Father and Mother Lin were still busy in the little outdoor kitchen, and Lin Xiaonuan was hard at work on her homework. No one noticed Lin Muyan slip out.
Evenings in the urban village were lively to a fault, brimming with the texture of real life. By now all sorts of street stalls had been set up along the roadside, and plenty of weary, footsore people were walking home beneath the moonlight, quite a few of them in suits and polished shoes.
By day they might be some “Little Wang” or “Little Zhang” in an office tower, back in the urban village, they became the sons, husbands, and fathers holding up their families.
Everyone was working hard to live.
Compared with that morning, her first time here, Lin Muyan was already a little more able to accept the place now.
She’d had twenty lucky years of good fortune, wealthy-household fortune, no less, and now her station had plummeted from the heights. The pain of it was real, of course, but at the same time new hopes were slowly taking root.
There were upsides, actually, to not being the Shen family’s young miss. At the very least, from now on she got to arrange her own life.
If she’d still been at the Shens’, the road ahead would most likely have been a job at the family business, the round of social functions the family arranged for her, matchmaking dates with one wealthy young master after another, and finally picking a family whose alliance could prop up the Shen Group, married off for the merger…
Now she’d become a poor family’s child, but she’d also become a free, ordinary girl, fully in command of her own life.
After walking a while, Lin Muyan drifted to the far end of an alley where there were fewer people. Up ahead lay a small lake, the one quiet spot around here.
Lin Muyan walked over, and seeing no one about, she crouched down, pulled out the wooden shovel, and dug into the grass.
This time she dug up a key.
“What’s this?”
She’d meant to find the answer in the comment stream, but the bullet comments were all question marks too.
【Jiaojiao never dug up a key before, right? It was always stuff that’d be useful in the apocalypse, basically.】
【To be honest, first time I’ve seen it too, but to me this is just an ordinary anti-theft door key, one apartment at most. Useless in the end times, and it’s a single key with no coordinates to boot, who knows which door it even opens?】
【Well said. Ahh, that feels good, finally she dug up a useless piece of junk. If she dares dig up another treasure, I’m gonna throw a fit!】
Even the bullet comments didn’t know what the key was for. A little disappointed, Lin Muyan could only put it away for now, then rose and quietly headed home.
Before dawn the next day, Father and Mother Lin had just gotten up, today Lin Jianbin had to go off to work. The whole family’s burden rested on him, wherever there was renovation work to be had, he’d go apply, sometimes working several jobs in a single day.
Wang Yanqin filled his water bottle, handed it to him, and glanced again at the sky.
“This weather’s so strange. Yesterday it was bitter cold, and today there’s not only bright sun, the temperature’s jumped more than ten degrees.”
A thick padded jacket would have him sweating buckets today, so Father Lin set out in light clothes, he rather liked weather like this, in fact.
Just then Lin Xiao came back in from outside. He wore only a thin wool coat, yet had a sheen of sweat across his brow. Seeing him, the couple both started.
“Xiaoxiao, what brings you rushing back so early?” Wang Yanqin ran over to wipe the sweat from his face.
Lin Xiao was very tall, if a touch thin, with a handsome, well-defined face dusted with a bit of stubble that lent him an air of maturity.
Seeing how worn out their eldest son looked, the couple ached with pity. Lin Xiao broke into a sunny smile and said,
“Mom, Dad, I hurried back this morning to see my little sister. Is she…”
He wanted to ask how she was, whether she was easy to get along with, whether she had a great-house young miss’s temper, but in the end he couldn’t bring himself to.
In his heart he’d already accepted this little sister the wealthy family had swapped away. Whatever she was like, she was still his sister.
Just as, five years ago, he’d actually known Shen Jiaojiao wasn’t a Lin child, yet he’d gone on caring for her, being good to her as ever. It was only that Shen Jiaojiao was seriously ill and was good to no one in the family.
What worried him was his parents. If this sister raised in a wealthy household was difficult, if she looked down on the family for being poor, it would break his parents’ hearts.
So, uneasy, he’d hurried back before work to check on things.
Hearing that their son had come to see his sister, Father and Mother Lin exchanged a smile. Wang Yanqin didn’t answer Lin Xiao right away, instead she shooed Lin Jianbin out the door.
“Hurry off to work, or you’ll miss that subway. I’ve got our son and daughter here, don’t you worry.”
Father Lin had missed a whole day’s work yesterday and was indeed anxious, so he gathered his things quickly and headed out. Passing Lin Xiao, he made a point of clapping him on the shoulder with a smile.
“Don’t worry, son, everything’s fine at home. Dad’s off to work now, I’ll call you later.”
Father Lin left. Lin Xiao had rarely seen his father smile so brightly, which only made him more curious, and he took his mother’s hand, urging her to spit it out.
Wang Yanqin was overjoyed from the bottom of her heart. She said,
“Your little sister’s doing great. She’s got a good nature, a good temper, and she doesn’t look down on us one bit. Yesterday she even praised my cooking, ate a whole big bowl of rice. That little monkey Xiaonuan even teased her for eating so much. The two girls are sharing a room now.”
Mother Lin’s grin stretched ear to ear, a smile straight from the heart, happiness practically leaking out through the gaps in her teeth.
Lin Xiao let out a heavy breath of relief, and shared in her joy.
His little sister seemed to be a sensible child after all. The Shens were a great house, when all was said and done, they’d raised his sister well.
Then again, it was also that his sister had a good heart at the core, not dazzled by wealth into a sly, difficult disposition.
This way, his parents could be happier too. Times were tight, sure, but at least everyone in the family was good, and that was enough.
Lin Xiao didn’t wait for Lin Muyan to get up, he hurried off to work.
Today he’d landed a big deal. Even veteran agents, even the top seller, might never get a crack at a Half-Mountain Villa listing, yet it had fallen to him.
As it happened, he’d heard the Shen mansion was in the Half-Mountain Villa district, and he wanted to see Jiaojiao, to see whether she was being bullied now that she’d returned to the Shens.
Jiaojiao was sensitive by nature, in her manic spells she had to be given a sedative, but the rest of the time she came across as rather meek and timid.
Loath as he was to admit it, he felt Jiaojiao’s temperament wasn’t exactly endearing, that it left people not sure how to get along with her, even.
Back when she’d lived at home, the whole family had to tiptoe around her, terrified a single wrong word might wound her or set her off.
The Shens were a top-tier, prominent house in S City. Stepping into a family like that, Jiaojiao might well be looked down on.
The bullet comments had been drifting above Lin Muyan’s head all this while, one wave after another. The moment her eyes opened, the screen was filling up with comments spamming “so handsome.”
Lin Muyan stared, baffled. Only on a closer look did she realize the bullet comments were calling Lin Xiao handsome.
Hm? Wait, Lin Xiao? Her big brother was back?
Lin Muyan threw on her clothes in a hurry and rushed out the door.
In her birth family, the only one she hadn’t had a chance to meet yet was her big brother, Lin Xiao, and she was eager to meet this brother whom even the bullet comments were praising as handsome.
A pity she was a step too late. Wang Yanqin said, “Your brother just left.”
【Lin Xiao’s probably all right, our Jiaojiao quite liked him.】
【The ones who wronged Jiaojiao worst are that green-tea wretch and her high-level vicious mom. Those two really are mother and daughter, they’re the first to die in the apocalypse, and rightly so, or Heaven would have no justice left!】
【Right, those two are the most hateful, then that brat Lin Xiaonuan, plus that weak, useless dad. Lin Xiao’s nothing like them, this big brother I actually quite like. He’s right up my alley, looks-wise.】
The comment stream was a pack of face-cons. At first they’d condemned the whole Lin household with one stroke, saying there wasn’t a decent one among them, and now they’d all turned into face-simps.
Lin Muyan had no energy to even snark back. She splashed her face and went to wake Lin Xiaonuan.
Lin Xiaonuan had slept with her head soaked in sweat and was crying out that she was dying of heat.
Only when the girl said it did Lin Muyan notice it really was hot. The big floral-print padded house clothes Mother Lin had set out for her had felt a bit cold worn yesterday, today, early as it was, she already felt stifling.
“You’re right, it’s so hot. What’s the temperature today, anyway?”