“Yo, how many times has this been already this year?”Her best friend had the body of a devil and the face of an angel, plus a sweet doll-like voice. She was especially good at attracting the attention of middle-aged and older men.
“Don’t even mention it. I couldn’t hold back and gave the bastard a kick that’ll probably make him childless. I just got out of the police station.”
“You okay?”There wasn’t a trace of real concern in her tone. Since college, this girl had practically been a regular at police stations. Some men were just shameless.
“It’s nothing serious. I held back, so at worst he’ll need ten days to half a month to recover. Anyway, I’m starving, and since we haven’t seen each other in a while, I thought I’d ask you out.”
“Get to the point.”This girl would never contact her for no reason.
“Hehe, well… isn’t everyone saying that the wishes at Yonghe Temple are super accurate? I was thinking we could go make a wish together and I’ll treat you to a big meal afterward. How about it?”
“You make it sound like I can’t afford a fancy meal myself.”
“As if! You, Miss Landlady, are way richer than a useless bum like me. You’re the kind of person who treats money like dirt.”
“Hmph, good that you know it. Your lady here is a rich woman. Money’s just a number to me,” Shi Meiqing bragged smugly.
“So, are you going or not? Are we still sisters or what?”Clearly, this one wasn’t known for patience either.
“Fine, fine. But haven’t you heard about Yonghe Temple’s reputation? You still dare go there to make wishes?”
Yonghe Temple was famous for granting wishes with eerie accuracy—but always in strange and bizarre ways. Creepy didn’t even begin to cover it.
“Yeah, I know. It’s just for fun.”
“You seriously think everything online is true? You should only believe about thirty percent of what you read online.”
“I heard the bracelets there are really effective. I thought we could get matching friendship bracelets. Then everyone would know how close we are.”
Shi Meiqing glanced at her face in the rearview mirror. Had her friend noticed something wrong with her complexion lately? Then all the stuff she’d been putting on her face every day would’ve been for nothing.
“Alright. But at this hour, we should eat first. What do you want? My treat.”Neither of them were stingy people.
“Sure, then we’re definitely eating somewhere expensive.”
“The way you say that makes me sound cheap. Fine, you pick the place. We’ll meet directly at the restaurant.”
After agreeing on a location, they hung up. Shi Meiqing kept her eyes on the road, though her mind had drifted who-knows-where. Her hands and feet moved mechanically, yet somehow the car drove perfectly steadily.
Shi Meiqing was twenty-six years old this year. Tall, beautiful, the kind of woman anyone would call stunning at first glance.
But she was very low-key. The reason? She had a kind of hidden social anxiety and disliked interacting with strangers—especially because she hated the disgusting, malicious looks some people gave her.
People often called her a pitiful child, though she never felt pitiful herself. Even though her parents were awful, she had grandparents and maternal grandparents who loved her dearly.
Her parents were the sort of people others would despise just hearing about. Back then, they’d loved each other so intensely they insisted on being together. But less than two years after getting married, and after having her, they became like mortal enemies.
When they loved, it was earth-shattering passion. When they didn’t, they wanted to kill each other. As the product of their broken marriage, she naturally became the punching bag.
It was said that if the four grandparents hadn’t arranged to visit her that day, her inhuman parents might have smashed her to death on the spot.
The furious elders immediately threw the couple out of the family. She became the only child of both families, while her parents divorced at lightning speed and started new families without the slightest guilt.
Sometimes she suspected that her existence—the “product of a failed marriage”—had merely been an excuse for their divorce. They’d probably cheated long before that.
She didn’t know whether those two were living well or not. As far as she was concerned, she might as well have been born from a crack in a rock.
In twenty-six years, she had only seen her parents a few times as a child, and even then, only heard their voices through a closed gate.
Her grandparents truly meant what they said. Once they disowned those two, they never cared about them again. All their love and devotion were poured into her instead.
She grew up without parents, but surrounded by love. In fact, she’d lived happier than many children who did have parents.
Unfortunately, good people didn’t live long. Shortly after she entered university, her grandparents and maternal grandparents went on a trip together. Their tour bus got into an accident, and none of the four survived.
That was when she truly felt as if the sky had collapsed. If not for Little Curly Hair staying by her side through that dark period, she might have followed the four elders soon after.
As for the fact that she herself didn’t have long to live, she was actually happy about it.
Yes, you read that right. She genuinely wished she could see her grandparents again sooner. The thought of continuing to live together with them somewhere else filled her with happiness.
Even without parents, and with only four elders raising her, she had lived an incredibly comfortable life.
The grandparents refused to acknowledge her worthless parents, but they still made sure those two paid every cent they owed. Her child support, tuition, living expenses, and education costs had all been paid in double.
Those two might have been terrible human beings, but they had one advantage: they were good at making money. Both had considerable wealth, which naturally benefited her.
On top of that, the four elders were smart. During the city’s expansion years, they got insider news early and bought up many old houses.
Even if the five of them had done absolutely nothing and simply collected rent every day, they could’ve lived comfortably for life.
Not to mention the enormous compensation payout after the accident.
The elders had been especially thorough—they’d made wills long ago stating that if they died or met with an accident, all four of their estates would go entirely to Shi Meiqing.
As for their biological children? They wouldn’t get a single cent. Shi Meiqing was a genuine second-generation landlord—a rich landlady.
As long as she stayed away from gambling and drugs, she could live a wealthy and carefree life until the day she died.
And as for those bizarre parents coming back to fight over inheritance? Impossible. Even the children they later had never appeared before her. At least those people still had some sense of shame.
Unfortunately, Shi Meiqing’s wonderful life was about to end abruptly at twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. Who could’ve imagined that someone whose life had gone so smoothly and comfortably would suddenly develop a terminal illness?
Shi Meiqing sighed. Her only regret was that she was dying before she’d managed to spend all her money.
She parked the car and shook her head. Maybe when people were nearing the end, they naturally started reminiscing about the past.