Shu Lingchen remembered it very clearly—
Back when he was in kindergarten, there was a chubby boy in his class who constantly targeted him. The boy always took the lead in mocking him for being a fatherless child, and the boy’s parents never disciplined him. Instead, they joined in with sarcastic remarks.
When Shu Shu heard about it, she rushed straight to the kindergarten without a word.
First, she slapped the boy’s father twenty times. Then she tore out half of the mother’s hair and scratched up her face. Finally, she stripped the chubby boy down to his underwear and made him stand outside the school gate as punishment.
Seven or eight teachers couldn’t stop Shu Shu.
The scene was quite spectacular.
In the end, completely unharmed, Shu Shu picked him up, threw down a bank card as medical compensation, and said with a smile:
“If you won’t discipline your child, then I’ll do it for you. If I ever hear that anyone bullies my son again, I’ll make sure they regret it.”
The next day, the chubby boy transferred to another kindergarten.
Hearing Shu Lingchen’s words, the boys around him couldn’t connect “very good at fighting” with the transfer student’s pretty and harmless face.
But Brother Chen never lied.
“Brother Chen, does that mean you suddenly left the party yesterday to go fight the transfer student? And then you lost?”
Shu Lingchen: “……”
He had wanted to say that if they had witnessed the kindergarten battle with their own eyes, they wouldn’t doubt him.
But if he accidentally revealed that Shu Shu was his real mother…
Being reborn was already unbelievable. Being reborn into the future was even more unimaginable. Shu Shu might be captured and treated like an experiment or a ghost.
So after a moment of silence, Shu Lingchen could only grit his teeth and admit it.
“…Yeah.”
The boys were stunned.
Even Brother Chen admitted defeat. Just how incredible was this transfer student?
Looks like they’d better walk around her in the future if they saw her in class.
Just as they were thinking this—
One of the boys suddenly saw a notification on his phone. He opened it, looked up, and said:
“Brother Chen, the school beauty Chu is inviting classmates to her house in Yujing Garden again this weekend!”
Last night, after Chu Lian posted the selfie with the Moutai bottles in the forum thread, the replies exploded.
Students from both lower and upper grades kept commenting about how luxurious Chu Lian’s house was. Many wanted to see the entire wall of Moutai bottles in person.
Chu Lian agreed.
But she said there couldn’t be too many people because it might disturb the neighbors upstairs and downstairs, so she would only invite seven or eight classmates to visit her house this weekend.
The boy with the strange haircut asked excitedly:
“Brother Chen, are you going to try this time? I heard Yujing Garden is super luxurious.”
Shu Lingchen shook his head.
“I’m not trying. I don’t want to go.”
He had lived in that house for over ten years. Seeing it every day had already bored him. What was there to see?
But the boy looked at him with a knowing expression and raised his eyebrows.
“Brother Chen, why pretend in front of your own brothers? It’s not that you don’t want to go—you just can’t go, right?”
Shu Lingchen sneered.
“I’m too lazy to explain to you.”
But to the others, that reaction clearly looked like he was pretending to be tough.
Sigh.
Forget it.
They wouldn’t expose him and embarrass him.
In less than a day, the news that Chu Lian was inviting classmates to her house this weekend spread throughout the school.
The dismissal bell rang.
Class 12’s classroom quickly became empty.
Shu Shu sat in her seat with her arms crossed, looking at her son with a queen-like posture as she questioned him.
“How many times has Chu Lian taken people to our house?”
Shu Lingchen hesitated before answering.
“Since the second year of middle school… from time to time…”
Heh.
So basically too many times to count.
“And every time, she tells everyone that the house in Yujing Garden belongs to her?”
Shu Lingchen said, “Because of the debt collectors, Aunt Chu and Chuchu can’t go back to their original home. Chuchu also needs a social life, so she can only invite people to Yujing Garden…”
“Then why aren’t you included in her social circle?”
Shu Lingchen scratched the back of his head.
“My reputation isn’t very good. Chuchu is such an outstanding girl. How could she have a friend like me?”
Question marks practically appeared above Shu Shu’s head.
“Then why did you copy those people and confess at the school gate???”
“Because Chuchu reposted something on her social media saying she envied people who were confessed to with roses. But since I’m here, Chuchu doesn’t need to envy anyone!”
Shu Shu: “……”
She now had a reasonable suspicion that the post was visible only to Shu Lingchen.
After the confession ended, Chu Lian was “saved” by Shi Jin, gaining everyone’s sympathy. Shu Lingchen got scolded online like trash, while she gained another wave of good reputation.
Shu Lingchen might have been used as a pawn without even realizing it.
After a moment of silence, Shu Shu suddenly asked:
“What’s the legal process for abandoning a seventeen-year-old mentally challenged child? How many years in prison would that get?”
Shu Lingchen: “What?”
Shu Shu closed her eyes.
She couldn’t look at this little idiot any longer. One more second and she might throw her child away.
She decisively grabbed her schoolbag and walked out.
“Mom, where are you going?”
Shu Lingchen chased after her.
“You still haven’t told me where you stayed last night. You’re unfamiliar with everything here, and you don’t even have money. It’s dangerous.”
As he spoke, he took an envelope out of his schoolbag.
“There’s some money in here. Use it. If it’s not enough, ask me for more.”
Shu Shu took the envelope and peeked inside. Roughly estimating, there was nearly a thousand in it.
Shu Lingchen continued:
“If you don’t want to stay in my small rented place, you can move back into the house in Yujing Garden. I’ll talk to Aunt Chu—”
Shu Shu snorted.
“So if I want to return to my own house, I still have to inform the people who are temporarily staying there?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I can go back to live there, but first you kick the Chu mother and daughter out. Once the house is empty, I’ll move back.”
“….” Shu Lingchen’s expression turned troubled. Obviously he couldn’t do that.
Shu Shu asked again:
“Then how long exactly will their temporary stay last?”
“….” Shu Lingchen stayed silent. Clearly he couldn’t answer that either.
Shu Shu wasn’t surprised at all.
So she said directly:
“I won’t live in that house anymore. I don’t want it. I’m a clean freak.”
Those two people had lived in her house for years. Just thinking about it disgusted her.
Even if the Chu mother and daughter moved out now, she wouldn’t spend another night there.
Shu Lingchen was shocked.
“What? You don’t want it anymore? Then where will you live? Rent your own place?”
Shu Shu looked at her son and suddenly sighed with a sorrowful expression.
“Don’t worry about me, son. Just care about your Aunt Chu and Chuchu.”
“As for me… the streets are so big. There’s always a place for me. The sky can be my blanket and the ground my bed.”
After saying that, Shu Shu admired the guilty expression on her son’s face, took the envelope, and left.
Twenty minutes later—
Shu Shu was curled up on the sofa in a presidential suite, swinging her feet while eating chilled fruit with a fork and checking information on her phone.
She truly didn’t want that house anymore.
But her version of “not wanting it” didn’t mean letting the Chu mother and daughter have it for free.
That Chu Lian clearly didn’t like Shu Lingchen. She was only keeping him around because of the house.
Since that was the case—
She would take the house back.
A new message window popped up on the phone.
“Dear Black Gold user, here is the property fee record for Apartment 1701 in Yujing Garden under one of your branch accounts for the past four years.”
Shu Shu put down her fork and opened the long image.
Since the time she “died,” the property management fees for the Yujing Garden apartment had always been paid automatically from the balance of one of her cards.
Back then she found paying the property fees troublesome, so she set up a special card with some money in it. Every month, the property fees and utilities would be automatically paid.
Which meant—
The Chu mother and daughter had been enjoying her house for free the entire time.
“Dear Black Gold user, this is a friendly reminder that the balance of this card is no longer sufficient to cover the property management fee for Apartment 1701. To avoid unnecessary trouble, please renew the payment before the final deadline, which is this weekend.”
Such a reminder was marked under the list.
This weekend?
Wasn’t that exactly the day Chu Lian planned to invite classmates to her house?
Shu Shu raised her eyebrows when she saw the notice.
Oh.
Then she simply wouldn’t renew the payment.
After that, Shu Shu exited the property list and continued checking the renovation plans that a designer had sent her for her new house.
Yes.
A new house.
Yujing Garden, unit number F1600.
Right downstairs from the apartment that the Chu mother and daughter had taken over.