin with, her brows and eyes were soft and gentle, her nose bridge high and straight, her lips full and lush, and those peach-blossom eyes looked like rippling spring water when she smiled, making her exceptionally endearing.
Her skin was not as fair as those Luo Dong natives who had been under the protection of the Sky Dome system since birth; instead, it carried a touch of unique health and wildness.
Simply put, judged purely by appearance, she looked less like a boring human and more like a wild mountain spirit that had just attained human form.
This rare temperament was as glaringly out of place as a wild rose abruptly blooming in a greenhouse.
If they had not spent three whole years together without a single spark of romantic love, greenhouse flower Lin Ya would not even dare to claim with a clean conscience that she harbored no ulterior motives toward her.
After lunch, with no classes on Friday afternoon, Qiu Wu was just about to head to the library with Lin Ya to prep for the presentation when her phone suddenly buzzed in her pocket.
She took out her phone.
Sister Wang: “Miss, the head of the family has instructed me to pick you up. I am waiting for you at the school south gate parking lot.”
What is going on?
Qiu Wu furrowed her brow.
Figuring she brought bad luck, her adoptive mother rarely initiated contact with her.
She initially assumed her cousin Qiu Ji had gotten wronged somewhere again and wanted to summon her back to vent her frustrations.
“What is wrong?” Lin Ya asked as she packed up her things.
“Nothing, family matters. I will not be able to accompany you this afternoon, sorry.” Qiu Wu put away her phone and offered an apologetic smile.
“Are we really going to stand on ceremony between us? Go on then, and text me if anything comes up.” Lin Ya shot her a playful glare and waved her off.
Stepping out of the cafeteria, Qiu Wu used an umbrella to block the warm afternoon sun and walked alone toward the south gate of Luoda.
Not far from the south gate parking lot was a construction site. Heavy machinery roared away, grinding the original terrain beyond recognition, and the kicked-up dust drifted half a street away, entirely indifferent to this purified slice of the Sky Dome.
Qiu Wu remembered that two months ago, this place had still been a small grove of trees filled with noisy cicadas and long-tailed birds.
The cicadas died, and the birds flew away.
In a little while, the festering flesh of the earth would scab over with steel and iron bones.
Beep-beep.
A car horn sounded from nearby. Qiu Wu snapped back to reality, quickened her pace to a long black sedan, and got inside.
“Hello, Miss.” The middle-aged woman in the driver’s seat nodded expressionlessly in greeting.
The car drove smoothly along the wide road, journeying all the way from Sector 57, where Luocheng University’s Seventh Branch was located, toward Sector 15, where the Qiu family residence sat.
The further inward they went, the more congested the lanes became, the taller the buildings grew, and the noisier the crowds got.
There was no peace to be found anywhere in this world.
Qiu Wu withdrew her gaze and made small talk. “Sister Wang, did the head of the family say what she wanted with me?”
“No.” Sister Wang stared straight ahead without even glancing at her.
Figures.
Her adoptive mother ran a tight ship and was quick to resort to verbal and physical abuse against anyone who broke the rules.
Therefore, almost everyone in the Qiu family kept their lips tightly sealed, especially regarding matters concerning the head of the family.
Qiu Wu stuck out her tongue and simply closed her eyes to rest.
What will be, will be; what comes cannot be avoided.
After a grueling car ride lasting nearly four hours, the sedan finally drove into the old Qiu family estate.
The five-story detached villa was worth a small fortune in the now land-crunched Sector 15, and it served as the final shred of dignity for this declining minor family.
Qiu Wu stretched her body, sore from sitting for so long, smoothed out the wrinkles on her clothes, patted away any non-existent dust from her casual trousers, and tried her best to put on the posture of a so-called young lady of wealth as she pushed open the door with light steps.
Back straight, steps steady, and corners of the mouth curved at just the right angle.
Ascending the rosewood staircase step by step, Qiu Wu felt as though she were walking to her execution.
“So you still know how to come back?”
The executioner had arrived.
Qiu Wu stiffly raised her head and met the cold gaze of her cousin, Qiu Ji.
The woman had the same green eyes as her, but her hair was pitch black.
“I asked you a question. Are you deaf?” Qiu Ji seemed to be in a particularly foul mood today; she strode right up to her and demanded an answer.
Qiu Wu decisively lowered her head. “I am sorry, Eldest Miss.”
At a time like this, arguing with Qiu Ji over whether she looked more like a thief or a bandit would achieve nothing besides earning herself a beating; apologizing directly was the safest way to keep the peace.
As it turned out, her calculations failed.
Qiu Ji reached out, grabbed her by the throat, and shoved her straight against the nearby wall.
Are you serious, Big Sis? Did you suddenly decide to take me out on a whim today?
The stone carvings on the wall dug painfully into her spine, and the lack of oxygen brought on a wave of dizziness.
Qiu Wu raised her hand to grip Qiu Ji’s wrist. Prying her off would not be difficult, but considering the consequences of doing so, she cleanly gave up resisting and wheezed out, “Eldest Miss, what did I ever do to offend you?”
In the past, Qiu Ji never resorted to physical violence herself; at most, she would scold her and sentence her to kneel in the confinement room.
Qiu Ji glared at her angrily. In those eyes that shared a five-part resemblance with her own, Qiu Wu read a mountain of disgust and a tiny trace of unwillingness.
“You actually have quite the capability.”
What capability?
Qiu Wu could not make sense of it, but if Qiu Ji did not let go soon, she would not even need to understand.
“The head of the family is waiting for me.”
You might not care if I live or die, but surely you care about your mother, right?
“Hmph!”
“Cough, cough, cough!”
Qiu Ji let go of her hand, and Qiu Wu began to cough violently. Her vision blurred, and the tears squeezed out by the choking briefly obstructed her sight.
By the time she caught her breath, Qiu Ji was already gone.
Qiu Wu opened her front-facing camera, and unsurprisingly, a conspicuous red ring was left around her neck.
It probably would not fade away anytime soon.
She sighed, returned to her small room on the bottom floor, and dug out a scarf to cover it up.
Besides, even if her adoptive mother saw it, she would not stand up for her anyway, so this at least saved her the trouble of explaining.
Head of the family Qiu Qi’s study was on the third floor, secured by a heavy wooden door that looked soundproof enough to shut out the blast of an external explosion.
Qiu Wu remembered the last time she came here was when she was twelve years old, right after she was adopted by the Qiu family.
It probably was not anything good this time either.
Confirming one last time that her expression looked sufficiently submissive and harmless, Qiu Wu pressed the intercom button next to the door.
“Head of the family, it is me, Qiu Wu.”
After a brief silence, Qiu Qi’s voice sounded, accompanied by the click of a door lock.
“Come in.”
Qiu Wu pushed the door open and stepped inside. Nine years had passed, yet this room seemed entirely unchanged, featuring the massive wooden table large enough to play billiards on and the towering bookshelves packed with dense volumes. Even though the room was spacious and well-lit, it still felt suffocating.
The only difference was the person sitting behind the desk.
The head of the family, Qiu Qi, who always wore a bitter and distressed expression, was actually smiling at her.
All the hairs on Qiu Wu’s body stood on end.
When things go abnormally, there is bound to be a demon behind it!
Precisely because she understood her own situation all too well, Qiu Wu felt an unprecedented level of panic.
Nine years ago, the previous head of the Qiu family fell gravely ill, and their business ventures suffered repeated setbacks.
Plagued by bad luck, the Qiu family ultimately chose to believe in metaphysics and sought out a renowned master to cast divination.
The master said the Qiu family was facing a destined tribulation, and to resolve it, they needed to adopt a girl of the same clan born on the day of Jingzhe and treat her kindly.
The Qiu family went through great lengths to find a suitable candidate.
That person was Qiu Wu, who was then residing in Luo Xi.
Tracing Qiu Wu’s family back four or five generations, they were indeed relatives of Qiu Qi’s ancestors, but a century had passed, and the two branches of the Qiu family were no longer comparable.
Just as Luo Xi and Luo Dong both belonged to Luocheng, separated only by the Luo River, their local cultures and lifestyles were worlds apart.
Luo Dong’s population and economy accounted for over ninety percent of the entire city, and its technology was unmatched globally, making it the most prosperous metropolis in the modern world.
Luo Xi, on the other hand, relied on agriculture and animal husbandry, and had become increasingly sparsely populated in recent years due to the impact of Luo Dong’s development.
Luo Dong’s Qiu Ji was attending banquets alongside her mother while Luo Xi’s Qiu Wu was busy picking reddening apples off the tree branches.
Perhaps driven by fate, three months before Qiu Qi tracked her down, Qiu Wu’s parents died in a car accident while delivering farm produce to a sales point. Only she, her elderly grandmother, and her two-year-old sister were left at home. The driver responsible was an impoverished drunk who could not scrape together much compensation.
Faced with the Qiu family’s relatively generous reward and a crumbling family with no one else to manage it, Qiu Wu simply had no choice.
Obsessed with averting their tribulation, the Qiu family wasted no time completing the adoption formalities and eagerly whisked Qiu Wu away from Luo Xi to the Qiu household in Luo Dong. At the very beginning, they were at least polite and considerate.
However, the turning point prophesied by the master failed to materialize. Half a year after Qiu Wu was adopted, the head of the Qiu family passed away, the family business suffered a heavy blow, and their situation grew increasingly precarious.
Qiu Wu’s status naturally shifted from a blessed star of hope to an unlucky burden.
The head of the family, Qiu Qi, treated her as if she did not exist, while the family’s original eldest daughter, Qiu Ji, frequently took on the role of master and subjected her to verbal and physical abuse.
Qiu Wu did not have much to say about this. She still felt she owed a debt of gratitude to the Qiu family, as that timely influx of money had saved her remaining family members. As for herself, the moment she stepped into the car leaving home, she had already prepared herself for the worst.
She just had not expected this day to arrive so soon.
Facing the smiling head of the family, Qiu Wu mustered twelve points of caution. “Excuse me, what do you need with me?”
Qiu Qi pointed to the chair beside the desk. “Sit down first, no rush.”
A cup of hot tea was actually placed right in front of the chair.
At this point, even if the head of the family claimed her kidney was failing and Qiu Wu was her only matching donor, she would not even be surprised anymore.
Qiu Wu silently sat down, her hands beneath the table repeatedly rolling the hem of her T-shirt while her mind swung wildly back and forth.
Should I really agree to give her a kidney or not?
Qiu Qi’s light cough interrupted her wild train of thought. The stern-faced woman adopted the tone of a financial report meeting to make small talk. “Xiao Wu, how old are you this year?”
“Twenty-one?” Caught off guard by the topic, Qiu Wu stuttered slightly.
Why is she asking about this?
Qiu Qi smiled, actually looking somewhat like an elder at that moment. “When I was your age, I already had Ah Ji.”
A sudden flash of lightning went off in Qiu Wu’s head, and her tense body instantly relaxed.
She thought it was some major crisis.
Turns out it was just an arranged marriage.