Song Hanzhou was so frightened that his heart seemed to stop for several seconds. He hurriedly caught her. “Older Sister, what’s wrong? Let’s go to the hospital!”
Song Tingwan took a few gasping breaths and gradually recovered. She patted him reassuringly and shook her head. “No need. I’m fine. I just feel a little tired.”
But Song Hanzhou still couldn’t relax. He gripped her hand tightly and asked anxiously, “Older Sister, you won’t leave again… will you?”
Song Hanzhou didn’t even try to make sense of why his Older Sister, who had been dead for ten years, had suddenly come back to life.
All he knew was that being able to see the family member he had missed for so long again was already a gift from heaven.
Song Hanzhou was the second child of the Song family, five years younger than her. When the accident happened, he had just turned thirteen.
Their parents had both died in an air disaster years earlier. After that, their grandfather and Grandma had held the family and the company together.
According to their grandfather and Grandma’s plans, once Song Tingwan came of age, she would begin learning to take over the company’s affairs.
But no one had expected Song Tingwan to meet with an accident so suddenly, leaving no body behind.
Even the car she had been driving at the time had never been found.
Her thoughts broke off. Song Tingwan didn’t answer his question directly; after all, she still had no idea how she had suddenly been reborn.
Out of habit, she reached up to pat her younger brother’s head, only to realize that the brat who used to be half a head shorter than her had grown to a full 185 centimeters.
She couldn’t reach it anymore.
Song Hanzhou obligingly lowered his head and rubbed it against her palm.
“You’ve got so much hairspray in your hair, it’s stiff as a board. It doesn’t feel nice at all.”
Song Tingwan withdrew her hand with a look of distaste, but she had successfully dispelled the unease in Song Hanzhou’s heart.
Looking at her slightly awkward younger brother, she evaded the question and said, “This is my home. Where else do you expect me to go?”
“Older Sister, that’s not what I meant,” Song Hanzhou said quickly.
Song Tingwan patted his shoulder reassuringly. “All right, I’m standing right here in front of you, aren’t I? I don’t know what happened either, but it’s still better than… me never coming back, right?”
Song Hanzhou nodded emphatically, stepped forward, and hugged her gently. “Older Sister, I missed you so much… We all missed you so much.”
Song Tingwan’s eyes grew wet. She gently patted his back, comforting him. “I missed you all too.”
That night, Song Tingwan had a dream.
In it, driven by their overwhelming longing, her younger brothers had finally found a substitute for her.
Bai Xiyuan, who looked seven-tenths like her.
Her Second Brother, Song Hanzhou, had spared no expense to launch her career, pouring a fortune into putting a mountain of resources at her disposal.
He had even recklessly made an enemy of a powerful figure in Jing City for her sake, driving the company into bankruptcy. Bai Xiyuan had then mocked him as a brainless idiot.
Her Third Brother, Song Zhaoli, had seen internet trolls constantly attacking Bai Xiyuan, so he’d illegally tracked one of them down and beaten the person into a permanent, severe disability. In the end, he’d landed in prison.
Her Fourth Brother, Song Zhaoyang, was even worse. To win her favor, he’d signed away his freedom for life, only to be forced by a corrupt company to make indecent videos and turned into a cash cow.
Wonderful. Not one person in the whole family had a happy ending. Song Tingwan was so furious in the dream that she almost laughed.
She’d heard of a first-love white moonlight[1]Chinese romantic slang for someone remembered as an idealized, often unattainable or lost love; the expression is being applied jokingly to an older sister here. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3735981_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3735981_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, but never an Older Sister white moonlight.
Imitating the lost love with someone who looked like her—was this really how they were going to play it?
And the powerful Jing City figure who’d driven Song Hanzhou’s company into bankruptcy was none other than her ex-boyfriend, Fu Shiyan, whom she had dumped!
What a petty man. It was just a breakup, wasn’t it?
Did he really have to hold a grudge so bitterly that, even after she’d been dead for so many years, he still couldn’t let it go—and could ruin her younger brother’s company without sparing a thought for their past?
“Fu Shiyan, you bastard!”
Song Tingwan woke with a start, only to open her eyes and find herself completely dumbfounded.
The room before her was nothing like the decor she knew. It was all cool colors: gray curtains, gray cabinets, even gray sheets and duvet cover.
She sat up in a daze and looked around. “Seriously, I only went to sleep. Where the hell have I ended up?”
At the same time, downstairs.
A man came up from the basement. With a trace of fatigue in his expression, he loosened his tie and sank onto the sofa, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Ding-dong—
A notification sounded.
A few minutes later, the man finally picked up the phone someone had tossed onto the sofa and opened the voice messages from a friend.
【Sixth Brother[2]A familiar Chinese-style form of address using numbered seniority within a family or close circle; it need not indicate a biological brother. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3735981_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3735981_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, you’ve got to see this idiot Song Hanzhou. He’s willing to spend five hundred million on a female star.】
【At this rate, he’ll bankrupt the Song family sooner or later, and there’s no one to keep him in check.】
When the voice messages ended, his long-fingered hand opened the video his friend had sent.
It showed Song Hanzhou being interviewed by the media, but this version was filmed from a first-person perspective.
The reporters asked a lot of questions. When one of them asked whether he had fought Fu Shiyan because of Bai Xiyuan, the man finally lifted his eyelids.
Then a faint but unmistakably familiar voice rang out, and the man’s eyes flew open.
“Song Hanzhou, are you planning to bankrupt the family, and then…”
He listened to it over and over. The expression on his face shifted from astonishment to excitement.
His hand trembled slightly. Just as he was about to call and confirm something, he heard a noise upstairs.
The man stood and looked toward the staircase, his gaze darkening.
He lived here alone. Even the housekeeper came only at set times to clean.
There couldn’t be anyone else in the house at this hour.
At the thought, the man’s lips curled slightly, menace roiling in his eyes. He went to the cabinet, picked up a baseball bat from the umbrella stand, and headed straight upstairs.
On the second floor, Song Tingwan had no idea where she was. With her body weighed down by exhaustion, she could only creep out of the room and warily survey her surroundings.
But as she crouched and tiptoed toward the stairs like a thief, she ran straight into the man coming up.
“Ah!” Song Tingwan cried out in fright, grabbing the banister just in time to keep from collapsing onto the floor.
Her face was deathly pale. She stood frozen, staring blankly at the person in front of her.
With a clatter, the baseball bat fell from the man’s hand and bounced noisily down the stairs.
He stared at her in disbelief, his pupils trembling. He didn’t dare blink.
Song Tingwan wore a pale yellow printed pajama set. Her hair was slightly mussed, and her palm-sized face was full of astonishment.
She looked exactly as she did in his memories—not a single thing had changed.
The man instinctively took a step toward her, then pulled back in fear.
He was afraid this was another dream.
Afraid that if he got any closer, she would disappear.
It took Song Tingwan a while to recognize the person in front of her.
Fu Shiyan?
The ex-boyfriend she had dumped!
Only, he looked a little different from the man she remembered.
His features were more chiseled now, and he wore a perfectly tailored suit that gave off the air of a mature man.
Song Tingwan gripped the banister, her mind racing.
Should she pretend she didn’t know him?
It had been ten years since they’d last seen each other—or so it was for him. It wouldn’t be strange if he didn’t recognize her, would it?
“You… you…” Come on, mouth, say something!
Song Tingwan wanted to cry. How was she supposed to explain coming back from the dead?
At the sound of her voice, Fu Shiyan’s pupils continued to tremble.
She hadn’t disappeared.
This wasn’t a dream.
It really was her!
Once he was sure, Fu Shiyan quickly composed himself, doing his best to act natural. He fixed his eyes on her and slowly asked, “Why are you in my house?”
His response left Song Tingwan close to despair.
She’d been asleep at home. How had she woken up in Fu Shiyan’s house?!
She swallowed and steadied herself, thinking of how she had dumped him—and how he was now a powerful figure in Jing City, and would eventually be the one to ruin her family’s company.
She couldn’t afford to offend him for now.
Besides, he didn’t seem to recognize her.
Song Tingwan managed to force out a smile. Summoning what little strength she had, she said weakly, “What if I told you I don’t know either… would you believe me?”
Fu Shiyan stared straight at her, his expression blank. “Oh.”
Oh, my ass!
Song Tingwan dug her toes into the floor. So did he believe her or not?
Fu Shiyan slipped one hand into his trouser pocket. Beneath his calm exterior, his heart was racing, and his fist was clenched tight.
But Song Tingwan had reached her limit. It felt as if something inside her was being steadily drained away. She was about to say something else when the man in front of her split into several blurry images.
She shook her head. A moment later, her vision went black, and she pitched straight toward him.
References[+]