To Gu Wan, a situation a hundred or a thousand times more severe than being held like that by Qin Zhijun was the possibility of turning into a half-human, half-demon creature. Right now, the most urgent task was to head back and check whether the color of her birthmark had darkened even a little bit.
Since she didn’t actually have low blood sugar, she took just a few sips of the sugar water, managed her internal embarrassment and bashfulness, and saw that he seemed to hesitate as if wanting to say something. She stood up, lowered her head, and said softly, “I understand. I’m heading back then.”
The expression on Qin Zhijun’s face froze for a moment.
What did she understand…?
Did she mean she understood that she should carry candies with her whenever she went out from now on, or did she mean she accepted his refusal to marry her?
At the thought of the latter, his heart felt mysteriously stuffy and blocked.
She had already left, yet a few lingering wisps of the warm, delicate fragrance he had smelled on her earlier still hovered in the room. He didn’t know what was wrong with him—if she truly wasn’t going to marry him, wasn’t that precisely what he had wanted?
He lightly clenched his fist, hiding that faint trace of disappointment deep in his heart.
Returning to her own room, Gu Wan shut the doors and windows tightly before stripping off her clothes. The cloth band wrapping her chest had been tied too tightly, and as she unraveled it ring by ring, red indentations were left carved into her tender skin.
She had no choice but to wait for those red marks to fade before she could verify any changes to the birthmark. Even though it was a scorching summer and she was inside her own room, Gu Wan still felt that being bare-chested was deeply embarrassing. Thus, setting the cloth band aside, she slipped on an undershirt and pulled her regular clothes straight over it.
However, the clothes that used to fit somewhat loosely now had to be yanked down forcefully once they reached her chest. The thin undershirt covered hardly anything, and with her lightweight summer shirt tightly binding her body, Gu Wan felt just as embarrassed as if she weren’t wearing any clothes at all.
It seemed that besides wrapping her chest, she would have to find a way to tailor two new, oversized outfits for this coming autumn and winter.
After waiting for about half an hour, the red marks left by the cloth band finally subsided. She took off her clothes to examine the fingernail-sized fox birthmark. Set against her fair skin, the light-pink fox had distinctly shifted away from the hue between white and pink she had seen last night.
Overjoyed, Gu Wan laughed while tears streamed down her face. Looking at the pink fox birthmark on her body now, she even found a sense of beauty in it—it no longer looked like something that could burst forth as a hideous monster to devour her at any moment.
She meticulously wrapped the cloth band back on, pulled her clothes on neatly, wiped the tears from her face, and flashed a wide smile.
Her guess had been spot on: Qin Zhijun truly was beneficial to her integration of the fox clan bloodline.
Furthermore, her parents and Qin Zhijun’s parents had agreed to let them marry in six months. From discovering the anomaly in her body to witnessing the inherited memories, the breathless panic weighing on her heart melted away at this very moment, leaving her feeling light and at ease. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
As long as she visited the Qin household often and could marry Qin Zhijun in six months, everything would be fine.
She walked out of her room and bumped right into Wang Shuiying, who had just returned from outside with Niuniu.
Wang Shuiying, who was originally heading back to her own room, took two steps before turning back around to stare at Gu Wan for quite a while. Suddenly, she reached out her right hand and gave Gu Wan’s cheek a pinch. Gu Wan instinctively covered her cheek with her hand.
The silky smooth texture under her fingers made Wang Shuiying’s eyes light up, and she marvelled, “Xiao Wan, why do I feel like you’ve gotten so much fairer lately? We do the same work and eat the same food every day, so how come my skin is dull and rough while your face feels even softer to pinch than my Niuniu’s?”
Gu Wan said softly, “Sister-in-law’s skin is very nice too.”
Wang Shuiying’s eyes crinkled with laughter. Truth be told, in the three years since she married into the family, her sister-in-law had truly bloomed into a fine young woman. That voice of hers was so soft that even a woman like herself felt a tingling warmth in her heart listening to it.
Then, thinking of the marriage her parents-in-law had arranged for her, she couldn’t help but feel it was a pity for Gu Wan.
Around nine o’clock, Qin Xiaomei hung up her family’s washed laundry to dry and brought over a half-finished pair of cloth shoes to find Gu Wan.
The two young girls were born in the same year and had been close since childhood, always sitting together whenever they had free time.
Gu Wan was still embroidering shoe insoles. Her mother had prepared quite a few blank insoles for her, so this task would keep her busy for a good while.
Thinking of the rumors she had heard over the past two days regarding her eldest brother’s marriage, Qin Xiaomei kept glancing at Gu Wan every now and then while stitching the shoe.
Ever since the night the Zhao family sent a matchmaker to break off the match, she had overheard Uncle and Aunt Gu in her room saying they wanted to marry Xiao Wan to her eldest brother. Yesterday, she heard her parents mention that her eldest brother seemed unwilling, saying he refused to drag anyone down.
She and Xiao Wan had been like sisters since they were little. If Xiao Wan became her eldest sister-in-law, she would certainly be delighted.
However, judging by her parents’ tone, it seemed very unlikely that her eldest brother’s leg could ever be fully cured, and he would still walk with a limp in the future. She feared Xiao Wan might feel aggrieved in her heart.
On one hand, she was overjoyed that her best friend might actually become family; on the other hand, she worried that her eldest brother’s current situation would wrong her friend. Truthfully, if her brother’s leg only ended up with a slight limp, the absolute worst-case scenario was that he couldn’t stay in the military anymore—it wouldn’t hinder their everyday life at all.
Qin Xiaomei deeply respected her eldest brother, considering him the most remarkable brother in the world—steady, accomplished, handsome, and good to their family.
Hearing her parents talk, Uncle Gu said Xiao Wan would still be married to her brother in six months. She really wanted to ask how Xiao Wan felt about it in her heart and whether she felt wronged. Enjoying the story? Read on at novelping(.)com.
Thinking up to this point, she probed tentatively, “Xiao Wan, I heard Uncle Gu telling my parents the other day about marrying you to my eldest brother. Did you know about this?”
Gu Wan nodded. “My parents told me.”
Seeing that Gu Wan knew about it and didn’t display the slightest hint of resistance or sorrow on her face, Qin Xiaomei let out a quiet sigh of relief.
When all was said and done, they shared a friendship forged from childhood. Although Gu Wan didn’t carry the same weight in her heart as her own brother, she didn’t want to hide anything from her either. She asked cautiously, “Did Uncle Gu tell you that my eldest brother’s leg might not recover completely? He definitely won’t be able to stay in the military in the future.”
More than just telling me—my mom even shed quite a few tears over it, Gu Wan thought, nodding once more.
Seeing that she was fully aware, Qin Xiaomei set her mind at ease. She had been genuinely terrified that Uncle and Aunt Gu had kept Xiao Wan in the dark, only for resentment to brew after Xiao Wan married over. With one side being her biological brother and the other her best friend, she didn’t want to see either party unhappy.
She glanced toward the house, lowered her head, and asked in a low voice, “Then do you have any thoughts about it? Are you truly willing to marry my eldest brother?”
Gu Wan was naturally a hundred percent willing. With a gentle smile hovering on her lips, she shyly bowed her head and continued embroidering her shoe insole. Seeing her expression, Qin Xiaomei instantly knew she was willing in her heart. Beaming with joy, she lightly bumped Gu Wan’s arm with her elbow and teased in a low voice, “Then you’re going to be my eldest sister-in-law from now on!”
As she spoke, she leaned right up to Gu Wan’s ear and deliberately called out, “Eldest Sister-in-law!”
Scared out of her wits by her reckless teasing, Gu Wan cast several nervous glances around the yard. Seeing that no one was around to hear them, her face flushed bright red as she told Qin Xiaomei to stop talking nonsense.
As the two of them chatted and laughed, leaning close to one another, Qin Xiaomei twitched her nose and asked, “Xiao Wan, do you smell a fragrance? It smells really nice.”
Gu Wan took a sniff and shook her head.
“Really!” Qin Xiaomei sniffed around the air, finally settling near Gu Wan’s shoulder. “It seems to be coming from you. What did you use that smells so good?”
Gu Wan turned her head to sniff near her shoulder, but smelled nothing at all.
At that very moment, along the small path leading from Sanjiawan toward Qinghu Village, a woman around twenty-one or twenty-two years old, dressed in a blue floral Dacron short-sleeved shirt, held several oil-paper parcels tied together in one hand and a net bag containing a jar of canned mandarins in the other, briskly entering the entrance of Qinghu Village.
Sansukini: I posted the wrong chapter. Sorry. Here’s the correct one.