Ding Jing and Zhao Siyi, mother and daughter, had used the original owner as a stepping stone, not only stealing her home and fiancé, but building their good reputations on her back. Lu Jiaxin had come back this time precisely to expose Ding Jing and Zhao Siyi’s true faces and clear the original owner’s name of these baseless slanders.
Lu Jiaxin said to the crowd, “I swore an oath to my mother that I would go to university no matter what. So even after being betrayed and spraining my ankle, I still pulled myself together quickly to face the exam. But not long after it started, I got a stomachache, and that afternoon during the math section my ankle started hurting again.”
Having said this, she stared at Ding Jing. “Betrayed by my fiancé, then a stomachache and a sore ankle during the exam, at the time I just thought I was having terrible luck. But lying in the hospital bed after the injury, thinking it all over, I suddenly realized something was off. Zhao Siyi and Fan Yinuo had been a couple for over half a year, hiding it perfectly the whole time, so why did I only happen to catch on two days before the exam?”
“And another thing, I’ve always been in good health, I rarely get sick, and stomachaches are practically unheard of for me, yet that day the pain was unbearable.”
She went on, staring at Ding Jing. “It was you, it must have been you who told Zhao Siyi to deliberately talk loudly on the phone so I’d overhear and find out. Your goal was to throw my mind into chaos so I couldn’t sit for the exam properly. When you found out it hadn’t worked, you tampered with my food instead, so I’d get a stomachache during the test and not be able to finish.”
Although the original owner had a bad temper and a spoiled disposition, because she’d promised her mother she’d get into university, her grades had actually been excellent, third in the whole school among liberal arts students on the last mock exam. Zhao Siyi, by comparison, had ranked somewhere in the thirties, there was no comparison between the two.
Ding Jing’s heart shook. The old Lu Jiaxin had a fiery temper, shouting and yelling the moment anything upset her, sometimes even arguing with her father when worked up, but even then she’d been, at most, a paper tiger. This new Lu Jiaxin, though, had become a wolf that could tear someone apart.
The crowd erupted in a wave of murmurs, if this was true, then Ding Jing and Zhao Siyi really were vicious.
Ding Jing put on a pained expression. “Jiaxin, I’ve cared for you like my own daughter, and Siyi has treated you like her own sister, how could you slander us like this?”
Watching Ding Jing sway as if she might faint at any moment, Lu Jiaxin sneered. “You say I’m slandering you. Then swear an oath, if Fan Yinuo and Zhao Siyi really are together, may she die alone and friendless, her body left to rot on some mountainside for wild dogs to gnaw on.”
The stomachache and the sore ankle during the exam were fabrications, but it was true that the original owner’s poor exam performance had genuinely stemmed from failing to compose herself after being betrayed.
Ding Jing’s eyes nearly split with rage, she wanted nothing more than to strangle Lu Jiaxin. Why hadn’t those traffickers sold her off into some remote mountain wilderness, why had they let her escape?
Watching her refuse to swear the oath, was there anything the crowd still didn’t understand?
Lu Jiaxin pressed her advantage. “Ding Jing, can you explain why my mother’s bankbook and every valuable item in my room are gone?”
The apartment had been bought by the original owner’s mother without her father’s knowledge, but the bankbook was something Lu Hongjun knew about, and he’d promised to deposit five hundred yuan into it every year. Afraid the original owner would spend it carelessly at a young age, she’d kept the bankbook herself, but the withdrawal stamp had been kept by her father.
In the more than four years since the mother’s death, Lu Hongjun had kept his promise and deposited five hundred yuan every year, on top of the original owner’s yearly lucky money. Accumulated over time, the amount was substantial.
Ding Jing suppressed her fury and said hoarsely, “The bankbook and the valuables in your room, your father put those away for safekeeping…”
Lu Jiaxin cut her off. “I had a whole wardrobe of clothes and over twenty pairs of shoes, but now there’s nothing left but a few pairs of worn-out socks and two ragged pieces of clothing. Don’t tell me my father packed away my clothes and shoes too?”
Auntie Xue clapped her hands. “Ding Jing, I remember your niece came by five days ago. She came empty-handed and left dragging a suitcase and carrying a big bag.”
At this point Ding Jing was consumed with regret, she’d assumed Lu Jiaxin had been kidnapped and would never return, so when her niece said she wanted the clothes, she hadn’t stopped her, and now it had come back to bite her. She couldn’t come up with an excuse and forced a smile instead. “Jiaxin, tomorrow I’ll take you shopping for new clothes.”
Auntie Xue pressed on relentlessly. “Ding Jing, so everything Jiaxin says is true? You deliberately let her find out about your daughter’s affair with her fiancé right before the exam, and you deliberately tampered with her food to make her fail?”
Lu Jiaxin was quite pleased. Auntie Xue was known throughout the housing complex as a troublemaker, but right now she was proving to be an excellent ally. Very good.
There was no way Ding Jing would admit to it. “During those three exam days, Siyi ate the exact same food as her, surely you don’t think I’d harm my own daughter too?”
Auntie Xue kept pressing. “Then what about your daughter and the Fan boy?”
Ding Jing said, eyes reddening, “There must be some misunderstanding here. When Siyi gets back, I’ll definitely have her explain everything clearly to Jiaxin.”
Lu Jiaxin wasn’t about to leave the job half-done, having started, there was no way she’d let this mother-daughter pair recover now. “A misunderstanding? The year before last when I had a bad cold and was lying in bed feverish, Director Fang’s mother happened to come by to borrow something, and you deliberately washed my underwear in front of her. Afterward the whole housing complex was saying how strangely lazy I was, that I even made my stepmother wash my underwear for me. And what did you tell my father at the time? You said Director Fang’s mother had simply misunderstood.”
This Director Fang’s mother was known throughout the housing complex as a terrible gossip, second only to Auntie Xue.
“And last year, that dear niece of yours ran into my room and rummaged through everything, not only breaking my music box but also making off with over thirty yuan and a Hetian jade peace clasp from my drawer. When I got back and demanded she return the money and the item, not only did nothing get returned, but my father scolded me for it, and then the whole housing complex was saying how domineering and unreasonable I was.”
“Ding Jing, before you married into this family, everyone praised me as sensible and filial. But once you moved in, one ‘misunderstanding’ after another kept happening, and somehow you and Zhao Siyi became the diligent, kind stepmother and stepsister, while I turned into the bad-tempered, lazy, unreasonable, spoiled young miss.”
Before Ding Jing had married in, the worst the original owner had ever been called was a bit spoiled, but for a girl in her teens from a well-off family, the only child at that, being a little spoiled was perfectly normal.
Auntie Xue was very worked up and said loudly, “I always said she was faking it, what stepmother is ever really that good? You all just wouldn’t believe me. Now do you see I was right?”
Lu Jiaxin thought this was too absolute, there certainly were good stepmothers out there in the world, just relatively fewer of them.
Most of the people present had come around to agreeing with Auntie Xue, though they hadn’t voiced it outright since they didn’t yet know how Lu Hongjun felt about all this.
Ding Jing knew the more she tried to explain, the worse it would look, so she said, choking up, “Jiaxin, I know you’ve suffered a great deal out there this past month, but you can’t slander me and Siyi like this.”
Lu Jiaxin had no intention of arguing with her, arguing would only put her at a disadvantage. “You’ve been putting on this act for four years, aren’t you tired of it? I’m sick of the sight of it.”