He Shixia, who was halfway through cleaning the floor, said, “…Alright, I’ll finish up here and then come find you.”
Ning Yichu walked out of the dining room, and He Shixia watched him leave before squatting down to continue cleaning the floor as if no one else was around.
He Rulin squatted down next to him, curiously asking, “Love Saint, what’s going on?”
He seemed pretty relaxed, not at all upset about his father’s dramatic change in status or the fact that the family might be kicked out of the main residence.
He Shixia calmly replied, “A-Ning has figured things out. Since people used to say he was a habitual liar, he’s decided to change and be honest from now on. It’s a good thing.”
He Rulin said, “…Are you both crazy?”
He Ruzhu hugged the leg of the chair that He Grandmother had just been sitting on, lamenting, “Sixth Brother, you’ve really broken our hearts. As expected, a married man becomes a different person. We can’t even compete with you, so why are you being so heartless…”
The fourth sibling, He Ruyue, leaned against the wall and sighed, “Shixia, after all these years as a family, can you tell us the truth? Was today’s incident really not your doing?”
He Shixia seemed willing to answer any question: “No, it had nothing to do with me—I’m not trying to shirk responsibility or imply that you shouldn’t blame me and should blame A-Ning instead. Don’t overthink it. I’m just telling the truth; I don’t want to steal A-Ning’s thunder or credit.”
“Credit? What credit does he have! He Shixia, you bastard!” He Grandfather finally snapped out of it and threw his cane.
He Shixia had just finished cleaning the floor, stood up to dodge, and then nodded slightly to He Grandfather: “A-Ning revealed the past today, allowing you, Grandfather, to face the mistakes you made, so you don’t have to die with secrets. I think that’s indeed credit.”
He Grandfather was even more furious: “You’re cursing me to die!”
He Shixia didn’t respond further. He took the cleaning tools and trash can to the kitchen, handed them to the servants, washed his hands, and then went to find Ning Yichu.
Ning Yichu hadn’t returned to his room.
He had been sick for a few days, lying down the whole time during his fever, so his body was weak. Now that he was awake and saw the sunshine outside, he felt cheerful and chose to sit in the garden for a while.
Following the servants’ directions, He Shixia found Ning Yichu sitting on a swing deep in the garden.
It was the most ordinary kind of swing, with two hemp ropes tied to a tree branch, connecting to a not-too-big wooden board half a meter off the ground.
No one in the He family had played on it for a long time, but no one had thought to dismantle it either. So when the servants tidied the garden, they occasionally maintained the swing, preventing it from falling into disrepair and breaking when someone sat on it.
The tree was lush with branches and leaves, and only a few rays of sunlight penetrated through, casting a near-circular shadow in the vibrant garden.
Ning Yichu sat on the swing under the tree’s shade, holding the ropes on either side, his head resting lightly on the left rope, swaying slowly, occasionally pushing off the ground with his feet to keep the swing moving, looking as if he were daydreaming.
He Shixia looked at his thin figure and skin so pale it was almost transparent, feeling as if he were seeing a fragile butterfly about to take flight.
The butterfly fluttered among the flowers, seemingly ready to fall from exhaustion at any moment.
He Shixia’s heart skipped a beat, and he quickened his pace, then regained his composure, slowing down as he approached.
“A-Ning.”
Ning Yichu, with his forehead resting on the rope, didn’t turn at the sound, continuing to sway slowly.
He Shixia stood to the side of the swing, looking at Ning Yichu’s delicate features, and suddenly spoke, “When I was fourteen, I went with my family to a Ning family banquet. I saw you in the Ning family’s back garden. That was the first time I saw you; you should have been about eight years old then.”
Ning Yichu showed no reaction.
He Shixia softly said, “Back then, you took advantage of the darkness, while everyone was indoors or in the front yard, to secretly cut the swing’s ropes in the back garden.”
This piqued Ning Yichu’s interest a bit. He looked up, “You neither stopped me nor reported me, just watched from the shadows, remembered it all these years. Turns out you weren’t a good person from the start either.”
He Shixia neither confirmed nor denied: “Because I saw you with bandages on your head, crying while cutting with a utility knife, not very efficiently. You seemed unwell, cutting for a while before sitting down to rest, looking both pitiful and sad.”
Ning Yichu blinked and let out a chuckle.
“So I didn’t stop you at the time. I saw you cut the rope until it broke, so there was no need to worry. After all, a swing that obviously damaged couldn’t hurt anyone.”
He Shixia looked into Ning Yichu’s dark eyes, as if seeing that child in the night, with tears in his eyes, isolated and helpless.
Ning Yichu lazily said, “Yeah, I was pretty dumb back then, not bold enough to do bad things—but the result was good. The Ning family didn’t suspect it was me because that swing was made by Ning Zeqi as a gift for Ning Zeshu. Ning Shaoyi had fought with Ning Zeqi when the swing was first made and threatened to destroy it. Plus, I used Ning Shaoyi’s sister’s utility knife and deliberately threw it in the back garden’s trash can, so…”
—Ning Zeshu, the young master of the Ning family, lost at a young age and finally found again.
Ning Zeqi was Ning Zeshu’s older brother, and Ning Shaoyi, by generation, was their uncle, but he was a few years younger than Ning Zeqi, so they usually interacted more like peers.
Recalling his childhood, Ning Yichu smiled proudly, “In the end, the Ning family thought Ning Shaoyi used his sister’s utility knife to cut the swing’s ropes. That was the swing of the Ning family’s precious little treasure, Ning Zeshu, and Ning Shaoyi got a good scolding.”
Ning Yichu’s smiling eyes fell into He Shixia’s, only making him feel an impenetrable sadness.
“They didn’t suspect you… because you were supposed to be resting in bed that night,” He Shixia softly said.
Ning Yichu tilted his head.
He Shixia continued, “The injury on your head was because Ning Shaoyi and Ning Zeqi made a bet, and the loser had to ‘vent’ for Ning Zeshu, which meant causing trouble for you so you couldn’t attend the upcoming banquet. Ning Shaoyi lost… He tripped you when you were going downstairs, and you fell down the stairs. Luckily, you only hit your head.”
So that night in the back garden, Ning Yichu’s low efficiency in cutting the ropes was partly due to his naturally poor physical condition, but more because he was indeed sick at the time, frightened by the fall, and had a fever, with a head injury causing dizziness.
Yet, even though Ning Yichu was hurt and sick from being tripped by Ning Shaoyi, the Ning family only gave a dismissive “Shaoyi didn’t mean it,” and Ning Shaoyi wasn’t even reprimanded. The incident wasn’t as serious as “Ning Zeshu’s swing being cut.”
But even so, back then, Ning Yichu could only resort to cutting the swing ropes as a trivial form of revenge… He Shixia, recalling this, felt heartache and regret.
Ning Yichu could tell He Shixia wanted to “feel sorry” for him, but he didn’t care for it, deliberately reminding him, “Yeah, I cracked my head open, couldn’t even get up, but driven by revenge, an eight-year-old kid managed to sneak out of his bedroom, steal a utility knife from someone else’s room, and without being caught, went to the back garden to cut the ropes. Is that impressive or scary?”
He Shixia said, “A-Ning…”
Ning Yichu’s face turned cold, “He Shixia, let me tell you, I’ve been ungrateful and vengeful since I was a kid, with strong execution ability. It’s just that I didn’t have the capability, so my past acts of revenge seemed insignificant. Don’t label me as pitiful, and don’t expect that if you lower yourself, I won’t cause trouble for you and the He family.”
He Shixia shook his head, “I didn’t think that way. I just regret standing by and watching…”
If he could go back to his youth, that night he wouldn’t stand by and watch coldly. He would take that stubborn child home, raise him with care, and let no one bully him again. He wouldn’t have to hold back tears alone, and if he was unhappy, he could cry and fuss and demand comfort… He should have grown up carefree like that.
“If you hadn’t fallen for me, would you still regret standing by and watching a stranger child?” Ning Yichu was unmoved, but he did think of a question.
He pushed off the ground with one foot, swinging the swing higher, then asked He Shixia, “Wait, how do you know the backstory of that incident?”
Although He Shixia witnessed him cutting the swing ropes, since he didn’t intervene back then, he shouldn’t know the backstory. And after Ning Yichu died in his previous life, even if He Shixia asked the Ning family about this trivial matter, Ning Zeqi and Ning Shaoyi probably wouldn’t remember, as it was insignificant to them.
Ning Yichu didn’t know how he knew the early events, and He Shixia was a bit surprised too, then rationalized it—it’s normal, after A-Ning died in his previous life and became a ghost, he probably didn’t want to stay by his side all the time, so it’s normal not to know some things.
“When you moved to the He family, you didn’t bring much. After you were gone in the previous life, I went to the Ning family to find your old belongings. In your elementary school political science textbook, I found your diary…” He Shixia softly answered.
Ning Yichu was slightly stunned.
In elementary school, he did have the habit of writing a diary. Firstly, to practice writing more, looking up words he didn’t know in the dictionary or writing pinyin to strengthen memory and aid learning. Secondly, because he had no one to talk to, he simply wrote in his diary to express himself.
He initially used extra notebooks for his diary, but it wasn’t long before the Ning family discovered them when they searched his things.
Because he wrote in his diary that he wanted to return to the orphanage and wasn’t happy at the Ning family, they were furious, called him ungrateful, and punished him by making him kneel in the yard for hours until he fainted.
When he woke up, he heard Ning Zeqi say they had thrown his diary into the fireplace and burned it, and they forbade him from writing diaries again.
“If you write nonsense in your diary and someone sees it, they’ll think our family treats you badly. Why would you write that? Are you keeping the diary as evidence for the future?” Ning Zeqi had said discontentedly at the time.
Ning Zeqi was thirteen years older than his biological brother, the true young master Ning Zeshu, and also thirteen years older than Ning Yichu, treating Ning Yichu, the fake brother, particularly harshly. Young Ning Yichu was very afraid of him.
But Ning Yichu still wanted to write a diary; he really needed a place to express himself.
However, using a separate diary would surely be discovered again, as the Ning family didn’t think he had any privacy in that house—so Ning Yichu thought of using his political science textbook as a diary.
Although they were given political science textbooks in elementary school, they never used them, and there was plenty of blank space in the textbooks. If he wrote sparingly, it would last a semester, and based on the experience of his previous diary being discovered, it wouldn’t be found if kept with other textbooks.
And indeed, it wasn’t discovered again later.
Until he went to middle school and didn’t have a suitable textbook, Ning Yichu suddenly didn’t feel like writing a diary anymore, so the habit stopped after he graduated from elementary school.
Time had passed, and now, hearing He Shixia mention his elementary school diary, Ning Yichu was silent for a moment.
Then he suddenly let go of the swing ropes and jumped off the swing.
The swing wasn’t high, so jumping off wasn’t a big deal, but it still made He Shixia’s heart skip a beat, and he instinctively reached out to catch Ning Yichu.
Ning Yichu slapped his hand away, “You reminded me, I still have things at the Ning family that I need to get. Besides, it’s not right to only give ‘in-laws’ a big gift. The Ning family is my ‘maiden family,’ and I’ve been married for a few days. It’s time to return and give them a gift.”
He Shixia listened to his sarcastic words and smiled helplessly.
Author’s Note: