Ji Yunshu froze on the spot the moment she heard the name “Meng Li,” nearly dropping the candy tin in her hand.
Which *meng*? Which *li*?
Regardless of the characters, the pronunciation matched the name from her dream.
Meng Li.
The horrific dream images flooded Ji Yunshu’s mind once again—that woman’s triumphant gaze, her father’s indifferent face as he glanced at her from a distance and turned away, He Jianjun shaking off her hand, and the suffocating feeling as young people dragged her off while shouting, “Down with the capitalist lady!”
It was this very name.
Ji Yunshu stood dazed where she was, gazing at her mother from afar, her eyes rimmed with red.
Ji Yunting was the first to react. He looked back at Ji Yunshu, his brow furrowed, and shifted half a step toward his younger sister as if trying to shield her.
Standing at the doorway, He Qiuxia’s expression shifted from confusion to something complex and indescribable. She looked back at Ji Yunshu inside the house, then turned back to the young soldier. Her voice remained relatively steady: “What birth daughter? Comrade, my family’s girl is fine and well. Where would a birth daughter come from? Tell her to go back and stop making a fuss here.”
The young soldier did not leave, a awkward look on his face: “Auntie, I told her, but she refuses to leave. She says she brought all the evidence, and… she also said you two were swapped at birth in northern Jiangsu. She said back then, you and Mrs. Meng gave birth at the same time, right when the Nationalist forces launched a sudden attack on the northern Jiangsu Liberated Zone… She didn’t say much else, only that you and the Chief must see her. She said you would know the moment you look at her.”
He Qiuxia was silent for a moment before saying, “Go back and have her wait a bit. I’ll make a phone call to my husband.”
The young soldier nodded, turned around, and left.
He Qiuxia took a deep look at Ji Yunshu, who was still stunned in place. With reddened eyes, she hurried to dial the phone to Ji Haiguo’s workplace, keeping her voice very low: “Come home right away, something happened at home.”
Ji Yunshu could not hear what was said on the other end. He Qiuxia hummed twice in agreement and hung up the phone.
Turning back to look at Ji Yunting and Ji Yunshu, He Qiuxia’s lips moved, and after a long moment, she managed to squeeze out: “Your father will be back in a bit.”
Ji Yunting looked at He Qiuxia’s expression, then at Ji Yunshu’s pale face, and said, “Mom, I’ll go to the entrance with you to take a look. Xiao Shu, you stay inside the house, don’t come out.”
Ji Yunshu shook her head.
She stepped down from the bed, her bare feet touching the floor, her voice trembling slightly: “No, I’m going too.”
“What are you going for?” Ji Yunting frowned. “The sun is hot outside, just lie down and rest.”
Ji Yunshu ignored him, bending over to look for her cloth shoes.
He Qiuxia walked over and pressed down on her shoulders. Her eyes were red, but her tone was firm: “Yunshu, listen to Mom, stay home and wait. No matter who comes outside, you are my daughter—that won’t change.”
Ji Yunshu raised her head to look at He Qiuxia, tears welling in her eyes, though she held them back: “Mom, I want to go. No matter what happens in the future, I want to see what she looks like.”
Looking at her daughter like this, He Qiuxia felt a sharp, sour pang in her heart. She opened her mouth, sighed at last, and reached out to smooth Ji Yunshu’s hair: “Alright then. Put your shoes on properly, and Mom will comb your hair. We’ll go together.”
He Qiuxia picked up the wooden comb on the coffee table and gently combed Ji Yunshu’s long hair smooth from top to bottom, then tied it into a simple braid resting against her chest.
Ji Yunting watched from the side, wanting to say something, but in the end said nothing, only lightly patting Ji Yunshu’s head.
The three of them left the courtyard and walked toward the security post.
The July sun was intense, making Ji Yunshu unconsciously squint her eyes. She walked alongside He Qiuxia, who held her hand tightly with a solemn expression.
As they approached the post, Ji Yunshu saw a girl standing at the entrance from a distance.
The girl wore a floral long dress, had two simple hair braids, and stood upright with a canvas bag slung over her shoulder. The sunlight shone on her face, making her features difficult to see clearly, but judging by her dress and grooming, she indeed did not look like a girl who had suffered hardships.
She was wearing a Dacron dress. Dacron was hard to come by; in her entire life, Ji Yunshu had only seen one piece before, which was specially bought at a high price by neighboring He Jianjun’s older sister when she got married. Ji Yunshu recalled that in her dream, the Meng family was a fairly wealthy capitalist family, and her anxious heart sank even further.
As they drew closer, the girl heard footsteps and raised her head.
The moment Ji Yunshu saw that face, she froze completely.
Curved eyebrows, a straight nose bridge, thin lips that turned up at the corners when smiling—her features were not exceptionally striking, but together they were very pleasing to look at. Crucially, the shape of her eyes and the curve of her chin looked as if they were cast from the exact same mold as Ji Haiguo’s. Even the small red mole between her eyebrows was identical to the one in her dream.
Ji Yunshu’s breath hitched, and it took a long while before she barely snapped out of it.
She remembered how when she was little, people always said she looked neither like He Qiuxia nor like Ji Haiguo. Every time, He Qiuxia would smile and say, “My daughter resembles her late grandmother across generations.” She had never cared about it before, but now seeing this face, she suddenly understood—it wasn’t that she didn’t look like her father, but that her father’s features were on someone else’s face.
Seeing them, the girl’s eyes lit up, and she walked over quickly. Her gaze moved from He Qiuxia to Ji Yunshu, paused for a moment, and then she smiled softly.
The smile was very natural, so natural it seemed as though it had been practiced many times.
“Mom, Brother,” she called out twice, her voice soft and tender, exactly like in the dream. After a pause, she slowly spoke, “Is this… Older Sister?”
Ji Yunshu did not answer immediately; she felt there was something strange about Meng Li’s intonation. Instinctively, she leaned closer to He Qiuxia, her hand involuntarily gripping the hem of He Qiuxia’s clothes.
Hearing this, Ji Yunting also frowned, took a step forward to block Ji Yunshu, and spoke in a tone that was neither harsh nor polite: “Comrade, our relationship hasn’t been established yet, so please refrain from calling us that for now. If you have anything to say, come inside to talk; the entrance is no place for conversation.”
Meng Li glanced at him, and seeing that He Qiuxia did not object, she nodded: “Alright.”
Ji Yunshu followed closely behind He Qiuxia step by step, her mind filled with the terror of their swapped identities from her dream.
Even though the weather was so hot and dry, Ji Yunshu felt a chill seeping into her fingertips.
Just then, He Qiuxia took hold of Ji Yunshu’s hand again, giving her a reassuring look before holding on tight and not letting go. Walking at the very back, Ji Yunting occasionally glanced at Meng Li and then at Ji Yunshu.
Ji Yunshu kept her head down, staring at the path under her feet, the glare of the sun hurting her eyes.
Once inside the house, He Qiuxia asked Meng Li to sit in the main room while she went to pour a glass of water and set it in front of Meng Li. Ji Yunting pulled up a chair to sit opposite Meng Li and signaled with his eyes for Ji Yunshu to sit down. Ji Yunshu did not respond to him, only standing beside He Qiuxia. None of the three spoke.
Meng Li, however, was not shy. She placed the canvas bag on her lap, pulled out a stack of papers from inside, and arranged them neatly on the table.
“Auntie,” she looked at He Qiuxia, her tone serious, “I know this is quite sudden, but I am indeed your daughter. These are the pieces of evidence I have collected over the years. You’ll understand once you look at them.”
He Qiuxia did not immediately take the papers. She looked at Meng Li, sizing her up for a long while before speaking: “You say you are my biological daughter, what proof do you have?”
Meng Li pulled out one of the papers and said, “This is proof from my adoptive parents’ side. I grew up in Su City. My adoptive father is named Meng Guangze, a capitalist in Su City who used to run a textile factory. They never knew I wasn’t their biological child until two years ago when my adoptive mother fell ill and needed a blood transfusion, only then discovering our blood types didn’t match. I am type AB, but my adoptive mother is type O.”
Major hospitals in this era were already capable of testing basic blood types. In Ji Yunshu’s dream, that was also how she found out she wasn’t the biological daughter of Ji Haiguo and He Qiuxia.
Ji Haiguo was type AB, and He Qiuxia was type A; it was impossible for them to produce a daughter with type O blood. Although Ji Yunshu did not understand why right now, in her dream, that was exactly how He Jianjun had slapped the test report onto her face!
He Qiuxia did not move, but as Ji Yunshu stared at that thin, handwritten hospital report, her heart sank halfway nonetheless.
Seeing that He Qiuxia remained silent, Meng Li continued, “Auntie, before coming here, I also went to northern Jiangsu to find the comrades from the nursery back then and asked about the situation at the time. Both Sister and I were born at the northern Jiangsu nursery, and my adoptive mother stayed in the same room as you. When the war suddenly broke out and the nursery was bombarded, the dirt house next door was blown open. It was you who stepped forward to protect my adoptive mother, or else she would have been buried under the soil. But it was also at that moment that Sister and I were swapped. The nursery used blue swaddling clothes for everyone. She instinctively held on to me because I was closest, which was why Sister was taken by you later on. Afterward, refugees from southern Shandong and the northern Jiangsu Liberated Zone fled here, completely scattering the two families…”
He Qiuxia still did not speak. She closed her eyes, seemingly remembering that sudden disaster from over a decade ago. No one had expected the Nationalist forces to suddenly attack the northern Jiangsu Liberated Zone. She had just given birth a week prior and was at her weakest, yet her first instinct upon hearing the artillery shells was to protect that helpless woman beside her who had also just given birth…
He Qiuxia knew this selflessness was somewhat excessive, but she felt that she was tough and thick-skinned, unafraid. That woman, on the other hand, was clearly someone brought up with care by her family, separated from her kin, and had suffered a difficult labor on the very day she arrived at the nursery; surviving at all had been no easy feat, and He Qiuxia couldn’t bear to stand by. Her own husband was fighting at the front lines, so she had to protect other women in the rear.
Therefore, she naturally assumed the child in that woman’s arms belonged to her. After patting off the dirt on her body, He Qiuxia picked up the other neglected infant in swaddling clothes. Before she even had time to check, she was pulled along by other comrades from the nursery to rush to the air-raid shelter, thus losing touch with that woman.
It was too chaotic back then, and she indeed had not thought carefully about whether the child was hers. As Ji Yunshu grew up over the years, her health remained poor; He Qiuxia had felt immense guilt, thinking it was her negligence back then that had left her daughter with a lingering illness.
It was not until after the liberation, when Ji Yunshu fell gravely ill and required surgery and a blood transfusion, that neither her blood type nor Ji Haiguo’s matched. Only then did He Qiuxia learn that Ji Yunshu was not her daughter.
But by then, Ji Yunshu was already fourteen years old. Having raised a daughter for fourteen years, even if not biological, she was as dear to her heart as her biological son Ji Yunting. In fact, after that, she continued to treat Ji Yunshu even better than Ji Yunting.
Now that her real daughter had come to her door, He Qiuxia knew just by looking at that face that this person was likely her biological child. Yet, she still could not help thinking: what should happen to Ji Yunshu then?
Ji Yunshu did not know what she should do either. Looking at He Qiuxia’s struggling, pained expression, she realized that perhaps everything Meng Li said was true.
That face looked too much like her father’s—so much so that she couldn’t deceive herself into thinking it was fake.
He Qiuxia eventually picked up those few pages of reports and handwritten certificates. She looked at them for a while, remaining silent for a long time.
The room was very quiet, with only the ticking of the wall clock echoing.
After a moment, He Qiuxia spoke, her voice not loud, but trembling violently: “I have already called Old Ji. We will talk after he returns. About you coming to find us… did you tell your parents… your adoptive parents? This matter cannot be explained in a single moment. Didn’t they come with you? Are they in Beijing? Do I need to have Old Ji issue them a letter of introduction? Our two families need to sit down and talk about this together. If they are also in Beijing, please invite them over. After all, this is a major event for both families.”
A daughter swapped at birth nearly twenty years ago suddenly appearing before her—even a woman like He Qiuxia, who had braved hail of bullets and walked past the gates of death multiple times, was flustered. When nervous, her speaking speed would quicken, leaving her no time to think through the logic and issues in her words, her mind filled entirely with: why hasn’t Ji Haiguo returned yet?
“…” Meng Li hesitated slightly, seeming reluctant to mention her adoptive parents, and did not move. Looking at He Qiuxia, her eyes slowly turned red: “Auntie, I know this is hard for you to accept right away. But I’ve waited a long time for this day. I didn’t come to snatch anything; I just wanted to recognize my real parents.”
As she spoke, her voice grew increasingly choked up, tears welling in her eyes: “The train ride from Su City to here takes a long time. I only had the chance to come look for you because I fell gravely ill and needed to come to the capital for medical treatment…”
Meng Li pulled out a handkerchief and gently wiped her tears. Without waiting for the others to speak, she chattered on at length about her hardships in Su City.
In this era, children of capitalists were indeed easily looked down upon, a fact Ji Yunshu also knew.
Looking at Meng Li’s demeanor, He Qiuxia’s lips moved as if she wanted to say something, but she did not speak immediately; however, she was visibly more anxious.
Standing to the side witnessing this scene, Ji Yunting felt a uncomfortable pang in his heart. He turned his head to look at Ji Yunshu, finding his sister’s face terribly pale, her eyes fixed straight on Meng Li, her lips pressed tightly together.
He walked over and gently nudged Ji Yunshu’s arm: “Xiao Shu, why don’t you go over to Pei Yufeng’s house for a bit? Didn’t you say you were going to pick something up from him?”
Ji Yunshu turned her head toward him numbly, her eyes a bit dazed.
“Go on,” Ji Yunting lowered his voice. “Sitting here is just a painful ordeal. Go out for a walk. By the time Dad comes back, maybe this matter will be resolved.”
“No matter what the outcome is, you are my sister,” Ji Yunting said finally.