CHAPTER 19: The Past

When Lin Mother and Xu Yanqiu left the police station together, she was clearly disgusted. A mother trying to find her biological daughter and ending up at the police station… To outsiders, it would look like the child had been abducted or something.

“Why did you say all that back at the station?” Xu Yanqiu demanded.

“What did I say?” Lin Mother raised an eyebrow. “I just told the truth. I said you hadn’t seen Xiaoya in years, that I’m not her biological mother, and that I adopted her. Oh, or should I say you shoved her onto me?”

Lin Mother had always celebrated her son and daughter’s birthdays separately. Even though the household registration had them down for the same birthdate, she made people believe they were actually fraternal twins. On their birthdays, she’d say the older brother should go first to make him feel responsible, and the younger sister would wait a month to celebrate.

That was also because Yi Xiaoya’s actual birth month was later, so Lin Mother had deliberately arranged it so she could still have a birthday of her own.

“They all think Xiaoya isn’t biologically related to you!” Xu Yanqiu said through gritted teeth.

“Oh, so should I say I adopted her from you?” Lin Mother asked. “Alright, we’re still right outside. Let’s go back in and explain everything properly.”

She turned around, about to walk back into the police station.

“Don’t.” Xu Yanqiu hurriedly pulled her back. “Cousin, don’t go.”

“Again with the ‘don’t’?” Lin Mother said. “So everything I say is wrong and everything you say is right, just perfect. I should be praising you too, huh?”

“….” Xu Yanqiu felt her cousin was being unbearably sarcastic.

Just then, Xu Yanqiu spotted the secretary working for her husband. So her husband had found out she had been at the police station. She began to wonder how she should explain everything. Should she just come out and say Yi Xiaoya was her biological daughter, or…

But part of her still hoped Yi Xiaoya would acknowledge her as her birth mother. If she hadn’t handed Xiaoya over to her cousin but instead abandoned her at an orphanage, maybe Xiaoya wouldn’t have made it back to the Yi family so quickly.

Xu Yanqiu fell silent. She couldn’t keep arguing with her cousin.

Meanwhile, Yi Yao quickly found out that Xu Yanqiu had gone to the school to look for Yi Xiaoya. The security guard reported it to the school, and the school then contacted Yi Yao. He immediately guessed it was Xu Yanqiu—when he had investigated the Lin family before, he’d come across Lin Mother’s cousin, Xu Yanqiu.

Xu Yanqiu was the woman who, back then, wanted to use her child to marry into the Yi family.

So many years had passed that Yi Yao had already forgotten what she looked like. If he hadn’t seen her photo, he wouldn’t have remembered at all. Over the years, he’d been with quite a few women. Whenever they broke up, he always made sure to give them some compensation.

Out with the old, in with the new. Who had time to remember a woman from over ten years ago?

“Dad,” Yi Xiaoya said after finishing her meal. “I noticed something. The students winning chemistry competition awards at our school are all from first or second year. None of them are in third year. I’m starting third year soon. Doesn’t that mean I won’t be able to enter the chemistry competition anymore?”

“Who even joins competitions in senior year? Everyone’s busy prepping for the college entrance exam.”

Yi Xiaoya didn’t think she had any real shot at winning anything either. She was just cramming last minute—how could she compare to people who had been preparing for years? Some had been doing competitions since they were kids, covering all sorts of topics. She really didn’t stand a chance.

“Useless!” Yi Yao hadn’t even thought of that.

“If you’d found me earlier, I’m not asking for junior high—just even in my first year of high school, it would’ve been better,” Yi Xiaoya muttered. “It’s not my fault I grew up so fast.”

Yi Yao felt that raising a kid was just too hard. If only Yi Xiaoya already knew all that chemistry and pharmacology like she did in his dream, wouldn’t that be perfect? Right now she was neither here nor there—just an awkward in-between stage.

“Even if you don’t compete, you still have to take supplementary lessons!” Yi Yao said. “Stop thinking about being online all the time. You’re not a genius, you’re already behind compared to others. If you don’t work hard, you really will be useless.”

“Dad, you keep calling me useless and saying I’m hopeless—don’t you know that hurts my feelings?” Yi Xiaoya said.

Yi Xiaoya wondered why her dad didn’t just let her stay at Grandpa’s place and wait until after her birthday to come back. She suspected he wanted to discipline her and was afraid Grandpa and the others would take her side. That’s why he made her come live with him—such a schemer!

“Actually… if you’d found me later, you might’ve been less mad, right?” Yi Xiaoya added, “I heard lots of parents get so angry helping their kids with homework they practically blow a fuse.”

“There’s a private tutor,” Yi Yao replied flatly. “No need for me to do it myself.”

“…” Yi Xiaoya figured she’d better shut up.

“In the future, if someone comes to you claiming to be a relative, don’t just blindly follow them,” Yi Yao warned. “Even if it’s someone familiar, you have to call home and confirm. Crimes by people you know are statistically more successful.”

“Do we have any horrible relatives like that?” Yi Xiaoya asked, puzzled. Weren’t the relatives on the Yi side all pretty well-off?

“Couldn’t it be your mom’s side of the family?” Yi Yao countered.

“My mom…” Yi Xiaoya fell silent for a moment. “None of you ever tell me anything about her.”

Yi Yao got up, and Yi Xiaoya followed. He retrieved a stack of documents from the study—all about Xu Yanqiu, including how many boyfriends she had after leaving Yi Yao, even who she’d been a mistress for.

In Yi Yao’s eyes, they shouldn’t overprotect Yi Xiaoya. She needed to understand the cruelty of the world.

Yes, Xu Yanqiu was her biological mother, but since she had done those things, she shouldn’t be afraid of her daughter knowing them.

Yi Xiaoya looked at a photo. Wasn’t that the woman who came to the school gate today?

“It’s her?” Yi Xiaoya was shocked.

“She wanted to marry into the Yi family back when she was pregnant with you,” Yi Yao said. “Originally, it was supposed to be a one-time deal—money for a service. There was no way I’d marry her. She hid the pregnancy until her belly started showing. I told her to get an abortion, but she didn’t. She secretly gave birth to you and had her cousin raise you. Maybe she was always hoping you’d one day enter the Yi family. And once you were in, how could she not benefit?”

“Why didn’t she bring baby me to the Yi house?” Yi Xiaoya asked. “Even if she didn’t go to you, she could’ve gone to Grandpa.”

“Maybe she did try to go to your grandpa,” Yi Yao said. “There’ve been plenty of people holding babies, claiming they’re mine. But do you think your grandpa’s that gullible?”

“So I’m like a pearl lost in the sea?” Yi Xiaoya asked.

“You want to know about your birth mother? You can read. Look for yourself.” Yi Yao sat down and sipped his coffee.

Hiding the truth wasn’t the best option. Yi Yao didn’t like leaving things for Yi Xiaoya to discover on her own—some things were better laid out plainly.

Yi Xiaoya flipped through the pages, and her mind went back to that day at the elevator of the Lin family’s new home—Xu Yanqiu was there. Her birth mother must’ve learned she’d been taken back by the Yi family, and went to find her aunt.

“She’s now Madam Tang,” Yi Yao said. “Her handbags cost tens of thousands—sometimes over a hundred thousand.”

“…” Yi Xiaoya thought of herself and her older cousin—technically her cousin, not real brother. They didn’t have enough rooms at home. She slept in the bedroom, and her cousin slept on the couch.

Even though she wasn’t her aunt’s biological child, her aunt never made her sleep on the sofa or forced them to squeeze into a bunk bed.

The Lin family was struggling too, yet Xu Yanqiu had never once helped them. As far back as Yi Xiaoya could remember, she’d never even met Xu Yanqiu. It was like her birth mother didn’t exist at all.

“Oh right, seniors can participate in competitions too.” Yi Yao looked it up on his phone and waved it at her. “Technology’s advanced—if you don’t know something, just search it online.”

Yi Xiaoya stayed quiet. Her dad was really obsessed with competitions.

—
At the Tang household, Xu Yanqiu stood nervously in front of her husband.

“When did you suddenly get a relative like that?” Mr. Tang asked.

He didn’t like Xu Yanqiu interacting with her poor relatives too much, and definitely didn’t like them visiting. Xu Yanqiu had always done well in this regard, rarely bringing those people over, and Mr. Tang hadn’t visited her maiden family during the holidays either.

So when he found out she had gone to see Yi Xiaoya, he was quite shocked.

“You want me to look into it, or are you going to come clean?” Mr. Tang liked using this line. If someone had done something, there would always be traces.

“I…” Xu Yanqiu opened her mouth, terrified, but she had to speak. “I used to… Yi Xiaoya is my biological daughter!”

Xu Yanqiu steeled herself and finally said it.

Yi Xiaoya was her biological daughter. That was an unchangeable fact.

“Oh? So the precious granddaughter of Old Master Yi is actually your biological daughter?” Tang Xinyang came down the stairs with a sneer. “Didn’t you say you only gave my dad one daughter? When did another one suddenly appear? And a biological one, no less!”

Tang Xingyang could tell from Xu Yanqiu’s expression that her stepmother was feeling guilty—there was definitely more to this than she was letting on.

“She’s your biological daughter. How many times have you seen her over the years?” Tang Xingyang asked. She knew her father didn’t like Xu Yanqiu having too much contact with her maternal family.

No matter how Xu Yanqiu answered—whether she claimed to have seen her often and was close to her, or said she hadn’t seen her at all—neither would look good.

If she said they were close, it would mean she’d been going behind Mr. Tang’s back. If she said she hadn’t seen her, it would mean she didn’t care about her own daughter. And if she didn’t care, how could she possibly expect Yi Xiaoya to acknowledge her as her biological mother?

“I… She was raised by my cousin,” Xu Yanqiu said through gritted teeth, already full of resentment at how this stepdaughter always made things difficult for her. “Back then, I had no choice. I didn’t mean to deceive you all. I was just… I was afraid that if you knew I had a daughter, you wouldn’t marry me.”

“The Yi family is throwing a birthday banquet for Yi Xiaoya,” Mr. Tang said. “Do you have an invitation?”

“…” Xu Yanqiu fell silent.

“How could she possibly have one? If she did, she wouldn’t have needed to block her at the school gate,” Tang Xingyang said with a sneer. Ever since she found out Xu Yanqiu had ended up at the police station, she’d been thinking her opportunity for payback had arrived. Xu Yanqiu had always treated her with veiled hostility—of course she was going to return the favor. “And anyway, does a biological mother need an invitation to attend her own daughter’s birthday?”

Xu Yanqiu didn’t have an invitation to the birthday banquet and didn’t dare show up at the Yi household unannounced, afraid she’d be stopped at the gate. “My cousin and her family will probably go. I’ll go with them.”

“You’re not going to the birthday banquet for the Yi family’s little princess—you’re going to reap the benefits,” Tang Xingyang said coldly. “Your cousin raised your daughter with great effort, and you turn around and act like it was all part of your plan, that the credit is all yours. Ha! What did you do—send them money every month? Buy them a house?”