Downstairs, in the dining room.
“Grandma, Dad, Mom, you have to stand up for me!”
Zhu Ci rushed into the dining room like a gust of wind, nearly startling Meng Yin into dropping the plate in her hands.
Zhu Linjun took the plate from his wife’s hands. “Did you get burned?”
Meng Yin smiled and shook her head. “I had just finished setting the table, and now it’s all messed up.” She looked at Zhu Ci with a mix of helplessness and affection. “Who’s gone and bullied our A Ci so early in the morning?”
Meng Yin’s words made Zhu Ci’s anxious heart settle firmly.
So what if the real daughter had come back? She was still the daughter Mom and Dad loved.
Zhu Ci seized the opportunity to wrap her arms around her mother’s waist, nuzzling against her like a puppy, murmuring that Mom smelled so nice and felt so good. Then, in the next breath, her tone shifted to an indignant complaint. “It was Sister! She hit me on the head with a clothes hanger and made me bleed!”
Hearing this, Old Mrs. Zhu looked up from her newspaper, her gaze resting on Zhu Ci’s forehead for half a second before returning to the paper.
Zhu Ci caught her grandmother’s look, pouted, and felt deeply wronged. Seeing that Grandma said nothing, she didn’t dare embellish her complaints to Mom and Dad.
Grandma might be tolerant of her, but most of the time, her heart leaned toward Sister.
Seeing his daughter clinging to his wife and acting spoiled, Zhu Linjun felt for his wife, who hadn’t slept all night and had been running around all morning. He pulled out a chair for her and said gently, “A Ci, be a bit more composed.”
“Xiao Yin, you’ve been busy all morning. Leave the rest to me. Sit down and rest for a while.”
Meng Yin smiled sweetly at her husband. “I’m not tired.”
Zhu Ci stuck out her tongue and deliberately moved her chair closer to her mother’s. Seeing the lavish breakfast spread across the table, she instinctively reached for her favorite food.
Her hand had barely extended before Meng Yin lightly patted it away.
Seeing her father’s disapproving look as well, she sheepishly withdrew her hand.
In the morning dining room, fresh flowers still bearing dewdrops sat carefully arranged in vases. A full table of Chinese and Western breakfast dishes stretched before them.
Zhu Ci rolled her eyes at Zhu Fan and He Wan, who arrived late. “You two are so slow! Grandma, Mom, and Dad have been waiting forever.”
Old Mrs. Zhu rose from her chair, her gaze fixed intently on Zhu Yuan and Zhu Fan. Looking at the two girls standing side by side, their features bearing a five or six-part resemblance, her eyes reddened, and she repeated three times: “You’re back, you’re back, that’s good.”
“A Wan, come here to Grandma. Let Grandma have a good look at you.”
“A Fan, A Wan, standing together like this, anyone can see at a glance that you two are blood sisters.”
“Crash—”
A porcelain plate was knocked to the floor, shattering into pieces.
Zhu Linjun and Meng Yin saw Zhu Ci with red-rimmed eyes, fighting back tears. They comforted her, patting her head with both reassurance and indulgence.
When the two exchanged glances, they saw worry in each other’s eyes.
When their younger daughter was born, she’d been placed under blue light treatment in the neonatal unit, and a nurse’s negligence had caused the babies to be switched.
If it hadn’t been for the old master’s rambling words before his death last winter—saying Zhu Ci didn’t look like a granddaughter of the Zhu family—and Old Mrs. Zhu taking note of it, they still wouldn’t know their biological daughter was out there somewhere.
One was a girl raised by their side for seventeen years, not their flesh and blood but dearer than a daughter. The other was their own blood, yet they’d never spent a single day with her.
Ji Shu quickly stepped in to stop Meng Yin from bending down to pick up the broken pieces. “Madam, let me.”
Old Mrs. Zhu didn’t pay the incident much mind.
She noticed that Zhu Yuan was still wearing a faded, washed-out blue-and-white school uniform, along with that heavy-looking schoolbag, and her brow furrowed deeply.
Meng Yin looked at Zhu Yuan nervously. “A Wan, is it that you don’t like the clothes Mom prepared for you?”
“If you don’t like what Mom and Dad picked out, we’ll take you to the mall today, and you can pick out whatever you like yourself.”
Zhu Linjun spoke up. “Mom, Xiao Yin, let the children sit down and eat breakfast first.”
He looked at the reserved, quiet Zhu Yuan and reached out to take the schoolbag from her shoulder. “A Wan, let’s put the bag down and eat first.”
Zhu Ci, seeing how preciously she guarded the oranges in that bag, couldn’t help but sneer. “A whole bag of crappy oranges, treated like some kind of treasure.”
Watching all the attention focus on He Wan, she felt a fire burning in her chest.
He Wan looked up and met Zhu Ci’s eyes seriously. “These aren’t crappy oranges. These are oranges my eldest sister planted with her own hands, fertilized with her own hands, and picked with her own hands.”
“They’re very precious.”
In that household, her alcoholic father and gambling-addict mother had only disgust for her, simply because she was a daughter and not a son. Her eldest sister told her that their parents had listened to a fortune-teller who said that if they went to the capital’s hospital to give birth, maybe it would be a boy.
The whole family had sold everything they could, scraped together every last coin, and flown to the capital to have the baby—only to have another daughter.
On the very first day she was carried back to the small town from the capital, her parents had taken money from strangers and tried to give her away.
It was her eldest sister who paid the fortune-teller to say she was destined for great wealth and prosperity, and only then was she not sent away.
In that remote little town, only her eldest sister was good to her.
Her eldest sister told her that only by studying hard and getting into a good university could she escape that backward town and live a better, freer life.
He Wan straightened her back. “You can look down on this bag of tangerines, but you can’t trample on someone else’s sincerity.”
The girl’s eyes shimmered with light, yet burned with unusual determination.
Old Mrs. Zhu’s heart ached for her.
Zhu Yuan had been adrift outside the family for seventeen years, and now that she had returned—even if her clothes were plain—she still carried the proud bones of the Zhu family in her blood.
In contrast, Zhu Ci, who had been raised by their side since childhood, was growing more spoiled by the day.
Old Mrs. Zhu’s expression turned stern.
Zhu Linjun set down his chopsticks. “A Ci, we really have spoiled you rotten.”
Meng Yin’s ever-gentle smile also faded.
The eldest sister A Yuan spoke of was A Ci’s biological sister.
In the time she had spent with A Yuan, Meng Yin had always felt the child was distant and unapproachable toward her and her husband. But watching her eldest daughter together with A Yuan now, the strangeness and estrangement that time had created seemed to suddenly vanish.
Her gaze fell on Zhu Ci’s face, and an inexplicable feeling rose in her chest.
Meng Yin dismissed the odd sensation. A Ci was the daughter she had raised with her own hands—all three of the young girls before her were her daughters.
How fortunate she was.
Zhu Fan noticed the atmosphere growing subtle and thought to herself, So the real daughter versus fake daughter drama begins?
She set the green tangerine peel she was holding on the table and grabbed a bowl of congee nearby.
She was hungry.
Old Mrs. Zhu spoke with solemn gravity. “A Yuan, you are a child of the Zhu family. From today onward, forget the name He Wan.”
The young girl sat quietly, saying nothing, eating nothing.
Zhu Linjun cleared his throat. “Mother, A Yuan’s household registration—Xiao Yin and I have already transferred it to the capital, and her surname has been changed as well.”
Old Mrs. Zhu was quite satisfied with her son and daughter-in-law’s efficiency. Seeing the young girl with her head lowered, she pretended to be displeased to tease her. “A Yuan is rather partial—only giving tangerines to her sister. Grandma wants some too.”
Zhu Yuan pressed her lips together. The old lady’s warmth and kindness made it impossible for her to refuse.
This bag of tangerines wasn’t anything precious or rare.
They weren’t even sweet—they were quite sour.
But they were the only things that belonged to her alone, brought from that remote little town all the way to the capital.
These were the earliest batch of tangerines, not yet fully ripe.
Zhu Yuan took a tangerine from her bag and offered it to the old lady with both hands.
The tangerine was so sour the old lady nearly choked trying to swallow it.
Zhu Fan, sitting beside her grandmother, casually took the tangerine from her hand and finished it without wasting a single segment.
Sour was good—it whetted the appetite.
Zhu Yuan watched her sister eat the entire tangerine without changing expression, and her eyes lit up.
Zhu Fan noticed the fleeting smile on Zhu Yuan’s face and blurted out her thoughts without thinking. “You look pretty when you smile. You should smile more.”
Zhu Yuan’s face instantly flushed pink.
Meng Yin and Zhu Linjun both turned to look at their eldest daughter.
Their eldest daughter had always been cold by nature.
Old Mrs. Zhu smiled with satisfaction. They truly are sisters after all.
Throughout this breakfast, only Zhu Fan was seriously focused on eating.
Zhu Yuan was the protagonist of the day, the center of attention. When asked questions, she answered each one—neither humble nor overbearing, her back straight as a rod.
Meng Yin and Zhu Linjun wanted to talk to Zhu Yuan, but watching the old lady and their daughter chatting happily with no opening for them to join in, they felt a pang of sourness in their hearts.
Zhu Fan simply played the invisible person, savoring her meal while watching the heartwarming scene of the prodigal daughter’s return and reunion with family.
Zhu Ci didn’t have such composure. She had never been so neglected before, and in this moment, she felt an unprecedented sense of crisis.
No—she tightened her grip on the fork and knife in her hands. No one could take what belonged to her.
After breakfast, Zhu Yuan was led out by the old lady and Meng Yin.
Zhu Linjun was so delighted he skipped going to the company and took on the role of driver himself.
Zhu Ci called out to Zhu Fan, who was heading upstairs.
“Sister, you have to be on my side, or I really will tell Grandma.”
“I heard everything you and Sister Yazhi plotted in your room that day—I was in the dressing room, and I not only heard it, I recorded it on my phone.”
Zhu Fan’s footsteps came to an abrupt halt.
The 99-day countdown hanging over her head turned into a flashing red string of garbled code.
No way? She was going to die??
Zhu Fan’s face went pale.
Seeing her sister’s expression, Zhu Ci thought she was afraid.
She was immensely pleased. Elegantly slipping on her shoes, she blew her sister a kiss. “We’re the best sisters, remember?”
“We have to stay the best sisters forever.”
With that, Zhu Ci skipped out of the villa with a playful air.
The house fell quiet, but Zhu Fan’s mind was anything but.
[System: Warning! Warning! Warning!!]
[System: The world is beginning to collapse…]
[System: Interception successful]
[World repairing…]