Xiao Man saw it and jumped in alarm. “Oh no, Dr. Shi, your hand!”
Shi Miao didn’t seem to feel the pain. ”It’s nothing.”
During her midday break, Shi Miao went somewhere with fewer people, pulled out a slim cigarette, and lit it.
She held it to her lips but didn’t take a drag for a long time. The rising smoke blurred her features.
“Miao Miao, that child… was a stillbirth. Don’t take it too hard.”
Mother Cheng’s words seemed to echo in her ears.
Very few people knew that Shi Miao and Song Hanzhou had once had a child—back when he was still Xu Zhinian.
She had conceived that child at the height of their love. Back then, pregnant with it, she had been preparing to marry his older brother.
When Xu Zhinian found out, he lost control, smashing everything in the house that could be smashed. He cried, he knelt, begging her not to be so cruel to him.
But back then, Shi Miao had thought only of revenge. No one could stand in her way—not even her Xu Zhinian.
She had only looked at him coldly and said, “That’s what you get for not being Xu Family blood. I, Cheng Shimiao, will only marry the Xu Family heir.”
The man had gripped her wrist so hard it nearly snapped her hand bones, questioning her with reddened eyes: “Even if my older brother is a cripple who can’t stand, you’ll still marry him?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re carrying my child!”
“I can abort it.” Her voice was calm and cold.
The man’s eyes were bloodshot, as if about to weep blood. “Cheng Shimiao, did you ever love me at all?”
“If lying to you would make you feel better—”
“Enough!” His face was twisted with pain and despair. Like a cornered beast, he stared at her, every word dripping blood. “Cheng Shimiao, don’t you regret this.”
That day, Cheng Shimiao broke Xu Zhinian’s heart and drove him away. But she didn’t regret it.
She carried on with her plan of revenge without looking back.
However, things did not go smoothly.
On the eve of the wedding, her fabricated identity as a socialite was publicly exposed by the real heiress—she was a fraud through and through, a gold digger!
The Xu Family was furious. Mother Xu slapped her hard across the face and threw her out.
Overnight, Shi Miao was knocked back to her original form. No—worse than that. Her reputation was ruined, her job gone.
As if that weren’t enough misfortune, Mother Cheng fell ill. Their savings quickly ran dry, and life became tight and impoverished.
She finally found work as a translator, but the socialites who had once envied her spread rumors everywhere—that she had become an escort for money and gotten pregnant by some man.
Unable to find proper work, she could only hand out flyers, wait tables, do cheap, grueling labor. Her once delicate hands grew thick calluses.
And Xu Zhinian…
He returned to Jingzhou to be recognized by his birth family, changing his name to Song Hanzhou. From the mocked fake young master, the bastard, he transformed into the crown prince of the capital circle—unreachably noble.
A wealthy heir switched at birth could only happen between wealthy families. After all, how could a poor person be born in the same hospital room as the rich?
When they met again, standing beside him was a fiancée who truly matched his status.
“Hanzhou, that pregnant woman is so pitiful. Her belly is so big and she still has to wipe tables. I think she’s even lame. Let’s give her a big tip later, okay?”
Song Hanzhou looked at her as if she were a stranger.
Yet in the end, he still couldn’t bring himself to ignore her.
The man cornered her, his cold, sharp eyes fixed on that lame leg of hers, demanding to know who had done it.
Shi Miao didn’t answer, but silently looked toward one of the Xu Family members present.
Before long, Jing City’s richest family—the Xu Family—went bankrupt.
The culprit responsible for the death of Shi Miao’s father, who was also Song Hanzhou’s adoptive father, leaped from a building over sixty stories tall and died on the spot. When his adoptive mother heard the news, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and, despite two days of rescue efforts, passed away as well.
Everyone Shi Miao hated was dead, but in this world, there was one more person who hated her.
Song Hanzhou.
He hated her, despised her, forced her to be a mistress who could never see the light of day, made her child a bastard who would never rise above it.
She had always known how to wound him, and he knew how to wound her too.
Later, while Song Hanzhou was accompanying his fiancée for a wedding dress fitting, Shi Miao seized the chance to run.
But an accident happened along the way—she went into labor.
When she woke up, it was Mother Cheng who told her that the baby in her belly had been stillborn, and that the hospital had already taken it away for disposal.
She never even got to look at that child.
Shi Miao said it was for the best that the baby was stillborn—that way Song Hanzhou would never come after her again. But as she said it, her tears wouldn’t stop flowing, and she didn’t know why she was crying.
Just like now, as Shi Miao thought of the child who had never made it into this world, a tear slid without warning from the corner of her eye, dripping onto the railing.
Xiao Man was face-blind. She said Song Shu looked like her, but Shi Miao hadn’t taken her words seriously at all.
Her cigarette was nearly burned out. Shi Miao stubbed it out, rose, and headed back to the hospital.
Not far away, a tall figure had been quietly watching her for a long while, his dark eyes deep as an abyss.
Cheng Shimiao, long time no see.
……
“I heard the Song family once arranged an engagement between Song Hanzhou and the mayor’s daughter, but for some reason it was suddenly called off. Less than two years later, the woman married someone else. Such a shame.”
“But I heard she’s divorced now too. She’ll probably rekindle things with President Song!”
When Shi Miao went to the break room to fill her water cup, two nurses on duty were chatting idly.
“Hey, President Song has never married. Could it be he’s been waiting for her all along? And Song Shu—could he be their child?”
“Is that even a question?”
Over the years, as Song Hanzhou’s standing in the business world rose, there had been plenty of speculation about Song Shu’s parentage, but most people leaned toward Bai Zhiyao being his mother.
After all, in everyone else’s eyes, Bai Zhiyao was the only woman who had ever been by Song Hanzhou’s side.
And neither of the two people involved ever responded, as if in tacit acknowledgment.
No matter where Xu Zhinian went, or what identity he held, he was a prodigy who drew constant attention.
As usual, Shi Miao didn’t join the chatter. She filled her cup and walked off with her hands in her pockets.
The nurses watched her retreating figure and said enviously, “Dr. Shi’s patient is actually President Song’s son. So lucky.”
“I heard Su Jiani was originally supposed to be the attending physician, but the little young master refused and insisted on having Shi Miao treat him. Su Jiani was so furious that day she slammed her files down with a slap!”
“Su Jiani must have known Song Shu’s identity all along—she was trying to climb the social ladder. Turns out she couldn’t even get past a little kid. Hilarious.”
After Shi Miao had walked away, another nurse joined in. “President Song’s son—I don’t think he’s Miss Bai’s child, actually.”
“Song Hanzhou used to live in Yan City. He was quite the playboy back then, never short of girlfriends. Who knows whose belly he got pregnant?”
“How do I know? My hometown is Yancheng. Song Hanzhou didn’t used to be called Song Hanzhou—he was called Xu Zhinian, the school heartthrob of No. 1 High School. Super famous, the dream guy of countless girls.”
“I have to say, he was born lucky. If you had his fortune told, it’d definitely come up as an extremely noble destiny.”
“It doesn’t matter who gave birth to Song Shu. With Song Hanzhou’s status now, plenty of women would be willing to step in and raise the kid—it just depends on whether he wants to find Song Shu a mother. If Bai Zhiyao could have made it, she would have made it long ago. Why would she have waited until now?”
“……”
Shi Miao returned to the consultation room and saw a box of burn ointment on the desk that hadn’t been there before.
She was just about to ask Xiao Man if she had put it there when a young man from a flower shop suddenly came in, asking for Shi Miao by name to sign for a delivery.
When Shi Miao asked who sent it, he said he couldn’t disclose the customer’s private information, set down the bouquet, and left.
Xiao Man saw it and got very excited: “Wow, it’s so pretty! Dr. Shi, which admirer sent it?”
Shi Miao: “No idea. If you like it, it’s yours.”
A Cayenne pulled away from the hospital and slowly merged into the flow of traffic.
The air inside the car was very quiet.
Song Shu sat properly, eyelashes lowered.
Song Hanzhou rested with his eyes closed, his expression indifferent.
Just then, a childish voice suddenly spoke up beside him: “Daddy, do you dislike the auntie doctor who treats me because she’s Mommy?”