They called out a few times, but no one answered. Jiangnan checked his watch—past five already. The workday was over, and everyone had gone home.
Their examination room was tucked deep inside the building, some distance from the hospital entrance. Even if they shouted, no one outside would hear them.
Behind the building stretched a patch of farmland—completely deserted. The windows were all fitted with iron bars, so climbing out wasn’t an option. The only way out would be to break down the door.
As a soldier, Jiangnan naturally couldn’t do that. All they could do was wait for someone to come and unlock it.
What they didn’t know was that no one would be coming.
The doctor who had gone to fetch medicine had just stepped out when his family came looking for him, saying his wife was about to give birth. He dropped everything and rushed home immediately.
The others left one after another as well. None of them realized there were still people inside, so they simply locked the door behind them.
This place was called a clinic, but in truth, it was little more than a small rural infirmary. There were no doctors on night duty.
With no one coming, the two of them could only sit there, staring at each other in silence.
“Let’s talk. My name is Jiangnan. I’m from the provincial capital, a soldier. I’m here on leave, visiting a friend,” he said at last, unable to stand the boredom.
Lin Yuxi had no objection. Sitting there in silence really was too dull.
“My name is Lin Yuxi. I’m from a nearby village. I study at the middle school here. It’s summer vacation now, so I was visiting a classmate. I was on my way home when this happened.”
“What did you mean earlier—someone replaced you? Of course, if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to,” Jiangnan added, mostly just trying to ease the awkwardness.
“If it were anyone I knew, I wouldn’t say a word. But telling you doesn’t matter—you can just treat it as a story.”
“Why? I mean… why can you tell me?” Jiangnan didn’t understand. They were strangers—why would she share something she couldn’t tell others?
“Because we don’t know each other. Once tomorrow comes, we’ll go our separate ways. We might never meet again in this lifetime. And this… has been weighing on me. It’s suffocating.”
As she spoke, tears slipped down her face.
Didn’t she want to find her biological parents? It wasn’t that she didn’t—it was that she didn’t dare.
In both her past life and this one, she had never received a parent’s love. What she envied most were children cherished by their parents.
But she was afraid to face the truth. If, in the end, her parents chose that adopted daughter over her… she didn’t dare imagine what that would feel like.
Slowly, she began to tell her story.
“I’m not my parents’ biological child. When I was born, they deliberately swapped me with someone else’s baby.”
“In this family, I had to do all the work the other children didn’t. I couldn’t eat what they ate.”
“I used to think… maybe I wasn’t obedient enough. Maybe I wasn’t good enough, and that’s why they didn’t like me.”
“I tried desperately to please them. I worked as hard as I could. But it was useless—no one ever spared me a second glance.”
“My parents only seemed to notice me when they needed something done. The rest of the time, it was as if I didn’t exist.”
“And if that were all, it might’ve been bearable. But whenever they were upset, they would beat me. If they were bullied outside, they’d take it out on me. Sometimes… they’d hit me for no reason at all, just because they felt like it.”
Everything Lin Yuxi described had truly happened in her previous life.
Even though a lifetime had passed, the pain—both physical and etched deep in her heart—felt as though it had seeped into her bones. At the slightest touch, it would tear open again, raw and unbearable.
Jiangnan looked at the girl before him, crying so helplessly. In his mind, he saw a small child longing for her parents’ love, only to be met with cold cruelty and blows.
There was sorrow in her tears… but also despair.
He couldn’t even imagine how such a young child had endured it all, time and time again.
Lost in her memories, Lin Yuxi continued:
“I was only allowed to attend middle school on the condition that it didn’t interfere with my work at home.”
“Every day, I woke up early to cook breakfast for fifteen or sixteen people, feed the chickens and ducks, and finish all the chores before going to school.”
“My cousin, who’s the same age as me, and another cousin a year younger didn’t have to do anything.”
“After school, I had to rush straight home. If I was late, I’d be beaten or scolded.”
“Then one day, I stayed late at school for cleaning duty. When I got home, my grandmother had told my mother to cook. My mother tried to slack off and got caught.”
“When my grandmother was about to hit her, I arrived.”
“That’s my mother… how could I just stand by and watch her get beaten? So I stepped in to shield her.”
“In the end, my grandmother struck my head. I lost consciousness on the spot.”
“But no one took me to the hospital. Not even the village doctor was called. They just carried me into the house and left me there.”
“I woke up in the middle of the night and overheard my parents talking. That’s when I finally learned the truth.”
“They treated me like that all these years not because I was disobedient or not good enough… but because I was never their child.”
“When my mother gave birth—well, when she gave birth to their real daughter—it was a difficult labor. She was taken to Jiangcheng County Hospital.”
“After the birth, they learned that the woman sharing her ward was wealthy. So they swapped their biological daughter into that rich family… and brought me back instead.”
“They had already reconnected with their real daughter years ago—around when I was ten. Every so often, they’d go visit her and come back with money.”
“That night, I also heard them discussing whether to follow their daughter’s instructions.”
“I hadn’t even fully recovered from the shock when I heard my father say: don’t rush.”
“If they sold me, they’d only get one sum of money. If they killed me, they’d get nothing.”
“But if I grew up, got a job or married, then for the rest of my life, I’d have to support them.”
“They also said their daughter had been giving them less money as she grew older. So they couldn’t just follow her instructions—they needed a backup plan.”
“I understood what they meant.”
“Their biological daughter was afraid that if I grew up and discovered the truth, I’d go find her and expose her identity.”
“So she told her real parents—my adoptive parents—to sell me or kill me, to eliminate future trouble.”
“Look at how cruel that is… She stole the life that should have been mine, took my parents and my brother… and still wants to destroy me.”
“Fortunately, my adoptive parents don’t fully trust her. They want to leave themselves a way out, so they didn’t do it. But who knows what might happen in the future?”
Lin Yuxi couldn’t say she had been reborn, so she framed everything as something she had overheard.
“What did you do after finding out?” Jiangnan asked. Clearly, she hadn’t gone to acknowledge her real family—or maybe she had tried and failed?
“For now, I just follow my cousins’ example. If they don’t do the work, neither do I.”
“If they try to hit me again, I’ll shout for help and go to the village head, to the brigade leader. I’ll ask them directly whether I’m their biological child.”
“They don’t want my identity exposed—they’re afraid it will affect their real daughter—so they don’t dare make a scene or beat me casually anymore.”
Jiangnan looked at the girl in front of him. Just the fact that she was no longer being beaten made her smile—as if that alone was enough to satisfy her.
“Have you gone to find your biological parents?” he asked.