After parting ways with her classmates on Friday afternoon, Su Yunluo went to the city library to study. She stayed there until it was completely dark before heading home.
The moment she pushed the door open, the sound effects of Ultraman mixed with Zhu Muhuan’s laughter rushed toward her. Her grandmother was chasing him with a fork in hand. “You little rascal! Eat this orange—look at your mouth!”
Zhu Muhuan turned his toy gun toward Su Yunluo, who had just stepped inside. “Monster! Bad guy! Da-da-da-da!”
From the kitchen came the steady sound of Su Man cooking.
Su Yunluo walked through the living room and headed straight to her room.
But the moment she opened the door, she stopped.
She had only been away for a week, yet her room had been completely changed again. The desk had been pushed to the window and was now covered with crayons and picture books. Three shelves of her bookcase had been cleared out and replaced with rows of toy cars and Transformers.
She frowned slightly and tossed her bag onto the bed—
“Ding ding dong dong!”
A sharp electronic keyboard sound suddenly rang out from under the blanket.
She pulled it away. The keyboard was still scattered with magnetic tiles.
Without a word, Su Yunluo gathered all the children’s things into a pile and carried them to the living room sofa. “Don’t put these in my room anymore.”
Her grandmother glanced at the pile and frowned. “If we leave them outside, Huanhuan will make a mess! You’re hardly home anyway—what’s wrong with putting them there for a while?”
Su Yunluo wasn’t close to her grandmother. Her tone remained flat. “I come back every week.”
Su Man leaned halfway out of the kitchen. “Luoluo’s back? Mom, just clean it up. Don’t put things in her room anymore. Isn’t it a hassle to keep moving them around?”
Su Yunluo walked around the living room, looking for the items removed from her cabinet. She only found them on the balcony—in a cardboard box placed in the corner.
She crouched down.
Inside, everything was stuffed together messily—her childhood sketchbooks, her stamp album, the message book her classmates had written when she left the town… and a carefully wrapped pink semi-transparent plastic box.
It was easy to tell a music box was inside. The packaging had long faded, the ribbons and wrapping paper losing all their color.
It was her birthday gift when she was six.
The only time she had ever celebrated her birthday with both her parents present.
Su Yunluo stayed crouched there for a long time.
Her life had always been full of contradictions. When she was little, living in the town, she had longed every day to return to her parents. But now that she was finally back, she realized those days of being “left behind” had actually been the lightest and easiest.
Back then, she could still laugh without restraint. She had friends who followed her around calling her “Princess Luoluo.” Even though she was far from her parents, she still held onto hope, believing the separation was temporary.
It turned out that when life doesn’t go your way, even an imperfect past begins to glow softly, making you want to return.
But there was no going back. No one was waiting for her in those old days anymore. Her grandmother had passed away, her grandfather had moved away, and those childhood friends had long scattered into the crowd of the world. No one knew what they had become.
She picked up the music box and threw it into the trash bin beside the flower pot.
If no one cared, then she didn’t need to care either.
When she carried the rest of her things back to her room, her grandmother was still tidying the sofa area, muttering under her breath. As Su Yunluo passed by, she said calmly,
“Don’t touch my things again.”
Her grandmother, already irritated by what she saw as unnecessary fussing, snapped back louder. “You’re still so young but already so particular—‘my things,’ ‘my room.’ When Huanhuan grows up, this whole room will belong to him!”
Su Yunluo stopped.
“What did you say?”
Her grandmother straightened. “What else do I mean? Girls grow up and get married anyway.”
“Who said there’s anything wrong with getting married?”
“Once a woman gets married, she no longer belongs to this family!” The grandmother turned toward her grandson, her expression softening immediately. “Huanhuan is different. He is the root of the Zhu family.”
The room fell silent for a few seconds.
Then Su Yunluo suddenly laughed. “What’s your surname? And what’s his surname?”
Her grandmother froze. “My surname is Huang. His is Zhu.”
“Yes, you know your surname is Huang. Whether he is the root of the Zhu family—or whether the Zhu family even has a ‘root’—what does that have to do with you, someone with the surname Huang?”
Her grandmother’s face darkened. “How dare you talk to me like that!”
She pointed at Su Yunluo. “I knew it—you’ve never liked me spoiling Huanhuan. Since he was born, you’ve never looked at him kindly. Our Zhu family has had a single male heir for four generations. If we don’t spoil him, who will? When you were little, we never starved or froze you. How did you grow up so ungrateful?”
“Who are you calling ungrateful?”
With a loud thud, Su Yunluo set down the box and looked straight at her. “You say I wasn’t starved or frozen—how would you know? Did you ever take care of me for even a single day? What right do you have to say that?”
“Luoluo! Why are you arguing with Grandma again?” Su Man rushed out of the kitchen and pulled her daughter back, then turned to the grandmother. “Mom, why are you saying these things to the child…”
The sound of a key turning in the lock cut her off.
Zhu Junqing pushed the door open and immediately sensed the tense atmosphere. His brows furrowed. “What’s going on again?”
The grandmother trembled with anger. Seeing her son, she immediately found support. “Look at your daughter! Look at what she’s become! I’m her grandmother, and she dares talk back to me like this!”
Then she turned back to Su Yunluo. “I may not have raised you, but I raised your father. Aren’t you your father’s daughter? And you talk to me like this? The older you get, the less manners you have!”
“Yes,” Su Yunluo said coldly. “I do lack manners. Because in this family, no one ever taught me what manners are.”
“Luoluo!” Zhu Junqing said in a low voice. “Your temper is getting worse and worse. Everything you say has spikes in it. Even when you talk to me like this—do you have no respect for your elders? Apologize to your grandmother right now!”
“Respect goes both ways.” She looked directly at her father. “When you adults make mistakes, did any of you ever apologize to me?”
Zhu Junqing paused. “We adults? What did we do wrong?”
“Unfairness,” Su Yunluo said clearly, each word like a verdict. “Is the biggest mistake.”
Zhu Junqing froze completely. His mouth opened slightly, but no sound came out.
He looked at his daughter. Her gaze was too clear, too stubborn—like a mirror that left him speechless.
And toward her, he knew he carried guilt.
He was a “phoenix man” who had climbed his way up from the countryside. Even after settling in the city, he never truly let go of his deep-rooted obsession with male heirs. When Su Man was pregnant, his father—already in the final stage of lung cancer—had been told he only had three months to live. He stubbornly held on for six months, waiting for a grandson.
But what arrived was a granddaughter.
The old man passed away a week later, full of resentment, repeatedly murmuring:
“Our Zhu family… four generations without a son…”
“In the future, who will burn paper offerings at the ancestral grave…”
“If I had known, I would rather you never went to university than let the family line end…”
In the end, he held Zhu Junqing’s hand tightly, insisting—abandon the child, give her away, or sacrifice anything if needed—but the Zhu family line had to continue.
Otherwise, the ancestors would never forgive him.
To let his father die in peace, he agreed.
He couldn’t abandon his job, nor could he abandon the child completely—but guilt stayed buried in his heart. So when Su Yunluo was less than a month old, she was sent away. To outsiders, they simply said the child had died shortly after birth.
Su Man did not object.
Back then, their marriage had been arranged through introductions. Su Man fell in love at first sight with the handsome, stable, and promising man. Zhu Junqing, however, was not impressed by her ordinary appearance. It was her persistence over more than two years that led to their marriage. After marriage, she remained obedient, even treating his regret as her own responsibility. Sending the child to be raised by her parents in the countryside seemed like a reasonable compromise.
They later tried for a second child for years. After two miscarriages, their third attempt finally produced a son—Zhu Muhuan.
Meanwhile, Su Yunluo spent her entire childhood in the countryside, waiting through ten long years while her brother was being hoped for and born.
Those ten years of guilt had once bent Zhu Junqing’s back whenever he faced his daughter. But guilt had an expiration date.
Now, as she stood before him—sharp, distant, difficult—that guilt had faded into irritation and exhaustion.