Before Lu Zhanye could finish speaking, a flash of secret delight flickered across Su Wanrou’s eyes.
Su Wantang sat in the corner, her entire body cold.
She looked at the “medical certificate” in her sister’s hand, at the sincere tears on her sister’s face, and at the stormy expression that had suddenly darkened Lu Zhanye’s features.
So this was the plan.
A fake pregnancy to force a marriage.
Using a forged diagnosis and the pressure of the entire village to force Lu Zhanye to take responsibility.
“Wanrou!” Zhao Dehai shot to his feet, his face ashen. “You can’t make accusations like that! You and Comrade Lu…”
“I’m not lying!” Su Wanrou cried, turning toward Lu Zhanye. “Comrade Lu, that night… when you were unconscious… the medicine took effect… you mistook me for someone else… you held me, kissed me, and called me ‘Wanwan’… and later… later…”
She didn’t finish.
She didn’t need to.
Everyone understood.
Wanwan.
A buzzing exploded in Su Wantang’s mind.
Her sister even knew that…
She even knew the nickname Lu Zhanye had called out under the influence of the drug.
“You were unconscious, so maybe you don’t remember…” Su Wanrou sobbed. “But I remember. I remember every detail. Comrade Lu, I was an innocent young woman. Now I’m carrying your child. You… you can’t just abandon me…”
She dropped to her knees.
Right there in front of the entire village, she knelt before Lu Zhanye.
A deathly silence fell over the courtyard.
Everyone stared at him.
Under the lantern light, the man’s face was as dark as the sky before a storm. He stared at Su Wanrou kneeling on the ground, at the diagnosis paper in her hands, at her tear-swollen eyes.
After a long moment, he finally spoke.
“Let me see the diagnosis.”
His voice was cold as ice.
With trembling hands, Su Wanrou passed it to him.
Lu Zhanye took the paper and unfolded it. Under the light, he examined it carefully. His gaze lingered over the crooked handwriting, the bright red thumbprint, and finally the date at the bottom.
More than a month ago.
Exactly after that night at the threshing ground.
He looked up at Su Wanrou.
“Midwife Wang’s diagnosis?”
“Y-yes…” Su Wanrou nodded. “Midwife Wang said I’m already over a month along. The pregnancy is very stable…”
“Very stable?” Lu Zhanye interrupted.
Then he smiled.
It was a faint smile.
A cold smile.
Like a flash of steel along a knife’s edge.
“Comrade Su Wanrou.” He folded the paper and handed it back. “Whether I touched you or not, I know perfectly well.”
The courtyard erupted once more.
Su Wanrou’s face turned deathly pale.
“Comrade Lu, you… you can’t deny it now…”
“If it isn’t my child, why should I claim it?” Lu Zhanye’s voice suddenly rose, his eyes sharp as blades. “It’s true that the medicine affected me that night. I wasn’t fully conscious. But I remember one thing—”
He paused.
His gaze suddenly shifted toward the corner.
Toward the figure who had been keeping her head down the entire time, wishing she could disappear into the ground.
“I remember the person I touched had a red mole on the side of her neck.”
Su Wantang trembled violently and looked up.
Their eyes met.
Lu Zhanye looked directly at her and said, slowly and clearly:
“Right here.”
He gestured lightly to a spot on his own neck, just below the side of it, near the inner edge of the collarbone.
Exactly where Su Wantang’s red mole was.
Every head in the courtyard turned toward her at once.
Su Wanrou also spun around, staring at her.
Shock flooded her eyes.
So did panic.
She had miscalculated.
She had assumed that Lu Zhanye, drugged and delirious, wouldn’t remember anything.
She had assumed that with a forged diagnosis and enough tears in public, she could force him into submission.
But she had never expected—
That he remembered.
That he remembered the mole.
“Y-you…” Su Wanrou’s voice trembled. “You’re lying. That night it was obviously me… I was the one taking care of you…”
“Really?” Lu Zhanye withdrew his gaze from Su Wantang and looked back at her.
His calmness was terrifying.
“Then tell me.”
He took a step closer.
“Was that mole on the left side, or the right?”
Su Wanrou opened her mouth.
No words came out.
How could she know?
She had never paid attention to which side Su Wantang’s mole was on.
“Or,” Lu Zhanye continued, taking another step forward, “we can have Midwife Wang examine you again.”
His eyes locked onto hers.
“Right now. In front of the entire village.”
“To determine whether you’re actually pregnant at all.”